Salon On GOP Keeping the House – “It’s the gerrymander, stupid”

Let’s step back in time to 2010. Or perhaps 2008. In the aftermath of the 2008 election the GOP rank and file were in the hurt locker but the leaders wasted no time working out a plan to rebound. Under the cover of the “Tea Party’ (which was anything BUT an organic grassroots uprising) the true evil strategy was a massive coordinated effort to take over statehouses in 2010. Which would be a Census year. With enough control at the state level not just state legislative districts but Congressional districts could be redrawn to give the GOP a massive advantage. It was a brilliant and well-executed plan. Worse, it relied on an unpleasant fact about Democrats which is that in non-Presidential years our side was lackluster about voting.  So in 2010 the GOP bet big, won big and with the new Census allowing for everyone to redraw districts Republicans gained a huge advantage. This country is STILL paying the price.  However, we aren’t without hope and possibilities.

As you know, the slim and mostly unworkable GOP House majority in the Congress about to end is going to be even slimmer come January. Whether Mike Johnson will even remain Speaker is open to question (so far he’s okay but there are signs of a challenge) and his ability to exert control is dubious. Yes, Trump will be threatening to have any Republican who doesn’t toe the Party line ‘primaried’ but Trump’s history on this score isn’t something to be feared as much as one might think. However the issue here is how and why the GOP retained it’s slim (and now slimmer) majority. The reason can be stated with a single word – gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is a longstanding, sordid practice intended to skew the balance of legislative bodies both at the state and federal level. In school I (all of us) were taught about things like ‘one person – one vote’ and the people choosing their elected officials. Gerrymandering is the process of flipping that, especially the second part. When effectively done the people no longer choose their representatives, but rather the representatives choose their voters!  Most reading this are familiar with these concepts. Yes, the “both siders” will point out there are Democratic states that have engaged in gerrymandering but as this article from Salon points out in detail it’s the GOP that uses the process far more (and for a longer time) than Democrats.

This is a subject that takes some unpacking but I beg you to make the effort because it will only change from the ground up. By which I mean we have to start at the state level to break supermajorities, and put the fear of God into Republicans who try to get around attempts at non-partisan redistricting. State governments draw the legislative maps not only for their own state’s legislatures, but also their Congressional maps. Also, as Salon points out with state level Supreme Courts having become increasingly partisan decisions favoring GOP control of the process regardless of the laws or even state Constitutions the problem is made worse. In my own state of North Carolina a partisan state SCOTUS allowed a new supermajority (created when a turncoat Democrat switched to the GOP) allowed for a rapid mid-census redrawing of the map:

Republicans have held the House of Representatives by an extraordinarily small margin. Partisan gerrymandering is once again a huge reason why the right will hold the chamber. The three seats nabbed by the GOP in a mid-decade gerrymander of North Carolina look like they will be the difference-maker.

First the math: As of Thanksgiving weekend, the Associated Press has Republicans winning 220 seats and Democrats winning 214, with only one race still undecided. That’s in California’s 13th district, where it looks as if Democrat Adam Gray may defeat GOP Rep. John Duarte by a few hundred votes.

It looks like it will be a five seat majority for the GOP. Yes, three incumbents are going to be gone. Gaetz resigned (to try and head off that ethics report) when Trump nominated him for AG. Two others are going to leave to be part of the new Trump administration. However all three are in safely Republican districts so once special elections are held in the spring the GOP will still have a five seat majority.  Now, Republicans like to point to a couple of Democratic states and do some projecting/gaslighting and accusing DEMOCRATS of being the ones who abuse the process with gerrymandering. I call bullshit. If you read the linked article (fair warning – it will take a few minutes) you’ll see why.  Even worse, thanks to John Roberts and SCOTUS we can’t count on the law or Constitutional norms and principles to fix the problem. No, the Robert’s Court has taken steps to solidify, to institutionalize the GOP’s appalling tactics:

They got away with this because Chief Justice John Roberts and his fellow Republicans on the Supreme Court not only refused to accept multiple proposed nonpartisan standards for determining when a gerrymander went too far, but effectively closed the federal courts to all such claims now or in the future. That has left state legislatures — themselves often the products of extreme gerrymandering — and increasingly partisan state supreme courts as the final authorities on the fairness of congressional maps.

Again, conservatives and their news outlets like Fox want to harp on say New York and Illinois but the GOP grabbed far more in other places than Democrats scrounged up in those two states. For me the real concern is SCOTUS pretty much giving a green light to Republicans, even in states where voters pass initiatives for non-partisan redistricting to let GOP politicians ignore the voters. Or, to repeat myself let the (GOP) politicians pick their voters instead of letting the voters pick their representatives.  I could turn this into a lengthy, even by my standards piece but instead I again urge you to read the linked article by Salon. It really IS worth the time. Then the time to start putting your shoulder to the wheel at the local and state level.

It’s going to take a lot of work. HARD work to bit-by-bit change things at the state level. But unless/until we are able to break supermajorities, elect NON RWNJ conservatives to state Supreme Courts and then mobilize enough voters in ‘swing’ state legislative districts we can’t get fair Congressional maps.  There’s nothing realistic we can do to fix the Senate problem. At least in my lifetime. However, if we really, and I mean really fight like hell I believe we CAN make a difference in both states and the House of Representatives by 2030. And 2028 even?

We didn’t lose by much last month but we lost. Still, it’s an evenly divided country and the ‘unhappy’, pissy half that put Trump back in the WH and (barely) gave the GOP control of Congress IS only half of us. It’s safe to say they’re unhappy now they are going to be even more so before long. So we have an opening. We also have a model we can update and use again. In 2018 we kicked the GOP’s butt in the midterms. That’s what we have to do in 2026. Hit the GOP hard at the state level too while regaining seats on both sides of Capitol Hill. We did it with grassroots effort and candidates that engaged at the local/district level. So we know what works. It will work again.

The most important thing though is that if we succeed we aren’t done. The work will NEVER be done. That’s what Obama tried to tell us on election night in 2008. We have to put in the hard work, election after election. Every single time, or things will go bad in a hurry. As has just happened.  So let’s get back to work, and accept we have to solve this problem from the ground up instead of counting on it being taken care of from the top down.

One ‘wave” election like 2018 isn’t going to fix things. We need several (or more) in a row. Trust me when I say the GOP is eyeing 2030. The ‘Wise Men’ know another term of chaos will mean Democrats could retake the WH in 2028. But in 2030 any new Democratic President will face that painful history of losing seats in their first midterm. PLUS it will be a Census year. I know in my heart some serious people in conservative ranks are hard at work on updating what they did in 2010. We have NO time to lose in preparing to deal with it.

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