Chris Cillizza: The New Electoral Map

Source:Chris Cillizaa talking about the next American electoral map.

"The Morning: Why the electoral map is moving toward Republicans 

Every (late) December, two things happen:

Christmas

The Census Bureau releases its population estimates for the past year

And, yes, I get very excited for both.

Next week I will roll out my Christmas list for the political junkie in your life — so stay tuned for that.

But, today, I want to talk about the Census!

Here’s why it matters: Where people are moving over the decade will reshuffle the relative political power of states and regions. And that, in turn, has a direct impact on the two parties and their chances of winning the White House and the House.

While I eagerly await this year’s Census population estimates release, I pored over last year’s — and thought I would share my thoughts with you. The big one is this: Population growth (and loss) is working in Republicans’ favor right now

Here’s the map from the liberal Brennan Center estimating seat losses and gains based on current population trends:.. 

From Chris Cillizza

The mainstream media loves stories like this because it helps them drive ratings and viewership, which drives their profits. 

The Democrats looked like they were lost in Antarctica (you know, politically) after the 2004 elections and Karl Rove talked about the "permanent Republican majority at that point". They thought they would never lose the House of Representatives at that point. And it would be a long time before they would lose the Senate as well. 

Republicans went through this just 4 years later in 2008-09, when they not only lost The White House, including Missouri, Indiana, and North Carolina, but got crushed in the House and Senate as well. 

Republicans went through this in 1964 with Barry Goldwater when Senator Goldwater failed to even get 40% of the popular vote and only won 7 states. And the Democrats won additional landslides in Congress (House & Senate) to go on top of their large majorities as well. 

After 1988, when the Democrats lost their 3rd straight presidential election in a landslide, the mainstream media and to a certain extent pop culture, including Saturday Night Live were talking about whether the Democrats could ever win The White House again.

It's easy to be a glass is half full person when your party is down. But that's not why I'm a glass half full guy right now and I'm about to get into that. The worst thing that you can do politically when your party is down, is to politically panic. 

Sun Tszu once said: "Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems."

Steve Jobs once said: "Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat."

John D. Rockefeller once said: "I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity."

My personal political hero John F. Kennedy once said: "When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity."

Here's a quote that I bet President Joe Biden agrees with and likes a lot: "The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure." From Stephen Richards.

The other decision that you can make when you are down, is just try to look past it. And in a political sense, perhaps the 2nd to last thing that Democrats should be doing (and I'm already seeing evidence of this on social media and MSNBC, as well as the Harris Campaign) is to blame the voters for your losses. After all, the voters decide who represents them in any democracy. And you are not communicating with them and addressing their issues, you are going to lose a lot. 

But to get back to where I started on this issue when I talked about "Why The Democrats Lost" just 11 days ago: 

"And far as as the Harris Campaign's strategy, it seemed to be about maxing out yuppy, white-collar, especially female, yuppy, white-collar voters, of all political backgrounds, including urban and suburban Republican women, to vote for her. And hope African-Americans fall in line, where they were even dragging with President Biden, who did so well with them in 2020. And as far as blue-collar Democrats, I guess they left that up to Governor Tim Walz." 

From The New Democrat

And Chris Cillizza sort of picked up on this, the Democrats coalition is simply too small right now. While the Republican coalition is just big enough to lock in all the states that they have to have and win all the swing states as well. And the public image of the Democratic Party is too bad as well. They're seen as a left-wing feminist, hippie party, that hates straight men. At least masculine, straight men (to be more politically correct) , who love sports, who served in the military, or law enforcement, who love to drink beer, eat meet, who love women. America is simply not San Francisco or Greenwich Village ideologically and culturally. It's a lot more ideologically and culturally diverse than that. 

So where do Democrats go from here? And this is where I talk about turning a major problem (but I wouldn't call it a crisis) into a huge political opportunity. I got into this last week as well: 

"So this brings me to what I think the Democrats should be doing instead. As I said yesterday, America is still 35-40% working class. 70% middle class, which combines both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The most reliable voters in America, are people who go to work everyday, who work very hard for their money, to pay their bills. Hoping to put some money away, and trying to give their kids a better opportunity at life, then they had when they started out... 

The famous bank robber Willie Sutton coined the phrase: "Go where the money is". He was once asked: "Why do you rob banks?" With his reply being: "Because that's where the money is". Take that line of thinking up to a political sense and I would add you have to go where the votes are. American presidential elections are always decided by middle class voters and at least to a certain extent blue-collar workers. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, never get near The White House (at least as President) without these voters... 

The 50 state strategy is not about winning every single state and being the governing party in every single state at the same time. But instead it's about shooting for the stars and seeing how many stars that you can hit. Aiming for perfection knowing that you'll never be perfect, but doing that to see how good you can be, how close to perfection that you can get. Instead of what the Yuppycrats are doing now, which is raising as much money as possible, from big donors, in hoping of holding the Blue Wall and winning all the Deep Blue states, to be a governing party in America... 

From The New Democrat

Governor Howard Dean was talking about a Democratic 50 state strategy back in 2004-05. Probably even as early as the summer of 2003 when he was talking about how the Democrats could win back The White House. And it paid off big time for the Democrats when they completely won back Congress in 2006 and held the Congress and won The White House in 2008. 

The fact that the South is growing and the yuppy Northeast and West Coast is shrinking, is actually an opportunity for the Democratic Party. For a couple of reasons: 

1. It proves that the current Democratic coalition is simply too small and they have to get their numbers of with blue-collar voters and middle class voters in general, especially with men from those backgrounds. 

2. A lot of the Southern states that are growing, has to do with people from Northern and West Coast states moving there. Some of that might be because of lets say blue-collar voters moving from Fresno, California, to Texas, or Florida. But some of these voters are people who are moving from let's say California to Texas or Florida, to teach and start their own companies. White collar people who are Democrats, but might think it's too expensive for them to do business in California or New York, and prefer the business environments of Texas and Florida. 

And as a JFK Liberal Democrat (meaning someone who believes in liberal Democracy) this is a great opportunity for my wing of the party, because it just goes to show you can only go so far with the Socialist Left of the party and white collar hipsters. And that this party simply has to expand its coalition and get back to being the party of progress again. Instead trying to become the party of government-backed-guarantees. Americans tend to like progress. Not so much government trying to tell them that it can solve all their problems for them, if the people just give up most of their money to Uncle Sam. 

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