Virginia Beached

This will be reasonably short, since I’m not following the news as closely as I’d otherwise like to while here in Chicago.  (And the elves taking care of my place are doing a terrible job keeping me abreast of things.)

That said, I’ve certainly seen the stories about Virginia’s Supreme Court throwing out the vote that the public passed to approve gerrymandering.  And my immediate reaction was the same as almost all of that from people responding on social media that I’ve seen – How MAGOPs are gerrymandering districts by votes of the Red states legislatures, not only without the public voting but without even any input from voters…yet when Virginia Democrats put up a state measure that the public could vote on, and it passes – it gets blocked by the state’s conservative Supreme Court.

And yes, it’s pathetic.

Democratic House Speaker Don Scott and Attorney General Jay Jones have said they will be requesting an emergency hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal the decision.  They have also filed a motion requesting the Virginia supreme court to put its ruling on hold until after a decision from SCOTUS.  What impact that will have, who knows?  But I'm glad it's being done.  And here's hoping.

As for that the Virginia court ruling, though -- yes, pathetic is the polite term for it.  But I stand by my article last week here, that Democrats will still win in a Blue Wave, perhaps even still the 30-40 pickup I suggested last November.  But even if it turns out with all this manipulation to be half that, and the Democratic pickup is “only” 15-20 seats, that still gives them control of the House.  After all, most of these Red states are only letting them pick up one or two seats at most.  (In fact, keep in mind that Democrats only have to pick up six seats, not 40 -- let alone "only" 15.)  And further, I wouldn’t be surprised (for reasons I explain in that article) if some of the gerrymandered districts backfire on the MAGOP and a few of them even get “dummymandered” -- which is where they lose some seats, even some that once had been Safe Red before the MAGOP took votes away from them to move to a Leans Blue district.  The operative point is that in every Special Election since Trump took office, Democrats have picked up on average 16 points.  They even gained 25 points in a statehouse election in Trump’s own Florida district!  And flipped the seat!  And with Trump’s approval at a paltry 34% and his  dementia degenerating, which is what happens with dementia, it’s not like he’s going to be making things better for himself and his party, surrounded with unqualified incompetents.  Furthermore, this result seems to be spurring previously reluctant Blue states to now consider gerrymandering -- states which have the potential to pick up more seats than Red ones since (unlike these Red states) they have not recently gerrymandered themselves and therefore have more wiggle room to expand Democratic representation.

But additionally, what isn’t getting mentioned in most articles I’ve seen is that none of this gerrymandering affects the voting for U.S. Senate. In fact, all this might backfire on the MAGOP even more by it infuriating the public.