Democrats like to complain about gerrymandering as if they don’t partake in it themselves — and as if they didn’t have a lengthy history of doing so.
Even their proposed solutions show just how much Democrats love drawing partisan congressional maps.
California’s so-called “independent” redistricting commission returned a horrendous map that strengthens Democratic incumbents and warps the San Joaquin Valley to shove as many Republicans as possible into the district of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The largest congressional delegation in the country will thus be determined by a gerrymandered map dreamed up by a supposedly nonpartisan commission.
That’s not to say commissions can never work. Maryland’s commission came back with a sensible, compact map that made so much sense that Democrats in the state Legislature rejected it. Instead, Democrats in the state Legislature chose to gerrymander Maryland’s district once again to shut Republicans out of the state’s eight-seat delegation. Commissions are good when they return favorable Democratic maps in California but not when you can run a Republican out of Congress in Maryland.
Democrats are predictably advancing gerrymandered maps in several states, including Illinois. In the Washington Post, Paul Waldman notes that “in the relatively small number of states where they had the opportunity, Democrats are gerrymandering with equal vigor.”
That’s because gerrymandering is a tool both parties use. Democrats do it just as frequently and aggressively as Republicans. The difference is that Democrats currently pretend they hate gerrymandering. (They never minded it when it helped them control the House for four decades.)
They point to gerrymandering whenever they lose because they can never lose fair and square. They pretend they oppose gerrymandering on a national level while Democrats at the state level pursue it with whatever method is available.
Democrats do not oppose gerrymandering — they only oppose Republican gerrymandering. That is why “solutions” such as independent commissions get ignored if they do their job too well, like in Maryland. Democrats want their “independent” commissions to look like California’s, fortifying Democratic seats and eliminating GOP ones.
Remember that the next time Democrats whine about losing the House because of redistricting.
