Another one from the department of “it’s always nice to be recognized”. The editors of the Wall Street Journal note the lengths to which Illinois Democrats are going in their gerrymandering of Illinois’s districts:
The main progressive demand for the rewrite was that it carve a new majority-Hispanic district out of the Chicago area. In the reshuffle it also manages to push two Democratic-leaning suburban Chicago districts (the 6th and the 14th) further out of reach for Republicans. The 17th district (across the border from Davenport, Ia.) also becomes less competitive.
The result is to make the proposed 14-seat Democratic majority in the Illinois House delegation more impregnable. The first gerrymander, according to the Princeton analysis, contained three Democratic districts where GOP candidates could be expected to perform at 46.5% or better—and thus win in a good year. But the new map has zero. That means a bigger wave would be needed for Republicans to compete beyond their three safe districts.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has already lost his credibility on district-drawing by promising independent maps in 2018, then signing off on gerrymandered state legislative districts this year. If the Legislature approves the new Congressional map, the Democratic Governor will likely be a rubber stamp. Despite years of hyperbolic moralizing about Republican gerrymandering, Democrats are pursuing the most extreme gerrymanders whenever they can.
Complaining about how undemocratic your political opponents are rings a lot less hollow when you eschew taking undemocratic steps yourself when you have the opportunity. I would also point out that, as FiveThirtyEight learned when they did a nationwide analysis, Democrats actually benefit more from gerrymandering thatn do Republicans.
One thing the editors do not point out is that the proposed legislative map redraw does not merely cut Republicans out of the equation but goes to extraordinary lengths to preserve black incumbents at the expense of Hispanics. I’m not kidding in my prediction that white and Hispanic Chicago voters are more likely to make common cause than black and Hispanic voters.
This is emphatically not a case of “both sides do it” but one of “human beings do it”. Utilizing whatever advantage you have is a completely understandable human behavior not limited to one political party or another.
While I’m on the subject of democracy, when you take a ground-level view of politics, even the reddest or blue-est state is actually purple. Lamenting how terribly undemocratic it is that Democrats don’t hold 51 votes in the Senate when 55% of the votes in the country are cast for Democratic candidates is comparing apples and oranges. If you get rid of the gerrymandering, eliminate the Senate entirely, and make the House much more granular, the likely outcome is electing a smaller percentage of very progressive representatives not more. And, possibly, fewer very conservative representatives as well. The very unrepresentativeness of the House of Representatives and the ever-increasing size of Congressional districts are two of the factors increasing polarization.
Looking at the “snakes” map, this should not be construed as a defense of it, but point out a risk. The proposed map has a real chance of becoming a “dummymander”.
From the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, 7 seats have Democrats projected at > 50% and < 60%. In 2020, the country overall voted 50D-47R in House elections. In a R-wave year like 2010; the vote was 52R-45D. In that 2010 kind of year, assuming a uniform swing, most or all of the 7 seats would flip.
There's still a year to go, but Biden is polling worse then Obama ever did.
It looks like I’ve been swallowed by a snake. This will be interesting after living in a Republican sink for the last 20 years.
The logic of the snake is clear: a string connecting a bead at East St. Louis and the largest metro area outside of Chicago, a bead for the coal countries where Mother Jones lies buried, a bead at capitol city and all of those public employees, a bead at Decatur with its manufacturing heritage, and finally a bead around Champaign-Urbana and the largest university in the State.
Weaknesses: (1) reliance on less consistent voting groups in youth and poor African Americans; (2) drawing in coal counties whose Democrats are more Manchin-like than any Democrat likely to be on the ballot; and (3) the beads are large enough to capture a lot of suburban and suburban-like residents that probably tend to vote for establishment republican types.
If you want to see a snake district, go look at the very first gerry(sala)mander district in Massachusetts.
Frankly, I don’t care about gerrymandering. Elections have consequences. Suck it up.
I am, however, very opposed to any measure that increases the democratic content of our governments. In a pure democracy, a simple majority controls everything. There are no constitutional or legal or traditional limits on what the majority can do. A pure democracy is always a tyranny. I remember the 60’s leftist demand for participatory democracy. I experienced it in practice. People who do not agree with the majority are subjected to “struggle sessions,” in which they are coerced and intimidated into professing the majority view as their own. Submission to majority vote is insufficient, you must embrace the ideology publicly.
The Constitution was designed to be an anti-democratic document, because the Founders feared democracy, believing, correctly, that democracy and liberty were incompatible. The present day antics of Progressives proves that theorem beyond any reasonable doubt.
The institutions designed to prevent democratic excess and protect minority rights are: the College of Presidential Electors (intended to be independent of the voters), the original Senate (now subverted), the Supreme Court [review of legislation is actually Marshall’s innovation (usurpation)], and the Bill of Rights (originally omitted, but inserted as a condition for several states approval).
The Progressive Republicans weakened most of the minority defenses after the Civil War. Their cause has been taken over by Progressive Democrats in the present day. Woodrow Wilson was a great fan of the book “The Administrator.” The author’s argument was that politicians and politics should be removed from government as much as possible, and actual governance should be handed over to professional bureaucrats. The modern regulatory state pretty much approximates that ideal.
PS. The original Constitution said nothing about voting rights. The determination of those was the prerogative of the States. Before passage, no State had universal white male suffrage. Most States installed it temporarily for the vote on the new Constitution.
Those were better times.