Blue Dog Gone

Mark Shields notes that in the struggle to reform Social Security, the White House has outsmarted itself politically. "The president will be without one of the great Democrats that he could have relied upon for counsel," observes Shields, "because of the incredibly short sightedness of the White House and Tom Delay -- Charlie Stenholm, Democrat from West Texas, blue dog Democrat."

Blue dog Democrats, as Shields puts it, are those who "believe in things like fiscal sanity, who oppose tax cuts but oppose big liberal spending, but continue to be Democrats. And Charlie Stenholm . . . was in favor of privatizing part of Social Security, one of the principal advocates." The White House has no allies among House Democrats for its Social Security plan, though "if Charlie Stenholm was in the House of Representatives today, he would get a minimum of ten or a dozen Democrats to join."

What happened is that, in "a naked power grab, Tom DeLay and the Republicans of Texas, with Karl Rove's complicity, wrote Charlie Stenholm out of Congress." The GOP Texas redistricting scheme "abolished his congressional district. I say that because the Democrats understand that that's the first thing, even if you are with them, it is not going to do you any good with this White House. I mean, Charlie Stenholm has been an open, not supporter, but a guy who has been certainly open to all the initiatives. If that's his fate, then why should we [remaining Democrats] cooperate on something like this?"

Comments

kevrob | January 24, 2005, 3:10pm | #

I heard Shields whining about this on the PBS NewsHour on Friday night. I caught a whiff of "one of my favorite sources is out of the loop now" in his voice, but that could just be me.

Funny, I rarely heard the likes of Shields bemoaning the loss of Gypsy Moth Republicans when they got their districts gerrymandered out from under them, or knocked off by a standard-issue Northeastern Establishment Democrat.

That being said, I would prefer an Iowa-style commision for redistricting a state over the typical backroom, protect-all-incumbents deals that usually prevail.

Kevin

thoreau | January 24, 2005, 3:28pm | #

You know, redistricting wouldn't be such an issue if representatives were elected from multi-member districts, like the Swiss do. In that case, your ability to elect somebody that you like wouldn't be quite so dependent on where you live, as the odds are good that all of the different parties would get at least some degree of representation.

Since I know this will elicit howls of protest, I'll just paste in the arguments that I always make (which I have saved on my hard drive). Hopefully this will pre-empt some of the objections:

1) In a bicameral legislature, it would be best to only elect one chamber by PR, not both. Obviously the US Senate shouldn't be changed in that regard.
2) I'm not talking about statewide or nationwide elections for the lower chamber. In the US House, small to mid-sized states could serve as districts electing up to 10 or so legislators. Larger states could be divided into districts, with each district electing 5 to 10 legislators. On the state level, the lower house could be divided up among districts of 5 to 10 members.
3) I'm not suggesting the party list elections that European countries often use. There are plenty of ways to keep the focus on individual candidates rather than parties. See the Center for Voting and Democracy for more info. The Swiss have a system where you vote for parties as well as individuals, to balance things out. The parties get seats in proportion to their level of support in the population, but the candidates representing those parties are the ones with the greatest popular appeal (including both core supporters and swing voters).
4) I'm not suggesting a parliamentary system that goes unstable and requires a new election every time a legislative coalition falls apart. The executive would still be elected separately, but one house of the legislature would simply be elected by PR.
5) Yes, I realize that this is a republic, not a democracy. My goal is to get the best representation for the people, rather than a system where the majority in a district gets all the representation while the minority gets no representation.
6) For those who lament large district sizes distancing people from their legislators, when's the last time the legislator from your gerrymandered district paid any attention to you?

kevrob | January 24, 2005, 3:42pm | #

thoreau, I have no problem with ditching Single Member Districts, first-past-the-post, in HoR elections. I was intrigued by the representation system L. Neil Smith used in The Probability Broach. Congresscritters collected proxies from individual voters, who could cancel and transfer them electronically at any time. One "member" might represent nobody but himself, while the fellow sitting next to him was backed by millions. Utopian, sure, but don't you think we could scrape together enough proxies to have an actual libertarian represent us?

Kevin

thoreau | January 24, 2005, 4:01pm | #

kevrob-

Ideally I'd favor a system like that. Pragmatically, I'd be perfectly happy with a variant of the Swiss system:

(I keep using Switzerland as an example because they have a strong tradition of federalism, a smaller public sector than most of their European neighbors, and a history of stable government. Proportional representation systems tend to get a bad reputation due to the bloated regulatory states of many European countries and the unstable parliamentary systems of places like Italy.)

Say that district sizes are kept between 5 and 10 members. Each voter has a number of votes equal to the number of seats being contested. You can vote for as many candidates as you have votes, and even combine multiple votes behind a single candidate to give him greater support. The seats are distributed among parties according to their share of the votes, and the seats go to the most popular candidates in each party.

It isn't fool-proof, because there's no guarantee that your favored candidate within a party will win. Indeed, if you split your votes among multiple parties to favor your favorites within each, there's always the possibility that the strategy will backfire. However:

1) It's a known risk
2) Each voter has maximum flexibility to decide how he or she will cope with that risk
3) It allows more people to be represented (the minority can get representation as well as the majority, in keeping with the notion of a republic rather than a pure democracy)
4) Representation for the minority as well as the majority means that the composition of the legislature is much less sensitive to the decisions of politicians who draw boundaries.

crimethink | January 24, 2005, 5:08pm | #

While I like thoreau's Swiss idea (though if it were French I'd have a different opinion ;-), a less radical option would be a constitutional ammendment limiting each state to one non-rectangular congressional district. This would severely minimize the likelihood of gerrymandering, and at the same time brighten the prospects for geometers looking to get consulting jobs with the parties. ;-)

Of course, it would also mean that many towns and cities would straddle two or more districts, but that typically occurs in blue states already.

Douglas Fletcher | January 24, 2005, 5:30pm | #

So I guess the Democrat's best strategy on this, if Shields is to be believed, is to just hold their breath until they turn blue -- then the big meanies in the White House will go away?

I'm going to guess that if that's the way things go there are going to be more guys like Tom Daschle cleaning out their desks come 2007.

As far as gerrymandering goes, my slightly cynical nature makes me think that even if you had straight rectangular districting, somehow some of those bastards would be able to figure out how to make a squareymander.

Franklin Harris | January 24, 2005, 5:31pm | #

My congressman, Bud Cramer, D-Alabama, is one of the so-called Blue Dogs, and if voting for every big NASA and military program that comes down the pike counts as "fiscal sanity," then I we all could use some Thorazine.

Brett | January 24, 2005, 5:32pm | #

a less radical option would be a constitutional ammendment limiting each state to one non-rectangular congressional district

Would my congressional district be considered rectangular? This is the redrawn district which outed Martin Frost, who just might end up the new DNC chair.

I have to agree, the shape of these districts is a joke.

crimethink | January 24, 2005, 5:44pm | #

Brett,

That's pretty bad, but wait'll you see my district (click on my name)...

crimethink | January 24, 2005, 5:54pm | #

The story in my case is that the Republicans forced two Democratic Representatives (LaFalce of Tonawanda and Slaughter of Fairport) into the same district.

boifromtroy | January 24, 2005, 5:55pm | #

I bet they'd have gotten rid of Jim Kolbe (with whom Stenholm wrote the Social Security privatization bill) if they could have, too!

Brett | January 24, 2005, 6:11pm | #

crimethink, there's no shortage of lake front property in that district.

R C Dean | January 24, 2005, 6:16pm | #

You can't draw rectangular districts wihtout getting some major problems with numbers of voters in each district.

You can require that the district lines cross as few county/municipality borders as possible and have the shortest circumference possible. That gets you nice compact districts that line up with reality on the ground.

thoreau | January 24, 2005, 6:33pm | #

I'm on an email list for people who are interested in various aspects of alternative election methods and the mathematics of elections. There have been discussions of redistricting algorithms. People have proposed all sorts of things criteria such as minimum perimeter, convexity, etc., as well as minimizing the number of boundaries crossed. The problem is that finding the global optimum out of all possible district maps is impossible.

The best solution proposed on that list has been to let anybody who wants to submit a proposed map, and then select the map that scores highest based on criteria such as minimum perimeter, smallest population variances, etc. It may not be the absolute optimum, but it will be the best map that anybody could come up with.

Ammonium | January 24, 2005, 6:35pm | #

Illinois has several artistic congressional districts. Try these in particular:

http://nationalatlas.gov/congdist/Il04_108.gif
http://nationalatlas.gov/congdist/Il17_108.gif


I lived in Texas a few years ago. The new district boundaries are actually a lot more reasonable than the old ones in terms of shape. The Democrats had to draw up some very odd districts in order to obtain a solid majority of reps since Texas is overwhelmingly Republican.

Jim Walsh | January 24, 2005, 6:59pm | #

Tom DeLay short-sighted? Who'da thunk it...

Brett | January 24, 2005, 7:01pm | #

Yeah, Illinois #4 is a work of art.

crimethink | January 24, 2005, 7:05pm | #

RC,

I don't think you'd have any problem making sure the populations of the districts are equal. It's a simple tiling problem (hence the reference to geometers, though topologists might be a better choice).

One foolproof method: simply start off with a rectangular "1st district" in the northwest corner of the state; if its population isn't right, adjust its east-west or north-south length until it's the right size. Then move to the east and draw another rectangle, repeating the process. Once you reach the eastern boundary, go south, and so on.

In the end you'll wind up with (#districts-1)rectangles and one odd-shaped district near the center of the state.

Of course, this would not be the only, or even the best, way to draw the map following the rectangular district rule. But it would not be impossible to do it.

crimethink | January 24, 2005, 7:12pm | #

I remember seeing a report about NC's 12th district on This Week with David Brinkley as a lad. Don't ask why I remembered -- but it looks like the district is intact after all these years...

http://nationalatlas.gov/congdist/Nc12_108.gif

Gov. Mander | January 24, 2005, 10:54pm | #

Alternatively, you could draw unequally populated districts that follow existing political and natural boundaries. Each representative would have a vote equal to the size of his district. For example, if district A has a population of 500K, and district B has a population of 750K, Rep. B has a voting weight 1.5 times that of Rep. A.

MJ | January 25, 2005, 7:25am | #

"I say that because the Democrats understand that that's the first thing, even if you are with them, it is not going to do you any good with this White House."

Well,I for one am shocked, shocked to find party politics being practiced by our country's...political...parties.

Merely because someone from the other party might agree with you on some of the issues, does not change the fact that in most cases if you have an opportunity to replace him one of your own, you take it. Republicans do this, Democrats do this, and if they ever have an opportunity to do so, Libertarians will also.

joe | January 25, 2005, 9:47am | #

If Rep. Steholm was a big believer in fiscal sanity, I doubt he'd endorse borrowing $2trillion in the short term in order to head of an imaginary crisis.

M1EK | January 25, 2005, 10:09am | #

Ammonium, you're full of it. Texas' new districts are far worse than the old ones on the simple eyeball test (three Austin districts come together at my house; I can stroll across district boundaries 10 or 12 times on the way to my stepson's school).