The Case for a Democratic Environment

UPDATE (9/9/22): FiveThirtyEight updated their partisan lean metrics hours after I published this. The story has been updated to reflect the new data.

Special election charts and results as well as the above generic ballot polling average are by FiveThirtyEight. I wanted to credit them in the captions but WordPress is being dumb.

I think people are underestimating how likely it is that we’re in at least as favorable an environment for Democrats in 2022 as we were in 2020. Yes, Democrats are only ahead on the generic ballot by 1.2% at the time of this writing, whereas in 2020 they were ahead by 7.3%. But the polling in 2020 was notoriously bad. Democrats only wound up winning the House popular vote by 3.1%. That’s a 4.2% miss! In 2018 – when Trump was not on the ballot – the generic ballot got things exactly right. It predicted Democrats winning by 8.6% and they won by 8.6%.

The ‘Trump effs up the polls’ theory is going to be tested again this year (it makes sense since he destroys everything else that I love!) but in the meantime, let’s assume the generic ballot is correct, or at least close to correct (lets say for the sake of argument ±2%, which is in between the 4% error 2020 and the 0% error in 2018). Then the environment is anywhere from R+1 to D+3. So either slightly worse than 2020 or about the same.

But we also have other figures to go by, namely special elections. The advantage of special elections is that they aren’t polls. They’re actually elections where people go out and make a choice. The disadvantage is that they are usually low turnout affairs that attract only the most politically engaged. Still, they usually are pretty predictive. In the special elections since Dobbs, Democrats have been overperforming by between 7 and 11 points (depending on how you count Alaska).

So based on the generic ballot and special elections we can say that we’re in anywhere from an R+1 environment to a D+11 environment. To be clear, I don’t think we’re in a D+11 environment, so let’s use D+7 (the conservative calculation of special elections) as our high. So the environment is anywhere from R+1 to D+7, for a median of D+3. That puts us in basically the exact same environment we were in in 2020, when Democrats won 222 seats.

So Democrats should expect to win 222 seats? Not so fast. You forgot about redistricting! There’s a number of different ways to calculate the effect of redistricting but I think the easiest way is to look at how many districts Biden won. On the old map Biden carried 224 districts. On the new map he would have carried 225, according to Redistricter.

But Democrats ran 1.5% (or 2 seats) behind Biden; one of the reasons their House majority is so thin. So instead we can look at each district’s partisan lean or (PVI) using data from FiveThirtyEight. In a D+3 year Democrats should expect win every district with a PVI <R+3. This would give us a final result of 220D-215R. In an R+1 year it would be 206D-229R. A D+7 year would give Dems 237 seats, one more than they won in 2018, which makes me think we’re not in a D+7 environment (though stranger things have happened). So going by PVI we’re looking at Democrats winning anywhere from 206-237 seats, with the median being 221.5.

Another way of looking at it is to use FairVote’s Monopoly Politics Projections, which allow you to estimate each party’s share of seats based on different environments. I like this better because it uses toss-ups (so I have less likelihood of being wrong). In a D+3 environment there are 218 safe/lean D seats and 181 safe/lean R seats, with 36 toss-ups. 218 is the exact number you need to win the House. An R+1 environment gives us 209R-183D with 43 toss-ups. They don’t allow you to calculate D+7 but back of the napkin calulation tells me there’d be about 232 lean/safe D seats.

So going by FairVote, Democrats could expect to win anywhere from 183 seats (an R+1 environment where Republicans win all the toss-ups) to 254 (a D+3 environment where Democrats win all the toss-ups) with the median being 218.5. In a D+7 environment, Democrats would win close to 280 seats if they won all the toss-ups, but nobody’s had that kind of majority since the 1970s so I’m going to assume that’s not going to happen. Let’s stick to 254 (D+3 w/ all toss-ups) as our high.

So based on my read of the current environment Democrats are favored to win around 221.5 seats using PVI or 218.5 seats using FairVote’s projections. I guess this was all a long winded way of me saying that things are really freaking close! Also, someone’s going to have to be chopped in half. I suggest Marah Palintola.

Ranked choice voting is hard!

Where Things Stand Two Months Out From the Midterms

Sagearbor, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Democrats are looking to defy history. Can they? Here’s a thread I wrote, analyzing how the current race compares to past races. Enjoy!

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In good Republican years they tend to run away with the race around labor day as pollsters switch over to likely voter (LV) models. For instance, at this point in 2014, Republicans were ahead by 0.3%, but less than a week later they were leading by close to 4%

Democrats are currently leading on the generic ballot by 1 point, and Democrats and Republicans are essentially tied in LV polls taken in the month of September.

This is good news if you’re Democrats because it differs from 2010 and 2014 when Republicans were leading by 7.8 pts and 3.4 pts respectively in LV polls taken in the first half of September

Generally the party out of power holds an enthusiasm advantage, however this year, with the overturning of Roe v Wade, Democrats have closed the enthusiams gap, especially when compared with past midterms.

We’ve seen it in special elections where Democrats have overperformed by an average of 7-11 pts since the Dobbs decision (depending on how you count Alaska).

Whether this can hold for the next 2 months remains to be seen, but in past midterm cycles the party out of power has tended to run away with the race after labor day. Needless to say, the next few weeks should tell us a lot about where this race is headed.

Thank you to @FiveThirtyEight @baseballot @MorningConsult @pewresearch and @RealClearNews for doing all the hard work.

Originally tweeted by Tommy Meyer (@TommyzTakes) on September 7, 2022.

Democrats may not be Doomed in the Midterms

In 2010 Scott Brown stunned the political world by winning a Special Election for the Massachussetts Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy after he died. Brown won 52-47, a 5 point margin in a state Obama had won two years earlier by 26 points. It was a stunning upset and a harbringer of things to come as Republicans picked up 63 seats in the 2010 midterms to easily retake the House in what then President Barack Obama called a ‘shellacking.’

Fast forward to 2022 and we have a very different situation. Democrats have overperformed in special elections by an average of 5.7pts since the Dobbs desicion overturning Roe V Wade. Democrats have overtaken Republicans on the generic ballot (at this point in 2010 it was R+4.5) and the Senate seems to be moving farther and farther away from Republicans – with Fetterman leading by 10pts in Pennsylvania and Mark Kelly leading by 8 in Arizona. Even Wisconsin and Ohio look within reach for Democrats (though we’ve been burned by polling in these states before).

The president’s party almost always loses ground in the midterms. In the 19 midterms that have taken place since World War II, the president’s party has lost seats in the House in all but two: 1998 (after the Clinton impeachment) and 2002 (after 9/11). Needless to say if Democrats don’t lose the House it would be a shocking turnaround from where we were just a few months ago. It would be less shocking if Democrats don’t lose seats in the Senate, but that’s still only happened 4 times since WWII.

So why are Democrats overperforming in a year where – if history is any guide – they should be losing ground? Well I’m sure the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade certainly has something to do with it. As the Washington Post reported Monday 1 in 3 women have lost access to abortion, and more restrictions are coming. I think some of Democrats’ recent legislative victories have also helped though people usually don’t vote based on policy. We’re also seeing an improving economy with inflation and gas prices falling after (hopefully) peaking in June.

But I think the biggest reason is that Republicans have simply become too extreme. They’ve leaned into the Trumpist wing of the party, at the expense of regular voters. Republicans had a choice to make after January 6th. Trump or democracy. They chose Trump. That was a mistake and now they’re reaping what they’ve sewn. His voters simply don’t come out when he’s not on the ballot (just ask Republicans running in 2018) and it turns most Americans, at least the ones who vote in midterms, actually like democracy. They’re not okay with Republicans abdicating their responsibility to protect it. They like having rights and are not okay with Republicans taking those rights away, like the right to an abortion. And they’ll take boring competence that they don’t have to think about every day over the constant chaos, corruption, and conspiracies that come with Trump and the Republican party.

I never thought I’d see the day when one of our two main political parties simply stopped believing in democracy. When your response to someone trying to overturn the results of an election and a literal violent attack on our democracy is to look the other way or worse; actually defend these actions, you have turned your back on democracy and our not worthy of even being elected Dog Catcher (no offense to Dog Catchers). A democracy where voters don’t punish politicians for that kind of behavior is a country dangerously close to no longer being a democracy. I’m glad to see that maybe, just maybe, Republicans are in for the type of ‘shellacking’ they deserve.

Building Back Better Manchin Style

DonkeyHotey, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Time is running out for Democrats to resurrect parts of their Build Back Better agenda and pass a Democrats-only reconciliation package in time for the midterms, when they are almost certain to lose one or both houses of Congress. Democrats believe that if they don’t at least get a framework by Memorial Day it will be too late. Manchin has laid out his priorities: drug price reform, tax increases for the wealthy, deficit reduction – going so far as to say that half the revenue should go towards deficit reduction. He also wants the programs to be permanent, instead of having arbitrary sunsets. But as NBC News reported, if Democrats are waiting for him to write the bill they’re going to be left waiting.

Luckily there’s a way to meet all of Manchin’s demands within the framework of the original Build Back Better Act, and include extending the Obamacare subsides expanded under the American Rescue Plan – which Insider reported would run out right before the midterms if Democrats don’t act. Democrats are bad at politics but they can’t be that bad at politics, right? RIGHT!?

Anyway, in case Democrats are that bad at politics (they are) I’ve decided to write the bill for them. Here is my Build Back Better Bill: Manchin Style!

Build Back Better: Manchin Edition

• ACA subsidies: $428 billion
• Climate provisions: $570 billion
• Drug price reform: -$270 billion
• Tax increases and other revenue: -$1.705 trillion

Total Spending: $998 billion
Total Offsets: $1975 billion

Deficit Impact: -$977 billion

According to CBO estimates permanently expanding the Obamacare subsidies would cost $428 billion over ten years, while the climate provisions laid out in the Build Back Better Act added up to $570 billion. That’s $998 billion in spending over ten years, which can be more than offset with savings from prescription drug pricing reforms ($270 billion), tax increases and other revenue ($1705 billion). Approximately half of the revenue raised ($977 billion) would go towards deficit reduction while the other half ($998) would go towards healthcare, prescription drugs, and fighting climate change.

Left on the cutting room floor are things like affordable housing ($175 billion) and universal pre-k and childcare ($752 billion), though if Manchin eases off his demand that half the money go towards deficit reduction (not likely) they could be added back in and we’d still reduce the deficit by $50 billion over 10 years. Another option would be to include a scaled-down childcare and pre-k package. Politico has reported Democrats have been shopping around just such a package that would come in at about $200 billion. Were Democrats able to convince Manchin to go along with it we could have a bill that looks something like this:

Build Back Better: Manchin Plus

• ACA expansion: $428 billion
• Climate provisions: $570 billion
• Affordable Housing $175 billion
• Childcare and Pre-K $200 billion
• Drug price reform: -$270 billion
• Tax increases and other revenue: –$1705 billion

Total Spending: $1373 billion
Total Offsets: $1975 billion

Deficit Impact: -$602 billion

In this scenerio you would have $1373 billion in spending and $1975 billion in total offsets for a deficit reduction of $602 billion, meaning around 30% of the revenue would go towards deficit reduction. Would Manchin go for it? Probably not, but a boy can dream!

Gerrymandering: The Real Voter Fraud

Steve Nass, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The left and the right are locked in a never-ending battle between what’s worse: voter fraud or voter suppression? The truth is, neither. Neither is that much of a problem in this day and age. And both are a distraction from what is really disenfranchising people: gerrymandering.

How does gerrymandering disenfranchise people? Well the entire point of gerrymandering is to force the other party’s voters to “waste” their votes. A vote is considered wasted when it’s cast for a losing candidate or anything cast for the winner above 50%. If you think about it, it doesn’t matter whether someone wins with 51% of the vote or 81% – they still win – so that extra 30% of voters could have been put to much better use in other, more competitive districts. Similarly, in a district where a party routinely wins 81% of the vote, the 19% of voters who voted for the other party might as well have just stayed home. They know their vote isn’t going to matter much. Anyone who lives in a state that routinely votes one way or the other in a Presidential election (I’m looking at you New York!) knows the feeling.

In a perfect world nobody’s vote would be wasted. Unfortunately we don’t live in a perfect world. So long as we have single-member districts with winner-take-all elections where the winner need only win a plurality (as opposed to a majority), a certain number of votes are going to be wasted. The next best thing is to have each party’s share of wasted votes be about equal. If each party is wasting votes at around the same rate, that means the map is probably pretty fair.

Which brings us to the efficiency gap. The efficiency gap is a way of measuring the difference between each party’s share of wasted votes. If Democrats, for instance, waste 20% of their votes, and Republicans waste 30%, then the efficiency gap is 10% in favor of Democrats.

The goal of the gerrymanderer is to maximize the number of votes the other party wastes, while minimizing the number of their own party’s wasted votes. Another way of looking at is, their goal is to maximize the efficiency gap in their own party’s favor. They do this through what’s called packing an cracking. To go back to our above example, Republicans may pack Democratic voters into a district where their candidate routinely wins 81% of the vote while the surrounding three districts give Republicans about 55-60% of the vote. This would result in a region that is 1D-3R, even if there are an even amout of Republicans and Democrats in the region. If that 30% of Democratic voters were to be unpacked and spread more effieiently into the surrounding districts, a Democrat could win 2 or more of those districts.

The Dallas/Forth Worth area is a good of packing in action. Voters in Dallas and Fort Worth are packed into those three oddly shaped districts in order to create four Republican districts. Biden won this area by more than a million votes (which is more than Trump won the entire state of Texas by).

Forth Worth/Dallas area has 3 Democratic districts and 4 Republican districts

Cracking is where you take an area that has a high concentration of one party’s voters and you split them up into multiple districts so they represent a minority in each. The Orlando area is a good example of this. It’s split up into 5 seperate districts, 3 of which lean Republican – despite the fact that Biden won this area by more than 17 points.

The Orlando region is split into 5 seperate districts, 3 of which lean Republican

All of this should be far more offensive to people than supposed voter fraud or voter suppression. This is literally a case of politicians choosing their own voters, instead of the other way around. The stated goal of gerrymandering is to dilute the power of your vote by either putting you in a district where you’ll never be able to elect a candidate of your choice, or where your candidate would be elected no matter how you vote. I can promise you, this has much bigger effect on the power of your vote than voter fraud ever will, and it does far more to disenfranchise people, especially people of color, than any of the new voting laws that have been signed into law recently.

With the focus on voter fraud and voter suppression we’ve turned a blind eye to the real threat to our democracy: gerrymandering, and by obsessing over the last election and claiming it was”rigged” we’re allowing politicians to literally rig the next one. Let me leave you with this: the map isn’t yet completed but if things hold more than 90% of US House races this year will be uncompetitive. Control of Congress isn’t going to be decided in November. It’s being decided right now. Pay attention.

Not an Economist: A Build Back Better For Inflation

Welcome to my brand new “Not an Economist” series, where I talk about economics with the small caveat that I’m not an economist so I may very well be talking out of my ass. Enjoy!

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With Congress coming back from a two week recess and the clock winding down until the midterms, word on the street is Democrats are ready to restart formal negotiations on another reconciliation bill. As I’ve argued in the past, the old Build Back Better wasn’t going to have much of an effect on inflation either way. It might have slightly increased inflation in the short term (and by slightly I mean a few tenths of a percentage point) because much of the spending was frontloaded, but it would have likely lowered inflationary pressure over the long term – since it was fully paid for and would increase the productive capacity of the economy. But, of course, that bill is dead. The new bill doesn’t exist yet but from what I can glean from what’s been reported it looks like it will be better designed to ease inflationary pressure, both in the short-term and the long-term, and will lower the burden of high prices on working families. For starters, here’s what the the bill will probably look like:

1. Lower the cost of prescription drugs
2. Extend the expanded Obamacare subsidies
3. Massive investments in clean energy
4. Raise taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year
5. Reduce the deficit

So how would these items lower inflation? Well the first two are self-expanatory. By allowing medicare to negotiate prices, the bill will bring down the cost of prescription drugs. Extending the Obamacare subsidies, which were made more generous by the American Rescue Plan, would keep out-of-pocket healthcare costs down for most people. These would have the added benefit of keeping people healthy so they don’t miss work and could help nudge those still sitting on the sidelines back into the workforce. More workers means we can produce more things which will help ease some of the supply-chain shortages fueling inflation. And more workers also means companies won’t have to compete as much for talent, which would lower the upward pressure on wages – another contributor to inflation.

Everyone is upset about the price of gas these days. Well while we can take steps to bring down gas prices in the short-term, a long-term solution would be to move away from oil and gas entirely to cheaper, cleaner sources of energy. Onshore wind and solar are currently the cheapest ways of generating electricity. Making the investments to expand these technologies will drive down energy costs and make us less reliant on other countries for our energy needs. I know everyone talks about wanting to be “energy independent” but the truth is that we only have about 4% of the world’s proven oil reserves. We consume around 20% of the world’s energy every year. The only way to be truly “energy independent” is to move to sources of energy we have in abundance here at home. As someone who lives in California, let me tell you, we’ve got plenty of sun. And I’ve asked some of my friends in Chicago. Turns out we’ve got plenty of wind too! The other benefit of doing this is that it will save lives. More than 100,000 people die in this country every year from air pollution. From a strict macro-economic standpoint more people alive equals more workers which means lower inflation.

It’s long been a charge from the right that raising taxes, especially for those at the top, slows economic growth and hurts the economy. Well for once there’s an argument that that’s exaclty what we need to do. It kind of confounds me that Democrats haven’t been pushing more for raising taxes on the wealthy, since it’s one of their most popular agenda items, and since it’s a natural solution to fighting inflation. If pumping too much money into the economy causes inflation, it stands to reason that taking money out of the economy will lower inflation. Raising taxes could slow economic growth and stunt job growth but in an economy that’s running too hot that might be a good thing. Taking excess money out of the economy and using it to pay down the deficit will have long-term benefits for the economy and lower inflation in the short term.

Finally I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another bill making its way through Congress that could help with inflation. It’s the China competition bill. One of the big drivers of inflation early on was the rapidly rising price of used cars, as a semiconductor shortage made companies unable to produce enough new cars to meet demand. China’s recent lockdown of Shanghai, which has caused even more supply chain snags, is a good reminder of the dangers of relying on other countries (especially adversaries) for essential items. Investing in the manufacturing of these components here at home will help ease the burden of supply chains snarls, and ease inflationary pressure.

The truth is that there isn’t much fiscal policy makers can do about inflation. That is Fed’s wheelhouse. But we can and should act where we can to move things at the margins. The good news is Democrats can still pass much of their agenda without having to worry about increasing inflation. In fact, the small effect it will have on inflation will be to bring down prices. And that is good for everyone.

What the California Recall Means for 2022

Gavin Newsom’s landslide victory in California’s gubernatorial recall election is obviously good news for Democrats, but let’s not get too carried away with extrapolating from the results. A Democrat won in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1, Biden won by 29 points, and Newsom has an approval rating of 57%. Plus Larry Elder was perhaps the worst candidate Republicans could have run.

All that being said, if you were looking for signs that the tide was turning against Democrats you didn’t get them here. Special elections are often a harbinger of what’s to come and so far results have been pretty good for Democrats. The only dissapointment has been Texas’s 6th but the party wasn’t really engaged in that race. Democrats are still leading the generic ballot by 2-3 points, even as Biden’s approval rating has plummetted 5 points.

Then there’s Orange County which, like many suburban counties used to be a Republican stronghold but has moved to the left in the Trump era. Democrats flipped all four of Orange County’s Republican-held seats during their wave election in 2018 only to have two of those seats flip back in 2020, despite Biden winning the Orange County by 9 points. In fact, of the nine districts that voted for Biden and a Republican in 2020, two of them (CA-39, CA-48) were in Orange County. The vote is still being tallied but as of this writing Newsom leads the recall 52-48 in Orange County with 92% of the vote counted. If that holds it would actually improve upon his 2018 margin, when he won Orange County by .2 points in a Democratic wave year. Democrats will mostly be playing defense in 2022 but but if they were to pick up one or both of those seats, or win back CA-25, which was decided by 333 votes in 2020, that would offer them some breathing room.

There’s a long way to go until 2022 and a lot can happen between now and then but so far, we haven’t seen the telltale signs of a backlash against the President’s party. Even with the Delta surge and the withdrawal from Afghanistan weighing Biden down, Democrats seem to be holding steady. The next big tests will be in Virginia and New Jersey, where voting in those governor’s races is already underway. If you thought you were going to get a break from election season, think again.

How to Pass Voting Rights (Without Getting Rid of the Filibuster)

Photo by Artem Podrez on Pexels.com

When the Senate returns on Monday from their August break, they’ll have a lot on their plate: reconciliation, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, raising the debt ceiling; but perhaps nothing on their agenda is more important or more urgent than voting rights. Luckily there is still a path forward for Democrats if they choose to take it, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t necessarily involve eliminating or even necessarily reforming the filibuster (though doing so would undoubtedly make the path forward easier). In this piece I will explain the path forward on voting rights and why the window for action is closing fast.

First a word on Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Progressives have been needling them for months now to support ending the filibuster and neither of them has budged. Manchin has voice tepid support for some modest reforms, but Sinema has only dug in further. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “just convince Manchin,” as if he wasn’t the most stubborn person in the world and as if convincing someone to do something against their interests when you have absolutely no leverage on them wasn’t a complete waste of time; and there’s no time to waste. With the release of the census data last month the process has already begun to draw new Congressional maps. The further along states get in that process, the harder it will be to unravel extreme partisan gerrymanders. That’s why most experts believe that if a bill isn’t passed by the end of September, it will probably be too late. With the Senate not getting back until half the month is nearly gone that gives them an incredibly small window for action.

Still, all hope is not lost and there is a path for passing meaningful reforms in time to affect redistricting and the 2022 elections. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teed up a vote on the For the People Act as well as on a standalone redistriting reform bill as the first order of business when the Senate returns on Monday. He also made clear that Democrats plan to replace the text of the For the People Act with a slimmed-down version that Democrats have been working on with Manchin. It’s imperative that by the time the Senate gets back they have the text of the Manchin compromise bill finished, otherwise Republicans will be able to hide behind the excuse that they’re voting against the more controversial (though still wildly popular) For the People Act instead of a slimmed-down package of modest reforms. This wouldn’t be ideologically inconsistent for Republicans, who last month voted against moving forward on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the text was finished. In order to put maximum pressure on Republicans, we need to eliminate any excuse they can hide behind for blocking voting rights.

Nonetheless we should expect Republicans to filibuster. At that point Democrats should bring up the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which the House passed last month. Once again Republicans will filibuster and it’s at that point that Democrats should take one more swing at trying to convince Manchin and Sinema, and any other members of their caucus who may be on the fence, to agree to make changes to the filibuster so that the bill can be passed.

It would be lovely if this were the end of the story, if Manchin and Sinema would have an epiphany and agree to eliminate the filibuster so that the bills can pass by a simple majority – but that is unlikely to happen. When Manchin and Sinema do refuse, it’s time for a good old fashioned talking filibuster. As I’ve pointed out in the past, bringing back the ‘talking filibuster’ doesn’t require any rule changes. It doesn’t require the consent of Manchin or Sinema or anybody else, it just requires some procedural maneuvers by Majority Leader Schumer. This will be painful (there’s a reason we don’t have talking filibusters anymore) but you know what they say: if you want to pass voting rights you’re going to have to sit through a few days of Ted Cruz reading banned Dr Seuss books. Desperate times man, desperate times.

There’s another reason Democrats need to do this as soon as they get back on Monday. That is because government funding runs out September 30th. This provides Democrats with leverage as there will be extra pressure on Republicans to end their filibuster so that the Senate can pass an appropriations bill and avoid going into a costly government shutdown. I have no doubt Republicans would shut down the government to block voting rights, but how long do we think they could keep it going? As workers are furloughed, SNAP benefits dry up, and people can’t get benefits for social security and medicare – eventually Republicans will fold.

We haven’t seen a talking filibuster in awhile so people may not be familiar with how it ends but it’s fairly simple. Once everyone who wants to talk is finished talking, and Senator can “ask for the yays and nays,” on the question and the measure can be advanced by majority vote.

So that’s it right? We’re done? Well, not exactly. Now we’ve got to do it all over again because the pending question that the Senate just voted on – and spent weeks debating – was whether to begin debate. Next the Senate must vote on the measure itself. This can also be filibustered but if we’ve just spent weeks enduring a talking filibuster, its highly unlikely that anyone will have the appetite for another one.

So that’s the path ahead. Is it easy? No. Is it painful? Yes. Is it the only way? It’s looking increasingly likely that’s the case. There is a clear path forward on voting rights. Democrats just need to choose to take it.

Why Redistricting Reform is the Most Important Item on Democrats’ Agenda

Today, for the first time, Joe Manchin endorsed redistricting reform, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering and taking mapmaking out of the hands of politicians once and for all. Manchin has good timing, since just today I was working on this piece about why redistricting reform is the most important item on the Democrats’ agenda. Everything else should take a back seat to ensuring that the districts drawn in 2021, which will be used for the next decade, are fair and impartial. The reason is simple: everything else on Democrats’ agenda is dependent on them holding onto the House and Senate in 2022.

The Senate, of course, isn’t effected by redistricting and Democrats have a good shot of holding onto the chamber in 2022, since Republicans will be defending 20 of the 34 Senate seats up for reelection. Democrats might even pick up a seat or two if they have a really good year. This is especially important since we’ve seen the limits of what a 50-50 Senate, with Joe Manchin as the swing vote, is able to accomplish. They couldn’t even create a bipartisan commission to investigate an attack on their own chamber. I see little hope for things immigration reform, gun safety, police reform, and while they do have two more shots at reconciliation, there’s a limit to what can pass through that process (it must be related to budget or spending) and it’s not even clear Democrats have the 50 votes needed use the reconciliation process to pass priorities like President Biden’s American Jobs Plan or American Families Plan, as Manchin is yet to sign onto either. Picking up a Senate seat or two will give Democrats a little more breathing room, but none of that will matter if they lose the House.

Now before I’m accused of admitting that the Democrats’ push for voter access and redistricting reform is some kind of power grab, let me start by saying something black people have been telling white people who feel threatened by the push for equal rights for years: equality feels like oppression when you have privlege. Republicans have privledge when it comes to the distribution of power. They currently have an advantage in every branch of government, and though there’s nothing Democrats can do about the electoral college or the Senate, both of which were designed to protect the rights of small states, the House, by definition is meant to be representative of the people. Unfortunately, because of partisan gerrymandering, Republicans have consistently held an advantage, which is how they won House majorities in 1996 and 2012 while losing the popular vote. This could get worse after the next redistricting cycle. Republicans have the sole power to draw the lines for more than 2.5X as many districts as Democrats (187 vs 75). I have no doubt they will use that power to gain maximum political advantage (as I’m sure Democrats would do if they were in the position). So ending gerrymandering may seem like a Democratic power-grab but it’s not. It’s just levelling the playing field.

So what does redistricting reform look like? Well one thing both the For the People Act and the Manchin proposal have in common is a ban on partisan gerrymandering. This is important because the Supreme Court decided a few years ago that there’s nothing they can do about partisan gerrymandering. Currently only racial gerrymandering is illegal. Putting a statuatory ban on partisan gerrymandering would give the Supreme Court the ability to strike down maps that are created to unduly favor one party over another. But a ban on partisan gerrymandering isn’t enough. Court cases take time, and often by the time the maps are struck down multiple elections have taken place on them.

Both Manchin’s compromise and the For the People Act would also change how maps are drawn, so it wouldn’t take years of litigation to get a fair map. Most states still have their legislatures draw the maps, with approval from the governor. If one party happens to control all the levers of power, they can’t help but draw maps to cement their own power. The For the People Act’s solution is to require states to create independent redistricting commissions to draw maps. The commissions would be made up of 5 Republicans, 5 Democrats, and 5 independents. In order for a map to be enacted it would need to be approved by at least one member of each party.

Manchin on the other hand proposed using computer models. This runs into some problem with bias if you’re solely relying on the computer to draw maps, since it would still take a person making choices about inputs and picking a map from the thousands the computer spits out, but it would still be better than the system we have now. Another option is using computer modelling to shoe that a map drawn by a person is biased by proving that a less biased map could have been drawn and therefore the human drawn map was intended to unduly favor or disfavor a political party. It’s unclear from Manchin’s proposal which route he plans to take.

History is not on Democrats’ side heading into 2022. The President’s party has lost seats in the House in 17 of the last 19 midterms since WWII, losing an average of 27 seats. That would be more than enough to wipe out the 5 seat majority Democrats currently hold. If they lose the House in 2022, they’re not likely to regain unified control of government again for the rest of Biden’s Presidency, since the Senate map in 2024 heavily favors Republicans and 2026 will be another midterm.

Despite these headwinds I still believe that Democrats can buck the trend and hold onto their majorities. They should have a fair bit of wind at their back heading into 2022, with the economy roaring and COVID in the rearview plus Biden seems to understand what is the most underappreciated rule in politics: if you want people to like you, do things that they like. He seems to, wisely, only be going after the low-hanging fruit at the start of his Presidency, i.e. pursuing things that have broad bipartisan support. This should keep him, and by extension Democrats, fairly popular heading into 2022. Finally Republicans seem to be doing everything in their power to blow it; leaning into or at least failing to push back on Trump and the rest of the crazies in their party. Turning off the very suburban voters they lost in 2018 and 2020. Potentially for good.

Democrats will only be able to capitalize on these trends if they ensure that the next election happens on a level playing field. They may still lose. In fact I’d still say Republicans are favored, but at least if they lose it will be because voters rejected the Democratic agenda and not because of unfair maps that put a thumb on the scale, and that is the least we should expect of our democracy.