http://www.cbc.ca/news/the-perverse...ican-budget-showdown-neil-macdonald-1.1873758
Wanton gerrymandering
Actually, not only did the American people vote for Barack Obama a year ago, they put Democrats back in control of the Senate as well. And in the races for the House of Representatives,
Americans collectively cast 1.4 million more votes for Democrats than Republican candidates.
And yet, the Republicans still control the House, and a small minority of those Republicans, defying their own party's leadership, are now pushing their nation toward calamity.
That's not to say they don't have the right to do that. Political parties can often find themselves being driven by a unified, if tiny, minority. But, in this case, that group derives its power from what is probably the most undemocratic aspect of the democracy Americans are so proud of.
Budget showdown trio
The budget showdown trio. From top, Democratic President Barack Obama, Republican congressional Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Senate Speaker Harry Reid. (Reuters)
Here's the equation: Republicans control a lot more state legislatures than the Democrats do. State legislatures are in charge of all voting, federal and state. And basically, the Republicans have rigged the game.
For Congress,
they've drawn electoral districts that meander and twist and jut, maximizing the influence of their own voters, and "wasting" opposition votes by packing as many of them as possible into districts their opponents will already probably win.
It's called gerrymandering, a word coined nearly 200 years ago in Boston, after then governor Elbridge Gerry signed into law a district so tortured it resembled a salamander.
The result of contemporary gerrymandering:
233 Republican House seats, to 200 Democrats, despite the big Democratic majority in the popular vote. (Two House seats are vacant).
Another result, according to a demographic analysis by the Wall Street Journal: The average Republican district is 73 per cent white (as opposed to 52 per cent in the average Democratic district), and rural, meaning much more thinly populated.
For that reason, Republicans tend to win by much larger margins and are just about impossible to unseat. They are only vulnerable to attacks from the right, and Tea Party candidates are about as far right as you can get.
