Ralph Nader is Right

Yesterday, Michael Medved had Ralph Nader on his show. I happened to be in the car at the time and got to hear about 15 minutes of the interview. Mr. Nader had one terrific point amongst his other hopelessly naive positions. He said that the two parties have gerrymandered congressional districts in such a way so as to obliterate democracy. Elections were no longer contested things, they were simply coronations of incumbents.

Ralph Nader is right. Dig this.

A single congressional district in Texas. Image from manifold.net.
Here's the result.

In November of 2004, 401 of the 435 sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought reelection. Of those 401, all but five were reelected. In other words, incumbents seeking reelection to the House had a better than 99% success rate (sic - it's better than 98%, but why quibble?). In the U.S. Senate, only one incumbent seeking reelection was defeated. Twenty-five of twenty-six (96%) were reelected.

Ralph Nader said he knew he was going to lose, but he was trying to get the country to see how democracy had been stolen from them. He was willing to spend his time and energy pushing the concept along, one tiny step at a time.

As far as this part of his platform goes, more power to him.