Reddit Reddit reviews Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy

We found 17 Reddit comments about Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
U.S. Political Science
Politics & Social Sciences
Politics & Government
Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy
The explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting.
Check price on Amazon

17 Reddit comments about Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy:

u/[deleted] · 75 pointsr/politics

I think the issue here is that there's no protection for cities and high density populations within our current system. For example in 2012 in Pennsylvania Democrats won 51% of the vote for Congressional house seats but lost as seat in Congress. To me that's what busted. The representation in each state is skewed to represent smaller, often whiter, communities.

Lets take this example for instance:

Say a state has 5 congressional Districts:

District 1 voted 55-45 Dem

District 2 voted 60-40 Republican

District 3 voted 52-48 Dem

District 4 Voted 53-47 Republican

District 5 voted 65-35 Dem

Now after a landmark wave like 2010 the Republicans redraw the lines of the district

District 1 redrawn to be 58-42 Republican

District 2 wasn't redrawn Remained 60-40 Republican

District 3 was redrawn became 59-41 Republican

District 4 was redrawn became 59-41 Republican

District 5 was redrawn became 80-20 Democrat

Visually speaking Wapo had a great piece on it. Also the grab the book Ratf**ked

u/mysterious_baker · 45 pointsr/politics

This article shouldn't have focused on just North Carolina; they make it sound like this was just something the GOP members of one state did, when it is not.

This was a systematic attack planned and executed across the nation. The GOP looked at every state in the country, determined which seats they could easily flip to gain control of the bodies that make the congressional maps, and then funded the republican candidates there.

This was a concerted effort named Project Redmap, and they used every dirty trick in the book. Attack ads, lies, slander, plotting out districts so that they concentrate minorities or democrats or whatever else they could do.

Get a copy of Ratf**ked. It covers it all, in much greater detail.

The GOP made their plans to take over the country, and they executed it perfectly. They have control of the country now, and it's only going to tighten.

The only way to fix it is a massive wave election for democrats in 2018, which will take a concentrated effort just like the Republicans put forth, and that's not going to happen. You see, they planned for that too, and have been working to keep it from happening.

u/Zenmachine83 · 25 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

Attempting to blame democrat migration for the state of gerrymandered districts is weak tea and intellectually dishonest. While gerrymandering has always existed in our country, it has never been conducted on the scale which the GOP engaged in gerrymandering after the 2010 census and tea party rise to power. All of this is well documented in this book which shows a coordinated effort by the GOP and their donors to subvert democracy through gerrymandering of congressional districts. We are not only talking about red states here either but also blue and purple states where the majority of voters are dem but are represented primarily by republicans since 2010.

Fortunately gerrymandering is fairly easy to prove in court and we have seen a number of successful legal challenges to the practice over the last year. If this continues, dems may not have such a steep road to re-taking the house, especially when one considers the recent results in special elections...

u/glewtion · 22 pointsr/news

One of the best books out there about redistricting is Rat F**ked. A must-read.

u/Maverick721 · 14 pointsr/BlueMidterm2018

If anyone is interested in reading more about the gerrymandering on steroid that the Republicans been using since 2010 I recommend RatFuck by David Daley

https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628

u/KeyserSoze128 · 13 pointsr/politics

Pat McCrory was a pretty decent Republican mayor in Charlotte as a counter balance to the Dem controlled city council & county board of commissioners. He was likable and worked across the aisle to get things done. When he won the governorship the N.C. legislature had a supermajority due to gerrymandered districts and had been drunk with power. McCory was ill prepared. Art Pope, a long-time right-wing operative, became his chief of staff like Cheney was to Bush. McCrory went along with Art Pope's reckless ideas and never pushed back to the wacko republican legislature and lost his soul.

Charlotte Observer columnist Mark Washburn nets out McCrory's astonishing record. Eleven nice words to describe the reign of Gov. McCrory

North Carolina is a purple state suffering from gerrymandered districts that followed the 2010 census as are these states: Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Here a good book on subject:
Rat F*cked

u/jimjacksonsjamboree · 9 pointsr/rva

Ed Gillespie is the architect of modern gerrymandering. He is directly responsible for the mess we're in right now - the rise of donald trump and white nationalism. Without ed Gillespie, we would have had fair elections, we'd have fair representation in congress, and the few wouldn't be in control of hte many.

Im sorry poor Ed is getting "unfairly" judged as a racist extremist, but his policy of disenfranchising poor, black, uneducated voters, is something that a racist extremist would think up.

> Gillespie was chairman of the Republican State Leadership Conference, the national organization that supplied the money and minds necessary to install GOP majorities in the state legislatures, which, in turn, draw congressional seats.

> Because Republicans now hold two-thirds of the nation’s legislative chambers, it is no surprise that they are comfortably in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives.

http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/jeff-schapiro/schapiro-va-republicans-on-defense-over-redistricting/article_52ebb4a6-089d-5d1e-bd2f-737bc9ba86b6.html

https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506446330&sr=1-1&keywords=9781631491627

u/cory_foy · 2 pointsr/politics

But that's the thing - people didn't think they were voting against their interests. Trump promised jobs. He promised action. He promised to shake things up. He reached out to a segment of the population that has felt left out, and told them that what they've been through is horrible, and he can make it better. And he gave them a boogeyman in the news and "PC Culture".

I think you'd be surprised at how much of the country still is OK with racism. Still believes in white supremacy. They may not state that they are racist, but their policies and behaviors show they are.

Also, don't underestimate what happened the last couple of weeks of the election. Those letters, and subsequent gobbling up by the media is likely what pushed all of this over the edge.

Finally, read this book which goes into the strategy the GOP used to Gerrymander districts which made this no field day.

u/thatguyworks · 2 pointsr/politics

They have indeed. This book lays out exactly how they did it too. Here's a hint: it wasn't because they had better candidates. They simply saw an opportunity to redraw all the maps... and took it.

Pretty evil stuff if you ask me.

u/generalonlinepersona · 2 pointsr/triangle

Thanks for sharing this!

In a similar vein, this book talks specifically about the Republican plan to control all state legislatures through systematic redistricting starting in 2008. They've been immensely successful in their plan, called REDMAP. (yes - REDMAP - Redistricting Majority Project)

The Amazon excerpts of the introduction give a good sense of the book, then a state by state breakdown of their actions starting in 2008. Wake County libraries have this book - I'd recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628

u/chrsquinn1 · 1 pointr/pics

Popular Vote went Clinton - Meaning in vote total she won by 3 million votes. but that doesnt matter.


GOP Quotes of the Effect of REDMAP on the election - Your Party speaking on boundary movement.



Extra Reading:
NPR

Ney Yorker

Book (RatF**ked)

I'm not blaming anything, the GOP used american systems well to win the race. But don't act like you know shit, and as much as Hillary makes people awful people trump is a dumbass candidate making you a dumbass. Learn to spell, learn how the race was won, and learn more you uneducated mong.

u/colterpierce · 1 pointr/politics

This book is entirely about Gerrymandering and is something every American should read.

u/FlixFlix · 1 pointr/interestingasfuck

David Daley launched a book earlier this year called "Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy"

The title sounds like a crazy conspiracy... because it is. It chronicles the literally secret plan flawlessly executed by republicans in anticipation of the 2012 elections and how we're now stuck with this for decades.

There was an excellent interview on NPR's Fresh Air with the author a few weeks ago. Moneyball applied to politics as they call it, complete with outside consultants, computer modeling, secrecy and everything.

u/HeavySweetness · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

I recommend a book called "Rat F*cked," by David Daley, which details how Republicans took advantage of the 2010 Census through their "REDMAP" plan. Every 10 years, we redraw districts once we get new data from the census. While Democrats have a decided technological advantage on GOTV, Republicans applied that same type of data analytics to Gerrymandering, capturing many state houses which then decide federal level districting plans.

u/MrMagPi · 0 pointsr/politics

Eh.. I don't know about that. I mean, historically that has been the case, but ever since Citizen's United gerrymandering has taken on a whole new form. The republicans have mastered it and are now the king of ratfucking.

You would like this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467733922&sr=8-1&keywords=ratfucked

One of the reviews from amazon below

> - first, they provided funding to state congressional races in order to obtain veto-proof majorities in state legislatures. The republican party very strategically picked republican candidates in key states and provided them with almost unprecedented funding so that their campaigns and advertising budgets would overwhelm their opponents. The plan was spectacularly successful and resulted in republicans taking over large number of seats in a number of important state legislatures.
> - second, following the 2010 census, when the new census results mandated that state districts be re-evaluated, the republican controlled state legislatures used their power to very carefully re-draw the boundaries of enough districts in order to ensure that the voting from those districts would be strongly in favor of any future republican candidates.
> - third, in the following years when states elected their representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives, the newly constructed state districts performed as planned and brought significant numbers of new Republican faces to Washington D.C., bringing control of the House solidly into Republican hands.