(2/9) Voting Blue No Matter Who Just Gives Democracy a Great Big Screw

Centrist Democratic leadership is shamefully skillful at preventing Democratic voters from having elections with real choices.

The Terrible Damage We Do . . . Voting Blue No Matter Who. • (1/9) Centrist Democrats Do Not Reflect the Will of their Voters • (1a/9) “Top-Down” Makes More Sense Than “Left-Right” Today in the U.S. • (2/9) Voting Blue No Matter Who Just Gives Democracy a Great Big Screw • (3a/9) Why Vote “Blue No Matter Who” If Centrist Dems Never Play to Win? • (3b/9) Why Don’t Centrist Dems Show Up to Fight (Blue No Matter Who) • (3c/9) Blue No Matter Who — Even When Centrist Democrats Are Incompetent?

Centrist Democrats rig elections in at least 3 ways

1. Gerrymandering.
2. Preventing competitive candidates from even getting onto Democratic primary ballots to challenge Centrist Democrat incumbents.
3. Using Party-level resources to protect incumbent Centrist Democrat Representatives from losing to Democratic challengers in primary elections.

A few questions before we dive in

1. When Democratic Party leadership works to systemically prevent voters from having a real choice on the ballot, isn’t “voting blue no matter who” EXACTLY the same thing as supporting the idea that there should only a single-candidate ballot in a dictatorship?
2. Or, more to the point, shouldn’t voters select their representatives in a democracy
3. Isn’t it wrong for representatives to be selecting their voters to maximize their own chances of winning?

Part 1. Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering means “dividing a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to (1) give one political party a majority in many districts while (2) concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.”

As the Brennan Center for Justice notes in the simplest possible terms, “Gerry­man­der­ing is deeply undemo­cratic.” (If you’d like more details on gerrymandering, this April 2022 article from the Brennan Center is an excellent overview.)

Let’s be clear up front.

American political parties — including both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party — have engaged in gerrymandering over the years, decades, and centuries. There are plenty of bad acts, guilt, and shame to go around.

According to FiveThirtyEight, given how Congressional district maps are drawn (as of July 2022), “there are 187 Democratic-leaning seats, 208 Republican-leaning seats and 40 highly competitive seats in the new maps.”

Today in 2022, out of 435 total seats in the House of Representatives, only 40 seats — or 9.2% of total seats — are open and competitive such that they could swing either R or D.

The other 90.8% of the seats are very likely to remain in their respective party column, whether Democrat or Republican.

There is one critically important takeaway that becomes obvious once you see this level of gerrymandering in the U.S.

All of the candidate selection/election “action” and opportunity happens in the primary. (…at least, for 90.8% of the Congressional districts in America.)

The primary election is the only place where voters have any meaningful choice at all in terms of selecting a candidate who will fight for the things important to voters.

General elections for 90.8% of Congressional seats are almost meaningless. It is a foregone conclusion in each of those 395 districts that the Democrat or the Republican will win based on which way the district leans — not based on any policy or personal differences between the two candidates in the general election.

Given that both parties gerrymander Congressional districts for their own benefit — as opposed to being for the benefit of the voters and the citizens of the U.S. — it is correct to say that neither political party is materially better than the other.

“…Although Republicans went into the cycle with control over drawing more districts, the number of Democratic-leaning seats actually increased as a result of redistricting. The new maps have six more Democratic-leaning seats than the old ones and the same number of Republican-leaning seats. This is due to aggressive map-drawing by Democrats in states such as Illinois as well as court decisions overturning Republican gerrymanders in states like North Carolina….” (FiveThirtyEight)

One note: while gerrymandering is a real problem, it’s also not fair to say that every single district in that “90.8%” grouping of non-competitive districts is non-competitive only because of gerrymandering. There are regions of the country that are just overwhelmingly Republican or Democrat because that’s the way the local population swings “en masse,” and it has nothing to do with gerrymandering.

Part 2. Centrist Democrats rig elections to keep competitive primary candidates off the ballot to protect incumbent Centrist Democrats from facing real primary challenges.

The North Carolina story

Matthew Hoh decided he wanted to run for the US Senate seat in North Carolina as a Green Party candidate.

He did everything right. He collected the signatures he needed to get onto the ballot.

Heck, he actually collected thousands more signatures than he technically needed to get on the ballot.

This is when the Democratic Party apparatus in North Carolina went into turbo mode to make sure that Matthew did not actually get to be on the ballot in November 2022.

First, the Democratic Party called and texted Matthew’s petition signers in North Carolina to tell them, “hey, this is really going to hurt the Democratic Party if Hoh runs…would you maybe like to take your name off the petition?” To be fair, while this Democratic Party behavior is deeply anti-democratic, it’s technically not illegal.

But this didn’t work well enough to push Matthew off the ballot.

Time to go to Turbo Level 2.

Now the Democratic Party operatives started going over the line and committing acts of fraud. They began telling petition signers over the phone that, “We’re with the Green Party, we really are representing them, we really have their best interests at heart, and wouldn’t you prefer to take your signature off the petition? etc.”

Be clear about this: Democratic Party operatives were impersonating Green Party volunteers. And yet the few hundred petition signature “take-backs” they were able to cajole out of people they called weren’t enough to get Matthew thrown off the ballot.

But hey, the Democratic Party in North Carolina is nothing if not relentless in its disdain for small-d democracy.

Now we’re at Turbo Level 3!

North Carolina Centrist Democrats then used their connections with the North Carolina State Board of Elections such that this was the news on July 1st, 2022:

“The North Carolina state board of elections rejected the green parties petition for their candidates to appear on November ballots Thursday, citing its ongoing fraud investigation that question the validity of more than 2000 signatures that party officials turned into qualify. The board denied the North Carolina green party bid in a 3 to 2 party line vote, with three Democrats voting against certification and two Republicans voting in favor.” (The News&Observer, July 01, 2022)

Again, let’s be clear.

It is indeed entirely possible that since the Green Party is the more progressive, more liberal side of North Carolina politics, having a Green Party candidate in the race might well hurt the election chances for the Centrist Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Ok . . . so what?

Does the Democratic Party not believe in democracy? (Just kidding, I’m teasing. I already know the answer to that one. They don’t.)

Look, there’s no question that this would’ve put pressure on the Centrist Democrat candidate.

Oh my gosh, that Centrist Dem candidate might have had to actually modify policy stances to attract more voters from the segment of people who might otherwise vote for a green party candidate.

Who knows? Maybe the leaders of the North Carolina Democratic Party were just skipping school the day they covered the concepts of (1) “you have to do the work to earn votes from voters if you want to win an election” in high school civics class, and (2) “it’s wrong to steal votes.”

There are example from other states like Ohio and Massachusetts where very similar things happened. Biden himself is rigging the Democratic presidential primary for 2024 so that he can have a frictionless path to being renominated.

Is this what democracy looks like?

Probably not, since we know that substantial majorities of Democratic voters do NOT want Biden to run again.

Doesn’t this seem more like the kind of banana republic or Soviet Union election setup that Americans in the past would have heaped scorn on?

(Side note: I wonder if the Centrist Democrats in North Carolina had t-shirts printed up earlier this summer that said, “Vote Blue No Matter Who to Give North Carolina Voters the Biggest Possible Screw!” on the front . . . and “BOHICA” on the back . . . ?)

Do Republicans also try to keep challengers off the ballot in their primaries?

While there is no question about the trainwreck-level of “quality” of many current Republican primary candidates, I don’t see evidence that the Republican Party tries to keep any particular set of primary candidates off their ballots. Or at the very least, if they are trying, there is no evidence that they are systemically succeeding.

Republicans seem to have no issue with anyone being on their primary ballot. They are ok letting candidates duke it out.

But when it comes to Democrats letting candidates fight it out fair and square in primaries? Centrist Democrats, the DCCC, and even Democratic Presidents interfere all the time.

Centrist Democrat leadership must be really scared that their incumbent candidates are too weak to withstand a real challenge in a primary election.

Either that, or they are scared that the systemic corruption of the Democratic Party and their incumbents will get called out by an honest challenger during a primary.

Part 3. Centrist Democrat leaders use Party-level and national-level resources and money to defeat primary election challenges to Centrist Democrat incumbents

This is what happened in a safe Democratic district in Texas.

A Democratic Party that believes in “small-d” democracy should not care how many people run on the Democratic side of a primary election as long as the district is a totally safe win for Democrats.

And yet they do care. A lot.

But they only seem to care when a Centrist Democratic incumbent has a credible challenger who might win.

This was the case in the South Texas district of Centrist Democrat incumbent Henry Cuellar, who was the only pro-life, anti-abortion Democrat in the House of Representatives and who is anti-union enough to also be the only Democrat in the House to vote against the Pro Act.

In other words, Henry Cuellar really isn't aligned at all with the values that the Democratic party pretends to have.

Running against Cuellar was Jessica Cisneros, a Progressive challenger. Ms. Cisneros had values and policies that lined up strongly enough with key parts of the district that it was a very close race.

Regardless of who won, there would still be a Democrat from that district in the US House of Representatives. Zero question about that.

So naturally Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn visited the district to throw their full support behind Henry Cuellar.

And a LOT of national-level Democrat PAC money flowed into the district to help get Henry Cuellar over the finish line, including money from DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel) and from Mainstream Democrats, a super PAC.

Cuellar ended up squeaking by to barely win his primary.

Think about how important this must have been for Nancy Pelosi to crush that young Democratic challenger and keep the pro-life, anti-abortion Cuellar in his House seat right when the Dobbs decision was due to come down.

Democrats have been saying how much they support abortion rights and the right of a woman to control her own body, but when it comes to leading one of their own corrupt centrist Democrat incumbent cronies potentially lose, the fact that Cuellar is the only Democrat who is anti-abortion in the US House of Representatives didn’t matter the slightest bit.

Takeaways

1. When it comes to gerrymandering, neither party seems to be materially better than the other. Which party is more effective at gerrymandering and ahead of the other does go back-and-forth somewhat over the years.
2. When it comes to rigging Congressional primary elections so that voters don’t really get a meaningful choice of candidates, centrist Democrats are objectively worse than Republicans .
3. When it comes to party leaders using party-level and national-level resources and influence to defeat primary election challenges to incumbents, Centrist Democrats are again objectively worse than Republicans are. Democrats seem scared to have their incumbents have to answer real questions during the primary election. It looks pathetic and weak. Republican leadership respect (or fear?) their voters enough to let them make their own decisions.
4. BONUS Takeaway: All of the candidate selection opportunity “action” happens in primary elections. (…at least, for 90.8% of the Congressional districts in America.) The primary election is the only place where voters have any meaningful choice at all when it comes to selecting a candidate who will fight for the things important to them. The general elections for 90.8% of Congressional seats is almost meaningless.

Final questions to Centrist Democrat voters:

1. Do you folks think you deserve better representation than this?
2. Do you think the country needs better representation than this?

Please leave comments and questions below. Thank you for reading, subscribing, clapping, and sharing — I appreciate you sharing your time and attention!

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Jeffrey Goodman