The Tilted Field

It's amazing Republicans don't control the majority of government.  You read right, I'm shocked by it, but it's not because their ideas resonant with more than the ultra wealthy and the willfully ignorant.  It's because they have tilted the election playing field so much in their favor, they should control everything.  The fact they control half of government, at best, is a testament of how unpopular they've become.  The only thing keeping them from turning into the Whigs is the tilted field.

Here is how the right has made a mockery of the election process:

• They have gerrymandered many districts into safe zones for Republicans, splitting the Democratic vote across as many right leaning areas as possible, neutralizing their impact.  When they have a Democratic strong area too large to diffuse, they take as many Democratic voters as they can, usually from poorer and minority areas, and create one large Democratic district, limiting the poor and minority voice in our government.  This is why 2010 hurt the Dems so bad (the districts are set by the incoming majority on census years), and why 2020 should already be on everyone's radar.

• They hide their candidates.  When was the last time you saw a political sign outside of the strongest of Republican strongholds say "proud Republican?"  They create political messaging which disguises their candidates affiliation, sometimes even masquerading them as Democrats.

• Republicans go out of their way to avoid talking about their true positions on all issues.  They'll accuse a journalist of having an agenda for merely asking them to clarify their positions. 

• Unless they are woefully behind, they never want to debate.  Debates force them to, vaguely, outline their positions and agenda, something the modern GOP'er is terrified of doing.  They don't want to put anything on the record which might come back to haunt them.

• When they do have to debate, they insist on controlling the venue, the audience, the topics, the  questions, the media accessibility, and every tiny detail, creating a sheltered "public" forum, usually stocked with their supporters.

• They create dog whistle ballot initiatives for major election years, initiatives which represent the worst of us as a society (anti gay, anti minority, anti voting rights, anti women's rights; usually wrapped in false patriotism and/or religion).  These initiatives successfully deliver the dregs of humanity, and their unbridled hatred, to the polls.  The right knows these dregs usually vote Republican.

• They have a massive amount of control over the media in this country.  The right owns a large portion of the media, and what they don't own has been browbeaten into submission with their McCarthy-esque methods, ensuring a right friendly/left unfriendly message is relayed to the masses.

• When they can't control the message, they either avoid talking about certain stories altogether, or create a new crisis (like ebola) to dominate the news cycle.

• Through unchecked dark money flowing into elections, the GOP and their supporters outspend the competition on advertisement at obscene levels.  10 to 1, 15 to 1 and even 20 to 1.  That's $20 spent by Republicans and their backers for every $1 for the Democrats.

• When a voter registration campaign, especially one geared to getting minority voters registered, has success, they will do everything to shut it down.

• Voter registration drives run by Republicans have a tendency of mishandling registrations filled out by Democrats.  When voter registrations are delivered to Republican campaign officials, some districts seem to have consistent trouble getting them entered into the system.

• Under the false flag of trying to stop criminals from voting, Republican voting officials purge hundreds of thousands of legal voters from the voting ranks by simply removing popular names, names usually common in the African American and Latino communities.

• The right and their puppet masters spend millions every election cycle to discourage voting.  They know they will lose if Democrats turn out to vote, so they create false apathy to keep the voting public at home.

• The right knows making voting easier by expanding voting hours hurts their end results.  They will always fight to limit voting hours.

• The right inflated an extremely minor problem, voter fraud, and used their fear mongering to justify requiring voter ID's.  The GOP will insist state issued college ID's are not legal voter ID's, but NRA membership cards are, knowing who their are disenfranchising.  At worst, making people pay for an ID to vote is an outright poll tax.

• Republicans love some tactics which are extremely low.  They put out misinformation about voting days, hours and polling places in an attempt to confuse the voters.  They also engage in threatening robo-calls to intimidate people from voting.

• Polling stations in poorer communities are usually understaffed and under equipped, purposely, to make waiting times and voting lines long, knowing this too will discourage some.

• They purposely draft confusing ballots and unclear instructions which are designed to create large numbers of disqualified ballots.

• And let's not forget the shocking amount of ballots from poorer and minority voting areas which seem to disappear every election.

Running through this list, should make you angry, furious even, but it should also make you laugh.  Even with such a tilted playing field, the right barely can hold onto any power, and have to vote in unison, with zero dissent, maximizing arcane procedural rules and motions to have a say in government.  It is only a matter of time before even the current tilt isn't enough anymore.