In Another Legal Blow To Trump, Pa. Supreme Court Tosses Suit Challenging Mail-In Ballots

6 min readNov 29, 2020

One of the big questions is whether a Trumpist 2024 candidate can be a little bit milder so as to not alienate the suburbs, yet still inspire the low-propensity Republicans to vote at 2020 levels,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “If they can pull that off, it’s going to be a very hard environment for Democrats.”

In the run-up to Election Day, the major legislative campaign committees for each party, along with independent groups, poured record sums of money into races. For Democrats, the aim was to take electoral districting power away from Republicans, who after a red wave in 2010, drew gerrymandered maps that favored the party’s candidates.

The blue wave of 2018 left Democrats just a few seats away from a majority in a dozen chambers, including Arizona’s House and Senate; statehouses in Iowa, Michigan, Texas and Pennsylvania; and both the North Carolina House and Senate.

Democrats’ failure to flip any of their targeted chambers means that Republicans will have control next year of 20 state governments that will collectively draw 188 congressional districts, according to one analysis. In a bright spot for Democrats, the party is closing in on a supermajority in the New York Senate. That outcome would help give Democrats control of mapmaking in states with a total of 73 House districts.

(An additional 167 districts will be in states with divided governments or where independent commissions draw electoral maps.)

Republican mapmakers will seek to dilute the emerging Democratic strength in the nation’s suburbs by packing some of those voters into urban districts while joining others to conservative rural districts.

“The most important consequence of the elections is that Republicans prevented a decade of liberal gerrymandering and gave Republicans the chance to take back the House in 2022,” said David Abrams, deputy executive director of the Republican Legislative Leadership Committee, which raised money for state races.

Texas was Democrats’ biggest failure. After flipping a dozen seats in the Statehouse two years ago, the party was just nine seats shy of a majority.

Its most likely opportunities were nine Republican-held districts where former Rep. Beto O’Rourke surpassed Sen. Ted Cruz in their 2018 Senate race.

Most of these districts were in the suburbs of Dallas and Houston. Yet Democrats failed in all but one of the nine races, although Biden carried many of the districts. With majorities in both legislative chambers and a Republican governor, Greg Abbott, Republicans will control the drawing of as many as 39 congressional seats next year, when Texas is projected to gain three House seats after the 2020 census, more than any other state.

“I think that there were voters out there who were disgusted with Donald Trump and saw Joe Biden as an alternative,” said state Rep. Chris Turner, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “They said, ‘You know what, I’m not a Democrat — maybe I’m an independent; maybe I’m a moderate Republican — I’m going to vote for Republicans down ballot.’ ”

Turner said Republicans successfully nationalized the races by accusing down-ballot Democrats of seeking to defund the police, favoring socialism and aiming to ban fossil fuels, even though none backed that agenda.

The Biden plan vows to eliminate the wait list, then enhance federal contributions to allow states to develop more community alternatives, which are generally less expensive than nursing home care.

Finally, it tackles the issues that have led to persistent churn in the mostly female workforce that provides elder care and child care, including low wages, lack of benefits like health insurance and sick leave, and the need for further training.

That effort, the plan notes, will support unionization and collective bargaining. “The solution cannot be caregivers at poverty levels with unfair working conditions,” Goss Graves said.

The Biden team asserts that the nation can pay the tab for this vast undertaking over 10 years, by rolling back tax breaks for real estate investors with incomes over $400,000 and increasing tax compliance for other high earners.

It also argues that the plan will create 3 million new caregiving and education jobs, and increase employment by 5 million by allowing unpaid caregivers (most of them women, again) to reenter the workforce.

Debate is certain to ensue over the price tag nonetheless, given a fragile economy, and over whether these plans represent the best solutions to the nation’s child care and elder care needs.

As Whiting pointed out, “the tax credit puts money back in caregivers’ pockets, improving their well-being.” But it won’t benefit lower income families who don’t pay much income tax, or any, unless it’s made “refundable,” so that a caregiver could receive a reimbursement check for more than she paid the IRS.

Social Security credits would most likely have greater impact, said Richard Johnson, an economist who directs the Urban Institute Program on Retirement Policy. One drawback, however, is that “it doesn’t help caregivers until they begin collecting Social Security,” he said. “The tax credit could provide immediate help.”

In Another Legal Blow To Trump, Pa. Supreme Court Tosses Suit Challenging Mail-In Ballots

Written by Buyslyrye