To defeat the Texas gerrymander, Democrats need to go nuclear [View all]

[Lonestarblue]

Excellent opinion piece in WaPo this morning. I hope Democratic leaders heed its suggestions to finally fight Republicans on their terms instead of simply complaining. Just fighting Trump is not enough. This opinion rightly suggest that state leaders band together to institute policies that hurt Republican states. The idea f mutual deterrence versus mutual destruction is good.

“During the decades-long nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union, leaders on both sides relied on a state of mutually assured destruction to keep the two countries from stumbling into an apocalyptic war.

There are two strategic concepts from that era that apply well to Democrats today: counterforce and countervalue.
Counterforce posits that the best way to deter an opponent is to credibly threaten the use of one’s own nuclear capability to strike at the opponent’s nuclear forces. In the context of today’s redistricting wars, that means neutralizing the weapons Republicans are using — directly, surgically and proportionally — within the sandbox of redistricting, like we’re seeing from New York and California. They gerrymander their big red state; we gerrymander our big blue state.”

Snip

“It’s good that Democratic leaders are trying to leverage counterforce deterrence on redistricting. But, if New York, California and other blue states want to deter red state aggression more comprehensively, they also need to consider the grislier logic of countervalue.

In our domestic context, it means using the full weight of blue states’ market power, cultural influence and legal authority to raise the stakes of Republican red state aggression. That means making it harder for corporations to operate in states that obliterate fair elections. It means using their economic might to impose regulatory and economic costs that bite hard enough to make the constituents of even the most insulated legislator feel the pain. In other words, it means countering red state aggression with potential actions that go beyond reciprocity and may impose disproportionate costs.“


https://wapo.st/3J6Sanx