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Before You Speak | Episode 25 | Gerrymandering · Before You Speak

• Derek Peterson: What's up y'all welcome back to the Before You Speak podcast. I am your host Derek Peterson and I'm just processing the fire hose of my newsfeed with this guy over here. Elwyn: What's up everybody, I am Elwin and the fire hose of my newsfeed is filled with MAGA TEARS, MOTHERFUCKER! Let's go Virginia! Derek Peterson: Yeah ⁓ Man, I'm still not fully convinced and we're gonna get into the gerrymandering stuff as we go here because that's what our episode is about today. Yay ⁓ but the ⁓ it's interesting to see the dynamic just on the internet in general of how people are talking about it because you know people are pissed off and they're like you're ruining our democracy meanwhile like Virginia and California both voted on if they should gerrymander and all the Republican state just go ahead and do it. So I'm like, yeah, I mean, come on. Elwyn: Yeah. Fuck all the way off with all of that bullshit. You started it in Texas when Trump said do this and Texas just did it and there was no vote. And now you're pissed off that it's not working and that other states are doing it and they're actually doing it with a popular vote and with a referendum and with a multi-step process instead of just ramming it down people's throats. There's a great side to side. photos that I saw today of some guy, his name is Scott Pressler from TPUSA, where on ⁓ Sunday he was in Indiana speaking to a group of people ⁓ because they want to primary the Indiana Republicans who voted against redistricting. So they're mad that Indiana did not do redistricting, so they want to primary the Republicans out. so that they can do redistricting. And the next day he's in Virginia speaking to people going like, we can't redistrict. Redistricting is this crime against democracy. It's like, bro, 24 hours ago you were gonna try to vote out people who did the very thing you're advocating for today. That's why my fire hose is filled with Magatiers because the bullshit is just so transparent. Derek Peterson: Did it? We've lost values in this country completely. And the worst part is that we don't even like pretend to hide it anymore. I feel like there was at least a period of time where we like like this stuff would be like, hey, we don't want to do that. But then they would feel guilty enough about like going out the next day and saying the exact opposite thing. So like there was some self-consciousness about it. And now I think all of that is just gone. People are just like. Elwyn: Well, also, yeah, and we'll get into this in a bit. But the Republicans have been playing a different sport than the Democrats for years now, probably since at least when Obama started and McConnell's number one goal was to stop Obama, right? They've stopped governing, they've stopped legislating. It's just pure political power. Derek Peterson: ⁓ yeah, I can do it. Elwyn: And the Democrats spent, let's say 20 years, almost 20 years trying to figure out the rules of a game that the Republicans weren't playing. And finally, the Democrats have realized we gotta play the rules, we gotta play the game they're playing. If we wanna change the rules, we need to win under their rules first. And it's what the Virginia, the woman who's the head of the, I think the House of Representatives there, you know, she's on record. She said, you started this, we're fucking finishing it. That's her direct quote. Yeah, yeah. Derek Peterson: That, which is great, but then also at the same time, I think it's kind of hilarious because like even still throughout this process, the Democrats aren't like forcing it. They're still like very gently. All right. Like these guys are messing with us. So like, let's hold a vote and make sure that we can compete. So, I mean, there's still like a gentle nature of like the Democrats. Well, at some point, at some point I just want a Democrat. Elwyn: Yeah. Derek Peterson: to be as like on fire for doing the right shit as Trump is for doing the wrong shit. Like I want somebody that is willing to just railroad everybody to just be like, no motherfuckers, we are going to push this through because it's the best thing for the country, not because it's going to help out my four friends become billionaires ⁓ that are teetering on that 100 million marker that need to like push up into the B status. ⁓ But we'll get more into the gerrymandering here in just a minute while we still have some news to cover. ⁓ We talked about updates on the Iran war, which if I'm being honest, ⁓ no one knows. I'm pretty confident that our president doesn't even have an update on the Iran war because every time he's like, yeah, we're fine. The straits open. Elwyn: That's completely accurate. Derek Peterson: Like as he's speaking, Iranians are bombing ships trying to go through. wait, wait, no, it's not. We're negotiating still, I think. ⁓ Is JD Vance going over there somewhere? Maybe Pakistan. Elwyn: Yeah. Well, they don't like JD Vance, so it's not him. This morning, of this morning, Iran hadn't sent a delegation, or nobody was there from Iran. I don't think anybody in human history has tried to declare victory harder than Donald Trump is trying to declare victory over and over and over again. And the Iranians are just like, hey, guess what? Fuck off. ⁓ You don't get to tell us that you won. Derek Peterson: They're not the only ones. It's the- Elwyn: I'm laughing, but it's bad all the way around. it ties to Virginia, right? Where Trump was like in Texas, hey, we're going to do this thing and nobody's going to fight back. And all of sudden, these states of California and Virginia are fighting back. Trump was like, we're going to go to Iran and they're not going to fight back. And Iran's fighting back. he just, like, his entire ⁓ political seems to be predicated on this idea that if he just runs through shit, nobody's ever gonna fight back. And the minute somebody fights back, he freaks out and the whole thing falls apart. now with Iran, I honestly think he's just getting bored. Derek Peterson: Dude, do you know what the scariest part about this is for me now is just seeing what's happening because, you know, there was this, there was this air and I don't think it was just us. If I'm being honest, I think for the most part, a lot of the world believed that in similarly to Americans that Americans have so much military power that, you know, messing with us is beyond like question, right? And I think the scariest part about what's happening right now is what Iran is doing in, fighting back against us is actually showing the world that we're not as strong as we had once said we were. So, and Trump flip-flopping like this and declaring victory, like, you know, there's real reports about, you know, our missile stockpiles being low. We spend way too much money on them compared to other countries, like all of these interceptor missiles that are. ⁓ And we jumped into this without a plan. ⁓ But now we're, as our army is spread thin, you know, there's rumors that, you know, Russia pushes harder against Ukraine and tries to move more. you know, China potentially goes after Taiwan, correct? You know, like there's a bunch of stuff going on right now that... ⁓ The U S kind of held a lot of these things at Bay because our military was considered the most powerful thing in the world. And Iran is like that little scruffy kid in the schoolyard that everybody thought would just get their ass kicked and is like not allowing it to happen. you know, like this is what happens when a bully shows up and just tries to like walk in, you know, and take somebody out. Yeah, it happens occasionally to, but Elwyn: Yeah, or this is what happens when power is exercised poorly and stupidly. It's like what Iran is doing is not, yeah, it's not unlike what Ukraine is doing where everybody thought that Russia was going to roll right over Ukraine. Four years on, you know, that's, I don't know if it's a stalemate or not, but it's pretty damn close and there's a lot of dead people in its wake. You hit on something that I think we don't sort of appreciate enough. So people don't... Derek Peterson: ⁓ it's awful. Yeah. Elwyn: People say like, well, America's not the world's policeman. Well, the world worked pretty well with America as its policeman. The problem with that is, you know, just like the problem with police. If the police start ⁓ beating up innocent people, then the innocent people are gonna be like, well, fuck the police. I don't trust them. I don't believe in them. I'm really skeptical of them. And you know, that trust. and credibility that the law enforcement has, which is probably what makes it 90 % of its efficacy is in that, that goes away. And now the United States is like, well, we can't be trusted with our allies. We can't be trusted to not start stupid wars. When we do start stupid wars, we are exposing ourselves as unable to win them convincingly and lacking a plan. So. you now the world is like, okay, cool. Well, this thing that we thought was our policeman, which frankly worked for 50 years, that's not there anymore. And we're just having this incredible reshuffling of, you know, that we're living through this incredible reshuffling of world order. Derek Peterson: Yeah. And the truth is the world needs a good guy. Like there's so much stuff going on in the, it's such a, like, if you actually scope out on this stuff, it's really interesting to like ponder on is just like, we have like, we create this, we create the idea of like what's right and wrong, you know, and, and the values in which we, we kind of live by as humans and we spend the majority of our life. like going, ⁓ like playing like good versus evil, like good guys, bad guys, you know, we have these set of rules that we all kind of subscribe to and believe in and then there's people that decide to break all of those rules and then we have to create a bunch of people that are there to enforce them and fight back against those and like the world needs a good guy and we don't, I feel like. As I've gotten older, I'm like, man, it's getting confusing. I always viewed us as that. And it sucks that I'm starting to feel like we're not, you know? Elwyn: Sarah, I don't, I'm not, sorry. ⁓ Well, how long have we been the good guy? I don't think necessarily the world needs a good guy. Derek Peterson: We may not, this may be my ignorance by the way. Yeah, it might be my political negligence with how much terrible shit the US has done in the world, which I'm very well aware that I'm not a historian, will never pretend to be one. you know, like the overall, I kind of felt like, you know, we, I felt like the values and morals that we stood for as Americans were one of like equality and prosperity and, you know, like, Elwyn: least ostensibly. That's what we talked about. But I think for the rest of the world, like why I blanch a little bit at the good guy is there's plenty of the world that isn't interested in those things, you know, and that is where things get interesting. Is it our job to spread those values around the rest of the world? And I don't think so. You know, we tried it for a long time and it just hasn't worked. If Iran Derek Peterson: Lift everyone's boat. Yeah. Elwyn: wants to, you know, if they can't figure their own shit out and they stay with a, you know, brutalist theocracy, that's Iran's problem. You know, if Iran's brutalist theocracy blows up one of our aircraft carriers, then yeah, we should, we should very quickly, swiftly punch them in the nose and be like, fucking don't do that again. Right. And if we have to do that, 50 times cool whatever like because every time I think historically when you do that you buy a few years you buy five to seven years before things are like well they haven't punched us in the nose a little bit then something else happened punch them in the nose again right but you don't get in the ring with them for 15 rounds because then you run the risk of exposing weakness then you run the risk of of it not going well so you have to build and maintain this mythology of strength you have to have the strength to do that but the smarter you are and when you use it, the better, the more everybody's gonna be like, yeah, I don't wanna get punched in the nose by that guy, it's gonna fuck us up. So I'll play around the edges, but I'm not gonna, I'm not really gonna go crazy out of my lane. Derek Peterson: Yeah. And dude, I think if this is showing itself to be this war is showing itself to be so dangerous and a number of ⁓ for a number of reasons, including what you just said. And then on top of that, just how exorbitantly more expensive it is to do to build weapons in the U.S. now. Like they went back and asked for like one point five trillion for the defense budget and the and You the Pentagon hasn't passed an audit and God knows how long. And so we're essentially just funneling more and more money to a bunch of super rich people that are getting, that are marking up the price of like, this is probably in my opinion, one of the most egregious offenses in our country is the fact that people are making so much money off of Americans tax dollars under the disguise of, of safety and protection when The reality is that we've funneled more money than any country ever has to their military for decades and we're broke, we're running out of stuff. Go fuck yourself. There is no way that any of this should be happening at the moment. None. It's one man's opinion but I think it's a pretty strong one. I also did want to talk about... Cash Patel here, because this was hilarious. ⁓ Cash Patel suing the Atlantic in a move that is like onion-esque. It's like the guy, off of an article that came out that just claimed basically that he was an alcoholic, you know, ⁓ while there's videos all over the internet of him drinking through different times. and he is suing them for 250 million, which I think is hilarious. I think the discovery portion of this case is what everybody is just looking forward to, which I have a feeling this all gets dropped quietly over the next few months. Elwyn: Let's go There's not enough popcorn in the world for that discovery. His press conference yesterday was hilarious. He's like, are you saying that you've never had alcohol on the job? You're lying! No, I'm asking you a question. You're lying, media! No, but have you actually, like, nine different people said you have? It's like, scum media! It's broke. Derek Peterson: Yes. Elwyn: Yeah, so the answer is yes because we've seen it and that that story was sourced with 12 different people Right like 12 different people they none of them went on record, which I understood with their names But that means that 12 different people Right. That means it Derek Peterson: Yeah, he's the FBI director. You go on record with your name and you're immediately getting like people are showing up at your house. Yeah. Elwyn: fired. Yeah. That means that 12 different people ⁓ corroborated basically these stories. And it is fun to make fun of him because he's a fucking ass clown. ⁓ But, you know, was he drunk when the Brown shooting happened and he didn't show up for like 36 hours? How has this affected his handling of the Charlie Kirk case? When he was slugging beers with the US hockey team. forget exactly what it was, but there was something pretty big going on that required an FBI director. So, it's not... Derek Peterson: Yeah, there's always something big going on, bro. It's like there should be zero at this moment. They're in time. They're like that job. Like there are certain jobs in the yet. Yeah, I'm sorry. Like this is these aren't like a dude, you're not a podcaster anymore. This isn't like a job that you like. There are certain jobs, including the president of the United States and some of these jobs that hold more weight than others that require serious behavior. Elwyn: Yeah, so. You just can't drink. You can't drink on the, you can't drink when you're FBI director. It's like. sobriety? Derek Peterson: Meaning like, yes sobriety, like when you are the director, when you are in charge of the military or the FBI, ⁓ that should be a requirement that you should not be high or drunk during the time that you hold that position, just in general. You know, like it's, I think it's as simple as that, but all this is dumb as shit. It's literally like the most, like it's like, I remember this time I got caught stealing a goldfish when I was a kid, or a Swedish fish off a counter, and my mom, like, I was in the back of the car and I couldn't wait till I got home to eat it, so I threw it in my mouth, and my mom saw me chewing something, she's like, what are you chewing? Where did you get that? I'm like, nothing. Uh, nowhere. Like, as I chew it, this is like the most guilty you can possibly be, right? I'm like, I'm not chewing anything as I'm chewing it. Elwyn: Yeah, I know. Derek Peterson: This is the easiest thing to see through as far as human nature goes. It's literally childish at its core. It's just the attack, attacking somebody that's attacking you is literally like what six year olds do. like it's. Elwyn: But it's what works every time these guys do it. You can tell it's performative. If they don't do it, Trump's going to be mad. It's what they've been taught to do, just attack back. And notably, like we're talking about Cash Patel, you now had your third female cabinet member be fired this week. The dumb men still going strong. Derek Peterson: It's a meritocracy, Everybody's in there because they're as well equipped for these jobs as anybody else has ever been. They don't allow people to just skate by. We're bringing that back. It's the dumbest. Did you have anything more you wanted to chat about in regards to Virginia? Elwyn: The best and the brightest. Yeah, yeah, there was something and this is like mostly just because I don't think people know about this enough and I think it's really fascinating. There's this thing that's been going around for 20 years. It's called the National Popular Vote Compact. And what this is, is it's legislation that is designed to be brought up in all 50 states. And what the legislation says is that when enough states have signed onto it that the total of those states electoral votes is 270 or more, then those states pledge to have their electors back the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. So it's basically an end run around the electoral college. So Virginia, having a good week here, good couple of weeks, they finally passed that into law last week. So that makes 18 states totaling 222 electoral votes that have signed it. So right now it doesn't do anything, right? It has no effect because they're not at 270. But, you know, this is a really, it's been proposed in I think six other states. Pennsylvania, it was just introduced for the first, it's passed one house of the legislature in six other states. Pennsylvania just introduced it for the first time last year. You know, and it's getting a little bit close and I think people should know about it because I think, you know, most people, they understand, I think on some level that the electoral college is a bit of bullshit. Now, if you're a Republican, you love the electoral college, but I think if you were like, hey, you know, let's talk about the theory, not the practice. There is, let's put it this way, electing president by popular vote has broad majority support bipartisan around the country. they understand, I think on some level that the electoral college is a bit of bullshit. ⁓ Now, if you're a Republican, you love the electoral college, but I think if you were like, hey, you know, let's talk about theory, not the practice. ⁓ There is, let's put it this way, ⁓ electing president by popular vote has broad majority support bipartisan around the country. It's how most people think it should happen. So I just kind of wanted to, find that people have never heard of that and the more people know about it, the better. Derek Peterson: Agreed, agreed a thousand percent. And this is something I, you know, as I was prepping for our podcast today, you know, as we get into solutions and talking about the future, you know, this is something that I think absolutely needs to change. you know, systems, ⁓ there's foundations. mean, there's a reason like even our constitution gets amended, right? Like they're like, we grow, we change the economy, the the country changes, how things happen changes. There's so much that needs to change like as time progresses with new technologies, with how we live our lives and do everything. And this is absolutely one of them. The Elector College is a completely dated system that's being held in place by people that benefit from it ⁓ in large part with along with the rest of our country. Elwyn: Yeah, I- And I'm not sure it was ever a good system. you know, there's a lot that changes when there's technological change. But I think this is just, it's a bad system. It's proven to be a bad system because not only does it sometimes elect someone who didn't get the popular vote, but it also means that we only give a shit about four states. And if you drill it down, we only really give a shit about like 15 counties because that's how... the popular vote doesn't matter. It matters how those counties vote. It matters how those states vote. And that's not the way to elect a president, right? It means that in Texas, my vote as my democratic vote rarely means anything. It's just a tally on a sheet that doesn't matter. Derek Peterson: Yeah, you're a thousand percent correct. And it's also a critical aspect of why we need to change a lot of this stuff. Like the, think if the majority of Americans are voting a certain way, then that's the way America should lean, you know? And if you don't like then the way things should change is by having people that have great ideas and can reach across the aisle and find middle ground with other candidates. And we've, we've elevated a system that promotes the opposite of that. We've elevated a system now that ⁓ is putting us at war with each other rather than incentivizing people actually being more moderate and holding views from both sides and trying to make things work. that's ultimately one of the foundational things that needs to change in our country as quickly as humanly possible because this shit is getting old. mean, dude, nobody's happy right now. Liberals aren't happy, Republicans aren't happy, everybody's just fucking angry at each other all the time. ⁓ And it's, I don't think it's meant to be this way. And if I'm being honest, I don't think we're as different from each other as a lot of people make it out to be. It's just, we've bought into the system that basically tells us that we have to, like if you're a Republican, you're a Republican, if you're a Democrat, you're a Democrat, and there's not a lot of middle ground. ⁓ And the truth is is the majority of America is in the middle like I know you're not but Elwyn: Yeah, I mean, I know, but I also think like it's not that what you're saying is wrong, but I think that there's more agency and this is a, it's a perfect lead in to talk about gerrymandering because that's ultimately the most sharp tool people are using. But like one of the things that happens with gerrymandering is people self sort Democrats move to democratic areas and Republicans move to Republican areas. And that is a form of polarization and, but that is not due That's not because of some sort of underhanded ⁓ machinations. That's because, you know, I want to live near Democrats. I want to live in a place where the school district is going to share my values, where the government is going to share my values, and people move to that. you know, there are differences between us, and they are absolutely being exploited, but we also do it to ourselves. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, ⁓ I agree with that. And being somebody that works in real estate, this is, ⁓ I have a very clear understanding of that because I'm dealing with it firsthand, ⁓ daily. and to the point where, you know, even right now I have clients moving to Austin from other parts of Texas that I'm helping because they can't live in deep red parts of Texas anymore and they need, but they can't leave Texas. So they're like, we need to, we need to find a, you know, a blue spot. in the state so they end up moving here and I have people that you know Austin is still too much and they're moving out. I have people that are more red and you know are moving out to the hill country areas where it leans that direction you know one client selling their house and moving out of the country because they can't handle it anymore so yeah all this stuff makes sense but let's ⁓ let's get to the foundational parts of this so what let's define what is gerrymandering in general. Elwyn: So gerrymandering is basically ⁓ the act of drawing congressional districts in a way that benefits the party who's drawing them. drawing congressional districts for partisan gain. And this is not new. We talk about it a lot now. But the first known instance of gerrymandering, and this is how it got its name, was in like 1812 when the governor of Massachusetts, a guy named Eldridge Gerry, drew a district that looked like a salamander. ⁓ And that's how it became a gerrymander. The Boston Globe ran an article about it and called it a gerrymander. And that's why it's literally why it's called a gerrymander. Right? Randall stuff. Derek Peterson: That's awesome. I didn't know that until this morning. Elwyn: Yeah, so it's been around forever. It is certainly not forbidden by the Constitution. And, you know, there is a little bit of like, I feel like to some level, gerrymandering is, hey, you won, you lost. And, you know, I think it's matter of extent and sort of how it's changed over 200 plus years. But it is important for people to start with the idea that this has been around for 200 and some odd years. This is not a new construct. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. And so for somebody like me, my initial reaction to something like this is I've been learning more about it over the years because I'll be honest, I was ignorant to it until about five or six years ago. I had no idea what gerrymandering was or meant. then, you know, talk a little bit about like this went to the Supreme Court, correct? And basically they had a decision on it. Elwyn: Yeah, so when this started to get pretty bad was ⁓ after Obama was elected in 2008. And the Republicans kind of looked around and saw a landscape that didn't look very good. And then they did something very, very smart. They actually instituted a project, which they called Project Red Map in 2008. And the goal of that project was to take over as many state legislatures as they could in 2010. These dates are important because every 10 years we do a census. And that census is why we reapportion and redistrict. Reapportionment is, you know, after we do the census, we say, ⁓ Texas grew in population, California shrank in population, Texas gets two extra seats, and these other states lose seats, other states gain seats. That's reapportionment. Some states stay the same. ⁓ But population moves within those states even if they stay the same. So then every state redistricts, where they redraw their district. This is all done at the state level. Congress has nothing to do with how this is done. So in 2010, Project Red Map was incredibly effective and the Republicans took back over 700 legislative seats in state houses around the country and they got 22 trifectas, meaning they had the House, the Senate, and the governor seat in 22 states compared to 11 for the Democrats. ⁓ This cost them $30 million. Fucking worth it. ⁓ From that point on, they went all in on gerrymandering and redistricting. So, of course, these districts get drawn, they get challenged in state court and federal court. It works its way up to the Supreme Court. in a case that involved two states, North Carolina and Maryland. North Carolina was a Republican state, Maryland was a Democrat state. They had both gerrymandered, both parties do this. This is not something that only Republican states do. It's just that Republican states, think it's fair to say, are much more aggressive about it. But it was by design, two states, we want this case with two states going to the court. And the court was faced with two questions. The first question was, ⁓ is gerrymandering for partisan gain constitutional? Can we do this? The second question was, is this something that the courts can hear at all? It's a term called justiciable, right? Or is this something that the courts have no business hearing? And there's a long history of Supreme Court precedent around this thing called the political question doctrine. which basically means that the Supreme Court can say, we're not hearing this. We don't think the courts should decide this. This is a purely political question. And on its face, that sounds sensible, but you scratch the surface just a little bit and you're like, well, what is a purely political question? Foreign relations, purely political, Supreme Court should probably stay out of that stuff. But almost everything else, we need the court. The question is, should the court... have a role in safeguarding around the margins of politics or not? And that's really what that question meant. Should the court be able to decide that a state that's gerrymandered their districts, so in North Carolina's case, it went from like a six-five split, six Republicans in seats to five Democrat, to 10 to three. And the only reason that it wasn't 11 to two, this was on record from the guy who drew the maps, is he said the only reason it wasn't 11 to two is we couldn't find a way to make it 11 to two. And this was a state that had voted 52 % Democratic, 48 % Republican. Now the Republicans have 10 of the 13 seats. Okay, so the question then is, the court, does the court have a role in looking at that and saying, no, this doesn't. Derek Peterson: Mm-hmm. Elwyn: These congressional districts don't reflect the political makeup of the state. They don't reflect the will of the voters. And we want them to redraw them. And the court never got to the is partisan gerrymandering okay question because they said, no, courts don't have a role in this at all. Not meaning we're not gonna hear this. Meaning you can never bring a claim for partisan gerrymandering in any court ever. It's not the type of thing that a court can hear. Now, I'm gonna sidebar, I'm gonna veer off for a second because we did an episode a couple weeks ago on judicial activism and we talked a lot about how when the Republicans are activists at the Supreme Court, it strips rights and it minimizes rights and the Democrats' activism tends to expand rights. This is a beautiful case of that, right? Because gerrymandering dilutes votes. Derek Peterson: Yep. Elwyn: dilutes the voices of the American people and the Supreme Court didn't just say it's allowed, it said, it's not even the type of thing that a court has any role in talking about at all. The courts don't exist as a check or balance when it comes to partisan gerrymandering. Go at it, folks. So it's kind of this incredible abdication of judicial responsibility that now means partisan gerrymandering completely fine. Important to know also, the 15th Amendment specifically prohibits racial gerrymandering. You cannot draw districts that are racially biased. Derek Peterson: ⁓ really? They don't give a shit about that. Like that is like the entire gerrymandering ⁓ system in Texas. Like every map you could look at and be like, yeah, this is all racially gerrymandered. Elwyn: Well, right. but not the Right, and you hit on it, right? That's the thing. What's the difference if we assume, which is an assumption mostly borne out by history, that people of color, blacks and Hispanics and Asians, whatever, tend to vote democratic? Well now, all you... Yeah, so now all the state of Texas has to do is say, no, we're not cherry-mandering based on race. We're cherry-mandering... Derek Peterson: Because it includes their rights. Elwyn: to give ourselves political advantage. Well, that there's some carryover to race. We didn't pay attention to that. We weren't paying any attention to that when we looked at the demographic makeup of every fucking block in the state of Texas, okay, of every street, of every zip code, of every school district in the state of Texas. We weren't looking at the demographic makeup of those states. We were just looking for partisan gain. We're sorry if there's some sort of carryover. It's complete bullshit. Because of course you can racially gerrymander and dress it up as partisan gerrymandering and now that's okay. Derek Peterson: Yeah, and it's not okay. It's like the, is, I think everybody fundamentally knows, and this is one of the issues Texas might run into this time through, right? Like they racially gendered, gerrymandered the maps here, ⁓ expecting the same Latino turnout for Republicans that they have. I think Florida did the same thing. And then they instituted a terrible immigration policy, which pissed a lot of people off and. could potentially lose a lot of those ⁓ voters, which, so a lot of this stuff they're saying could backfire, but yeah, like, pretending like any of this isn't racially motivated is silly. And it drives me freaking insane to see. like, where, like, okay, well, let's talk about ⁓ the difference between the gerrymandering between, like, what Texas did and then what California and Virginia did. Do you believe that gerrymandering should exist in a way where people still, like, that the voters are still involved in it? Elwyn: Well, I think any sort of ⁓ yes is the short answer, right? this is, it is more, this inherently anti-democratic measure is given a democratic sheen if states get to vote on how their maps are drawn. ⁓ That doesn't mean that it's completely right. Like I said before, I don't think that it's wrong if a party has control of the state house. Well, one of the perks of that is you get to draw the districts. So does it have to exactly match the political makeup of a state? No, I don't think it does, but there's gotta be some sort of guidelines, right? And I think it's worth knowing, talking a little bit about how this works. Let's take ⁓ Houston, for example. Let's say, or a city, let's say an American city, and cities tend to vote Democratic. Let's say that city has four congressional districts and the city votes 55-45 Democratic. Okay, and all those districts are represented by Democrats who won 55 to 45, 55 % to 45%. Okay, now the Republicans come in and they take power. And they look at that and they're like, well, this sucks. We want Republicans taking those seats. So there's two primary ways they do it. There's cracking and packing. Okay, now cracking means you're gonna take that district of 55-45, you're gonna take all of them, and you're gonna break it into a bunch of different pieces, and you're gonna reorganize those pieces so that the 55 gets diluted. You now you spread those 55, that 55, and you look at the blocks, you look at where those votes are, and you draw the lines down the street, the street I used to live in, the development I used to live in. The main street that went down it had a Republican on one side and a Democrat on the other. I moved and I had a new representative. So you look at that and you're like, great, how can we rearrange these lines just a little bit so that that 55-45 is, you know, 50, 49-51, right? And what you do alongside that, and sometimes you can do one and not the other, is you pack where you say, okay, when we crack these districts and we break them all up, We're gonna accept that we're gonna have one. There's just too many Democrats in this city. So we're gonna pack them all into one district. And that district is gonna be an 80-20 Democratic district. And all the other three districts are gonna be 53-47 Republican districts. Now, you have in a city that's 55-45 Democrat, three Republican legislators, one Democrat legislator. And... why this is undemocratic is if you're in that district, certainly if you're in that district of 80-20, you know, your voice has just been diluted. Where your vote mattered, you know, where you shifting your vote because you don't like the Democrat, you think that they've lost touch, right? Where you shifting your vote because a compelling Republican has come on the scene and you're like, this guy seems moderate. I kind of like them, right? Now, none of that matters anymore. your vote, whether it's Democrat or Republican, isn't going to shift it because the divide is too big. And the bet that you make if you're the Republicans in Texas is that that 53-47 is going to And historically it has. Whether or not it will this year, we don't know. But that's kind of little bit of how that works. Derek Peterson: Yeah, this year's Yeah, this year is going to be interesting because, you know, like the political discord is pretty heavy at the moment and there is a good chance. It's funny because like a lot of my Republican friends here in Texas, ⁓ their resolution at the moment is just to not vote. So like I don't see a lot of Republicans voting for Democrats because they've been they're convinced that any Democrat by label is the enemy because it's all they hear. on Fox news and from the president. like they like in their head, know, switching would be like jumping over enemy lines and joining the other side, you know. And I think for most people, that's a bridge too far to cross. But I think in general, their solution is just to like put down their weapon and walk away. And I think that we're going to see a lot of that. So I'm really curious how that impacts. the midterms this time around because in some of these gerrymandered districts, you know, and we'll see what happens but and I think that the the people that are were on the fence like the people that voted for Trump that were like on based on the economy or based on you know, like even the you know border Protection things like that. Most of those people's feel like they were they were duped. So, you know like a lot of I think there's the people that still are gonna be active voters that may not be in line with what's going on, there may still be some flips, but I think for the most part, we're just gonna see historically low Republican turnout in these next elections. And I'm curious how that impacts what's going on. ⁓ Elwyn: Yeah, think buried in there is an important part of why gerrymandering is bad, right? There's always going to be a certain number of districts that are non-competitive. know, a rural Texas district is always going to be pretty non-competitive. Derek Peterson: or all of Oklahoma. Elwyn: or all of Oklahoma, yeah. But. Derek Peterson: Which really should just be a rural district of Texas. Elwyn: But that's right. I just drove through Oklahoma this week. It's terrible. ⁓ Sorry, Oklahomans. Derek Peterson: I know, just lump it in with Texas in the part that everybody forgets about. Elwyn: I was like, ⁓ thank God we're in Arkansas. But no, think, you know, if you have districts that are relatively proportional, you know, let's say there's some sort of standard deviation formula that ⁓ independent redistricting commissions are allowed to work by. Derek Peterson: Said like three people ever Elwyn: And this is what Democrats have proposed in multiple years in the last 10 years. know, independent redistricting commissions that are going to do the maps that have, you know, that are putatively nonpartisan, but have Democrats, have Republicans and some sort of mathematical formula so that some semblance of ⁓ similarity to the actual makeup of a state is held in more districts. It's not going to be all of them. Well, then all of a sudden these people that are sitting out Maybe they don't sit out, or maybe they do. It's their right to sit out. But a Republican sitting out in Austin doesn't matter, right? Because Austin's 70-30 Democrat. A Republican sitting out in a 55-45 Austin district, which doesn't exist, well, that person's gonna matter. Now, they might say, fuck it, my vote matters and I'm gonna vote. Or if they sit out, now the Republicans have to pay attention. Now they have to say our message, we have to adjust our message. Because if they just bury discontent in a plus 40 district, then it doesn't matter. We talked last week about Marjorie Taylor Greene's district. It was like a 20 point swing. Still went by 13 to the Republican. They don't really need to give a shit about that district. They don't need to invest any money in it. They don't need to change their messaging. They're still winning it by 13. That's interesting because it's another 20 point swing. for all these not districts, not Marjorie Taylor Greene former districts. So, you know, that's where it's like, you can sit out your vote if you don't wanna vote for a Democrat. You don't have to vote for a Democrat. Like not voting is a form of protest. But if those non-votes matter more, then the party that isn't getting them, that's counting on them, either has to die or pay attention. Derek Peterson: Yep. Yep, so where do we go from here? Elwyn: Well, what I hope would happen, you know, like we now have Virginia, Florida has yet to decide what they're gonna do. I think they have a special session coming up next week. Just to score key for a second, Democrats right now are plus 11, Republicans are plus nine. Good job, Texas. But I think that, you know, the Democrats to their credit have consistently brought up national legislation to... ban gerrymandering or at least limit gerrymandering on a national scale. And I think they have to keep doing it. You know, it's, you know, I was all like, yay, MAGA tears, you know, at the beginning of the episode and yeah, fucking for today, I'm guzzling those down. But I don't think that it's right. I don't think that the healthy democratic system is one where in order to fight, have to... completely dilute the votes of people in your state, I absolutely would have voted for Virginia because the only way to fight this shit is to fight this shit. You can't bring a stick to a gunfight and that's what the Democrats have been doing. But I do hope that when they take the House, which they should in 2026, put this legislation up. Show that you're the party of morals and values. Show that you're willing to make things a little more difficult for yourself to do what's right. Derek Peterson: Yep. Elwyn: You know, it's really easy to be in the opposition and scream about this stuff. So what I really hope is that, you know, they stick to their guns and they're like, yeah, we won. We didn't like what we had to do in order to win. Now we're gonna try and make it so that that thing can't happen. We only did it because we did the wrong thing for the right reason. And now that we won, having done the wrong thing, we're gonna try to make that wrong thing go away. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you on that. In my opinion, I think, and I know this won't happen because Republicans, their policies don't win on anything except for with wealthy people. Like when it comes to the majority of Americans. so it's pushing any kind of change on this is going to be a challenge because Republicans have a lot of control and they have terrible policies around the majority of ⁓ like issues in our country, things that are wildly unpopular. But in my opinion, You, you hold like every state, everybody that either registers or ⁓ maybe we, you hold a preliminary, like a primary vote to basically decide overall, which like, which direction you would vote. And like, there's no maps, nothing like based off of the demographic of how people in your state would vote generally. Like, so if you're a registered Democrat or you register Republican, like whatever that split is, then the state gets that many representatives, right? So like if you're a minority party, so let's say like Texas gets 55 % Republican. So they get, you know, if it was, you know, I don't know how many seats, let's say there's 40 or so seats. Elwyn: It's like 35, so it'll be like 20 to 15. It'll be like 21 to 17, something like that. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. So like if you're so if you're a Democrat and you're running, you can still run and potentially win a seat, but you're going to have to compete against Republicans in ⁓ in those districts. But it comes down to more of a popular vote rather than district by district. And then each party gets a certain number of representatives based on on that. Like so if you get all the Democrats that get X amount of votes are the ones that get voted in and vice versa with Republicans. I don't know like there it's ultimately I think that it in my opinion I think it we need to figure out a way to just get it to all go away. The hard part about that is that if you if you cut out districts in general and you're there's always going to be a fight for fairness on the on the the lines right wherever any district map where a line ends, there's gonna be potentially people that feel marginalized because of that. So in my head I was like, well if you just get rid of all of the lines and you go based off popular vote and percentages, that is probably the fairest way to divvy up seats. But what it does is it kills a lot of local representation. And the whole point of local representation is that you have somebody that represents your districts and your needs. ⁓ in Congress and, know, we would lose a chunk of that because the majority, you know, then it becomes a popularity contest. And so, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna have people from all over, like it's going to be people mainly in the biggest cities in the state that are winning all of the representation for the entire state. Elwyn: Yeah, you can't do away with districts. It's not that the district system is broken. There is a lot of debate. Yeah, but that's only in its implementation. Yeah, but that's only in its... Derek Peterson: I mean, it kinda is. Have you looked at some of these lines? Look at it, dude, I wish our podcast was more visual because if you could see some of these districts how they're drawn. Elwyn: No, it's ridiculous, right? Like they redrew the map that they redrew for Texas. You know, it's like a, it's like a spirograph, you know, where you have in the city of Austin, little tiny bits of a district that explode out as you go east and west to cover all this land because they need to get enough population to outnumber the population in Austin. But it's not the fact that districts exist that's broken, it's how they're drawn. Like we need districts for what exactly you just said. The person in Austin who's looking at, like me in Austin, who's like, no, my interests, what I need from a federal representative is completely different than from the things that someone in Giddings, Texas needs. And the same goes the other way. Giddings, Texas does not have the same needs as Austin. And you can draw these, they're called communities of interest, how they draw them. It's really hard to draw them in a way that's completely fair because do you go by zip code? Do you buy school district? you go by, there are some people who have been interviewed in other states that have done this where they're like, no, we have in this town, everybody goes to this one place and they go to this one church and that. should be the center of the community of interest, right? That's where all the shared interests are and that's what we want represented. It's not the district system, it's not how the population is divided into the number of districts, it's how the districts are drawn. That's the issue. And again, I don't have a problem with, you know, I don't have a problem with the winning party getting to, you know, sort of pad their number a little bit. Don't lose, right? It is a fight. ⁓ But if you, you have to do this in a way that supports and enables political debate, because out of political debate is bred better political policy. And if the goal is to just, and the practice in this case, is simply to dilute the votes that you don't want to win. then you're never gonna have effective political policy. And if you're in power, you probably don't give a shit about policy. You care about maintaining power, right? But that's where the Supreme Court decision is so stupid because of course there should be a guardrail there. Of course the courts should be able to say, this has gone too far. They don't have to draw the districts, right? They don't have to figure it out for that, for people. But they can say, this has gone too far. And we do it with the Voting Rights Act. We do it with same-sex marriage. We do these things with laws all the time. And the court, in a decision written by the people who benefit from gerrymandering, simply said, we are not equipped to handle this. Which is not unlike a district attorney saying, yes, there's a lot of crime from the mafia in my city, but I'm not equipped to handle it. I'm going to let the mafia. handle it. There, you know, we want the states to figure this out on their own. The states are the fucking problem, right? The states have proved that they need guidelines and there have to be some guidelines and they've been lost for resented and all the Democrats vote for them, all the Republicans vote against them, and they lose. Derek Peterson: You Yeah, Justice Kavanaugh was just fine, you know, passing a decision saying, ⁓ yeah, you can pull people over based on the color of their skin to see if they're an immigrant or not. But God, you can't draw a map that would be, you know, that we're not going to get involved in like anything that involves maps and those be being potentially drawn wrong. They could be racially driven. Go fuck yourself. All of them. I hate them. Elwyn: Yeah, you don't want to make a cake for a gay wedding. That's no problem because if we force you to make that cake, your religious freedom is somehow infringed upon. And we don't want to infringe upon rights. ⁓ you want to draw a voting district that infringes upon the weight of a minority population or a whole half of cities' votes. We're cool with that because guess what? A Democratic Senate is not appointing Alito and Roberts and Kennedy and whichever the other, Thomas that fuck. Derek Peterson: Yep. Which to be honest, they should be like I'm so over the the morally bankrupt leadership that we have in this country. Like I'm just begging. Like I feel like we're all are like attaching so quickly to guys and people that just feel like they're honest at the moment because we're missing so much of it. But which is also dangerous. But we're getting low on time. So I wanted to ⁓ I want to move us, this was a good conversation, but I want to make sure we get to our shut the fuck up for the week. So who are we telling to shut the fuck up this week, Alan? Elwyn: I'm going back at Democrats who just take the Jews for granted. I listen to this podcast, Breaking Points, pretty regularly, and they've got some super progressive, ardent anti-Zionist lefties ⁓ on it, and they also have a couple of Republicans on it. It's relatively balanced. But they were talking about the Michigan Senate primary, and that's an interesting primary because there's an APAC pro-Israel ⁓ sitting congresswoman who's running who got booed off the stage and she's backed by Schumer and all these you know very moderate normie pro-israel Dems she got booed off the stage and the guy who is coming up really really fast is a Muslim guy Abdul El-Sayed something like that who is anti-Zionist right so these two Crystal Ball and Ryan Graham are talking about this they're two they're two of the lefty hosts and they're saying Wow, isn't it amazing that being anti-Hezbollah and some other just horrible anti-Nazi tattoos is no longer a deal breaker in the Democratic Party. Wow, how times have changed. And they weren't casting a judgment on it, except they were trying, they were gonna say some shit about Hezbollah is actually not a terrorist organization. It's a fucking terrorist organization, right? So they're like, wow, this is amazing. You can not give a shit about Hezbollah and now get elected in Democratic primary. And like two minutes later, the woman, goes in with, you know, I'm hearing a lot about the political homelessness of the American Jew. And she just goes, give me a fucking break. There's plenty of Jews who are anti-APAC, who have a lot of problems with what the state of Israel is doing. The American Jews vote strongly on social justice issues, you know, so just take that, get the fuck out of here with that stuff. And I'm not, paraphrasing, but not much. That's pretty much how she was phrasing it, like, get the fuck out of here with your politically homeless American Jew. And I was like, no, that's the problem, right there. Two minutes ago, you were saying, Hezbollah, the fucking terrorists. are actually not that big a problem. And it's okay if we have candidates that don't give a shit about Hezbollah having a strong presence in Lebanon, that don't feel that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Two minutes ago, you were like, that's good. And now you're like, and Jews don't care, or we don't care if you're politically homeless, because you're vote with us on social justice issues. You're probably right that I am, okay, gonna vote on social justice issues. But man, I hear you. I hear you dismissing that political homelessness of American Jew argument. I hear you not giving a shit about it. I hear you conflating it with your disdain for AIPAC, okay, and your disdain for what the government of Israel is doing. I hear you saying, ⁓ well, there's plenty of American Jews who really don't like Netanyahu and what the state of Israel is doing and who really don't think that AIPAC should be determining who gets elected and who doesn't. Therefore, Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: The American Jew is not politically homeless. Nope, you're wrong. And in being wrong, you're proving the point. And you should shut the fuck up and listen for a second. Because honestly, your positions aren't gonna change. But how you talk about them and how you listen really should change. It really has to change. Because at some point it's gonna matter. And the more I hear people on the left being like, ⁓ Hezbollah's not that bad. The more I'm like, how bad is the left actually? I know how bad segments of the right are, but how bad are segments of the left actually? Right, can't close the book on that. It just keeps getting longer and longer. And it's because of people like that. So, they should shut the fuck up. Derek Peterson: I agree. They should all shut the fuck up. You know, here's the thing that I think you being Jewish and maybe you understand this, maybe you don't, is that white people like myself have very little connection to any kind of heritage for the most part. You know, like I have some friends that are really strong Italians that have like a strong connection to like their upbringing, their history, their heritage. But guys like me, don't. so asking guys like me to empathize with, you know, a Zionist or the under, to even just kind of understand that when we have no feeling of connection to a past or a history at all is like speaking to the wind, you know? And there's a lot of people that say some ignorant shit because they don't have those connections. And I'll be honest, I don't either. Me trying to pretend like I understand what it's like to have families that live through family members that went through and lived through the Holocaust and what that feeling was like we can't. And so the best we can do is try to understand and empathize. But, know, like my family's I'm a mutt, I'm mostly Swedish, but I have very little connection to my heritage at all. Furthermore, my dad makes me not want to have any connection to it at all. So, you know, like, ⁓ there's a. I understand the sediment of people saying the shit that they're saying, but I also understand that it's out of complete ignorance and lack of empathy and understanding for a people group that has a very deep connection to Israel. you know, I agree. They can shut the fuck up. So unless they're Jewish, then I'm not that I'm not that I'm just going to stay out of it. Elwyn: Yeah, also, if, if, yeah, also, if we have all the money and control all the media and all the banks, don't you want us on your side? Derek Peterson: That's That's why we're still friends, Alan. Elwyn: Yeah. Derek Peterson: It is not. Well what are we talking about next week? Elwyn: I'm still waiting for my check. We were going to go with, what was it? It was a good one. School Vouchers. Fuck School Vouchers. Let's do it. Yeah. Derek Peterson: That's right. This is gonna be a fun one school vouchers it is well for all of our loyal listeners Who I could probably name by my name At the moment see you next week No Oscar get out there Tony this one's for you, bro Elwyn: What's up, Tano? You Tony.