If you have, say, a natural 55-45 majority across a wide region, you cannot draw EVERY district to give you a safe 60-40 advantage. The game is to try to load up a few districts with a ridiculously high number of Democrats. But in reality, you can't ever get as extreme as 80-20. About the best you can ever do is Alan Grayson's custom-tailored district, which he won 63-37.

So if the Dems are winning the total vote by 1.5 M, it is not mathematically possible to stack up a majority of completely safe districts. The best you can do is rig it so you have an extra margin of 2-3%

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS. Gerrymandering doesn't give a 10% advantage. It gives a 1% or 2% advantage.

Now, don't get me wrong. That extra 1% or 2% can be decisive. There is no doubt about that. But the who idea of Gerrymandering making a Dem victory impossible is just preposterous. It is defeatism and I am getting damn sick of these schmucks whining about that all the time.

Deal with it. Yes, the GOP games the system. We know that. And we just have to go out and win by a big enough margin to overcome their dirty tricks.

And -- this is very important -- we have to elect people who will actually take some real action about our electoral system when we do win. Every poll you see says that -- for the past 20 years -- Americans have been solidly progressive on the issues. Whether it is gay rights, climate change, health care, economic fairness, job outsourcing/offshoring, reproductive self-determination or any other contemporary issue, Americans are on the progressive side by OVERWHELMING margins -- usually 65-35 or more. Our problem is that we have a bunch of spineless apparatchiks in our party who are afraid to run aggressively on those policies. If our Party ran on a true progressive platform, we would sweep the elections.

You will notice that the ones who are always whining about the big bad Republicans are the same DLCers who say we mustn't rustle any feathers as we campaign.

ers who say we mustn't rustle any feathers as we campaign.

So true I had to say it again.