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Legal Commentary

: Althouse

The NYT mishandles a metaphor: "Democrats? ?Blue Wave? Crashed in Statehouses Across the Country."

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It matters more than usual which party controls the state legislatures, because 2020 was a census year, and it's time once again for the partisan game of redistricting. Even if you think you only care about Congress, the House of Representatives is at stake as these lines are drawn, creating safe districts and competitive districts for Republicans and Democrats.

I hadn't noticed any reports about the state legislatures, so I did a search. What came up first was this headline in the NYT: "Democrats? ?Blue Wave? Crashed in Statehouses Across the Country."

When I see "wave," I picture a real wave, an ocean wave, so if it "crashes" on something, it hits with power and inundates. So I thought the Democrats had done very well at the state legislature level. Then I realized this is the problem of the dying metaphor that George Orwell wrote about. It began as a vivid image, and some of us still see the image in our head when we read it, but it's used routinely by some writers ? it's just a go-to phrase ? and they don't coordinate the image with the words they use alongside it.

In this NYT headline, the verb "crash" was chosen to go with "blue wave" perhaps because it feels like a strong action verb or perhaps because it seems to go with "wave." Waves do crash. But here "crash" doesn't properly express what happens when waves crash. If a wave crashes on a building ? such as a "statehouse" ? the wave succeeds. The building is dominated. The headline uses "crash" more like the way the stock market crashes. It just collapses. It doesn't crash on something.

Notice that the headline has the wave crashing "in" rather than "on" statehouses. The preposition indicates that the writer wasn't picturing the action of a wave at all.

How can a wave crash in a building?

I did have a moment where I thought Oh, the Democrats got control of the redistricting! But, no. It's the opposite:

On Wednesday, the results were not yet final, but the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state-level races, said there were changes or potential shifts of control in just four chambers: the New Hampshire House and Senate, which Republicans took back from Democrats, and possibly the House and Senate in Arizona, though the contests for those chambers were still too close to call. He said it was the first time since 1946 that so few chambers were changing hands.

He? Who he?

?This is crazy in that almost nothing has changed,? said Tim Storey, an expert with the N.C.S.L.

Oh, him. Tim Storey.

?It really jumps off the page.?

Democrats failed to take control of the Texas House from Republicans, a prize that had seemed within reach. They also lost the battle for North Carolina?s House and Senate, chambers they had set their sights on after years of Republican control. And they failed to flip the Iowa House, according to the N.C.S.L. Democrats also failed to flip the Houses in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Mr. Storey said....

He said Democrats had achieved some victories, like preventing Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the Wisconsin Assembly, which will stop the Legislature from overriding any veto of electoral maps by the Democratic governor. And the election of Judge Jennifer Brunner to the Ohio Supreme Court reduces the court?s conservative majority from four to three, he said....

Before Tuesday?s election, Republicans controlled about three-fifths of all 98 partisan legislative chambers. If no other chambers flip as new results come in, that Republican dominance will not change.

?It was a huge night for state Republicans,? said David Abrams, deputy executive director of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which focuses on electing Republicans to state offices. ?Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars to flip state chambers. So far, they don?t have a damn thing to show for it.?...

ADDED: 2 things:

1. ?It really jumps off the page? is another dying metaphor.

2. The difficulty of flipping a legislature to the party that is winning statewide elections is evidence that the existing districting has given an advantage to the party that controlled the line-drawing the last time around.

Full post as published by Althouse on November 05, 2020 (boomark / email).