Kornacki: Democrats, stop whining about gerrymandering

>>> it's been three months since the election and i keep hearing the same lament from democrats. we would have won a clean sweep , the presidency, the senate and the house if only it wasn't for jerry mannedering. there's some superficial logic to this. gop ended up with a 17-seat majority. this came just two years after republicans used their 2010 midterm landslide to grab control of governorships and state legislatures in a host of big states, meaning that when it came time to draw new district lines for the 2012 elections, something the constitution says has to be done every ten years the gop was able to manufacture a whole bunch of seats they would have no business winning under a fair map. isn't that the essence of gerrymandering? yes, it is. but that doesn't explain why republicans still run congress. the real explanation has to do with how americans have chosen to sort themselves out geographically. democrats have traditionally been the party of urban america and republicans the party of rural america but there's never as dramatic a relationship between where a person lives and how that person votes as there is today. start with the democrats. president obama 's victory was keyed by overwhelming majorities from an overwhelming turnout by a rising block of voters, latinos, african-americans, women, particularly single women , professionals with multiple degrees, millennials, the coalition of the ascendant. they helped deliver obama a winning margin of five million votes nationally, but they are overwhelmingly clustered in cities and metro areas . this was enough to give obama win after win in key battleground states and to lift his party senate candidates in those same states, but the house is a different story. when it comes to the lower chamber , as you know, states are split into districts. what that means in the average big state is that the democratic vote packed into metro areas as it is is concentrated in a handful of districts where obama and his fellow democrats won with massive majorities. 70%, 80%, 90%. but in the ex-urban and rural areas , the gop had the advantage. not as dramatically but enough to win district after district with 55% or 60% of the vote. thus did we see results like this in ohio where obama won the state and sherrod brown was re-elected but republicans got 12 of the available 16 house seats. when jimmy carter was drummed out of office in 1980 , he managed to carry 900 counties nationally. when michael dukakis ran for president in 1988 , he suffered a 40-state landslide but claimed 119 counties. bill clinton won with 1,524 counties. do you know how many counties obama won last year? 690. that's it. 690. even though he won a convincing popular vote majority. gerrymandering wasn't a complete nonfactor in 2012 . the gop probably did grab a few extra seats because of it. but the real problem for democrats is that their base of support is less spread out geographically than it's ever been, which means they can win presidential races and even control the senate, but when it comes to the house, their best, their only chance for the foreseeable future is a massive anti- gop tide, like something we saw in 2006 or 2008 . short of that, the era of republican speakers could last for a long