On July 3, the New York Timestweeted outa new story reported from the rural reaches of far northern California, and received some withering responses.
NYT has a whole-ass genre of sad white people staring pensively out window in darkened room stories, podcasterShaun Lau tweeted, followed by an invitation, If youre a sad white person, feel free to tweet a photo of yourself staring out a window and Ill give you a NYT caption, leading, in turn, to a Times Magazine-worthy thread.
Texas Democrats were particularly incensed.
That was followed by another tweet with an illustrative map of the Austin areas imaginatively constructed congressional districts: Pretty amazing how our city can somehow hold only slivers of deep red rural expanses and be 5 districts in one.
TheTimesstory itself absurdly conflated the global reality of rural economic distress a genuine problem neglected decades too long with the most grandiose persecution fantasies of the particular Northern California locale. A prime source of the distress is the same as that seen by the prairie populists in 1880s a global capitalist system in which rural raw producers, as well as workers, are always precarious, regardless of how hardworking they are.
Its also broadly true thatcities grow more efficient as they grow larger, which underscores the need for dedicated government programs to mitigate the resulting stress this inevitably causes for more stagnant regions. America already has a baseline model for thissort of thing the plethora ofrural and agriculturally-oriented projects and programs that were part of the New Deal. Yes, the big bad government these Trump voters love to hate.
The grandiose fantasies get more notice, however, as reflected in theTimes headline, Californias Far North Deplores Tyranny of the Urban Majority. Its a bizarre rip-off ofLaniGuiniers1994 book, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy,whose inclusive spirit and depth of insight and scholarship could not be more opposite to the views of the Trump supporters in Californias far north. Many of them want to secede from the state, in which they actually wielddisproportionatelymorepower than those they feel oppressed by, due to supermajority rules that if anything foster a tyranny of the minority. Failing that, they want to grab even more power for themselves five times the power of Los Angeles voters in one scheme, and100 timesthe powerin another.
People up here for a very long time have felt a sense that we dont matter, theTimesquotes StateAssemblyman James Gallagher. We run this state likeitsone size fits all. You cant do that.
Gallaghers answer? Drastically quash the representation of the states majority of voters with a new scheme based on geography, rather than population: one acre, one vote rather than one person, one vote.
As theSacramento Bee notedin early June,Gallaghersproposal would create eight proposed regional districts which range in size from 923,000 registered voters in Northern California to more than 5.2 million in Los Angeles County, meaning that Angelenos would have less than one-fifth of the vote, compared to his constituents.
TheTimesgave it a more benevolent spin, quoting Gallagher uncritically: I am asking the people with power to give up some of their power in order to allow all the voices in the state to have a little bit more strength than they do right now.
Anothermeasure mentioned in the story superficially appears to point in the opposite direction. A lawsuitto expand the size of the legislature might appear to improve democratic responsiveness overall, but would do nothing to alter the fact that these rural northerners are a tiny minority of the states population. Again, theSacramento Beeclarified whats actually going onin an early May story, observing that the plaintiffs seek to return to a pre-1966 legislative structure in which each California county had one state senator, and to add more members to the Assembly so that districts encompass far fewer residents.
The filing itself notes that Siskiyou County had a population of about 45,000 people as of July 1, 2015, meaning that under this scheme its residents would have more than 100 times the voting power of Los Angeles County residents a breathtakingly anti-democratic outcome.
Many states used to have such unfair systems, giving rural minorities the power to rule over urban majorities, until the Supreme Courts landmark cases Baker v. CarrandReynolds v. Simsin the 1960s. Since then, the notion of one person, one vote they upheld has become synonymous with democracy around the world except among some American conservatives, that is.
In short, nothing actually happening in Northern California is remotely comparable to what has happened in Texas. Asnoted in theAustin Chronicle last March, Parts of five congressional districts are located in Travis County yet not one of those districts is anchored (i.e., has a majority of its residents or voters) in Travis. Austin, the 11th largest U.S. city, is also the largest without an anchoring district or acongressmanwhose primary responsibility is representing the city.
Four of those five districts are represented by Republicans. Only peripatetic Democrat [Rep. Lloyd] Doggett has deep Austin ties and a progressive agenda, the Chronicle noted, and indeed a secondary but thus far futile purpose of the GOP map has been to eject Doggett from Congress. He is trenchant on the larger effects of the GOP divide-and-conquer strategy: Crooked congressional districts, attaching distant communities across Texas to fragments of Travis County, continues to harm communities far beyond Austin.
Elongating districts and fragmenting communities is one of many ways in which gerrymandering harms democracy at the most basic level of impairing effective representation, as formerSaloneditor David Daley described in Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal Americas Democracy.
The big-picture impact of Daleys story was the GOPs success in holding the House of Representatives. As Ivepointed out before, that success was concentrated inseven key statesidentified by Mother Jonesjust after the 2012 election: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, all states Barack Obama won in 2008 but that sent more than a 2-1 Republican majority to the House in 2012, a year when Democrats narrowly carriedthe House across the rest of the nation.
Holding the House in 2012 allowed Republicans to gridlock the government, and win back control of the Senate in 2014 as a result. Even with that, the 52-seat GOP Senate majority today represents only around 50 million voters, compared to the 84 million voters represented by the 48-seat Democratic/independent minority. On top of that, theres news of a newKoch-supported effortto repeal the 17thAmendment, getting rid of all those pesky popular voters entirely and putting Senate elections back in the hands of gerrymandered state legislatures. So the Austin microcosm of deliberate disenfranchisement is an accurate reflection of the systematic subversion of American democracy pushed by Republicans nationwide, which keeps getting worse.
California hasnothing even close to that. Both state and federal district lines are drawn by acitizen commission, established by initiative, anda 2013League of Women Voters reportnoted that the end results earned majority votes for its final maps from all three required groups of commissioners: Democrats, Republicans, and those not aligned with either major party.
That doesnt mean democracy works perfectly in California not by a long shot. But the most egregious problems with democracy in California are in fact 180 degrees away from the romantic rural concerns highlighted bytheTimes article.
First theres the supermajority problem.As noted in early 2015by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, California is one of justseven states in which the constitution requires a supermajority vote of each house, plus the governors signature, to enact any bill that includes a tax increase. The argument that this is needed to keep state taxes lower doesnt stand up to scrutiny, however; supermajority states levy taxes at nearly the same level as other states, on average, over a three-decade period. States usually pass tax increases in response to recessions, paired with spending cuts, and then cut taxes again when times are good. In addition to being unnecessary, CBPPsaid, supermajorityrules can be economically counterproductive for states:
Every year in California there are dozens of stories about budgetary political problems at different levels of government that trace back to these supermajority requirements. The worst part of this, as the last point above highlights, the power denied to a simple majority isnt wielded by any sort of coherent or principled minority instead. Its often not much better than a simple bribe.
A second major problem with democracy in California is the skewed and limited nature of the electorate, which is far more conservative ideologically than the population as a whole. In 2006, the Public Policy Institute of California produced a report, Californias Exclusive Electorate, which Iwrote aboutat the time. It found that the difference between voters and nonvoters is especially stark in attitudes toward governments role; elected officials; and many social issues, policies, and programs. Nonvoters, for instance, were found to prefer higher taxes and more services to lower taxes and fewer services by an enormous margin, 66 to 26 percent. Among actual voters, the split was nearly even: 49 to 44 percent.
Ten years later, PPIC producedanother editionof that report. Thepress releasecited some key distinctions, including the following:
Nonvoters dont vote for a wide range of reasons, but one obvious one is that politicians seeking donor support speak to a very different set of concerns. If you (accurately) dont think that anyones speaking to you, why wouldyoupay any attention? And if you dont pay attention, why vote? This is how a democracy in name only works. And its designed to work that way.
So how do the complaints of secessionists in remote Northern California hold up?
Theyre right that Californias legislature is too small, and less responsive than it should be. The states population was around 7 million in 1940, and is almost 40 million today. Making the legislature five times larger would bring it back in line with pre-World War II levels. But the smart way to do that would be to keep district lines as they are, and elect five representatives per district using proportional representation.
The Illinois House used a similar system for almost a century, which allowed Chicago Republicans and downstate Democrats both to have representation, despitetheir minority status. This helped keep both parties more diverse at higher levels, and thus more able to craft sensible legislation. The same could be achieved in California today. Perhaps most importantly, it could help mix things up ideologically.
An underlying theme in theTimesstory is the supposed evils of regulation that have stifled capitalism..Theyvedevastatedagjobs, timber jobs, mining jobs with their environmental regulations, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican who represents the northeastern quadrant of the state, told the Times. So, yes, we have a harder time sustaining the economy, and therefore theres more people that are in a poorer situation.
But historically, free market capitalism has devastated such communities. A classic example in the region is recounted in The Last Stand: The War BetweenWall Street and Main Street Over Californias Ancient Redwoods. Generations of sustainable forestry practice were wiped out in less than a decade, destroying forests, jobs, pensions and lives. Fighting back against such destructive forces can best be done lead by those living there, a theme articulated potently by Nebraska Democratic Party chair JaneKleebin a recentIn These Timesinterview.
Its important that we talk about climate change in different ways, right?In rural and small towns we may not use the word climate change in the first five sentences, but everything were doing is talking about protecting the land and water and stopping these risky projects, which ultimately, obviously, impact climate change.
Youknow, small towns hate big corporations. Right, they hate big anything. They think Tyson is the devil, trying to consolidate markets and put chicken farmers under these really bad contracts. And so, there are lots of threads that Democrats should be talking to rural and small town voters on. And Bernie [Sanders] was obviously one of the best messengers for that.
The threads are there, and the people are, too. James Gallagher, the state assemblyman interviewed by the Times,won his most recent re-electionby 63 to 37 percent. In a five-member district elected by proportional representation, there would be enough Democratic voters to elect two members. Their daily presence in the state capitol would educate and inform the Democratic Party in ways that just dont happen as things stand now. Their presence as local elected officialswould also help invigorate the politics of the communities they represent. It wouldnt be anything like the secession fantasy that Trump voters in places like that claim to want. But it might actually help address the reality-based aspects of their anguish. We would all come away winners as a result.
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