The fiscal cliff

[A Black Falcon]

I keep hearing this, but I thought that this occurred on both sides of the aisle? It's a simple fact of politics and will always happen. Is there evidence that it was particularly odious in 2012? Simple geography may explain the phenomenon:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/...d-on-house

While both parties do gerrymander, the Republicans are better at it -- they're much more likely to be tough and force through horribly gerrymandered bills, while the Dems are more likely to equivocate and try to be fair. Also, remember that redistricting happens after each census. That means that redistricting this time happened in 2011-2012, right after Republicans won in so many statehouses. Many of those newly more Republican state legislative bodies then forced through tough, hugely R-skewed gerrymanders. In other states that happened some time ago, but regardless of when, the fact is, the Republicans are better at it, and went into this redistricting cycle with a big advantage in state legislatures. And only a couple of states have nonpartisan commissions draw the lines, like Arizona and California do (note: in both of those states, the new lines ended up to favor the Democrats, it seems. Or maybe it's just that non-gerrymandered lines lean Dem? I don't know.)

So, some states which should have a lot more Democratic House delegation members than they do, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, have very few because of how effective the Republicans have been at gerrymandering those states. On the other hand, there are only a few states where Democrats have serious gerrymanders helping them; for the 2010 redistricting cycle, Illinois was one of the only states which implemented a serious D-leaning gerrymander. Most in the party just won't do that. It's unfortunate that it's needed, though, because what we should have is independent, nonpartisan commissions drawing the lines in every state. It's crazy that it's not that way already, that's how it is in most other countries I'm pretty sure!

I mean, yes, it IS true that because of the Republican advantage in all of those low-population Western states they are going to have a better House representation than their national popular House-elections-all-added-together vote is going to show, but no, the result you see is NOT representative of the country, even considering that. In nonpartisan-drawn districts, the Democrats would probably have taken the House this year.