I don’t know how we can expect man to survive now that the cost of living has gone up 50 cents a pint W C Fields
Well, here we are, still 16 months from election day, and already the GOP is in a fine state of panic. I know what you’re going to say, Patience, Grasshopper, but this is different. After all, I’m not watching polls, I’m watching Republicans.
You can always tell just how scared the GOP is running by how batsh*t crazy their emergency plan is. If they’re only a little bit worried, then Traitor Tot just invents a new migrant caravan made up of all of Central America coming up to overwhelm our southern border. But if they’re scared sh*tless, then His Lowness wants to buy Greenland to have somewhere to cart all the migrants off to when they get here.
But Trump’s newest brain fart, doing a mid-cycle redistricting of the state of Texas in order to squeeze out five more GOP seats in order to help hold the House by 1-2 seats is an act if inspired stupidity. For too many reasons to count, but we’ll just stick to a couple of the more simple, direct ones.
For starters, I’m not sure how this Rube Goldberg contraption is even constitutional. The US Constitution mandates that federal House maps will be redistricted by the state legislatures every ten years, in the first year of a new decade. I’m not sure on what basis of legal arrogance Texas state law overrides the US Constitution, but hell, after almost 40 years of GOP state dominance, the state of Texas is damn near as lawless and despotic as when Mexico used to run the joint.
But let’s just start with pure, simple logic. There’s a damn good reason why redistricting is only done every ten years. Because that’s how often the national census is taken, and if redistricting requires one thing above all others, it’s accurate figures. And you can’t get more accurate than the census, and only the US government has the resources to pull it off. The GOP is trying to redistrict the state nationally based on five-year-old numbers, so they’re already starting with palsied figures! This is like trying to make a cell phone with the components of a transistor radio, it’s designed for failure.
I’ve written about this before, but it bears quick repeating. After the census is taken, and the legislative maps redrawn, by far and away the most effective election under that gerrymander will be the first one, in other words, the one in the year 02. For the simple reason that, just like a poll, the census is nothing more or less than a snapshot in time. And since tempus does fugit, a little thing called population migration sets in. That’s the whole reason for the census in the first place.
So the GOP is already starting out behind the 8-ball by using already palsied, inaccurate figures from five years ago. And no, the results are no help at all, simply because there is no way to determine what if any part population migration played, and what part increased or depressed enthusiasm, or candidate viability may have swayed the turnout in a particular district. So the GOP is already shooting blanks in the dark.
Here’s the other reason. Redistricting is an arcane and twisted skill, it literally takes decades of experience in learning to accurately read the tea leaves of the census and create a perfectly balanced map. Recently both parties have become more heavily embracing the alchemy of analytics, which really pisses me off. This is like having a football coach let the analytics tell him the next play to call. It’s the coach’s decades of experience, his game feel, and his gut that lead to a successful drive. Otherwise, you may as well just leave him locked in his office, and have Hal 2000 spitting out plays from the sidelines. Watch college football especially some weekend. Everybody but canned cling peaches knows that you don’t go for it on 4th and 3 from your own 45-yard line in the first quarter. But if the analytics say there’s so much as a 63% chance of success, these data jockeys run the play, and as often as not give their opponent a 45-yard field to a touchdown.
The same is true with successful gerrymandering, it takes skill, experience, and almost a 6th sense to put together a good map. That’s because there are some very basic givens in any state map;
- There are some districts, mostly rural GOP areas, and large urban Democratic areas that are so safe that you could literally run a cheese sandwich and get it elected. These areas are largely useless for gerrymandering purposes because they’re too damn insular
- The secret to successful gerrymandering is what I like to call The JFK Rule. When JFK ran for President in 1960, his father, Joe Kennedy, told him he would fund his campaign, but it came with a caveat, Don’t you buy one more vote than you absolutely need. I’m not f*cking paying for a landslide! The same thing is true with Gerrymandering. To make the map maximally effective, you’re basically relocating votes to protect against an unexpected event, say low voter turnout or a bad candidate. The object is to rig the district to assure a 1.5-2.5% margin of victory, regardless of the outside pressures. This is fine in year one of the gerrymander, but trying to change it in year six, with no accurate new numbers? As Blade likes to say, Now you understand the nature of the thing, what it’s capable of
OK kiddies, time for a little Schoolhouse Rock! Let’s start with a few simple facts, mathematically correct, and then apply it to our current problem regarding the GOP’s latest attempt to cheat their asses off in order to maintain power:
- The census is held once every ten years, at the start of a new decade
- The US House redistricting maps are drawn in the next year, and are good for ten years
- The first election year following redistricting is the most effective year for the gerrymandered maps, because afterwards population migration starts to degrade the accuracy of the numbers
- Not every district is useful for gerrymandering simply because they border only on already safe red or blue districts
- Especially with palsied and incomplete numbers, the physical mechanics of the map itself play against you. After all, there are only so many square miles of district boundary lines to play with, and only so far that you can stretch them
OK class, let’s add all this drivel together and see what we have. As you can see when you take each one of these simple facts and combine them together, a successful gerrymander is difficult even under the most ideal conditions, simply because of the number of variables involved. Now try doing it with five-year-old numbers, and no clue as to population migration, and you can see why this is shaping up to be a circle jerk.
And here’s a wild card that makes Texas somewhat unique, and with no way of accurately projecting the possible consequences. How many solidly reliable suburban GOP voters are out there, a reliable source of gerrymander fodder, that are fleeing the state due to its draconian anti abortion laws? And how many urban Democrats are spreading out from the cities to fill up those homes for safer neighborhoods and better schools?
I will close with this. With all of the facts that I’ve given you here, from where I’m sitting, especially in this unique situation, one reigns supreme overall. And that is the part that there are only so many square miles of contested district borders, and only so far you can move them.
Because the GOP already did this five years ago, and now they want to do it again, with no reliable census numbers to guide them! And with the way the MAGA GOP handles things, they could easily not end up flipping five more seats in the state to save their House majority, they could just as easily end up in a year where everybody hates Trump gerrymandering themselves out of 3-5 seats they already hold, thus only making their ultimate humiliation more complete. This is going to get interesting. Not even counting the inevitable scenario of two GOP incumbents Don’t touch that dial.
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
This might just end up as the poster picture of FAFO.
For what it’s worth, the only times that redistricting has occurred between Censuses has been due to courts (up to, and including, the Supreme Court) ordering such efforts to correct bad redistricting that happened in the first place.
Of course, with our current “illustrious” Drumpf bootlickers on SCOTUS, I don’t hold out hope that a lawsuit barring this GOP stunt from happening will end well. It would be nice if our “strict constructionists” on the Court (notably Thomas and Alito) will remember their “original intent” beliefs when this suit comes before them but they’ve shown–way too many times–that they’re more than willing to sell out their beliefs if said beliefs conflict with their political biases.
Gerrymandering is based on the presumption that voters will reliably vote for the same party in every election. A couple of factors that will affect the 2026 mid-terms: Trump’s popularity among 18 to 29 year-olds is falling rapidly, and Hispanic voters are appalled by the ICE raids and the denial of due process for detainees (many of whom are US citizens or legal residents).
Then, of course, there’s the economy, the Epstein files, and other factors that make the election hard to predict. But the GOP’s openly fascist moves aren’t going to make the party more popular.
Then there’s the fact that these dunces have already spelled out their intentions to eliminate seats held by democrats in the House. Some state legislators have been able to stand behind plausible deniability when they’ve drawn grossly unfair maps, but that doesn’t seem to be an option moving forward.
I won’t say it can’t happen, but it will take an imaginative ruling from our protectors of the Constitution at SCOTUS to sanction any map Texas comes up with between now and the 2026 elections.
Then again, they may rule in favor without comment.