The Gerrymander Wars Escalate

Any regular follower here knows I am not a fan of the gerrymander.

I've railed about it often: how it distorts true representation, suppresses voter interest and turnout, and drives the major political parties to pander more to the monied powers than to genuinely represent their districts and states.

For some time there in the late 2010s, I had some hope that legal fighting over the gerrymandering efforts by Republicans in key battleground states like Florida would end the issue: That the skewing of representation and denial of voters rights would irk even conservative-leaning courts to level the electoral field and letting sanity prevail.

Alas, the Roberts Court in 2019 nuked those hopes from orbit. All I had left were my observations that even by 2022 the GOP efforts to rig the congressional elections in their favor had turned farcical and clinging to a diminishing returns cliff - all those distorted districts and they still only have a 4-5 seat lead in the House - of their own making.

With the 2026 midterms looming - and with growing evidence that the slim Republican holdings in both the US House and Senate are slipping away - you can taste the desperation of the Far Right to impose their minority rule with escalating efforts across GOP-controlled states to skew their gerrymandered districts even more. Especially as trump himself - openly noting that losing Congress this 2026 would end his reign of madness and sadism - has been running around since 2025 - when his polling numbers slipped as ICE thuggery and tariffs increased - demanding states like Texas and Indiana redraw their districts to keep Democrats from gaining control of a divided House.

The big difference this election cycle - and a big reason why the Republicans are panicking in public - is that the Democratic Party finally decided to take the gloves off and do their own extreme gerrymandering to counter the decades of GOP mapmaking that drove us to this cliff.

I've noted before that yes, Democrats were guilty of gerrymandering in states their legislatures controlled, especially in Maryland, Illinois, and California. It's just that the Dems never pulled it to the extremes the way Republicans did in Texas, Ohio, and Florida. 

Until now: California passed a voter referendum in 2025 allowing them - the most populous state - to skew their congressional districts to where Republicans may not have any seats left; and Virginia passed a voter referendum this month allowing them to redraw districts to where mathematically speaking the Democrats can win the US House by 1-2 seats.

The Virginia results are under legal scrutiny at the moment, so it may not be settled for this midterms. In the meantime, the GOP panic that they could lose the House - and lose it for a long time, because they don't have as many nationwide voters as they'd like to keep skewing the results - has resulted in map madness in the large-population states they still control.

Florida, for example, called an emergency legislative session: Not about data centers, or AI, or education needs, or funding for the upcoming hurricane season; but about redrawing a map they already skewed 20-to-8 in their favor back in 2022. It's bad enough that they're planning to divide the Tampa metro - as huge a Democratic Party stronghold in the state you can find - so that none of the seats representing that metro will favor Dems: A clear partisan attempt to negate the rights and powers of a large number of American citizens.

The funny thing about all this? All of these Republican efforts to gerrymander themselves into permanent victory could actually help them lose it all (via David A. Graham at The Atlantic):

But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness—a foe that doesn’t always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to learn the word. Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help. Dummymanders are nothing new, but the bunch of new districts drawn in recent months mean that they could play an important role in the outcome of the midterms...

Now the action is mostly reaching its end as the deadline for finalizing 2026 maps nears, although some questions remain. (Among them: Will the Supreme Court issue a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in time for Republicans to draw new maps for this cycle? (editor's note: goddamn this foreshadowing...) The consensus among election analysts is that the redistricting will end up giving Republicans only three or four new seats, if any. But Democratic prowess in recent special elections raises the possibility that rather than a cold-blooded political hit, the GOP’s efforts could end up as a Pyrrhic victory.

In late January, a Democrat won a Texas state Senate seat in Tarrant County—in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Most House districts won’t see a shift that big, but victories like these have raised the possibility of Democrats catching enough of a blue wave that maps drawn to help Republicans might actually hurt them. The math is simple: In order to draw more districts favoring Republicans, GOP legislators had to spread their own voters a little thinner. But if they spread them too thin and Democrats have a good year, Republican candidates will become vulnerable.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked in these gerrymander wars is the role no-party-affiliate (NPA) or independent voters play in how districts get won. When they're drawing these maps, the Republicans (and Democrats) look at how much they can spread out their registered voters they expect to show up, and then pray that the third-party indy voters either side with them or fail to show... which is a huge gamble to take if you're trump's party when polling shows a lot of independent voters are pissed at trump right now. You can survive independent voter outrage if your district is +5 or +8 in favor of your party, but you can't if you've got the percentages at +1 or +2.

Many of Grofman and Brunell’s examples of dummymanders come from late in the 20th century, when Democrats still held lots of southern seats because of historic party support, but were on the verge of losing them to Republicans. For example, they write that the map Georgia Democrats drew after the 1990 census looks more like a Republican gerrymander than one drawn to help Democrats, which the authors blame on “the belief that it is good to be as thin as possible as long as you still remain breathing.” Entering the 1992 election, Georgia had nine Democratic House members. Three won, but three lost, and three more retired.

In the wake of those 1990 redistricting, the Republicans rose on the demographic - and racist - shifts from social conservative Democrats fleeing a party more inclined to defend civil (Black) rights. Those shifts were accelerated in the 2000s by the War on Terror of 9/11 and the growing evangelical Christianist voting base, which led to the Tea Party/anti-Obama fervor that drives the modern Republican base to this day.

Thing is, that partisan shift is pretty much played out. For all the ongoing outrage and demonizing the Far Right produces and consumes within their own circles, they can't increase their voting base any further. At best, they can bamboozle or enrage certain voting blocs - Latino men for example in 2024 - to side with them for one or two election cycles before their hypocritical true selves emerge and drive those blocs off.

This is one of the reasons the Republicans are not only struggling to gerrymander every state they can to favor themselves, they're also desperate to take away voting rights from everyone - Blacks, women, college-age, LGBTQA+ - they don't want voting. The conservative mindset on full display that only THEIR side should have power and rights, and everyone else needs to sit there in our cages being grateful for the crumbs thrown our way.

I'm terrified of the damage these gerrymanders are going to inflict: the lack of honest representation that will ignore the needs of our communities just as we need help from government the most.

The only true way in my opinion to end these gerrymander wars is for the rest of us - all of us - to show the fuck up at the polling stations during the midterms and vote the Republicans - the ones most responsible for propping up that child-raping, grifting, sadistic trump - out of office. As much as the Democrats are playing these mapmaking games, they're not the ones responsible for this monstrous tyrannical regime arresting families, crashing economies, and bombing schools.

We are long past due holding the Far Right accountable for all the sins they've inflicted on the rest of us. To hell with their games: VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT.

Then we'll see an end to these fucking partisan maps.

Paramount

As the ICE persecution of legal migrants/refugees escalated over the past month, more protests have erupted across the nation even in places like Minnesota. A lot of anger and frustration towards trump's thugs who are rounding up moms and children instead of the "criminal gangs" that the Far Right have screamed about for the last 40 years.

The tension made its way to Los Angeles this Friday, where the outrage among the residents - many of them in defense of their neighbors getting rounded up for doing nothing wrong - erupted into the kind of protest that brought out the LAPD and their crowd control of gas, rubber bullets, and batons.

Today, the protests continued in the neighborhood of Paramount, and the violence escalated even more (via Steve Patterson and Dennis Romero at NBC News):

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies deployed tear gas on protesters in Paramount this afternoon as they sought to end the chaotic gathering.

The deployment was preceded by explosive less-lethal rounds and the placement of cinder blocks in the street near a Home Depot where protesters believed federal immigration enforcement agents were conducting a raid. Fireworks also peppered the soundscape.

Sheriff Robert Luna said no immigration raid took place, though there was staging at federal offices adjacent to the Home Depot.

Sheriff's officials ordered the raucous crowd to disperse around 2:30 p.m., though several people remained in the area hours later.

While it's heartening to see Americans rising up against the brutality of trump's - and Stephen Miller's - anti-immigrant campaign, this is unfortunately the response those SOBs were hoping for, because it can justify trump's declaring martial law and assuming dictatorial powers (via Maya Yang and Diana Ramirez-Simon at the Guardian (US)):

The Trump administration will deploy the national guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles, border czar Tom Homan said on Saturday, as an immigration crackdown in the area erupted into mass protests with police in riot gear deploying teargas at bystanders.

“We’re already mobilizing. We’re gonna bring national guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law,” Homan said in an interview with Fox News.

US immigration authorities on Saturday extended area raids into Paramount, south-east of Los Angeles, and were met with more protests outside an industrial park.

Border patrol personnel in riot gear and gas masks stood guard outside the park, deploying teargas as bystanders and protesters gathered on medians and across the street, some jeering at authorities while recording the event on smartphones...

Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote on social media that Friday’s demonstrations were “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. On Saturday, he described the day’s protests as a “violent insurrection”.

During Friday’s protests at a federal detention facility in downtown LA, David Huerta, the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union, was arrested amid a police response that included teargas and flash-bangs.

Huerta, who was injured and detained, released a statement to the Los Angeles Times from the hospital, saying: “What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger.”

“This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice,” he added.

The reports are that they'll be sending in about 2,000 Guardsmen, but if they're thinking that will subdue a metro of 18 million people covering a geographic area of 400 square miles or so, that isn't going to help. I'm willing to bet they want this deployment to get overwhelmed so trump can justify sending in the US Army to "pacify" all of Los Angeles.

California's governor Newsom is trying to defuse the situation, but it's a question of what he can do to stop his state's National Guard from answering to trump's generals.

LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice. We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@governor.ca.gov) June 7, 2025 at 8:14 PM

Somewhere in a dark hole, Stephen Miller is enjoying the suffering and chaos he's wanted to inflict on our nation, if the reports are true about his obsession to terrorize Latino communities (via Tom Boggioni at Raw Story):

Following up on her Wednesday report on how Miller and Donald Trump's war on immigrants is "reshaping" the focus of what crimes should be prioritized, NBC's Julia Ainsley told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the abrasive Miller is increasingly angering other members of the administration.

For NBC News she wrote that in May, Miller "berated and threatened to fire senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day," and has since demanded other agencies help out with his "Operation At Large..."

Noting plans to use members of the National Guard to round up immigrants, Ainsley added, "This comes a week after the infamous, now infamous meeting where Stephen Miller called in the leaders of ICE and screamed at them, yelled at them, threatened to start firing the bottom 10 percent of performers if they didn't get their arrest numbers to 3000 a day."

Anna Giartelli at the Washington Examiner had more details about that rant:

“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day.

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official recited.

One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,'” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official...

Miller doesn't want gangbangers. He wants Latino families. And he's desperate to shove too many of them into kennels and basements and overflowing prisons.

It's proof that the anti-immigrant forces were never interested in stopping crime. It's proof that these bastards were interested in their racist agenda to purge America of anyone too dark-skinned for their liking.

We have monsters ruling the nation.

We have to defy them. It is paramount that we do so.

Blood on the Streets of Monterey Park

I woke up this morning to news about an Asian holiday - the Lunar New Year - getting disrupted by a gunman in Monterey Park, California overnight. Another goddamned mass shooting. At least 10 people dead (multiple wounded, so the numbers could get worse). Via NPR: 

A shooting in the city of Monterey Park, just outside of Los Angeles, has left 10 people dead and at least 10 others wounded. The attack came at the end of a day of celebration in the predominantly Asian American community in observance of the Lunar New Year. Authorities said the shooter remains at large.

Here's what we know:

The attack was at least the 33rd mass shooting in the U.S. this year — and the second in California in less than a week.

About 60,000 people — 65% of whom are of Asian descent — call Monterey Park home, according to Census estimates.

President Biden has been briefed on the shooting.

Authorities are investigating another scene in the nearby city of Alhambra.

Take a moment to look at that first stat: This is the 33rd mass shooting in the United States this year. WE ARE ONLY 22 DAYS INTO THE WESTERN CALENDAR. We are up to almost TWO MASS SHOOTINGS A DAY. We have become so jaded and worn down from gun-related deaths that we're utterly numb as a nation to this shit.

The attack focused on a large Asian community, signaling that this was racially motivated by Far Right factions hating on foreigners as part of their overall anti-immigrant mindset.

And given the high body count in just one setting, I'm willing to bet the weapon used was a military-grade assault rifle like the AR-15 (the chosen rifle for mass shooters across the USA). It is not a firearm meant for hunting wildlife, it is not a firearm meant for personal home defense. It is a firearm meant for war zones. Which is what the American landscape has turned into thanks to the Angry Guys With Guns community.

And again, nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money. 

And in the future, nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money. 

And another mass shooting, and another and another, and nothing will get done.

There will be more mass shootings, because we're up to one per day, getting closer to doubling up, because this is how the goddamned National Rifle Body Count Association makes their money.

And another... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

...

When are we going to have political leadership in the United States willing to step up and abolish the goddamned Second Amendment? We don't need militias anymore, and we've proven the PAST 40 YEARS THAT WE ARE NOT REGULATING FIREARMS IN ANY WAY. The Second Amendment has devolved from being "Empowerment for states to form and well-regulate their own militias" to "A goddamned license to kill anybody the Angry Guys want to kill."

There is blood on every American street, rising up on a tide of unrelenting hate and violence, and it is going to drown us all until we tell the goddamned gun nuts NO MORE.

Red Skies in 2020

Should have taken warning, it's just\
People mourning\
Running, hiding, lost\
You can't find\
Find a place to go\
So it's...

Red skies at night\
Red skies at night\
Oh oh...

- "Red Skies," The Fixx

This is not good (from Astig Magaling's channel):

(from BOSSCARS channel):

This one has better music but is more unsettling:

This isn't Blade Runner. This is Real Life.

Right now, the West Coast is shrouded in the smoke of dozens of wild fires from Washington to Southern California, all part of an ongoing cycle of bad weather and hotter-than-normal conditions. To quote from Jane Hu at Slate:

In case you’re wondering if this is normal: It absolutely is not. Historically, fire season in California peaks in October, and Denver hasn’t gotten snow in September for two decades. Often, vacationers in San Francisco complain that the weather isn’t as warm as they were expecting for California—“the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” people like to say—but the Bay Area hit 100 degrees this weekend. And these aberrant patterns aren’t the only extreme weather we’ve seen across the U.S. lately: Hurricane Laura pummeled the Louisiana coast less than two weeks ago, and a couple of weeks before that, a derecho whipped through Iowa, where winds over 100 miles an hour damaged more than 800 buildings and up to 43 percent of the state’s soybean and corn crop, according to Radio Iowa...

Hurricane Laura was two weeks ago and there's barely any talk about the damage done there. The storm that hit Iowa was a freaky thing called a derecho and the scale of it has wrecked the state for years to come.

And we've already forgotten as a planet the devastating wildfires of Australia that opened this annus horribilis of 2020. We're talking an environmental disaster that will take decades for humanity to recover and that may wipe out the natural wildlife forever.

Back here in the U.S., all of this is taking place with a Republican-led federal government that has said little and doesn't seem to be doing anything to help with resolving the climate change woes that are fueling the extremes in national and global weather.

None of this is normal weather. None of this is getting fixed as long as the Republicans drag their feet on any action that might dare cut into CEO bonus pay.

And it's still red skies tonight on the West Coast...

Predicting Character: The Force of Harris

The thing about Kamala Harris to take serious is her hardened sense of justice.

You saw that on full display in the first major debate among the 2020 Democratic candidates, where given the chance she eviscerated Joe Biden for his record as a U.S. Senator in the 1980s and 1990s opposing busing to desegregate schools. Pointing to her own childhood - how's that for anecdote - Harris argued how busing gave her chances at an integrated school to become the lawyer and political figure she is today. To her, it was a matter of social justice (integration) and legal justice (fairness).

That exchanged busted Biden, and boosted Harris to the top tier where Biden, Sanders and Warren were already tapped. She's arguably the candidate most opposed to Joe (while the narrative pits Sanders and Warren as rivals for the more Progressive primary voters).

So now that Harris is running with the big dogs now, what should we expect from her as candidate for President?

Harris' biography starts from her birth in Oakland to immigrants, a father from Jamaica and a mother from India. Both parents were scholars and social activists, which likely influenced Harris' growing up. While raised Baptist, her mom also had the family attend the local Hindu temple to keep in touch with her Indian roots. From there, Harris dual-majored in Economics and Political Science at Howard University, then returned to the Bay area to get her Juris Doctorate with UC Hastings College of Law (if she wins the Presidency, she'll be the most recent President who didn't get any degree from Harvard or Yale or Ivy League. And no, trump does not count: I doubt trump earned a college degree at all...)

Harris first came to national attention as the District Attorney in San Francisco back in 2005, when the likes of Newsweek magazine ran articles on her work. From the October 24 2005 issue (article by Karen Breslau):

...Harris... the hard-driving daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, both academics and civil-rights activists, grew up in Berkeley. But anyone who mistakes her for a softhearted liberal should think again. As a prosecutor in Oakland, Harris never lost a felony case sent to the jury. In San Francisco's most crime-ridden neighborhoods, Harris has become a hero --to mothers of murder victims, with whom she meets regularly to review the prosecutions of their children's accused killers. During her first year in office, Harris has boosted the conviction rate for felonies from 62 percent to 79 percent.

At the same time, she has also embraced innovative prevention strategies. For youthful offenders leaving prison, Harris is creating a re-entry program to provide schooling and job training. She helped raise money to build a safe house for teen prostitutes. "We have to dispense with old conversation about being 'soft' on crime or being 'hard' on crime," says Harris. "We have to talk about being smart on crime."

Harris's efforts to improve relations with the police department got off to a rough start when an undercover police officer was shot and killed shortly after she took office in 2004. Harris, a Democrat opposed to the death penalty, announced that she would instead seek life in prison for the accused killer. The decision enraged police. Despite those tensions, Harris and Fong continued to meet regularly, in part to signal to their departments that the work of law enforcement had to go on. Newsom gives the two women credit for continuing to communicate, unlike their male predecessors, who went for years without speaking to each other...

Despite the controversy, Harris seemed at least respected by local law enforcement, because her political career didn't take the hits an angry police union would dole out to anyone who crosses them.

From there, Harris moved up to California's Attorney General's office, where she made an immediate impact fighting over the post-Recession fallout (via Newsweek again in February 20 2012, byline Katrina Heron):

After multiple trips to Washington for heated closed-door sessions, Harris walked away last September from a deal highly coveted by President Obama and shepherded by a score of federal agencies, a proposed settlement between the 50 states' attorneys general and the five biggest banks involved in the home-mortgage crisis. "I have concluded that this is not the deal California homeowners have been waiting for," Harris wrote to the settlement's committee chairs, just nine months into her job, noting that more than half a million more homes in her state had fallen into the foreclosure process since discussions had begun in late 2010.

Harris's abrupt departure helped derail that agreement, and response to her move was swift. Some critics, including members of the financial community, spoke of a newcomer making an irresponsible gamble to enhance her own political stature. Those who approved saw a savvy bluff-caller doing her job for a state that leads the nation in homeowner woes, with 2.2 million borrowers currently underwater on their mortgages and seven of the 10 cities in America hardest hit by foreclosure. Still others believed Harris would never agree to a deal.

That last theory, at least, was put to rest on Thursday with the announcement that 49 states, including California, have agreed to a three-year, $26 billion settlement with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial. A formidable negotiator, Harris had pushed up her state's take from somewhere between $2 billion and $4 billion to $12 billion, with an estimated $6 billion more in value to owners coming from banks acknowledging the diminished value of homes. She also extracted special concessions on how the relief will be guaranteed and distributed. Along with other, equally intransigent AGs, Harris also prevailed against the banks' bid for across-the-board immunity, preserving for states the right to pursue their own investigations into how loans were made to borrowers and how they were then packaged and resold in financial markets.

Still, some critics branded the deal a sell-out (after all, bank shares rose), pointing out that it offers scant relief for those who have already lost their homes to foreclosure. Harris herself--for whom the settlement is arguably a huge political coup and a boost for any future gubernatorial run--did not crow. "We brought an $18 billion life preserver to homeowners who need relief right now," she told Newsweek in an interview after the deal was announced. "It's a good thing, but we have a lot more work to do. By no means are we done."

Harris... has never shied from a central role in the long-running negotiations. Sitting in her office under a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., she was roused easily from professional calm to righteous fervor, revealing shades of the career prosecutor who first made her name battling the grittiest of crimes, including child sexual abuse. Her customary uniform of dark pantsuit, high heels, and pearls suggests a rather glamorous CEO, but the bursts of intensity are that of a courtroom dynamo, by turns compelling outrage and inviting empathy, disarmingly folksy and clearly comfortable under pressure.

That combination of charm and combativeness has marked her as a comer in Democratic circles, and she's adept in a wide range of social climes. In conversation, she brings up visits with elderly African-American women who became targets for fraudulent mortgage activity--"they are my grandmothers!"--and fondly remembers the black congregants at churches in Los Angeles who supported her campaign for attorney general. At the same time, the liberal white establishment of San Francisco has been her fundraising bedrock, and one of her best friends is the socialite Vanessa Getty, wife of a Getty Oil heir.

As a young assistant district attorney in the 1990s, Harris developed an expertise in domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and sex slavery cases. As district attorney in San Francisco starting in 2003, she reframed the legal lexicon around sex crimes, replacing the pejorative "teenage prostitute" with "exploited youth," and pushed for an amended state law that would ensure stricter penalties for johns. Common to these cases was "the pathology of the predator, the bottom-feeder," Harris said, adding that "be they a runaway teenager or a homeowner, an insidious part of the equation is the predator." While opponents labeled her as soft on crime, her record proved otherwise. Another focus of hers was on reducing recidivism.

Perhaps most noticeable is Harris's penchant for moral argument, which she traces to her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast-cancer researcher of some renown who died in 2009. The India-born Gopalan came to the U.S. as a 20-year-old aspiring scientist and went on to several distinguished professorships. She and her husband, Donald Harris, a Jamaican-American academic, had two daughters; after their divorce Gopalan parented Kamala and her younger sister, Maya (now a vice president at the Ford Foundation), alone. "She was 5-foot-1 and you would think she was 6-foot-2," Harris said. "She told us, 'Whatever you choose to do, do it. Fight systems in a way that causes them to be more fair, and don't be overwhelmed by what has always been. You can see the potential and make it happen.'"

During Harris' campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2016, the Economist magazine in October 29 2016 had this to say:

More than a decade later, Ms Harris still puts her faith in data, as she cites crises that Republicans and Democrats alike know need to be addressed, in fields as diverse as criminal justice, immigration, the costs of higher education or the drugs epidemic that is as cruel a scourge in conservative rural states as it is in inner cities. Over a stop for iced coffees on the campaign trail, she says transparency is the key to building trust among people, and then between communities and government. To that end in 2015 her department began releasing torrents of statistics about arrests and deaths in custody across California. Nor is keeping the trust of the police forgotten: Ms Harris's department publicizes data on law-enforcement officers killed or assaulted on duty...

Washington skeptics may dismiss Ms Harris as a typical Californian progressive. It is true that her campaign ads boast of suing big banks for fraud. She also has a distinctly paternalist streak. Greeting an eight year old in his classroom, the attorney-general solemnly coaches him: "We shake hands and look each other in the eyes." Asked by a little girl about favorite foods, Ms Harris replies: "I like French fries, but I love spinach."

But Ms Harris is a prosecutor to her core, who approaches voters as she would 12 jurors of different backgrounds: "You have to point to the facts." Contemplating a country where millions feel displaced by change, she yearns to see another approach to politics tried: "to give people an image of what the future looks like, and to paint that image in a way that they can see themselves in it." Fierce, charming and eloquent, Ms Harris may be a big part of the Democratic Party's future too...

So with that as her biography for review, how do I view her as the candidate?

Kamala Harris - Senator, California
Positives: Driven, has a strong background as a legal prosecutor that makes her a tough debate opponent. Has enough campaign experience and enough career experience in law and administration to make her an effective President. Unwilling to back down from a fight. Behaves as though public office is a public trust. Is running on popular topics such as paying teachers better. Is genuinely charismatic and can work a crowd. If elected, would be the first Democrat from West of the Mississippi River since Johnson to win, and would confirm the importance of the most-populated state in the US. The Democratic candidate most likely to throat-punch trump first chance she gets.

Negatives: Does not have many legislative successes to claim (albeit working in a GOP-controlled Senate puts a clamp on that). Her track record as a prosecutor - even with the reforms she's championed - may hurt her among Progressives railing against police brutality. Does not guarantee flipping any key battleground states (California is so solidly Blue it may not elect another Republican to major office for the next 20 years). It's not her fault, but Harris is already the target of Birtherism conspiracy talk since her parents are both first-generation immigrants and the haters are arguing she's not a natural-born citizen (OAKLAND COUNTS, you goddamned racists). She's also a woman, and reviewing how badly the mainstream media tore into Hillary on gender issues alone suggests 2020 won't be any easier for women candidates. So we gotta go through ALL THAT crap again...

Chances: Rising. From the first debate where she pummeled front-runner Biden with his questionable stance on busing/school desegregation, Harris has more than doubled her polling numbers and is strongly in the top-tier. Continued strong performances on-stage - and any positive role she can play in Congress over the next year - could make her the winner in a tightly crowded top-tier that might send the results to a contested convention in 2020.

Character Chart: Straight out of the gate, we should agree that Harris follows the Active model of accepting the powers (and responsibilities of using power) that political office holds. It's more a question if she falls under Positive (using the office to enact major reforms, engaging crises with an open mind and eager for the challenge) or Negative (using the office to attain self-defining goals, reacting to crises unwillingly with narrow and unchanging beliefs) ways of wielding political power. Given what I've read and her career, I have to lean towards viewing her as an Active-Negative character (with caveats).

She displays an Uncompromising world-view, founded on what is clearly a firm belief in justice - her entire legal career is this - combined with the calls for social justice she inherited from her family. The Ambition common with A-Ns is tempered by the Active-Positive traits of thinking more in the "We Can" than "I Must" mindset, but her track record shows habits of unbending will. In most respects, she leans more towards Carter's character traits (maybe also Grover Cleveland) than other known Democratic A-Ns like LBJ. Unlike Hillary, whose A-N worldview made her unlikable, Harris has shown better skill at outreach and teamwork. She also hasn't displayed - yet - any of the troubling self-destructive signs that A-Ns have dealing with setbacks. Of the four major candidates for 2020, Harris is the toughest one to sort, but that Uncompromising descriptor best fits her than any other known trait. She's right on the fence with A-Ps though, much like Bill Clinton was bordering Active-Positive with Passive-Positive.

This doesn't make her a bad choice as President, though. We've had Active-Negatives as President who did not self-destruct in the ways Nixon or LBJ did. Under the right circumstances, an A-N figure in the White House would be able - willing in some cases - to clean out the corruption that most A-Ns see in politics. Unlike the type of Active-Negative trump is - one who accepts political corruption as a given and thus wallows in it for self-gain (the worst of Jackson, Johnson and Nixon) - Harris would be one who would genuinely opposes such corruption and fight against it (Cleveland again is the best role model here). This is where A-Ns have an advantage over Active-Positives who get too caught up in game-playing and Big Picture reforms that ignore the base problems that won't go away.

I've argued earlier that of the Democratic candidates, Harris is my top choice. I'm normally wary of A-Ns, but I do recognize that there are times - and this is one of those times - an Active-Negative geared towards reformative action is what's needed to fix a broken nation. The good news IMHO is that Harris shows signs of being personally incorruptable thus avoiding the kind of self-destructive scandals that plague lesser Active-Negatives.

Next up on Predicting Character: The one candidate I almost tagged as Passive-Positive... so now I get another chance to do it again.

Goin' to California With an Aching In My Trump

So in one of those developing stories where it comes out that someone you oppose politically does something reckless/foolish/both, there's this to say about Trump's apparent plan to campaign heavily in Blue (aka Solid Democrats) states this election cycle:

Dafuq?

Or, to quote from Gary Legum at Salon.com:

...California is too big, too Blue, and the state’s Republican Party has all the heft and impact of a Whiffle ball. The state hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since George H.W. Bush in 1988. It has a large Latino population, a group with which he polls very badly thanks to his outright racism. No polling operation that I can find has it on a list of potential toss-ups...

Lemme put it to you this way:

California's so Blue that when you drive past the Nevada/Cali border your radio starts playing the entire catalog of Atlantic Records' R&B artists.

California's so Blue the Blue Man Group can't perform there because they could blend into the background and never be seen again.

California's so Blue they have to dye the wines to their proper red color.

California's so Blue they haven't had a Republican win the Presidential campaign there since 1988.

And yet, a little like Legum notes in his first paragraph in the above article, there's something about this madness that you can't immediately dismiss...

To Legum, it's that Trump wasting his time in California would force Hillary to spend more time and effort in that state than she'd normally would: nowadays all serious campaigning up to Election Day are in the battleground states (which is why as a Florida resident I am going to need to stop watching television ads RIGHT NOW). Legum still realizes it's a "terrible strategy" because it also means Trump is wasting time and effort away from those same battleground states (while thinking it'd be a good move for Hillary because Trump can't afford to waste anything).

In my mind, however, I can't avoid the idea of this making sense because I'm one of those hapless True Believers in the American system of representative government. I'm thinking it's a good idea - and a terrible one - because I'm one of those who believe EVERY district - and every state - should be fought over, contested, brought into the arguments so that the value of those districts/states be validated rather than ignored.

I want all fifty states in the debate. I'm not a fan of the calculated "Battleground State" campaigns despite their effectiveness. Part of me wants Democrats challenging every inch of Red states like Texas and Georgia and Arizona and Montana and Kansas, just on the chance of winning over voters, winning enough voters to make Republicans NOT take those states for granted.

So to be fair, I've got no qualms about Republicans challenging every inch of Blue states like California and Massachusetts and Illinois and maybe Delaware... and for the same reason of making Democrats respond to keep "their" safe states on their side.

Just campaigning in Florida and Ohio and North Carolina and Virginia and Pennsylvania and Nevada - toss-up states with enough Electoral votes to make them necessary - seems a bit underwhelming to me.

I can see Trump making this kind of argument: That letting an Electorally-rich state like California - 55 electors, the most of any state - go straight to the Dems unchallenged is no way to break the electoral strangehold the Democrats have on the College right now. At some point, the Republicans have to make a play against the polarizing demographics within key states and balance the score.

While that is a valid argument to make, Trump is NOT the candidate to be making it. He's a walking disaster of demographic demonization, unable to stop himself from insulting entire voting blocs for longer than three days. There may be a need by the Republicans to campaign in ethnically diverse states like California and Florida to win over ALL possible voters, but Trump is NOT the guy to rely on getting that job done.

This isn't even the right party to make such a move: the Republican Party has been so antagonistic towards minorities and women and college-age voters for over three decades that any attempt now to woo any of those blocs back to them is a fool's errand. If the Republicans want to campaign and win in Cali, they're going to have to sincerely re-invent themselves to more moderate, reformer stances on immigration, education, and wages.

Trump's plan to campaign in California looks both foolish and wise at the same time. There is wisdom in recognizing that the GOP needs to start fighting back to win the states they need to stay in political power at the national level. But it's extreme foolishness on Trump's part to think he's the one who can pull it off.

Certainly there's a layer of full-bore bullheaded ignorance on Trump's part thinking he can "win" anywhere he wants to. He can't.

Just look at the current polling in select Blue states - California especially, then Illinois, and New Jersey where Trump also wants to compete - and you'll see Trump is very unlikely to win any of those voters over to his side, not without him performing radical surgery on his personality into someone who's not a complete less of an asshole.

Trump's losing Kansas: Granted, it's not a major electoral state, but the psychological impact of a key Republican stronghold falling this early to Clinton cannot be overlooked. Can he afford to ignore the Red states that are now toss-ups?

Trump can lose Arizona: once a conservative wingnut safe state, all because his anti-immigrant stance is stirring up the state's Hispanic voters something fierce.

Trump's not guaranteed to flip Florida, which is honestly a toss-up state but where Hillary regularly polls a winner.

And yet Trump thinks he can win in California: a hotbed of liberal tree-hugging socialist San Francisco-Hollywood hippiedom.

Yeah, good luck with that whole "mashing your head with a solid gold Trump doorknob" idea, guys.