Winning Congressional Districts

[SamSpade]

Saw a bit on OAN where the host was interviewing a DEMOCRAT who's fiercely against his party's support of sanctuary cities, dropping the ball on immigration and furious with his party's handling of crime.

He mentioned something we all PROBABLY know instinctively, but mentioned it clearly --

VERY blue (or red, but - mostly blue) districts have such low primary turnout, that a determined group of special interests can almost ALWAYS get their candidate in the House.

I took a look at some of the bluest distticts in - I chose New York. YEP, That is the case. A few THOUSAND people nominated him in the primary - and of course, the Republican loses in the fall, because they don't have a chance in a district that votes 80-90% Democrat.

So the person in Congress doesn't represent their constituents - they represent about three or four THOUSAND voters - special interests - and the rest of the quarter million voters can go pound sand.

Of course, generally, once elected, they have that job for as long as they want. The scariest thing in the world to them is to be "primaried" by their own party - which means, step out of line - and the PARTY will find a way to boot you.

NOT the voters.

 

[Kyle]

So Democrats don't just tend to be stupid, they're lazy too.

Who knew?

 

[SamSpade]

So Democrats don't just tend to be stupid, they're lazy too.

Who knew?

We SEE this of course, in DC because it's close by - gaining the nomination is sufficient to gain office, because the November election is so lopsided, it's just a sideshow. The DC council is more or less "appointed" by power brokers and special interests. The voters really don't have much to do except march to the polls in November and seal the deal.

I didn't really think about it until this broadcast - that at a level as high as the House, it just takes a handful of persons to game the system IF the district is an historically NON-competitive district - which is the vast majority of seats. I guess I just assumed that most districts have SOME degree of competitiveness.

What had NOT occurred to me is, that SO MANY are totally taken by special interests who then toe the party line BECAUSE the party has the power to boot them. This is why throughout a Congressional session, you can see party line votes because the members in NON-competitive districts risk being booted - the ones IN competitive districts - what we call DINO's and RINO's, because of their propensity for voting away from the party - aren't taking risks. THEY can vote as their constituents want, because they can get votes from either party and remain in office.

 

[GURPS]

VERY blue (or red, but - mostly blue) districts have such low primary turnout,

This is how AOC was elected ....

Saikat Chakrabarti w/ Justice Democrats picked a D+15 district and sand bagged [ primaried ] the incumbent

This guy lays it all out