The Blue Wave Is Obscuring the Red Exodus
The number of GOP departures is record setting https://politicalwire.com/2018/08/19/the-blue-wave-is-obscuring-the-red-exodus/
“There are 43 Republican seats now without an incumbent on the ballot. That’s more than one out of every six Republicans in the House — a record in at least a century, Wasserman says.”
Said Wasserman: “There’s a bit of over-caution, perhaps, on the part of the punditocracy, after what happened in 2016. But if anything most media could be under-rating Democrats’ potential to gain a lot of seats. They could be caught being cautious in the wrong direction.”
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a couple of those seats here in PA are in now-newly redrawn and (almost deep blue instead of lean red or swing) Districts.... and some of the "analysts" keep trying to look at how the particular district voted in the 2016 election and keeps hanging their hat on that outcome impacting this upcoming election where there was an exit... I.e., assuming that lightning will strike twice in those spots despite the fact that a bunch of these seats are actually getting challengers, and in some cases, strong ones.
I've seen that happening when they discuss PA. PA hadn't voted for an (R) President since 1988 yet this one time it did in 2016 means (to them) that the entire state has been upended and is now "red" despite the fact that the 2016 popular vote margin was by only 0.7% and registered Democrats still outnumber registered Republicans by about 800,000. That's how they missed a Conor Lamb. 
And since our districts were completely redrawn this year, they pretty much made a decision to not even discuss what will most likely be a minimum 2-seat (D) pickup out of districts here in Philly metro, where the (R) decided not to run again.
As BumRushDaShow said, there are some newly-redrawn districts as a result.
The new map is positively fantastic news for Democrats in their effort to take back the House this fall. “Democrats get everything they could want,” the New York Times’s Nate Cohn tweeted when he first saw the map. “With few exceptions it’s Democrats’ dream come true,” the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman tweeted. “GOP not going to like this at all.”
from Vox
The map changed from this (“the gerrymander of the decade”)
to this
Last edited Tue Aug 21, 2018, 06:56 AM - Edit history (1)
There were lawsuits to redraw the STATE legislative seats back in 2012 and those were redrawn per court order (although they probably need to be challenged again IMHO).
BUT there were multiple lawsuits running simultaneously in 2017 - both through the federal courts and the state courts for the congressional seats. The federal court route was rejected by district court judges because it was a "state issue". The state court route, which argued that the current districts were in violation of the state Constitution by not being "compact and contiguous", was what finally prevailed. It was also what kept the SCOTUS from interfering when the GOP sued (rejected for review at least twice).
The state Supreme Court demanded that the state legislature immediately present a redrawn map and welcomed other parties to present recommendations for a map - by a deadline. The governor and various 3rd parties submitted a number of versions (based on data models that would comply with the size and compactness as well as demographics requirements per the VRA). The GOP leaders of the state legislature refused to bring it up before the body and only complied at the last minute just before a midnight deadline, where the GOP douchebag leaders submitted their own, never reviewed or approved by the legislature cockamamie map that pretty much preserved their majority. The state Supreme Court rejected all of the submissions and drew the map themselves, which is the one that we now have. The GOP sued through the federal courts whining about state court "overreach" and ALL of their suits were rejected up through the SCOTUS (because "state" issue).
The map went into effect near the end of February 2018 with enough time to be ready for the May 2018 primary. In the case of Conor Lamb, he won the special election in March for an old version of a district to fill out that district's term and won the primary in May for a newly-redrawn different (but adjacent) district for the general election.
Had we not had a (D) governor or majority (D) state Supreme Court, this would have never happened because the GOP spearheaded this insane gerrymandering in 2011 and were determined to keep it that way. Their response to the redrawn map was to threaten to impeach the (D) members of the state Supreme Court.
For a state that has a (D) majority of registered voters by ~800,000, the state congressional delegation SHOULD BE -
10 (D) and 8 (R)
instead of the current -
13 (R) and 5 (D)
Analysts expect the potential final outcome could be 9 (D) - 9 (R).
But as it stands right now, pre-general election, there is OBVIOUSLY something wrong and the "media" refuses to delve into this state's current state of affairs by ignoring the gerrymandering and assuming that we are some sort of "red" state. Showing large swaths of geography as "red" ignores that many of those large swaths have more moose than people. A bunch of years ago I had posted stuff about our county population where almost 1/2 of the 67 PA counties have less than 100,000 people in the entire county.
Edit to add - there were cartograms on (of all places) National Review as they were analyzing the possibility of Drumpf getting PA , which basically showed the truer skew of D + I from past elections (and population). E.g., 2008 -
These old guys know how vulnerable they are, and they don't want to have their asses handed to them. So they are walking away and saying, "Oh well I didn't really want to run anyway. I guess I'm retiring - yeah, that's the ticket."
Take nothing for granted. The blue wave will be made of millions and millions of drops.
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... I was speaking to the "you" that is anyone reading this thread, not just you specifically, gothmog. 
I think most DUers are gonna vote regardless, but I do worry about the electorate at large. So many many people are just meh when it comes to joining their fellow Americans and making a difference together (otherwise known as voting).
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