The gerrymandering crisis

We all know how this started.  At Trump's behest, Texas Republicans came up with a super-gerrymandering plan intended to gain their party five additional House seats next year, relative to what they would likely have won under the existing (already-gerrymandered) map.  The state's Democratic legislators fought back, fleeing the state and going into hiding so as to deny the legislature the quorum that it needs to do any business at all.  State AG Paxton has tried to get the FBI involved, get some of the rebel Democrats expelled from the legislature, etc, while Democrats elsewhere have rallied to support them.

The Republicans' actions constitute a full-blown attack on democracy, politicians seeking not to represent the freely-expressed will of the voters but rather to manipulate the voting to get the result the ruling party wants.  In itself, this is not a surprise.  Republicans attacking democratic institutions is nothing new these days, especially when Trump demands it.

The Democrats, however, have generally tried to hold the line against such attacks as far as they are able to do so -- which is why the national party's response in this case is escalating the Texas gerrymander into a full-blown crisis of democracy.  Party leaders in California, New York, and elsewhere are threatening to carry out similar super-gerrymanders of their own states to increase the number of Democrats elected to the House, offsetting the Republicans' expected unfair gains in Texas.

(As I noted on Saturday, the Texas gerrymander actually might well backfire.  It depends on Hispanic voters continuing to vote Republican in the same proportions as in 2024, which is far from a sure thing given the flagrantly racist behavior of ICE in targeting people they think look Hispanic regardless of legal status.)

Of course Democrats must fight back against the Republican attack on democracy, but that means stopping the super-gerrymander in Texas.  Trying to similarly gerrymander blue states isn't fighting back.  It's joining forces with the Republicans, on the same side as them, to attack meaningful voting rights.  It's saying that they too seek not to represent the freely-expressed will of the voters but rather to manipulate the voting to get the result they want.  It's asserting that what they seek to do with power if they get it (opposing Trump) is so important that it justifies rigging elections to win more seats than the true will of the voters, expressed with a neutral map, would give them.  They have forgotten that the important principle is fairness to voters, not to political parties.

This article in Jacobin explains how fundamental the issues at stake here are.  It's long, but I urge you to read the whole thing.

For perhaps the first time in modern US history, we have both political parties joining forces and working together to attack the most basic right of citizens in a democracy -- the right to cast a meaningful vote.  This is a crisis.

It's also a betrayal of principle.  In 2022 Democrats tried to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would have banned all gerrymandering nationwide (the act narrowly failed).  Some blue states have passed laws which assign district-drawing power to nonpartisan commissions.  To now join the Republicans in this attack on democracy would mean repudiating the very laws they passed in blue states and tried to pass nationally.

This is not difficult for the average voter to understand.  Perhaps some people in the activist fringe are such logical contortionists that they can take "we had to gerrymander California so we could get into power to fight gerrymandering" as something other than comical hypocrisy, but nobody else will.

The overwhelming majority of voters oppose all gerrymandering, whether racial or partisan, regardless of who gains.  If the Democrats join with the Republicans in a gerrymandering push, it will instantly destroy their claim to be defenders of democracy against Trumpism.  The narrative that both parties are alike, in seeking to rig the system to gain power no matter what the voters want, will win an unshakeable grip upon the mass public mind -- because it will become true.

In some blue states, repealing those laws that give redistricting power to independent commissions would require a referendum.  This gives the voters a chance to defend their rights, by rejecting the repeal of these laws.  But no one will forget what the party leadership tried to do.

If the Democrats as a national party go through with this, I am done with them.  I've stayed (mostly) supportive despite the identity politics, the trans nonsense, the failure to really confront and crush the parasite billionaire class, the elitist sneering at ordinary voters' concerns about crime and cultural change and immigration, and all the rest of it.  But this is just too fundamental.  It's telling me my vote is not a means to express my own will in the political process, but a mere utensil in their hands, to be used and manipulated to serve whatever purpose they in their superior wisdom see fit.

Based on the survey results shown above, many voters would feel the same.  Yes, the activist fringe is all enthused about Democrats doing this, but that's that tiny 7% blue area on the left end of the "Democrats" bar.  Daily Kos and an insular ecosystem of political blogs and groups are not the real world.

I could never support the Republicans.  Aside from their own attacks on democratic institutions, there's the anti-vaxism, the global-warming denialism, the endless tax cuts for billionaires paid for by destruction of our threadbare social safety net, the undermining of the separation of church and state, the attacks on gay equality, the cowardly kowtowing to Trump, and on and on.  But if the Democrats join them in attacking democracy and making our votes meaningless, then supporting them can no longer be the answer.  What the answer then would be, I can't claim to know.