Yeah, Obamacare just doesn’t happen without two consecutive blue waves and a less polarized Senate map that helped us end up with 60 senators for a few months.
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A world where the Dakotas, Montana, West Virginia, and Arkansas can each have two Democratic senators is a different world.
sep 1, 2025, 10:55 pm • 108 4 • view
Only North Dakota! Thune was the junior senator from South Dakota at that point.
sep 1, 2025, 11:08 pm • 8 0 • view
Ah, correct! Still, it was a world where South Dakota *could* have two Democratic senators. Like, that seemed like a reasonable thing that could happen, but it seems insane today.
sep 2, 2025, 1:02 pm • 5 0 • view
Yes, it had been true five years earlier.
sep 2, 2025, 1:04 pm • 3 0 • view
I struggle to process how much of that shift was ancestral Democrats realizing they don't actually like Democrats that much anymore, versus Republicans successfully shifting much of the country away from free & fair democracy via REDMAP & good luck.
sep 2, 2025, 1:16 pm • 13 0 • view
Little of Column A, little of Column B, but 1994 and 2010 both happened before REDMAP, so I tend to think it's mostly the former.
sep 2, 2025, 1:17 pm • 10 0 • view
Some of the most insane-looking North Carolina maps people post were actually Democratic gerrymanders from the 1990s. A lot of Democratic gerrymanders in the South turned into dummymanders in 2010, giving Republicans the chance to gerrymander after that. But the shift was already happening.
sep 2, 2025, 1:24 pm • 11 0 • view
Also thanks to Martha Chokely, Obamacare also infamously *did* require shoehorning in a “reconciliation fix” bill!
sep 2, 2025, 1:22 pm • 1 0 • view