The Wisconsin Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel is, without a doubt, the most consequential item on the election calendar these next few weeks.
This conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Ben Wikler, Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, highlights the historical background a…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel is, without a doubt, the most consequential item on the election calendar these next few weeks.
This conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Ben Wikler, Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, highlights the historical background and what is at stake, and underscores why it is imperative that we help Crawford win. The election is April 1st.
I cannot recommend this interview strongly enough!
In 2020, Cheri Beasley lost the North Carolina Supreme Court election to Paul Newby by a mere 451 votes, out of almost 5.4 million cast. That’s a margin of 0.008 %.
If memory serves me right, Republicans immediately exploited Beasley’s narrow loss and their regained control of the court to reverse numerous prior NC Supreme Court Decisions, and to implement an egregious gerrymander in the state. That gerrymander gave Republicans significant advantages in three extra Congressional districts.
Had Beasly won, elections and North Carolina would have remained more fair – Democrats right now would likely be in control of the House of Representatives, with Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker.
Needless to say, that would be decisive in stopping Musk’s illegitimate DOGE, the ability to conduct House hearings and investigations, maintaining a separation of powers and maintaining Congressional "power of the purse", as well as more effectively countering the breakneck-speedy implementation of Trump’s Project 2025.
MORAL of the story: These state supreme court elections effing matter!!
Had the 2022 congressional map survived, the House would be 218D-217R.
That said, the 2022 map was imposed as one time thing per the Court’s ruling against the map R legislature passed. Rs were set to flip the NC Supreme Court in 2022 if not 2020. They had enough time to remap anyway.
Yeah, in that 2022 election Richard Dietz (R) beat Lucy Inman (D) 52.6–47.4, while Trey Allen (R) beat the Democratic incumbent Sam Ervin IV by very similar figures: 52.4–47.6. Those were solid five-point margins; I don’t know what it would have taken for Democrats to hold the NC Supreme Court majority. Interestingly, Ervin IV’s namesake grandfather was Senator Sam Ervin Jr. of Watergate fame, who imho made those Senate hearings particularly memorable.
Our top dog on Judiciary ought to be the excellent Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, not Dick Durbin. By the way, Whitehouse’s Senate lectures on the Federal Society’s capture of SCOTUS are incredibly informative, a must-watch.
I don't disagree with your points about how important state Supreme Court elections are, but I worry we're worse off wrt Trump and Congress than we think. I would much prefer having Jeffries as Speaker, but what makes any of us think that Trump and Musk would be at all thwarted by a house of Congress that stood in opposition to them?
To think that the normal guardrails of democracy are going to stand in Trump/Musk's way seems like wishful thinking. They're doing what they want regardless of Congress, the courts, norms, etc. What would a Democratic House do--pass a resolution that they strongly disapprove of the WH's actions? Sure, they wouldn't have passed the budget bill, but Trump/Musk don't seem to be constrained by budget authorizations anyway. I don't have answers or a strategy, but these are incredibly worrisome times, and we can't expect getting to 218 House Dems will save us.
For me, at least, the determination is in your conclusion: that we do not have an answer makes it something that cannot be focused on. It's a situation that we are, by and large, powerless to shape. We can only work within the confines of what we can do.
I also feel there is a certain level of power ceded by assuming that they will be able to successfully go down an authoritarian path with no push back. Our systems are made up of people. Just like every other person out there, those people are subject to normalization and are less likely to do that push back if the societal expectation is that it is futile. In this situation by refusing to accept an outcome as inevitable we can make it less likely.
I agree that we can't normalize this, but I think it's going to take a large-scale pushback from voters, even/especially those who voted for Trump, to get some meaningful checks from Congress.
At present, though, assuming that just having Jeffries as Speaker would be sufficient to put the brakes on doesn't seem like it would matter much with a WH that isn't going to follow any rules. If Musk defies court orders, who's going to prosecute him? Bondi? It is to laugh.
Jeffries seemed more interested in having a decorum discussion with Al Green rather than standing by his caucus and standing up to Trump/Musk.
i disagree; having a Democratic House should be priority #1 imo; the current Congress has given Trump their recorded votes and Cabinet\White House Advise & Consent majority votes; i blame the Congress, not Trump
Ray, we would be in a far better place with a Democratic House Majority and Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker. But just to be clear, I am in no way implying that this would be sufficient. This country is in very serious trouble, our democracy is in deep danger – and so is anything in the world that Trump touches.
I think the NC mess that Dems can’t seem to escape goes back to 2010 or even earlier. Democrats had the chance when they controlled the legislature to get independent redistricting on the ballot. It should have been clear to Dems that they weren’t gonna be able to control the legislature there forever and independent redistricting would have been insurance against Republicans getting control in a redistricting year. Dems in MN would be wise to try and get independent redistricting enacted because you never know when a really bad year might come up. It could happen in a redistricting cycle like it did in 2010.
Agreed but North Carolina wouldn’t have been a bad state to do it but that would’ve required predicting the future. Things could’ve gone differently in NC if they had continued getting bluer and we eventually would want to gerrymander ourselves.
I mean, did anyone really expect Democrats to be able to control the state legislature in NC forever? The state had only voted Dem for president once (2008) since 1976. Even Clinton couldn’t win it in 1992 or 1996. Dems even lost the state house in 1994 and 1996 there.
Even by summer 2009, it was pretty clear Dems were in for a rough year and by early 2010 polls were coming out showing Dems were likely to lose one or both chambers of the NC legislature.
Hoping for a state to get bluer and doing nothing is a bad strategy.
Coming off of 2008, the Tea Party wave crashing over NC was pretty rough and we never recovered bc of the gerrymanders. But statewide, it’s still pretty close to a swing state, it just hasn’t been swinging enough.
NC is an interesting and frustrating one. The 2008 election with Kay Hagan as our Senate candidate was fantastic. Everyone was afraid to run bc it’s NC and why waste our time? She stepped up and destroyed the Republican incumbent. Things went to shit after that but then still, we got Gov wins, we got Supreme Court wins that undid the congressional map. They’d still be better off with an IRDC at this point, obviously. It’s a big state with a lot of blue circles that can be easily packed.
In deep blue states like CA and NY yes. However they were a lifesaver in AZ in 2011 (although less so in 2021) and potentially MI the next time Republicans have a trifecta there in a redistricting year.
Basically, Dems should want them in red and even light blue states (like MN), but not in deep blue states where Republicans would never get a trifecta (MA, NY, CA, IL).
CA democrats had already declined to implement gerrymanders in the past. The pattern there was a history of incumbent protection maps — incumbents of both parties. The new maps in 2002 saw only a single seat change hands. No seats changed hands in 2004, democrats gained another seat in 2006, and no seats changed hands in 2008 or 2010. To expand on that, the 2008 house elections in CA saw a result of 60-37 (D-R) for the popular vote; 2010 was 53-44. This was a net shift of ~13 points between the two elections; yet zero seats changed hands.
The independent commission in 2010 did not seek to protect incumbents of both parties. The 2012 election with those maps saw a nearly identical popular vote result as 2008, except this time democrats picked up four seats. Going into the decade the seats were 34D-19R. By the end of the decade the seats were 42D-11R, and at its peak it was 46D-7R!
I'm skeptical that CA democrats would have had the willpower to do a gerrymander that would have seen us able to win that many seats. Today I think we'd be stuck with something like a consistent 35-17 delegation in CA instead of our current 43-9.
I agree. For various reasons and for many cycles, CA Dems were quite content to join hands with the GOP and draw incumbent protection districts.
In 2012, the first year of the CA citizen commission's lines, many incumbents were upset that they had been drawn into the same district as another. iirc, a lot of deadwood decided it was time to retire.
(BTW, the CA citizens commission is explicitly forbidden to consider incumbents place of residence when drawing lines. Probably one of the best things in that law.)
MN Dems need to not be wusses and gerrymander the shit out of the state the first chance they get. No more sharing power with a party that can’t win statewide.
Yes but first they’d need to be able to win both chambers as well as the governorship in a redistricting cycle, which they haven’t been able to do in well over 50 years.
Nah, mid-decade redistricting. Pass a map whenever you want. Legal in most states. They blew their chance in 2022 when it would have been the easiest to do.
Too many blue states screwed themselves over way too long ago and then we continued doing so even after the damage was already done. At this point, the only states Dems can have any hope of gerrymandering to the point of making a difference is IL, MN, NM, NV and OR. IL packs a punch but the others are only picking up 1 seat each.
It’s too bad the MN state senate isn’t up every midterm but rotates based on the census. The 2010’s were Presidential year elections so if the state senate had been up in 2018 like other states, we would have crushed it and gerrymandered ourselves into a semi-permanent majority.
Some creative line drawing could make Washington's current 8-2 composition more durable. We got there by picking up an R+5 seat and holding a D+1 seat. If they gerrymandered the state I suspect we could get the R+5 closer to even and make the D+1 more of a D+3ish seat.
Maine's constitution makes this de facto impossible, and I wouldn't even call it a gerrymander in practice, but the state could be split into two roughly equal seats by partisan make up, both being light blue. Instead we get a dark blue along with a red seat that we lucked into winning.
Those two map changes wouldn't change the current composition of our house delegation but it would make it so we wouldn't need exceptional candidates to hold two of our current seats, and would make a third seat more able to survive bad years for us.
I’ve never heard that before. I just think it hasn’t been done. The DFL was too chicken shit to do it when they had the chance. I used to say back in the day of Swing State Project that it wouldn’t be a good political move but the gloves are off. Winning elections is always a good political move. And, people don’t care about “good governance” or political maps. Winning is winning.
EYES ON WISCONSIN
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel is, without a doubt, the most consequential item on the election calendar these next few weeks.
This conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Ben Wikler, Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, highlights the historical background and what is at stake, and underscores why it is imperative that we help Crawford win. The election is April 1st.
I cannot recommend this interview strongly enough!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyXba-vx1sw
PAINFUL CONSEQUENCES: North Carolina
In 2020, Cheri Beasley lost the North Carolina Supreme Court election to Paul Newby by a mere 451 votes, out of almost 5.4 million cast. That’s a margin of 0.008 %.
If memory serves me right, Republicans immediately exploited Beasley’s narrow loss and their regained control of the court to reverse numerous prior NC Supreme Court Decisions, and to implement an egregious gerrymander in the state. That gerrymander gave Republicans significant advantages in three extra Congressional districts.
Had Beasly won, elections and North Carolina would have remained more fair – Democrats right now would likely be in control of the House of Representatives, with Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker.
Needless to say, that would be decisive in stopping Musk’s illegitimate DOGE, the ability to conduct House hearings and investigations, maintaining a separation of powers and maintaining Congressional "power of the purse", as well as more effectively countering the breakneck-speedy implementation of Trump’s Project 2025.
MORAL of the story: These state supreme court elections effing matter!!
Had the 2022 congressional map survived, the House would be 218D-217R.
That said, the 2022 map was imposed as one time thing per the Court’s ruling against the map R legislature passed. Rs were set to flip the NC Supreme Court in 2022 if not 2020. They had enough time to remap anyway.
Yeah, in that 2022 election Richard Dietz (R) beat Lucy Inman (D) 52.6–47.4, while Trey Allen (R) beat the Democratic incumbent Sam Ervin IV by very similar figures: 52.4–47.6. Those were solid five-point margins; I don’t know what it would have taken for Democrats to hold the NC Supreme Court majority. Interestingly, Ervin IV’s namesake grandfather was Senator Sam Ervin Jr. of Watergate fame, who imho made those Senate hearings particularly memorable.
the current Senate could use an Ervin or a Moynihan; instead, we are awash in mediocrity
Our top dog on Judiciary ought to be the excellent Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, not Dick Durbin. By the way, Whitehouse’s Senate lectures on the Federal Society’s capture of SCOTUS are incredibly informative, a must-watch.
I thought Ervin had been a segregationist, though. No?
Could the court have least set up some redistricting guidelines? Like stop fucking splitting Guilford county?
No, the next court just changes them.
I don't disagree with your points about how important state Supreme Court elections are, but I worry we're worse off wrt Trump and Congress than we think. I would much prefer having Jeffries as Speaker, but what makes any of us think that Trump and Musk would be at all thwarted by a house of Congress that stood in opposition to them?
To think that the normal guardrails of democracy are going to stand in Trump/Musk's way seems like wishful thinking. They're doing what they want regardless of Congress, the courts, norms, etc. What would a Democratic House do--pass a resolution that they strongly disapprove of the WH's actions? Sure, they wouldn't have passed the budget bill, but Trump/Musk don't seem to be constrained by budget authorizations anyway. I don't have answers or a strategy, but these are incredibly worrisome times, and we can't expect getting to 218 House Dems will save us.
For me, at least, the determination is in your conclusion: that we do not have an answer makes it something that cannot be focused on. It's a situation that we are, by and large, powerless to shape. We can only work within the confines of what we can do.
I also feel there is a certain level of power ceded by assuming that they will be able to successfully go down an authoritarian path with no push back. Our systems are made up of people. Just like every other person out there, those people are subject to normalization and are less likely to do that push back if the societal expectation is that it is futile. In this situation by refusing to accept an outcome as inevitable we can make it less likely.
I agree that we can't normalize this, but I think it's going to take a large-scale pushback from voters, even/especially those who voted for Trump, to get some meaningful checks from Congress.
At present, though, assuming that just having Jeffries as Speaker would be sufficient to put the brakes on doesn't seem like it would matter much with a WH that isn't going to follow any rules. If Musk defies court orders, who's going to prosecute him? Bondi? It is to laugh.
Jeffries seemed more interested in having a decorum discussion with Al Green rather than standing by his caucus and standing up to Trump/Musk.
i disagree; having a Democratic House should be priority #1 imo; the current Congress has given Trump their recorded votes and Cabinet\White House Advise & Consent majority votes; i blame the Congress, not Trump
Ray, we would be in a far better place with a Democratic House Majority and Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker. But just to be clear, I am in no way implying that this would be sufficient. This country is in very serious trouble, our democracy is in deep danger – and so is anything in the world that Trump touches.
I think the NC mess that Dems can’t seem to escape goes back to 2010 or even earlier. Democrats had the chance when they controlled the legislature to get independent redistricting on the ballot. It should have been clear to Dems that they weren’t gonna be able to control the legislature there forever and independent redistricting would have been insurance against Republicans getting control in a redistricting year. Dems in MN would be wise to try and get independent redistricting enacted because you never know when a really bad year might come up. It could happen in a redistricting cycle like it did in 2010.
IRDC have continously screwed Democrats; i disagree with you because of it
Agreed but North Carolina wouldn’t have been a bad state to do it but that would’ve required predicting the future. Things could’ve gone differently in NC if they had continued getting bluer and we eventually would want to gerrymander ourselves.
I mean, did anyone really expect Democrats to be able to control the state legislature in NC forever? The state had only voted Dem for president once (2008) since 1976. Even Clinton couldn’t win it in 1992 or 1996. Dems even lost the state house in 1994 and 1996 there.
Even by summer 2009, it was pretty clear Dems were in for a rough year and by early 2010 polls were coming out showing Dems were likely to lose one or both chambers of the NC legislature.
Hoping for a state to get bluer and doing nothing is a bad strategy.
Coming off of 2008, the Tea Party wave crashing over NC was pretty rough and we never recovered bc of the gerrymanders. But statewide, it’s still pretty close to a swing state, it just hasn’t been swinging enough.
NC is an interesting and frustrating one. The 2008 election with Kay Hagan as our Senate candidate was fantastic. Everyone was afraid to run bc it’s NC and why waste our time? She stepped up and destroyed the Republican incumbent. Things went to shit after that but then still, we got Gov wins, we got Supreme Court wins that undid the congressional map. They’d still be better off with an IRDC at this point, obviously. It’s a big state with a lot of blue circles that can be easily packed.
In deep blue states like CA and NY yes. However they were a lifesaver in AZ in 2011 (although less so in 2021) and potentially MI the next time Republicans have a trifecta there in a redistricting year.
Basically, Dems should want them in red and even light blue states (like MN), but not in deep blue states where Republicans would never get a trifecta (MA, NY, CA, IL).
I'd argue we benefited from it in at least CA.
CA democrats had already declined to implement gerrymanders in the past. The pattern there was a history of incumbent protection maps — incumbents of both parties. The new maps in 2002 saw only a single seat change hands. No seats changed hands in 2004, democrats gained another seat in 2006, and no seats changed hands in 2008 or 2010. To expand on that, the 2008 house elections in CA saw a result of 60-37 (D-R) for the popular vote; 2010 was 53-44. This was a net shift of ~13 points between the two elections; yet zero seats changed hands.
The independent commission in 2010 did not seek to protect incumbents of both parties. The 2012 election with those maps saw a nearly identical popular vote result as 2008, except this time democrats picked up four seats. Going into the decade the seats were 34D-19R. By the end of the decade the seats were 42D-11R, and at its peak it was 46D-7R!
I'm skeptical that CA democrats would have had the willpower to do a gerrymander that would have seen us able to win that many seats. Today I think we'd be stuck with something like a consistent 35-17 delegation in CA instead of our current 43-9.
I agree. For various reasons and for many cycles, CA Dems were quite content to join hands with the GOP and draw incumbent protection districts.
In 2012, the first year of the CA citizen commission's lines, many incumbents were upset that they had been drawn into the same district as another. iirc, a lot of deadwood decided it was time to retire.
(BTW, the CA citizens commission is explicitly forbidden to consider incumbents place of residence when drawing lines. Probably one of the best things in that law.)
MN Dems need to not be wusses and gerrymander the shit out of the state the first chance they get. No more sharing power with a party that can’t win statewide.
Yes but first they’d need to be able to win both chambers as well as the governorship in a redistricting cycle, which they haven’t been able to do in well over 50 years.
Nah, mid-decade redistricting. Pass a map whenever you want. Legal in most states. They blew their chance in 2022 when it would have been the easiest to do.
I’m pretty sure the MN constitution prohibits mid decade redistricting.
Are there any states that we have trifecta control in, and which would allow mid-decade redistricting?
I don’t believe any states that we didn’t already have control over redistricting for 2022.
Too many blue states screwed themselves over way too long ago and then we continued doing so even after the damage was already done. At this point, the only states Dems can have any hope of gerrymandering to the point of making a difference is IL, MN, NM, NV and OR. IL packs a punch but the others are only picking up 1 seat each.
It’s too bad the MN state senate isn’t up every midterm but rotates based on the census. The 2010’s were Presidential year elections so if the state senate had been up in 2018 like other states, we would have crushed it and gerrymandered ourselves into a semi-permanent majority.
Some creative line drawing could make Washington's current 8-2 composition more durable. We got there by picking up an R+5 seat and holding a D+1 seat. If they gerrymandered the state I suspect we could get the R+5 closer to even and make the D+1 more of a D+3ish seat.
Maine's constitution makes this de facto impossible, and I wouldn't even call it a gerrymander in practice, but the state could be split into two roughly equal seats by partisan make up, both being light blue. Instead we get a dark blue along with a red seat that we lucked into winning.
Those two map changes wouldn't change the current composition of our house delegation but it would make it so we wouldn't need exceptional candidates to hold two of our current seats, and would make a third seat more able to survive bad years for us.
I’ve never heard that before. I just think it hasn’t been done. The DFL was too chicken shit to do it when they had the chance. I used to say back in the day of Swing State Project that it wouldn’t be a good political move but the gloves are off. Winning elections is always a good political move. And, people don’t care about “good governance” or political maps. Winning is winning.
The court didn’t flip until 2022 actually. And the court actually became 5-2, so had Beasley won the GOP would still have flipped the court in 2022.