Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol: Gerrymandering Isn't The Democrats Big Problem

Democracy Journal has an interview with Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol:

I don’t want to hear anything more about electoral college reform, getting money out of politics. All these procedural fixes that the wealthy on the left are fixated on…The horse has left the barn; it’s too late. Unless there’s electoral turn-around starting in 2017 and ’18, in which Democrats are winning, this thing could lock in.

So the number one thing has to be signing up people to vote and getting them out to vote. Assuming that the courts are going to fix the voting system: Forget it. I mean they’re not, not on the timescale that’s needed. So I don’t know, I’m talking to wealthy progressives and trying to convince them to stop giving all their money to this or that procedural fix. You know I was disappointed that Barack Obama framed it as gerrymandering reform. I hope you’re aware that the best studies show that only half of the problem of the mismatch between Democratic numbers and Democratic legislative results would be solved by gerrymandering reform if it happened universally and perfectly. Half of the problem is the concentration of Democratic constituencies in big cities.

The struggles of the Democrat party.