Bush's Mandate

I wonder if anyone has done the math to estimate how many seats in the House of "Representatatives" would be Democratic after a ten-point victory in other years of our history before the gerrymandering that has taken place in the last 12 years? As pointed out in the article excerpted below, Democrats represent 58% of the people but have only 51% of the seats in the Senate 219 years after the Great Compromise. At least our founders approved that discrepancy. I don't think they would approve our non-representative House today.


From the editors of The New Republic...

"We now clearly are not the country that was 49-49. We're now at 51-48 and may be trending to 51-47. It is incremental but small, persistent change. We saw it in 2002, and we saw it again this year. ... It tells me we may be seeing part of a rolling realignment." --Karl Rove, November 7, 2004

Two years ago, Republicans managed to spin a 51 percent victory over a weak opponent into something very big--not quite a landslide, but a mandate, a "rolling realignment," perhaps even (as Newsweek breathlessly speculated) "a political dominance that could last for decades."

(snip)

Democratic voters have been endlessly told that they are nothing more than a tiny, alien coastal remnant, and many of them started to believe it.

Well, it's hokum. Bush and his vision for the country have been before the voters four times now. Twice (in 2002 and 2004) a narrow majority of voters supported him; once (in 2000) a narrow majority rejected him; and now a substantial majority has rejected him. Bush is not the incarnation of the popular will, and his critics are not anti-American freaks.

Read it all.

By the way, I don't agree with the article's characterization of Kerry. He wasn't my first choice for the 2004 nomination, but I think he would have been a strong President.