In the political science literature this is known and the tradeoff between descriptive and substantive representation. Does increasing the number of minorities elected to legislature/Congress outweigh fewer seats won by the party ostensibly supportive of minority concerns? Saying it does not makes the assumption that the Democratic Party in these states cared sufficiently about unique minority issues that white Democrats would have provided the same policy attention to minority issues as did minority representatives. I'm not sure I buy that.

Also, there are two types of gerrymandering: cracking and packing. Creating minority districts does the first. Concentrating many Democrats in one district so that there are fewer in surrounding districts. However, now that the Republican Party is stronger in the South, these minority districts are fast becoming the few places that Democrats can win seats.

The gutting of the VRA will allow Republicans to "crack" concentrations of minorities; splitting them up amongst Republican districts where there are too few in any one district to win an election.

For example, I'm guessing Mississippi's 2nd congressional district (encompassing the Delta) is liable to get split apart among the other three districts, creating four Republicans elected out of the state instead of three.

Yep, won't be hard at all to pass a bill that straightforward and logical, because Congress really cares about the voters.

Nader's 2000 run was responsible for the election of GWB, and Justice O'Connor's 2006 retirement lead to Justic Alito on the bench.

Wow, what does Supreme Court cock taste like and did you bring enough for everyone?

Show us where Ralph Nader touched you and how he took your job.

Nader touched us in a bad place by remaining on the ballot in swing states (after saying at podiums that he would NOT do that), getting 90,000 votes in Florida. It's safe to assume that many of those votes came from people who wouldn't have voted were he not on the ballot, yes, but it's also safe to assume that Nader got at least 160 votes that would have gone to Gore had Nader not been on the ballot.

The concept that there was no difference between Bush and Gore was both incredibly dishonest and unbelievably naive of the basic ninth-grade-civics concepts of what the Executive Branch actually does.

I admit that I was a Nader supporter in 2000. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. I found Clinton's foreign policy pretty reprehensible and at least as bad as Bush Sr's, and I didn't imagine that Bush Jr was going to go full retard. So yeah, I was part of the problem in 2000.

It's much much clearer today than it was then, but even then I should have seen it: keep the Republican out of office at all costs.

Nader didn't cost Gore the election. Gore's lack of charisma & total bitch of a wife did.

Without Nader, I'd have only voted for state and local elections, but abstained from the federal level.

I regret nothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JE48XHKG64

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFBl0fnMUVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYw1q2Ew7Bo