September 21, 2003
THE DEMS OF TEXAS....Democrats in Texas are a beleaguered
group these days, and once Tom DeLay's redistricting scheme goes through
they are likely to be even more beleaguered than ever.
So what's the answer? Charles Kuffner invited a bunch of Texas
bloggers to figure out what to do next, and today they've responded. Check it out.
Posted by Kevin Drum at September 21, 2003 05:02 PM
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Too bad the Republicans in California didn't have the means the
Democrats in Texas had to try to stymie a partisan gerrymander. Oh, but
wait I forgot. Partisan gerrymanders which favor Democrats are GOOD,
it's only partisan gerrymanders which favor Republicans which are
IMMORAL and undemocratic, eh?
Ah, the march of the trolls! In they come, dropping their little nuggets without a single blush of logic or shame.
What is going on in Texas has nothing to do with gerrymandering.
Sure, the GOP there is doing that. But the issue is and has been the
flagrant violation of one of the oldest procedures in the American
political social compact: the agreement that redistricting occurs just
once -- ONCE ONLY -- per decade, after the census.
Gerrymandering is, generally, a distasteful thing. But it is also an
old, old practice in the American political tradition. One may object
to, or be openly alarmed by, the gerrymandering carried out by one's
political opponents following a census. But that isn't the same as
saying it's simply illigitimate.
By contrast, what Tom DeLay and the Texas GOP are doing now is
filthy, immoral ... it IS, fundamentally, un-American and illigitimate.
It reflects the most dangerous kind of radicalism, radicalism that
should alarm true conservatives every bit as much as it alarms liberal
Democrats.
"radicalism that should alarm true conservatives..."
Well, those are few and far between these days, and it's asking a lot
to give up partisan advantage for the sake of the country, apparently.
Otherwise Delay would have been slapped by his own people for his Texas
shenanigans.
Does the dishonest moral posturing of partisan Democrats know no bounds? Marsman is mightily trying to prove that's so.
So the Texas dispute is not all about gerrymandering, eh?
[But the issue is and has been the flagrant violation of one of the
oldest procedures in the American political social compact: the
agreement that redistricting occurs just once -- ONCE ONLY -- per
decade, after the census.]
Oh, please.
So the new Democratic party standard of standing up for democracy is
minority disruption of orderly majority voting on redistricting, so a
Federal Court can impose a partisan Democratic gerrymander. For that
is the 'democratic' method of redistricting the Texas Democratic
minority is now fighting to preserve.
The fact is the Texas dispute is a raw fight over political power.
The Democrats have a court imposed gerrymander favoring them and the
Republicans are trying to replace it with a gerrymander favoring
themselves. And the Democratic minority is using all the dirty means it
can to keep power from slipping away. And it sickens me to see the
astoundingly dishonest posturing of the partisans that this battle is
some kind of principled stand in defense of democracy.
"So the new Democratic party standard of standing up for democracy is
minority disruption of orderly majority voting on redistricting, so a
Federal Court can impose a partisan Democratic gerrymander."
Yeah, we all know how partisan the federal court system is, and how
it ALWAYS sides with the Democrats in district-drawing and other
electoral disputes. In this connection, George Will has written at
least twice that he thinks DeLay is opening the gates of hell by doing
this -- because, of course, two sides can play this new game equally
well (and will, from now on).
Bruce Moomaw
Are you really claiming the current districts of Texas are NOT
gerrymandered in favor of the Democrats? Nothing would surprise me at
this point.
Brad, the Texas GOP deliberately threw the task of drawing
congressional districts to the courts. They would have had to negotiate
with the Dems, you see, and they didn't want to do that. Instead they
gerrymandered the state districts (through a separate process) and
waited until they got their folks into the statehouse when they could
have complete control. Yes I do dispute the false claim that they're
gerrymandered in favor of Democrats. The GOP can't beat democratic
candidates in GOP-leaning districts. Their solution is an explicit
gerrymander - disenfrachising rural voters and entire cities (e.g.
Austin) that don't vote the "right" way.
The idea that you're entitled to redraw districts whenever you take
control of state government is deeply destructive to the democratic
process.
No amount of partisan noise can change this. Mid-decade redistricting
is a virtually unprecedented extension of partisan warfare. Here in
Ohio presidential races are close but the congressional delegation is
extremely republican. Does this give us the right to redraw all of the
lines if the state Dems get power in 2006? If not, why not?
Marc
The goal of getting lines drawn is to gerrymander the states you
control and to get impartial lines drawn by a judge in the states that
you do not control. That makes you come out a winner. I think that its
fundamentally unfair to have some states gerrymandered while other
states are forced to live by the ruling of a judge. Either all states
should have court appointed boundaries or all states should have their
boundaries decided by the legislatures. Either its a partisan process
or its not, and it shouldn't be for individual judges to decide.
Except that each party in each state has always been equally free to
appeal to a judge. DeLay's little maneuver, contrary to his fond (and
publicly expressed) belief, will not give the GOP any lasting new
advantage nationwide -- it will just mean that both parties will now
spend ALL of each decade redistricting their states over and over
instead of doing it just once per decade, thus reducing still further
the time they have to spend on actual state legislative debate. In some
states this will give the Democrats an unfair advantage; in an equal
number of states, on the average, it will give the GOP one; in some
states biased judges will give the Democrats an unfair advantage; in an
equal number of states, on the average, biased judges will give the GOP
one. So neither party will win -- but the people will lose. Which was
my -- and Will's -- obvious point.
Personally, I would be delighted to see an anti-gerrymandering
Constitutional amendment -- and one of the best ideas I've been able to
come up with so far is one that requires that every border between two
House districts within a state must be along either a single line of
latitude or a single line of longitude, thus tremendously reducing the
ability of both parties to gerrymander at all. There are other ideas,
however. Until one is adopted, we should definitely stick with the
nation's long-time once-per-decade redistricting custom.
All this appealing to judges might make some sense if we were really
talking about NEW lines drawn IMPARTIALLY by a judge. We aren't. The
judge drew the districts with his preeminent concern being maximum
similarity with previous district lines. Previous district lines were
intentionally gerrymandered in favor of Democrats. Therefore the judge
was just recertifying an old gerrymander (as far as I can tell out of
laziness).
Bruce- either you don't know or don't care what the argument of the
Texas republicans is. Their argument is that the legislature has the
right to set the disctrict lines once after every census. Last year, a
judge took control out of the hands of the legislature and set the lines
- which means that the leguslature still hasn't had their chance. By
the argument of the Texas republicans, once this is done the lines can't
be redrawn again until after the next census. To me this is pretty
reasonable. There shouldn't be half the states with non-partisan lines
set by judges and half the states set by partisan statehouses. In Texas
the republicans are in the majority and our system allows them to
gerymander the lines to their benefit. Good or bad they should be
allowed to do it, just like other states where judges did not step in.
When a kid breaks a cookie jar they tend to say something like "the jar fell" - while omitting the fact that they made it fall.
If the Texas GOP really felt so strongly against tossing
redistricting to a court they shouldn't have deliberately done so. The
current maps have a number of GOP-majority districts that elect
Democrats. None of the counterarguments presented here even bother to
answer the fundamental point:
Repeated mid-decade redistricting does great harm to the political
process. Cut the pious nonsense about it making a difference whether a
judge drew the lines or not; this happens all the time. Answer the
question about whether it is good for the democratic process if we
continually redraw districts mid-decade...
Or whether we should stick to once a decade, which has been the
pattern in all 50 states without exception for the last 50 years, and
has only occurred a handful of times in the last century.
Calvinball is fun in a comic strip, but it is a bankrupt political philosophy.
Marc
Marc makes a good point.
There are between 19-25 districts in Texas that voted Republican on
basically every single race except for District rep. In my old district
(very conservative, very religious), Charles Stenholm (D) has never
faced a problem with re-election even though his district votes
Republican in every other race.
The Republicans have flat-out LOST their District campaigns to
Democrats because the people in these districts LOVE their Democrat
District Reps. Now my old district will be split between two other
major Texas cities, both two hundred miles away, and it is quite
possible that our rural and urban representation will be lost to cities
like Lubbock and El Paso. In the districts close to my current home,
one rural city (population of less than two thousand) will now be split
into three separate districts. And what about Austin? The Republicans
are too scared to split up that district, mainly because they don't want
to be forced to represent liberal constituents that they don't approve
of.
This will eventually backfire on the Republicans because they are now
setting a precedent that can easily be used against them in the future.
This is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of most conservative
Republicans that I have spoken with, and I can find very little support
for this redistricting issue... even in the Baptist church lobby after
Sunday service when every other Republican issue is usually placed upon a
pedastel next to the Bible.
Here is where we fundamentally disagree. You think that the system
is more fair whenever you can remove gerrymandering. I think that its
more fair to have a country where every state has gerrymangered
districts than to have a country where half the states are gerrymandered
and half are set by non-partisan judges. Having every state
non-gerrymandered just isn't a possibility.
There won't be 'repeated mid-decade redistricting" because
legislature can only set the district lines once after every census. In
texas, the legislature has been unable to set the lines yet because the
courts stepped in, now its the legislatures turn to try again. So pull
out the crap about repeated mid decade redistricting because thats not
the issue in this case.
The issue is whether legislature has the power to set the district
lines or whether the courts have that power. It might be better for the
democratic process if the courts set the lines in every state, but
thats not the rules that have been set out for us to play by. As long
as the rules allow for gerrymandering then everyone should be allowed to
gerrymander.
Pink- your argument is against gerrymandering in general and while I
agree with you that it sucks, thats just what happens when you control
the legislature in a state after a census.
And yes the republicans could get bitten in the ass by this in the
future. Do you know if any states have democrat controlled legislatures
and redistricting maps set by courts? (georgia I am pretty sure... not
sure about others)
Pink, many of the current Republican districts are just reelecting
the Democrats they had from the original gerrymander from back in the
days when Texas was a more Democratic state. You are attesting to the
power of the incumbent.
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