It’s hard to describe how clueless *and* depressing this situation is. To quote the great Eminem, “If you one shot, or one opportunity . . . Would you capture it or just let it slip?” For some in power, it seems to be the latter.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1413206793967349760
We stand at an inflection point about whether we can be a multiracial democracy or not. Few people in history have been given as stark a choice. And that people can’t see it is 🤦🏻♂️😑
I mean just consider gerrymandering which could determine control of the House for a decade. Hard to “organize” out of that. Yes, Democrats won back the House in 2018 after losing it in 2012 - but they benefitted from a couple of factors that won’t likely be present this decade.
The first, of course, was Donald Trump who was the equivalent of a 1000 tsunami hitting GOP gerrymanders and causing unexpected realignments of voters. However good the gerrymanders, they weren’t built for that. And many collapsed. (But not all - see Ohio).
But 1000 year tsunamis are rare and, in any event, having been hit by one, you can build in defenses.
The other thing that helped Democrats take back the House in 2018 were court-ordered redraws of maps in TX, VA, FL, NC, and PA. But the legal landscape has gotten more challenging since then.
Section 5 of the VRA which forced a redraw of the Texas map no longer applies. SCOTUS also has greenlighted partisan gerrymandering giving Rs a simple way to defend racially discriminatory maps on the basis of hey, we were just discriminating against Ds, not people of color.
And courts have gotten more conservative at both at the federal level and in key states (e.g., Florida). In short, when it comes to redistricting, past is not prologue.
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