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In reply to the discussion: The Brutal Suppression Of OWS Proves That The Rich & Business Will Tolerate No Dissent [View all]harmonicon
(12,008 posts)The problem is that "difference" is accepted so long as it's actually not different.
Time and again on DU, I've read posts by people defending gerrymandering, with the argument of "the other side does it too, so we have to in order to compete."
Well, the side I'm on doesn't do it. I care far more about democracy than I do about Democratic victory.
There's no point in blaming the GOP for gerrymandering until the Democratic party makes non-partisan congressional redistricting part of its nation-wide party platform. As I see it, this is more important than any chosen issue someone might have, whether it's civil rights, healthcare reform, or militarization, etc. The reason is that 1. real progress would be far more likely with those things if we had an actual representative democracy, and 2. if we didn't get the result we wanted on those fronts, at least we'd know that it was more likely because representative democracy actually worked, and our chosen position was that of a minority.
Of course there are also things that would go to great lengths to help this, the greatest probably being an implementation of instant runoff voting, but, again, without having a congress which actually represent the voters, what's the point?