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Liberal Gerrymander Myth Will Be Exposed

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In yet another instance of the U.S. Supreme Court twisting the plain meaning of the words of the Constitution, a 5-4 majority ruled that states could bypass their legislatures to create commissions to determine Congressional districts. The U.S. Constitution states specifically, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof,” but, in writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that “legislature” can mean a referendum. That’s absurd, but after a week in which “by the states” can be translated as “by the federal government” (Chief Justice Roberts on ObamaCare) and an amorphous concept not mentioned in the Constitution such as “dignity” can be used as justification for overturning state laws (Justice Kennedy on gay marriage), what’s one more legal fiction if it gets a liberal majority what it wants? As with those other two cases, this has excited a lot of liberals who believe, as Paul Blest writes in The New Republic, that this decision can lead to a political earthquake that could eventually give the Democrats back control of the House of Representatives. But unlike the other decisions that will help transform the world to conform to liberal preferences, this one is bound to disappoint the left. The reason why Republicans seem to have acquired a lock on the House has less to do with the gerrymander myth that claims the GOP wins by cheating than it does to with population patterns and the Voting Rights Act.

Gerrymandering is almost as old as the republic, but it has always had a bad reputation. Both Democrats and Republicans have carved up states in bizarre patterns in order to maximize political advantage for one party or the other. But in recent years, as the GOP won midterm landslides that gained them control of the majority of state houses around the country, Republicans have had the opportunity to do more gerrymandering than Democrats.

Blest’s piece gives as good a summary of the gerrymander myth as can be found. In short, he blames the Republican victory in 2010 as enabling them to steal seats in Pennsylvania and Ohio by coming up with districts with “nonsensical formations.”

The effects of that redistricting were noticeable in 2012 when, despite easily holding the White House, adding to their Senate majority, and winning the popular vote in the House by over 1 million votes, Democrats only won back eight congressional districts. In Ohio, two longtime progressive members of Congress, Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinich, were drawn into the same district, the boundaries of which are objectively ridiculous. After the 2012 election in Michigan, where Obama won by nearly ten points, Republicans held nine seats to just five for Democrats. And in Pennsylvania, the GOP picked up two seats despite Obama’s winning the state by over 300,000 votes and Senator Bob Casey’s winning re-election by an even wider margin. This process wasn’t limited to Republicans, either—they just had more opportunities to do it.

But while the GOP took advantage of their chance to redraw districts where they could, the sea change in House elections dates back more than two decades to the early 1990s when redistricting helped play a role in ending an almost unbroken 60-year streak (1946-48 and 1952-54 being the only brief exceptions) when Democrats controlled the House. Since then, the House has been generally trending to the Republicans, and they’ve run things other than Nancy Pelosi’s four-year reign from 2006-2010. But what happened in 1992 wasn’t the result of a vast GOP gerrymander. It was the result of court decisions interpreting the Voting Rights Act that demanded that states create minority-majority districts that would vastly expand the number of African-American and Hispanic members of the House. That effort succeeded brilliantly but though almost all of these members were Democrats, this triumph came at the expense of their party.

In the past, when Democrats had the chance to draw districts, they’d take advantage of the situation by trying to include areas with a high minority population in competitive districts. Since blacks were — and still are — an essential part of the base of the Democratic party, once they were concentrated into minority-majority districts, that left swing districts overwhelmingly white and as a consequence, far more likely to be won by Republicans. Moreover, the minority districts were far more “nonsensical” than anything any Republican or even Elbridge Gerry (after whom the practice is named) could have even dreamed of as they stretch across states and cross normal country and even geographic boundaries in order to corral as many minorities as possible into one district.

As Nate Cohn notes in the New York Times Upshot blogs, the Democrats’ dominance in urban districts with mostly minority voters inflates their national vote total in Congressional elections. But it does them little good to win inner city districts in cities by 8-1 margins while losing most of the competitive seats by close margins. What Cohn calls a “wasted vote problem” means that Democrats can win states like Pennsylvania decisively while losing the majority of Congressional seats.

The court, to the approval of liberal strongholds like the New York Times editorial page, believes good government pieties about non-partisanship will always favor the Democrats. But the liberal faith that supposedly non-partisan commissions such as the one created in Arizona will solve their problems is misplaced. Even non-partisan districts are always going to favor Republicans in states with minority and urban populations. Unless those commissions are prepared to break up minority districts and cost black and Hispanic politicians their jobs — something that is not only politically impossible but would be considered illegal by the courts — the fundamental GOP advantage will remain.

Moreover, as Cohn points out, instead of looking to the courts to win them victories they can’t achieve on their own, Democrats might do better to forget about commissions and concentrate on winning back state houses before the next census sets off the next round of redistricting. If the GOP wins the presidency in 2016, that might set up 2018 as the moment when Democrats might take advantage of the midterm pattern that gives the party out of power the edge. Of course, that means no President Hillary, so Democrats don’t even want to think about it.

But the most important lesson to be learned from this subject is that while redrawing districts can give political parties help, such devices are no substitute for popular support. If Democrats want to win back the House, they’ll have to do it at the ballot box winning swing districts and not by judicial fiat.

The post Liberal Gerrymander Myth Will Be Exposed appeared first on Commentary Magazine.


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