Welp, the thing happened last night. Texas Republican state reps in the Legislature got their quorum, and they passed their racist, evil maps, which they openly admit they want so that they can rig the midterms for Donald Trump, who isn’t enough of a man to win in a fair fight.
They’ve been saying out loud why they’re doing this. Texas Republicans are not even pretending. And they’re openly acting like they will never have to answer to anyone, anywhere for it, much less to voters or Democrats.
Take for example, garbage human Republican slavecatcher and Texas state Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi:
“The underlying goal is this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance,” he told his colleagues, adding that the crux of the changes to the maps center on five districts that “now trend Republican in political performance.”
And here is the governor of Calfornia, saying what he and California Democrats are going to do in response:
“See you in November,” he added on some social media platforms.
Texas hasn’t fully finished its latest act to take away the voting rights of Black people so that the world’s most hated and laughed-at leader Donald Trump has a prayer of winning the midterms — which is what this literally is, let’s not kid around — but last night’s vote was a big move in that direction. They will likely finish enacting the new maps this week, after Republicans in the state Senate get their grubby white supremacist hands on the bill.
Meanwhile, that’s Newsom signaling that they’re going forward in California with their initiative to use the voting might of California, which is significantly larger than Texas, to counteract what Texas’s maps will do. Of course, in California, it’s being put to the people, whether to temporarily abandon all principles of fairness in districting and pass some ratfucked maps that help Democrats. As it happens, polling shows the people are into it.
Axios reported yesterday that Newsom’s own pollster has found that what will become Proposition 50 is leading by 22 points among voters in the state. Specifically, it’s 57 to 35, with another eight percent voting for “pie is delicious,” because they don’t know what they think about Newsom’s plan, or are not aware of it at all. (We like to think of “undecided” voters in polls as people who just got smacked in the head with anvils who believe that pie is delicious.)
Meanwhile, nationally the message is getting through too, as a POLITICO-UC Berkeley Citrin Center survey says that 70 percent of Democrats think gerrymandering is always bad, buuuuuuuuuuuuut:
But a strong majority of Democratic voters across the country think California Democrats should “fight back” and create more favorable House districts if Texas Republicans do, embracing the exact idea likely to go before California voters.
That’d be a 63 percent strong majority, to be specific.
“The real divide isn’t about whether it’s fair,” said Jon Cohen, founder and CEO of TrueDot [which conducted the poll]. “The real divide is whether to fight fire with fire or hold the line on principle.”
AKA be cowards, masturbating in the corner about “principles.”
But thank God, even the most Mommy Morals rule followers of all the Democrats are coming around and lending their support to actually fighting fire with fire right now. Though we personally think Democrats need to drop this weenie “IF the Republicans do this, THEN Democrats are gonna do this!” shit and just be proactively complete and total motherfuckers. Gerrymander Republicans completely out of representation in California, Illinois, wherever it’s even remotely possible. We’re in a fight for the actual existence of the country, and even if we win that fight, things aren’t going back to “normal” anytime in our lifetimes.
That may not be what voters are ready for, though — as Politico notes, Newsom’s pollster’s results suggest that the strong support for his plan in California specifically hinges on the changes being temporary and in response to Texas, as opposed to just doing away with their overly fair nonpartisan redistricting committee.
But yeah, big gun Barack Obama has endorsed Newsom’s Light Motherfuckerism plan, and that guy is ALWAYS about doing things the fair and proper way. (Which is part of why it’s such amusing projection that Russia’s Girlfriend Tulsi Gabbard and Trump are working so hard to convince us that Obama spearheaded some evil conspiracy to deny Donald Trump the presidency by concocting a smear campaign to tie him to Russia. Sure, Barack Obama did that. You betcha.)
At a fundraiser Tuesday for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Obama called this a “responsible plan” and said it’s OK to do a rule bend this one time, but after that he’ll probably make us say our prayers and start being perfect again:
“I believe that Governor Newsom’s approach is a responsible approach,” he said, according to excerpts obtained by POLITICO. “I think that approach is a smart, measured approach, designed to address a very particular problem in a very particular moment in time.”
Nah, we say let’s be motherfuckers forever and apologize to Republicans on the fifth of eat my ass. But that’s just us.
Obama said of course that this is “not my preference,” but:
“We cannot unilaterally allow one of the two major parties to rig the game,” he said. “And California is one of the states that has the capacity to offset a large state like Texas.” […]
“Given that Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House that is effectively saying: gerrymander for partisan purposes so we can maintain the House despite our unpopular policies, redistrict right in the middle of a decade between censuses — which is not how the system was designed; I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this,” he said.
Well yeah.
And maybe if we can come back from this brink we can keep fighting fire with fire, since the maps Texas is in the process of replacing are already racially gerrymandered all to fuck, and so are a bunch of other state maps that mostly just so happen to be light red or purple states on the brink of becoming blue, states where Republicans have rigged the game to enshrine themselves in power basically in perpetuity, against the will of their states’ changing populations. (North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc.)
Or we can talk about good government some more while the Nazis work on expanding the text of Project 2025 to eliminate voting rights for women or whatever else the Christian Nationalists want to do once the buffoon is out of the way and they install President Couchfucker in power.
Either way!
Here is an MSNBC report from last night on Obama and Texas and all the whatnot:
OPEN THREAD!
[NBC News / Politico / Politico]
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