Samain Closing Moon
If you read my election day post (see below), you’ll know I tagged two major problems with democracy: the tyranny of the majority and volatility. This article from Slate by Jamelle Bouie provides the best explanation I’ve seen for this volatility and it’s a head scratcher: The Disunited States of America.
It’s a head scratcher because it posits an identifiable demographic reason for our apparent swings from Democratic influence to Republican. In summary older, white voters who now vote Republican 57% to 43% show up both in the mid-term and Presidential election cycles. The younger, more diverse demographic only shows up in Presidential election years. This age-based divergence in participation is of long standing, but the partisan nature of both groups is not.
The effect of this phenomenon is to produce Republican gains in both Senate and House races in the mid-term elections, only to see this process reversed in Presidential election years. This means we will likely sway from a Republican controlled Senate to a Democratically controlled one, neither in a strong position, presided over by a Democratic President for some time to come.
The House is in firm Republican hands for now due largely to gerrymandering, a successful strategy called REDMAP. See this article from PBS: GOP Gerrymandering. The demographic influence identified by Bouie tends to reinforce this control.
Anyhow, if you’re interested further, read the article. It does not bode well for our democracy over the next decade or so at least.
