Low Union Density = Republican Majority

Looking at the map of the United States there is a strong correlation between union density, right to work and presidential voting.  Historically the right-to-work states are the Confederate States of America plus the Great Plains and Mountain West (minus Montana, Colorado and New Mexico).  These are all states generally speaking that have the lowest union density and vote for the Republican presidential candidate.

There are anomalies.  For instance, Nevada is a right-to-work state and is in the top 15 in terms of union density, outstripping traditionally strong union states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.  But this can probably be explained by the importance of Las Vegas to the state's economy and the historic role of organized labor in the development of that city.  (Another anomaly is Alaska, which has one of the highest rates of union membership, is not right to work and hasn't gone to a Democrat since LBJ in 1964.  Not to be glib but having traveled to Alaska it is easy to conclude that it is a world unto itself.  There is a heavy military as well as oil industry footprint.)

All in all it's a reliable formula.  You want to drop union density?  Pass a right-to-work law and gradually the state will turn Red on the electoral map.  Thinking about my own office workers bargaining unit, if people were given the option not to pay dues, at first there might be only one or two who would choose not to; but over time that number would certainly increase.  Idaho passed right to work in the 1980s and its unions have steadily eroded.  Last year the Idaho legislature amended the law to make it tougher, banning even the use of market recovery money.  Market recovery is when unions subsidize a signatory contractor so that it can be competitive in the bidding process with non-union companies.

Reading Monica Davey's story this morning about Michigan going right to work, her description of how the Republican Governor Rick Snyder immediately and on the down-low signed the bills into law and then announced it to the media after the fact, the whole thing -- state troopers facing off against union protesters outside -- has the vibe of a putsch.

The Gerrymandered House of Representatives

There is an excellent unsigned editorial in today's New York Times on the effort underway in Michigan's Republican-controlled legislature to pass right to work.  Parts of the editorial could have come from Workers World, a socialist weekly I've read for many years: "Concern for the rights of individual workers, of course, is not the real reason business is pushing so hard for these laws. Gutting unions is the fastest way to achieve lower wages and higher profits."

According to Monica Davey's front page story the pivotal figure in this fight is Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder who originally opposed right-to-work legislation as divisive but then suddenly changed his mind and requested last week that the legislature give him something to sign in a matter of days.  UAW's Bob King is quoted as saying that Snyder succumbed to Rightist pressure groups.  One can almost smell the sulfur belching from a Georgia Pacific smokestack.

Equally dispiriting in today's paper is Jonathan Weisman's story about GOP anti-tax purity in the House, which is based on rigorous gerrymandering.  This is the second time in as many weeks that Weisman has addressed the issue of how it is that Republicans in the House can be so out of touch with the national sentiment on raising taxes on the rich.  Polls consistently show that a supermajority want the wealthy to pay more and Social Security left alone, the exact opposite of the House majority.  How can this be?  Of the two houses of the United States Congress isn't the House of Representatives supposed to be the people's house?

House Democratic candidates won about 50.5 percent of the national vote in November, but took just 46 percent of the seats. In the last 40 years, only one other time — 1996 — did the party that won the majority of the votes end up with a minority of the House, said Nicholas Goedert, a political science researcher at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri. Democrats actually gained two seats in the Senate.

Political scientists point to two factors influencing this divergence: a redistricting process dominated by Republican legislatures, and even more so, the concentration of Democratic voters in urban enclaves.

Gerrymandering did matter. In nine states redistricted by Republicans, the Democratic vote share was well above the percentage of seats won, Mr. Goedert said. For instance, in North Carolina, Democratic House candidates won 51 percent of the vote but only 27 percent of the House seats. Where Democrats drew the lines, in Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, Democratic House delegations fared better than their vote totals, but not as drastically. This points to an inherent advantage for Republicans. In closely contested years, like 2012, the concentration of Democratic voters in cities has put them at a loss — and given House Republicans little reason to fear national opinion.

In other words, the House has become another Senate — a block on the popular will.  With Citizens United the law of the land, a rural congressional district is chump change for a Super PAC.  I imagine the GOP can mantain its 30-seat House majority for quite a while.  Barring a radical shift our future seems certain to be some form of plutocratic dystopia.