If the Dems Can't Win With That...

This morning on Morning Joe there was discussion about how the Republicans are giving the Democrats a great narrative by not really exercising any meaningful over-site of the administration in the wake of the President's inexpiable deference to Putin.  Their conclusion was that if Democrats couldn't win with that arrow in their quiver that they were really in trouble.  This neglects one very important detail.

The Dems did win.

Two of the last three times Republicans won the White House Democrats got more votes.  Talking about how inept the Democratic candidates are assumes that it is a fair fight.  It isn't.

The Electoral College makes votes for President in normally Republican states much more effective than in reliably Democratic states.  On top of that, voter suppression laws in many states tilt the floor under voters' feet undeniably in favor of Republicans.  There doesn't seem to be much likelihood of resolving the former issue, and the latter becomes more and more entrenched as Republicans add voices to the courts.  There are even calls to make the electoral issue more problematic by apportioning the votes by district - a proposal which seems to come up primarily where it will help Republicans.

Speaking of districts, somehow Republicans have the majority of Representatives even though the majority of votes in many states go to Democrats.  A decades long program of gerrymandering has helped to put a (seemingly) permanent slant to the House.  There seemed to be some momentum building to help allay this in the courts, but the current administration appears to have little motivation to pursue that kind of case.  Fixing the districts without the courts means winning the state houses and that is in the grip of the gerrymander too - and the voter suppression.

The only place it might be kind of a fair fight (if you don't think too much about voter suppression) is the US Senate.  Those races are straight up popular votes, no electoral college and no districts.  As it turns out this one is even more depressing.  Since the number of Senators is independent of population, and due to anticipated population trends these votes almost don't matter.  An overwhelming number of Senators will soon be elected by a marked minority of Americans.  Within the near future the majority of the people will live in 8 states, represented by 16 Senators. The remaining minority of the people will be represented by the remaining 84 Senators.  Care to guess which parties dominate which states?  I know the founders were smart, but that can't be what they had in mind.

I really, really hope Joe is right and that the narrative Democrats will have going into the 2018 election is a compelling one, but if they lose we need to remember that it wasn't exactly an even playing field to begin with.