Leading Off

• Electoral College: Despite losing the popular vote, Donald Trump just won the presidency thanks to our archaic Electoral College—and now Republican legislators in key states are plotting to make our electoral system even less democratic. Republicans in Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia have all proposed allocating one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district and two to the statewide winner, something that only Maine and Nebraska currently do. While this change might sound like a reasonable reform on the surface, Republicans have only one purpose in mind: gerrymandering the Electoral College.

How this works is simple. Fifty-five percent of all congressional districts were drawn to favor Republicans follow the 2010 census, while just 10 percent were drawn to benefit Democrats. Consequently, Trump carried 230 districts to just 205 for Hillary Clinton, even though Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes nationwide. So if every state awarded electoral votes by congressional district, Trump still would have prevailed. And guess what? Mitt Romney would also have won this way in 2012, and George W. Bush would have in 2000, too.

Republicans will cynically argue that this change promotes fairness. If you were to award electoral votes by district in Minnesota, Clinton and Trump would have each gotten five, while in Virginia, Clinton would have earned seven and Trump six. Republicans will note that the popular vote in both states was relatively close, so they’ll say that splitting electoral votes would have better reflected that vote, as opposed to the current winner-take-all system.

However, each state’s electoral votes don’t exist in isolation, and awarding them by district only in states Clinton carried would, of course, only expand the GOP’s Electoral College edge. And it’s extremely telling that no red states are currently considering similar proposals. After all, Hillary Clinton won 14 districts in Texas. Why aren’t Lone Star Republicans advancing a similar plan? That’s a question that doesn’t need an answer.

However, the news isn’t all bad—at least, not yet. New Hampshire Republicans could pass their proposed bill since they completely control the state government, but it would only swing one electoral vote there, and fortunately, this legislation has yet to gain traction in the Granite State. And in Virginia, a state House subcommittee approved a measure before its chief proponent abandoned his bill this week amid public backlash. But more worrisome is Minnesota, where the Republican state House speaker just threw his backing behind such a scheme.

For the moment, Minnesota and Virginia currently have Democratic governors who could veto such bills, but that could change. Minnesota faces a critical open-seat gubernatorial election in 2018, while Virginia has one this year. If Republicans were to gain the governor’s offices and hold the legislatures there, they could easily pass these Electoral College gerrymandering schemes in two key swing states. And even if they don’t, they could still prevail: The Republican-controlled legislatures in both states could still put these changes up to a popular vote with just a simple majority vote. Democrats everywhere need be on guard.

Please note: This is a 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primary-free zone

Late in 2016, a federal district court struck down Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn state Assembly map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. On Friday, the court followed up that decision by ordering the legislature to craft new districts for the 2018 elections by Nov. 1. Of course, those same lawmakers were responsible for creating the very maps that were struck down in the first place, so it remains to be seen how the court will treat any remedial plans that legislators come up with, but this latest ruling represents progress in a case that’s crucial for redistricting reform.

Wisconsin is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country: Democrats won the statewide popular vote for the Assembly in 2012, but the GOP’s maps helped them maintain their majority. New maps could upend that. But even more importantly, this ruling might also have much broader implications, because a likely appeal to the Supreme Court could set the stage for a national precedent constraining partisan gerrymandering.

An earlier Supreme Court ruling called Vieth v. Jubelirer previously held that partisan gerrymandering could be unconstitutional. But in that case, Justice Anthony Kennedy, as the deciding vote, refused to strike down the particular map in question for lack of a manageable standard to determine when impermissible partisan gerrymandering takes place.

The plaintiffs in Wisconsin, however, have sought to overcome that problem by proposing one such standard called the “efficiency gap” that would examine how many votes get “wasted” in each election. Under this test, if one party routinely wins landslide victories in a few seats while the other party wins much more modest yet secure margins in the vast majority of districts, it could signify a gerrymander that has gone so far as to infringe upon the rights of voters to free speech and equal protection.

While the federal district court didn’t rely solely on the plaintiffs’ “efficiency gap” in reaching its decision, the opinion appears to have been precisely designed with Kennedy’s Vieth ruling in mind. Should plaintiffs ultimately succeed in persuading the Supreme Court’s perennial swing justice to finally set forth a standard to judge when partisan gerrymandering crosses the line, courts could begin striking down redistricting plans across the nation and at all levels. Republicans have gerrymandered 55 percent of congressional districts and most state legislatures nationwide, so such a decision could have extremely far-reaching consequences.

Donald Trump is haphazardly plowing ahead with his proposal to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, but among the many obstacles he faces is this one: the areas of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas that actually abut our southern neighbor strongly opposed the president in 2016. Daily Kos Elections has calculated the results of last year’s presidential election for the nation’s congressional districts, and now The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has smartly put that data to use to show that eight of the nine districts along the border voted against Trump. (Click through to see the WaPo’s excellent interactive map of the region.)

What’s more, three of those seats also elected Republicans last year: Arizona’s 2nd, located in Tucson and its suburbs; New Mexico’s sprawling 2nd; and Texas’s 23rd, which stretches from El Paso to San Antonio. All three are home to substantial Latino populations, and the two districts in Arizona and Texas both voted for Hillary Clinton after having narrowly supported Mitt Romney in 2016. It’s very possible Trump’s border proposals were responsible for that switch.

Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who represents the 23rd, has been vocal in expressing his opposition to the wall, an issue Democrats hammered him over during his re-election campaign last year—a race Hurd won by just 1 percent. Should some form of Trump’s border wall actually come to fruition, that would make Hurd, along with Arizona 2nd District Rep. Martha McSally, obvious targets for Democrats once again.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the fine folks down in the DKE basement, we already have our first 2016 presidential results by legislative district: Virginia's State House of Delegates. As the map above demonstrates, there are seventeen HDs in Virginia where Democrat Hillary Clinton carried a district held by a Republican incumbent.

However, the simple pairing of incumbent legislative party with presidential results does not always tell the whole story. Buried in what was a relatively small shift in the statewide partisan preferences in Virginia was a seismic shift in more than a third of the state’s legislative districts. 

Statewide, Hillary Clinton did slightly better (against the margin) in Virginia versus Donald Trump than Barack Obama did in his re-election bid against Mitt Romney. In 2016, the margin statewide was 5.32 percentage points, a slight increase over the 3.88 margin enjoyed by the Democrats in 2012.

But a total of 36 Virginia legislative districts saw shifts of ten points or more in either the Republican or Democratic direction. This suggests that the relatively modest shift statewide was the result of more pronounced shifts locally that, to an extent, cancelled each other out. 

That said, it was not a complete offset. The local shifts clearly benefitted Democrats, and in a way that could yield tangible benefits come November, when the critically important legislative elections in Virginia take place.

Leading off

● UT-Sen: This week, the Salt Lake City Tribune and the University of Utah released an eye-popping poll from Dan Jones & Associates that shows ex-Gov. Jon Huntsman demolishing Sen. Orrin Hatch, a fellow Republican, 62-21 in a hypothetical matchup. That's a very scary number for Hatch, but there are a few caveats to note before we start chanting "bring out your dead!" outside of Hatch's house.

The first thing to note is that respondents were asked if Hatch should seek an eighth term (they said no by a 78-17 margin) before the horserace question was asked. That question, particularly the information that Hatch wants an eighth (!) term, could very well have influenced respondents.

If, for instance, the poll had instead led with a question asking how voters in this conservative state felt about Huntsman's past support for the DREAM Act, the former governor may not have polled so well. As we always say, it's better to ask the horserace question up front rather than risk influencing responses.

The other strange thing is that this is a poll of 605 registered Utah voters, not GOP primary voters. Utah allows independents to register on primary day as Republicans, but registered Democrats don't have that privilege. However, the sub-sample of Republicans also favors Huntsman by a wide 49-35 margin, which is still not a good number at all for Hatch. But as we also always say, this is just one poll, and we should wait for more information. (The Tribune's article also discloses that Huntsman's brother is the paper's owner and publisher.)

We also may need to wait a while to see if we even get a Hatch/Huntsman match in the first place. Hatch hasn't announced if he'll run again, and Huntsman says he won't decide until Hatch makes his plans known. However, Huntsman hasn't ruled out challenging Hatch, and his only response to this survey was, "Regardless of poll numbers and 2018 politics, we should all be grateful for Senator Hatch's service to our state and country."

This week, the Salt Lake City Tribune and the University of Utah released an eye-popping poll from Dan Jones & Associates that shows ex-Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman demolishing Sen. Orrin Hatch, a fellow Republican, 62-21 in a hypothetical Senate matchup. That’s a very scary number for Hatch, but there are a few caveats to note before we start chanting “bring out your dead!” outside of Hatch’s house.

The first thing to note is that respondents were asked if Hatch should seek an eighth term (they said no by a 78-17 margin) before the horserace question was asked. That question, particularly the information that Hatch wants an eighth (!) term, could very well have influenced respondents. If, for instance, the poll had instead led with a question asking how voters in this conservative state felt about Huntsman’s past support for the DREAM Act, the former governor may not have polled so well. As we always say, it’s better to ask the horserace question up front rather than risk influencing responses.

The other strange thing is that this is a poll of 605 registered Utah voters, not GOP primary voters. Utah allows independents to register on primary day as Republicans, but registered Democrats don’t have that privilege. However, the sub-sample of Republicans also favors Huntsman by a wide 49-35 margin, which is still not a good number at all for Hatch. But as we also always say, this is just one poll, and we should wait for more information. (The Tribune’s article also discloses that Huntsman’s brother is the paper’s owner and publisher.)

We also may need to wait a while to see if we even get a Hatch/Huntsman match in the first place. Hatch hasn’t announced if he’ll run again, and Huntsman says he won’t decide until Hatch makes his plans known. However, Huntsman hasn’t ruled out challenging Hatch, and his only response to this survey was, “Regardless of poll numbers and 2018 politics, we should all be grateful for Senator Hatch's service to our state and country.”

This is just revolting beyond measure. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who claims to be a member of the Democratic Party, recently took a secret freelance trip to Syria without informing either Paul Ryan or Nancy Pelosi, as would be customary. And on her return, she tried to keep up the secrecy, refusing to say whether she met with the country’s murderous autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad.

On Wednesday, with pressure mounting, she finally admitted she did just that, shocking the hell out of Republicans and Democrats alike. After all, who would grant Assad legitimacy like that? Yet Gabbard still refused to explain who had paid for her excursion—only to later claim it had been funded by an obscure group from Ohio (which is not, you might note, the state Gabbard represents) that doesn’t even have a functioning website.

But we don’t even need to know Gabbard’s true benefactor to know where her heart lies: with Assad. Following her visit, Gabbard issued a statement that will fill your throat with bile:

As I visited with people from across the country, and heard heartbreaking stories of how this war has devastated their lives, I was asked, "Why is the United States and its allies helping al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups try to take over Syria? Syria did not attack the United States. Al-Qaeda did." I had no answer. […]

I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. [...]

Originally, I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it. I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there's a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering.

The U.S. must stop supporting terrorists who are destroying Syria and her people. The U.S. and other countries fueling this war must stop immediately. We must allow the Syrian people to try to recover from this terrible war.

A new poll from PPP confirms that Donald Trump, though he’s been president less than a week, is already underwater with most Americans. But the people he’s surrounded himself with are even more despised:

Donald Trump

Favorable: 44

Unfavorable: 50

Sean Spicer

Favorable: 24

Unfavorable: 37

Kellyanne Conway

Favorable: 32

Unfavorable: 43

Vladimir Putin

Favorable: 10

Unfavorable: 67

Only the best people, right, comrade?

No one wants to wait until 2018—or 2020—to fight back against Donald Trump. The good news is, we don’t have to.

Daily Kos is excited to announce that we’re endorsing investigative filmmaker Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running in this year’s first competitive special election for the House, down in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. In addition to making documentaries that have exposed crime and corruption worldwide, Ossoff is also a former congressional staffer, and you’re going to like hearing who he used to work with: none other than Rep. John Lewis, civil rights legend and Trump antagonist number one.

Even better, Lewis endorsed Ossoff when he launched his bid earlier this month, and we’re only too pleased to follow suit. Ossoff has put together by far the most impressive campaign of any Democrat running, and one rival already dropped out and gave his backing to Ossoff, calling him the front-runner. With Lewis leading the way, Rep. Hank Johnson adding in his support, and Georgia Democrats rallying behind Ossoff, it’s time for us to get involved, too.

Now, for a little background on this race, which is taking place in suburban Atlanta. The 6th District is about to become vacant because servile Senate Republicans will prove only too happy to confirm Rep. Tom Price as Trump’s Health and Human Services director: Price may be mired in insider trading allegations, but his zeal for destroying Obamacare is all that matters to the GOP.

But while Price might love him some Trump, his district doesn’t feel the same way. In fact, the 6th saw a remarkable shift on election night. Four years ago, voters in this conservative but well-educated area supported Mitt Romney by a wide 61-37 margin. In 2016, however, hostility toward Trump gave the president just a 48-47 win—a stunning 23-point collapse. That dramatic change in attitudes means this seat might just be in play.

Please give $3 to Jon Ossoff today to help him beat the GOP and fight the Trump agenda.

Please note: This is a 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primary-free zone

Leading off

● MO-Sen: A number of Missouri Republican office-holders have been mentioned as potential challengers against Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who is seeking a third term in a state that Trump carried 56-38. On Wednesday, well-known former NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, who abruptly retired two weeks ago, also dipped his feet in the water.

Edwards told the Associated Press that "I believe firmly in the principles that the U.S. was founded upon," and added, "If I could help, I definitely would consider it." Edwards said that he didn't have any plans to run, but he went on to quote Douglas MacArthur and declare, "No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation." Edwards didn't say he was interested in running as a Republican but it seems extremely unlikely that he's thinking of challenging McCaskill in a Democratic primary, and it's probably far too much to hope that he'll run as a conservative independent.

If Edwards does run, he'll have a very different profile than the myriad of other Republicans who could get in. Edwards came close to winning the NASCAR championship in 2011 and 2016, and he shocked fans when he stepped away from full-time racing earlier this month (though he refused to say he was retiring). Edwards also has a bit of a temper. In 2008, he allegedly had to be placed in a headlock to stop him from fighting another driver. Two years later, he admitted to intentionally wrecking an opponent's car during a race. However, Edwards' career survived both incidents, and Trump proved last year that Missouri voters can tolerate a lot from GOP candidates.