The Gerrymandering Doomcourse

This might wind up aging like milk, but I think I'm going to say it anyway:

Calm down about the gerrymandering thing.

Look, I'm not going to say that it's not bad, okay. It's bad. It's a parade of bad. It's another shower of shit in a rain showerhead of shit we've all been dealing with in this country for decades-- but... (and this is a big-ass but) we can't possibly predict what the ramifications are ultimately going to be.

The problem with gerrymandering is that you can only do so much of it before it has the very real potential to backfire on you. Texas is going to be fascinating to watch this year, because its gerrymander is based on the 2024 election results and assumes that every electoral result after that would mirror those. Given, you know, all of this (gestures broadly to the world at large), that's not a bet I would have made, but I'm not the Texas GOP. Also, I do expect you're going to see more state GOPs taking a pass on further redistricting after the midterms because (brace yourself for this shocker): the President isn't actually that good at this politics thing.

Indiana is still holding out, and I would love to know how much of that is Mike Pence. I would pay money to know that. There are rumbles out of South Carolina that they might take a pass as well, and that's because-- and this is the really underrated talking point here-- the current dynamics across the south benefit both parties.

It's a symbiotic relationship. The GOP gets to run MS, AL, SC, and keep the bulk of Congressional seats for the low, low cost of throwing the Democrats one or two seats. Take Section 2 of the VRA out, and it's a whole new ballgame, and I don't know if anyone can actually predict what the results are. Yes, initially, I think it will be an advantage to Republicans, but... only initially.

The problem Democrats have here is two-fold to me. For one, ending Section 2 of the VRA is going to crush black representation in Congress. I feel pretty confident of that-- but it also gives Democrats the opportunity to move out entrenched leaders and get new people in there, which is something that a not-at-all-small section of the party is very interested in doing. If Section 2 does go down, I am going to be fascinated to see how that plays out on the Democratic side come 2028. One of my hotter political takes is that Democrats could flip Mississippi before they flip Texas, but it would take investment and attention, and the Consultant class of the DNC is very... coastal? Elitist? Have they got their heads up their own asses? 

It's a Kerry versus Howard Dean argument all over again in many ways. In 2004, Kerry was concerned about getting 270 and nothing else. It didn't produce a Democratic map that inspired much in the way of hope for the future of the party. Dean correctly said, we need to compete everywhere and win everywhere, and his 50-state strategy paid off. It does and will present Democrats with an ideological headache, but progressives and leftists can take Republican insanity, or they can learn to chip away in the right direction and play a longer game. Will they? Probably not. But one does live in hope.

Republicans are going to be equally fascinating. I would love to know what they're actually thinking behind closed doors right now, and yes, the census shifts are a much bigger problem for Democrats than gerrymandering right now. If California and New York can't get their shit together and build some fucking housing, they may well be fucked, and nothing that I've written so far will matter. 

But I do think the Republicans are presented with a new problem: the coming post-MAGA moment and what to do about it. Culture War slop has an expiration date. People may doomscroll their way through whatever grift and meme the Right Wing Media Machine is pushing this week, but even the most Nerfed Out brains on both ends of the ideological spectrum have to do two things: put gas in their car and buy groceries. Culture War slop is proving to be a mile wide and an inch deep, whereas the inability to deliver anything remotely useful for actual voters is starting to get noticed.

(When Iowa, of all places, drops a last-minute water quality plan into the end of the legislative session, you can see that Republicans are starting to at least notice. Granted, I'm not sure what it does other than throw money at cleaning up the problem instead of solving it, but they've noticed that people were pissed about it and were forced to offer something. Which is better than nothing.)

Pick your aphorism. 'A week is a long time in politics.' 'Nothing is written.' But the problem with aphorisms is that they tend to be true a lot of the time.

Yes, this is another spray of shit in the ongoing national shower of shit we're all living through. It's okay to say that it's bad. It's okay to be upset about it. But don't pretend you have any idea what the short-medium and long-term ramifications are going to be, because nobody does.