u/Augustine_of_Tierra — reddlx

America Just Broke the House of Representatives

The recent supreme court decision on house districting and the rampant wave of gerrymandering in both republican and democratic states that is sure to follow will lead to the total erosion of representative democracy. From an objective standpoint, this is a tragedy in both red states and blue.

I think it will be hard for either mainstream party, as state minorities, to resist gerrymandering, from a rhetorical perspective. This is because each party is also gerrymandering the states where they have respective majorities anyway. States with democratic majorities are gerrymandering because republican states also are, and vice versa. So state minority democrats campaigning against gerrymandering will be less effective because their republican opponents will throw the fact the democrats in California are doing the same thing back in their faces. It will be easier to make an anti-gerrymandering argument as a political actor not attached to either of the main stream parties.

I think the logical conclusion to this escalations in gerrymandering, whether this happens in 5 or 10 or 20 years, will be that house delegations will be elected from states proportionally. So pushing for state and house level proportional representation off the bat would be a great issue for a socialist third party to push for. Basically agitating against democrats in California would be a great way of making rural working class Californians a socialist constituency, as it would be for urban workers in Tennessee.

Ok this is genuine question for everybody, whether you are for it or oppose it, but especially if you are for it. What is left populism actually?

As a marxist, we have a pretty set definition for it -- basically we think it is just opportunism where leftist by into class collaborationist political campaigns or coalitions with capitalists in order to maybe getter certain policies passes at the expense of losing credibility by working with those capitalists.

A lot of DSA people who are for "left populism" don't really seem to have a clear definition for it as far as I can tell, but they none the less will defend it and will defend left populist figure head until the cows come home.

So out of genuine curiousity (i'm not really looking to get into an arguement about it), especially for people who are for it, wtf is it?