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Dana Houle @DanaHoule
, 10 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
I think it’s time we declare anyone pushing that “Dems lost a thousand seats” idiocy a liar, a nincompoop, or an ignoramus

Why? Here’s why…
2/
A. They start after two Dem wave elections. It was the high pt for Dems since 1990
B. Legislative seats are stupid metric that’s not…
3/…apples-to-apples. In New Hampshire 1.3 million people are represented by 428 legislators. 1.8 million Californians are represented by 6.
4/
 C. If you compare the number of lege Chambers or Congressional & Senate seats Dems control today to what Dems had in 2005, it’s about…
5/…the same. People rightly talk boy gerrymandering as a big problem for Dems after 2010. It is, but MI/OH/PA/FL/(and after 2003)TX were…
6/…gerrymandered 2001-2011 too. Lot of seats we won in NY, PA, FL, & the Midwest were heavily Repub & tough to hold except in big Dem yrs
7/
 D. There’s the problem of Appalachia & the South. We still had a lot of conservative White Dems representing Southern states/CD’s…
8/
 …that had been voting Repub or were among those where McCain did better than Bush. (2010 we held 3 of Mississippi’s 4 House seats).
9/
 E. If we win back a thousand seats in 2018—which is plausible—pretty sure ppl pushing that stuff won’t say Dem party has improved.
10/ So, that dumb “Dems lost a thousand seats” thing non-Dems like to toss around: is anyone updating it to reflect what we’re winning back?
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Comments like this are useless. It’s like “raise the minimum wage to round figure of $X” w/out explaining what would be too high; if not, then why not $X+1,000?

A. Process for closing was horrible
B. Some of those schools shouldn’t have closed
C. This one probably should have…
…Stewart school once had about 1,300 students. It was down to 250 (it was K-8). A school a 1/2 mile away had a similar population decline. Stewart had no AC, and needed massive repairs. And the neighborhood around it wasn’t so much working class as it was hipster…
…the population was about half non-hispanic white, clustered from 20-50, mostly single without kids. Stewart was mostly black, but that’s in part because the population of 5-17 was almost entirely black, and the 5-17 pop was lower than almost every other Chicago neighborhood…
Read 8 tweets
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Key divide btwn pro-&-anti-Pelosi Dems: anti’s think Dems can still finesse things & vote w Repubs a lot & win in swing or conservative areas. Pelosi has understood for a while those days are gone, & her job is to sharpen the differences btwn the parties washingtonpost.com/opinions/nancy…
Pelosi has presided over the last Dem majority of the Blue Dog/DLC era, and now has put together the campaign to elect the first majority of the liberal/progressive/non-Southern Democratic Party. She should lead that majority.
No Democrat won because she said she wouldn’t support Pelosi for Speaker. No Democrat lost because he said he would support Pelosi for speaker. So if you want to oppose Pelosi, fine, but be honest about why, and admit it’s not because it’s necessary to win your district
Read 4 tweets
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From article seems she hacked website announcing results. Not the voting or tabulation systems, or the voter file. That’s a problem bc it can make ppl doubt the corrected results. But it’s diff than the votes themselves, and less of a prob in 44 states that have paper ballots /1
Obviously important to secure these voting systems, & I’m not new to the issue. I wrote a piece in 2004 arguing that voting machines should be produced by a public entity. And I pointed out a few days after the Wikileaks dump the big issue was hacking /2 newrepublic.com/article/135472…
But it’s also important we get things right. I regularly see libs/progs suggest the vote was hacked for Trump. There’s no evidence for it. And if there was, wouldn’t Dem campaigns be all over it? Big campaigns have sophisticated models & targeting, & would probably catch… /3
Read 7 tweets

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I underestimated Trump in 2016 (well more the tolerance for ignorance and racism by GOP voters, but same thing). I go into the 2020 cycle assuming Trump will still be around and the heavy favorite to be reelected.
The midterms were great. But just remember Dems lost 63 house seats in 2010 and 2 yrs later Obama beat Romney by 4 points and 5 million votes
Any talk of "no way" Trp makes it to 2020 or that Mueller "takes him down" is fantasy for the foreseeable future
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Within weeks of the Orlando nightclub shooting, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) participated in a sit-in at the House to demand votes on gun control legislation, saying, "We owe it to the LGBT community & all families harmed by gun violence to keep terror suspects from obtaining guns."
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This is a good point that gets lost. Each state's legislative districts represent wildly different numbers of people.

It ranges all the way from California state senators (930,000 people per district, more even than a House seat) to New Hampshire state reps (3,000 people).
So when someone says Dems lost 1,000 seats under Obama or gained 400 back under Trump, it would help to know the combined population the seats represent.

A lot of the flipped seats, in both of those figures, are in New Hampshire, which has a very big and very swingy legislature.
Rather than think about the raw number of seats, I prefer to focus on specific legislatures where a gain or a loss has long term consequences.

For example: losing the Kentucky House in 2016 was a big blow for Democrats. Gaining the New York Senate in 2018 was a big victory.
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#Khashoggi Case Thread: I am going to ‘pin’ this post to use it as an ‘Info Thread’ on the #Khashoggi Case. I am in #Turkey. I’ve been following the case closely and with access to sources & experts here. This is a very ‘sensitive’ criminal case due to ‘Diplomatic Booby Traps’!!!
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I'm at Water's Edge Brewery in Lake Ridge, Virginia tonight. Six of the seven VA House of Delegates seats here are held by Republicans. Tonight, that may change wildly.
Those seats in Prince William County, Virginia's second most populous, are a test of the anti-Trump grassroots movements spurred on by the Democratic party and progressive groups.
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People wonder why I dislike Bernie with such a passion...

It is because he is LYING to the voters.

I will list how he is lying.
He has many convinced that Democrats are sitting in a room with wealthy donors, looking down on the poor laughing all the way to the bank
am I pissed off... HELL YES!!!
He is LYING to the people, for his OWN benefit, which he does often.
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