I am really sick of this defeatist thinking. If Dems (INCLUDING OBAMA & REID) would stand up and show a backbone for the policies Americans favor strongly (which are supposedly Democratic principles anyway), they could easily overcome any Gerrymandering advantage.

If FairVote is a biased organization, we can fairly ignore their prediction. If they have historically been inaccurate in their predictions, we can ignore this most recent one. It does acknowledge that the republican bias of its forecast is due to the 'partisan bias in our congressional election system', e.g. gerrymandering.


We proved in 2012 that winning the popular vote in the House can leave Democrats as a 30-seat minority there. We already knew that we have to win more than 51% of the vote in 2014. If a study shows that we really need to beat 54% is too disheartening for you then ignore it and hope for the best. For others it may be an indication of the extent to which the system is tilted against us and a sign of just how much harder we have to work to send the Orange Man packing.

"I need you to elect p4eople to the House who will move these ideas forward" or "I need you to take those people who are obstructing everything and vote them out of office"?

Or anything remotely like that?

If he did, I never saw or heard it. There simply was zero effort on the part of the President and his team to do this. And frankly I don't see any of the effort leading to 2014.

15 damns seats. That's all it takes.

I don't care what FairVote says. They are irrelevant. Yes, I agree there is Gerrymandering. But ...

15 damn seats. We'll never reverse that Gerrymandering if the party doesn't get up and fight. The way they have carried on, even I have trouble finding a reason to vote for most Democrats. Where was the protest when the GOP rescinded the sequester for air traffic controllers, but not any of the other programs that cause millions of regular people to suffer?

If we won 54 to 46 I find it hard to believe we would be that close to where we are now. I also think they wouldn't gain as many seats as is suggested if they won 54 to 46. the whole point of gerrymandering is to give us a bunch of overly safe districts and to give them ones which are safe but not as safe as ours. thus an increase for us of 4 points should yield us more than an increase of 4 for them.

"the whole point of gerrymandering is to give us a bunch of overly safe districts and to give them ones which are safe but not as safe as ours."

And therein lies the opportunity to turn the tables on them. Just for sake of argument, let's say they tried to give us 70-30 districts while they dealt themselves more 60-40 districts. Well, the GOP ain't gonna win any of our 70-30 districts, but with good candidates and good campaigns, we can go after 40 of those 60-40 GOP districts and win 20 of them. A good candidate and campaign can overcome a built-in 60-40 bias. It happens every election. We need to make it happen 20 times in 2014.

I'm not saying it is easy. But it is hardly impossible. It is very doable.

I don't even need to show up, since even winning doesn't mean a win.

For those that need it:


I don't see how this is any different than any election I've ever voted in. "Winning" never means winning. If it did, by Obama's 2nd term there would be change I can "believe in."

their asses during the critical 2010 midterms. People, remember, NEVER sit out a fucking decade election, which ever party wins that election determine re-districting that will stay in place for ten years. Just think, some of the people that sat out and advocated sitting out the 2010 midterms consider themselves to be the sharpest tools in the shed and are advocating the same fucking insane strategy for 2014.

56% of voters turned out in 2008 while 37% showed up in 2006 & 2010, then back to around 56% in 2012. 2010 saw a decrease in young and minority voter turnout versus 2008.

2014 will be interesting, we will lose some seats we narrowly gained back in 2012 and win some we lost in 2010 or have not held before. I think it will be very close, it is very hard to predict though because turnout is the wild card.

I don't put much stock in this upcoming South Carolina race being any kind of mandate, Sanford is a loon, and we have to run for it again in 2014 against possibly a slightly more sane repub. We got lucky they picked him.