‘There is a fundamental structural barrier that prevents progress: manipulated electoral maps drawn … by politicians to preserve their party’s political power…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former President Barack Obama‘s failures in leadership led to one of the most significant electoral “shellackings” against his party in modern political history.
Now, he has made it his priority to flip the script, claiming that the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014—which together yielded a loss of 90 Congressional seats—were part of yet another ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’
Obama this week announced via Twitter the rollout of a new re-education program to “train volunteers, give them the tools to impact the redistricting process in their state … and empower them to be leaders in the movement for fair maps,”according to the web page for his Redistricting U.
Training is at the heart of organizing. It’s why I’ve always made it a priority – from my 2008 campaign until now. And it’s why I’m proud to announce @allontheline’s in-person training initiative, Redistricting U. Join us: https://t.co/yrWJ50wSdE pic.twitter.com/HiKvGd2XyE
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 26, 2019
The program is one of several being run through All On The Line, a supposed nonprofit “social welfare” advocacy campaign underwritten by the National Redistricting Action Fund that, nonetheless, reserves the right to “engage in grassroots electoral work,” according to the website.
Blaming the Maps
Although Obama and his flunkies—including Eric Holder, his self-declared wingman, former campaign bundler and disgraced ex-attorney general—have long claimed that unfair electoral maps were created during the 2011 redistricting, when Republican legislatures dominated many states, the bulk of his losses came prior to that.
After Obama forced his disastrous signature healthcare legislation through Congress by a party-line vote on Christmas Eve 2009, the next year’s election netted six gubernatorial gains for the GOP and 20 state-legislature turnovers (699 total seats) on top of 63 U.S. House and six Senate losses for the Democrats.
Ignoring the clarion-call for bipartisanship, Obama pressed forward on his unilateral, auto-pen agenda, with many of his executive actions later being ruled unconstitutional.
Democrats reclaimed 10 congressional seats during the 2012 election but lost 21 in 2014, for a net loss of 80 during Obama’s presidency.
It was reportedly during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that party elites including then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—a longtime Clinton stooge—hatched a plan to scapegoat the centuries-old, bipartisan practice of gerrymandering for their political failures.
Not long after, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by Holder, came into being—first as a nonprofit, but later boasting its own political-action committee and fundraising operations.
As the All On The Line website noted, one of the top obstacles for far-left Democrats has been facing the political backlash of efforts to enact their radical agenda.
“Whether you care about making sure everyone has access to quality, affordable health care, achieving equal pay, reducing the gun violence that plagues our schools and communities, protecting voting rights, or dealing with the urgent threat of climate change,” said the website, “there is a fundamental structural barrier that prevents progress: manipulated electoral maps drawn with surgical precision by politicians to preserve their party’s political power and silence the will of the people.”
Red States in the Crosshairs
Earlier this year, Obama folded his own campaign organization, Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America) into the NDRC, adding to its massive network of resources and political infrastructure, with speculation that it may be part of a behind-the-scenes prelude to a presidential run by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
For now, though, its main focus is on legal battles and activism to coerce states into making their districts more favorable to Democrats—often employing a “Sue til Blue” strategy that relies on favorable decisions from activist liberal judges.
In one case, even though a liberal candidate for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court had denounced the funding and support of outside interest groups, Holder and the NDRC continued to run ads and campaign heavily on her behalf.
Despite a setback when the U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled that partisan gerrymandering was outside the purview of federal judges, the NDRC network has pressed onward in its mission of targeting red states in the hope of flipping legislatures, state courts and other key positions prior to the next round of redistricting so that they, themselves, may gerrymander the districts to favor their party.
They have succeeded already in using court orders to force the redrawing of several crucial swing states—including Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
This contributed to some of the pickups that Democrats flaunted in the 2018 midterm election—where they had a net gain of 41 U.S. House seats and seven governorships.
Even with those advances, though, the “fairness” that the Left seeks will not be achieved until it has secured permanent legislative majorities for Democrats.
In North Carolina, for instance, after the state was forced to redraw its maps due to what the courts determined was race-based gerrymandering, Democrats still were unable to flip the state legislature and are now suing again, claiming the redrawn maps they approved were unfair.
Sore Losers, Soros and Secretaries of State…
The Obama–Holder juggernaut is not the only left-wing group seeking to manipulate election outcomes through backdoor efforts to redraw the maps.
Stacey Abrams, whose failed gubernatorial campaign in Georgia last year was backed by billionaire investors like Tom Steyer and George Soros, has announced her plans to flip the conservative legislature in her home state.
Her Fair Fight 2020 PAC is also targeting at least 19 other “battleground” states in a multi-million-dollar campaign before next year’s election.
Abrams, who refused to concede the governor’s race to her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, has insisted that voter suppression was the cause of her loss—even as the state made substantial gains in minority voter participation while Kemp was its secretary of state.
In addition to her own adocacy group, Abrams is supporting an initiative led by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State to flip the state-level offices charged with certifying elections—as well as other down-ballot races, like district attorneys and state attorneys general.
Soros previously funded a similar campaign, the Secretaries of State Project.
“We looked at the states that are going to have the strongest impact, based on the margins of victory or loss from the 2016 election and also [the] 2018 [midterm elections],” Abrams told NPR’s “On Point” in an interview broadcast Tuesday, revealing the sheer political motives of the group’s activism.
“We looked at states where we have Senate elections that will help determine control of the Senate for 2020, and we looked at states that have [secretary of state] races, but also states that have chambers that may flip and influence who controls redistricting for 2021 and beyond,” she said.