Current Events > "If you don't count all these people here, we would have a majority"

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/upshot/wisconsin-republicans-rural-urban-voters.html

In much of Wisconsin, Madison and Milwaukee are code words (to some, dog whistles) for the parts of the state that are nonwhite, elite, different: The cities are where people dont have to work hard with their hands, because theyre collecting welfare or public-sector paychecks.

That stereotype updates a very old idea in American politics, one pervading Wisconsins bitter Statehouse fights today and increasingly those in other states: Urban voters are an exception. If you discount them, you get a truer picture of the politics and the will of voters in a state.
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State legislators are the closest to those we represent, Scott Fitzgerald, the majority leader in the Wisconsin Senate, said in a statement after Republicans voted on the changes before dawn on Wednesday. Theyre the ones who hold town hall meetings, who listen directly to constituents across the state. Legislators should stand, he said, on equal footing with an incoming administration that is based almost solely in Madison.

That argument is particularly debatable in Wisconsin, where the legislature has been heavily gerrymandered. But Mr. Fitzgeralds jab at Madison was notable, too.

Mr. Fitzgerald was essentially recasting the new Democratic governor, Tony Evers, not as the winner of a statewide mandate but as a creature of the capital city, put there by people in the cities. (Never mind that the outgoing Republican governor, Scott Walker, and the state legislature are based in Madison, too.)

Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, drew this distinction even more explicitly after the midterm election.

If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority, he said. We would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature.

This is most likely true, depending on how you define Madison and Milwaukee. But its an odd point to make, given that Madison and Milwaukee cant be removed from Wisconsin. Nor Detroit from Michigan, nor Pittsburgh and Philadelphia from Pennsylvania, nor Raleigh and Charlotte from North Carolina.

It just is incredibly frustrating and really nonsensical to think about representation in those terms, especially when youre talking about statewide results, said David Canon, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin.

He pointed as well to comments by Mr. Walker arguing that his loss in the governors race wasnt a rejection by voters so much as a reflection of unusually high turnout among people who werent part of the voting population in his previous victories. Mr. Walker lost the race by 29,000 votes statewide. In Dane County, home to Madison, about 42,000 more people voted in the governors race this year than did in 2014.

How can that not be a repudiation by the voters? Mr. Canon said. It only isnt if you dont care about the voters in the parts of the state that are Democratic.

Republican gerrymandering in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina have pushed the limits of how much the urban voter can be devalued.

In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates for the State Assembly won 54 percent of the vote statewide. But they will hold only 36 of 99 seats. They picked up just one more seat than in the current Assembly, a result of a gerrymander drawn so well that it protected nearly every Republican seat in a Democratic wave election.

In North Carolina, Democrats won 51 percent of the popular vote for the lower chamber in the statehouse but just 45 percent of the seats. In Michigan, where a lame-duck session fight similar to Wisconsins is playing out, Democrats won 53 percent of the vote but just 47 percent of those seats.

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nyt is a goddamn disaster
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If you don't count the fucking places where people actually live the GOP would have a clear majority everywhere in the country. Good lord they are scum.
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If we dont count those who voted on somebody else, we would clearly have a majority of all votes!
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When did the NYT start publishing garbage like this?

darkmaian23 posted...

When did the NYT start publishing garbage like this?

They been like this for years. Subscribe to them and you'll see.
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darkmaian23 posted...

When did the NYT start publishing garbage like this?

Garbage like direct quotes?
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@A_Good_Boy
You're right, that didn't make any sense. I hadn't slept in ages and I missed the quotes. I thought it was an opinion piece. Outrage retracted. XD

Can they get any evilier?
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The problem with this article isn't that they're reporting these quotes, it's that they're not really repudiating them. This isn't the kind of story where you can stay neutral. Facts must prevail, but the media doesn't want that because it would hurt Republicans' feelings.
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