What’s the Plan for the Revolution?

“You say you want a revolution / Well, you know / We all want to change the world” - “Revolution,” The Beatles

Over the past few months, Bernie Sanders has roused millions of Americans with his call for a “political revolution” and his promises of Medicare for all, free college tuition, and a $15 minimum wage. When asked what obstacles stand in the way of this revolutionary change, Sanders tends to talk about the “disastrous Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case,” referring to the 2010 Supreme Court case that allowed individuals and corporations to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money on elections. Both Sanders and his Democratic primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, have pledged that, if elected, they would consider opposition to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to be a litmus test for any Supreme Court nominee.

But the problems with American democracy run much deeper than Citizens United, and they will persist even if the decision is reversed. Because of totally nonsensical rules that give politicians in state legislatures the power to draw the lines between congressional districts, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is virtually guaranteed until after the next census in 2020.

Every ten years, per a constitutional requirement, the federal government conducts a census and recalculates how many congressional seats are allocated to each state. Each state then has its own process for redrawing the lines of its districts. The only fixed rule is that each district should have a roughly equal population. The problem is that most states grant the power to redraw the lines to their state legislatures, rather than non-partisan commissions. And there are lots of ways to draw these lines, some more advantageous than others.

Here’s the point: If your party sweeps a bunch of governorships and majorities of state legislatures in a year that ends with a zero, you get to redraw the districts in those states. This essentially guarantees your side ten years of favorable lines. The basic strategy is to pack voters who lean toward the opposite party into just a few districts, where the other side will win with overwhelming majorities. This leaves your party with smaller but still comfortable majorities in many other districts.

That’s precisely what happened after 2010. That year, the Republicans seized control of 20 state legislatures, their best performance in the states since 1952. The results were stunning. Two years later, in 2012, Barack Obama won 48.4 percent of the statewide vote in North Carolina, widely regarded as a swing state. But thanks to lines drawn by a wave of Tea Party state legislators elected in 2010, North Carolinians elected nine Republicans and only four Democrats to represent them in the House. (The state Democracy Party is still contesting these lines in court, but the odds are not in their favor.)

On a national scale, skewed totals in each state add up to tilt the entire playing field. In 2012, President Obama won re-election by a margin of 5 million votes; nationwide, Democratic candidates for the House won over a million votes more than their Republican counterparts. But when the dust had settled, the Republicans maintained a 33-seat advantage in the chamber.

Unless 2016 is different because the Republican Party implodes at the convention over Trump, it is extremely unlikely that the Democrats will take back the House in 2016. The prediction markets know this: That’s why they give Hillary Clinton a 71 percent of being the next president, but the Democrats only a 7 percent chance of retaking the House. The Democrats will face even steeper odds in 2018, because Republicans tend to benefit from lower turnout and have historically done better in midterm elections.

In the long term, the best answer for our democracy is to mandate that states make their redistricting processes bipartisan. But for now, seeing as there is no clear path to end the practice before 2020, Democrats have to immediately start preparing a strategy to retake governorships and state legislatures before the next census. They have to start redirecting more party resources away from the presidential campaign, down toward state-level races where a little money makes a big difference. They have to start playing the game.

John Lennon, who knew something about imagining a better world, once sang: “You say you got a real solution / Well, you know / We'd all love to see the plan.” Here’s a plan for all my fellow progressives, especially those who lust after the Sanders platform: The next four years will be a slog, even in the best-case scenario. But don’t lose hope. Sanders’ policy platform has proved more resonant than almost anyone anticipated; whether or not his campaign recovers from his five losses on March 15, he has already left a profound mark on the party. If Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, she will inherit a liberal base that increasingly believes in the Sanders vision.

If only the revolution can stay alive till 2020, it stands a real chance of enactment.

Eyck A. Freymann '16, a Crimson editorial executive, is a History and East Asian studies concentrator in Quincy House.