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Op-Ed

Move for the Movement

July 29, 2019

If you don’t like the way things are going in this country, you need to move. Heed the words of the president: Go back to a country you already live in.

Milt Policzer

By Milt Policzer

Courthouse News columnist; racehorse owner and breeder; one of those guys who always got picked last.

If you don’t like the way things are going in this country, you need to move. Heed the words of the president: Go back to a country you already live in.

If you’re unhappy with the president, this is the best way to defeat Donald Trump in the next election. The Movement needs to begin now.

I’m not recommending fleeing in terror, although that’s definitely an option. Emigrating to Canada or Mexico is an enticing idea if no other reason than to see what Mexico would do about a wave of immigrants invading their country from the north. Would it pay for a wall?

But a panicked mass exodus isn’t necessary just yet. What I’m talking about is sacrifice for the common good. Are you passionate enough about the state of the nation to abandon your home?

Some of you — or perhaps many of you — are freaked out about the possibility of another electoral college victory for the president despite losing by millions of votes. It happened before. It could happen again. A New York Times analysis, for example, the other day declared “he could have a distinct chance to win re-election while losing the popular vote by more than he did in 2016, when he lost it by 2.1 percentage points. ... It is even possible that Mr. Trump could win while losing the national vote by as much as five percentage points.”

There’s a simple way of preventing this if enough people are willing to make the sacrifice: Work within the system.

Let’s look at what happened in the 2016 “election” in which Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by almost 3 million votes and thus was not allowed to be president.

Clinton won California by almost 3.3 million votes. She won New York by about 1.7 million votes. Trump won Texas by less than 800,000 votes, Ohio by less than 450,000 votes, Florida by less than 120,000 votes, Arizona by less than 100,000 votes, Pennsylvania by less than 50,000 votes and Michigan by less than 12,000 votes.

So the solution is pretty obvious: a million people need to move from California to Texas, 500,000 from California to Ohio, 150,000 from California to Arizona (where they could retire), 200,000 from New York to Florida (where they would retire anyway), 75,000 from New York to Pennsylvania (an easy commute), and 20,000 from any random blue state to Michigan.

If you’re serious about the next election, you need to get out and move. The electoral college vote would then be a landslide.

A 700,000 move to Kentucky might be nice too — there’s a Senate race coming up. Kentucky is a lovely state filled with horses, bourbon and beautiful farms. You’d like it.

The Movement has to begin immediately because there will almost certainly be residency requirements. You need to register to vote right away.

I do realize there will be pushback to this scheme. Critics will say this is a manipulation of the system. Most of these critics will be fans of gerrymandering and voter suppression. It’s best to ignore them.

Once Republicans realize this is happening because their real estate values are going up, there will be countermeasures. Red state legislators will change voter residency requirements — to something like eligibility based on land ownership for at least three family generations. There will be attempts to block sales of property to anyone coming from a blue state.

The former will generate litigation — welcome employment for many lawyers — and the latter should be easy to combat. After all, red state people like money. An entire class of real estate agents could be turned blue.

If housing is still a problem, I recommend buying up cheap farmland and putting up tents. You only have to live there until late 2020.

By the way, this form of activism can work on gerrymandering too. Just move to gerrymandered districts to flip the script. This, naturally, will be followed by counter-moves from the other side — at which time you can return to your prior residences.

Some of you may want to consider mobile homes.

Categories / Op-Ed, Politics

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