{"id":8943,"date":"2017-04-06T18:42:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T23:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=8943"},"modified":"2017-04-06T18:42:59","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T23:42:59","slug":"is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/06\/is-north-carolina-the-most-toxic-state-in-the-union-ctd-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Is North Carolina the most Toxic State in the Union?, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Wolf on The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em> rather gleefully notes<\/a> another North Carolina gerrymandering case won by the Democrats:<\/p>\n

On Monday, a federal district court struck down<\/a> a map that North Carolina\u2019s Republican-controlled state legislature\u00a0had imposed on the city of Greensboro, the state\u2019s third-largest city. In a remarkable affront to local rule, Republican lawmakers passed a law in 2015 that replaced the city council districts that the city itself had drawn and replaced them with gerrymandered lines intended to hurt Democratic and black voters.<\/p>\n

Democrats quickly brought a challenge to this new map, and the judges hearing the case have now put a stop to this usurpation of power. The court concluded that the legislature\u2019s map was an impermissible racial gerrymander<\/a>; that it violated the principle of \u201cone person, one vote\u201d; and that it unfairly singled out Greensboro. The city-drawn map had remained in place for the 2015 elections while litigation was ongoing, and it will now stay in effect for elections in fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is all well and good. But then he seems to engage in a bit of confirmation bias<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In fact, these gerrymanders are so effective that Greensboro, which typically votes for Democratic presidential candidates by a two-to-one ratio, is represented in the House by zero Democrats. And Guilford County, which is home to Greensboro and roughly half a million people, likewise supported Hillary Clinton by a 58-38 margin, but Republicans have maintained a majority on the county commission ever since 2012\u2014when, of course, they got to draw the map for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The real problem is that his case is difficult to assert without supporting evidence; that is, we can find other reasonable reasons for the observed behavior. For example, perhaps the Greensboro Democrats are a mendacious, despicable bunch who have repulsed voters so badly that they’d prefer local Republicans – and perhaps those running for county commissioner are not as bad as those running for the legislature. The victory in the gerrymandering case is, of course, a point in his favor; but his brush is too large. I fear that he misleads himself and his audience through this presentation.<\/p>\n

And I remember how confident the diarists on The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em> were that Clinton would be victorious, that Senator Johnson of Wisconsin would fall, that there’d be a general Democratic victory in the Senate and possibly even one in the House.<\/p>\n

Technically, you can say Clinton won the popular vote and lost in the Electoral College because of a quirk and Russian interference, and that some ground was made up in both chambers of Congress.<\/p>\n

But, honestly, it was still a disaster for the Democrats and their Progressive wing, and I put it down to the Progressives having their own little echo chamber. They talk to themselves too much. I think Stephen’s post would benefit from some self-criticism. The victory in the court case is encouraging, I do agree – but precision in observation and argument will lead to better results down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Wolf on The Daily Kos rather gleefully notes another North Carolina gerrymandering case won by the Democrats: On Monday, a federal district court struck down a map that North Carolina\u2019s Republican-controlled state legislature\u00a0had imposed on the city of Greensboro, the state\u2019s third-largest city. In a remarkable affront to local \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8944,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8943\/revisions\/8944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}