Redraw Congressional Maps
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Transcript
29 segmentsOn Monday, in a 63 decision, the United States Supreme Court vacated a ruling in the United States District Court of Northern Alabama, which required the state to draw congressional maps establishing two majority-minority congressional districts. Quote, the motions to expedite are granted. The petition for a writ of certiori before the judgment in number 25-243 is granted. The judgment in the United States District Court for Northern District of Alabama is then vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit with instructions. to remand to the district court for further consideration in light of the Louisiana versus Calais decision and so on and so forth. Judges, or excuse me, Justice, Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, which of course is not that surprising. This is, you know, another sort of... shoe to drop, if you will, from the decision that happened just a week ago, I guess, at this point. What day is it? Where are we? We're in the middle of May. Did you know that? May 12th? May 12th. So it's been about a week-ish. But since the decision I just mentioned there a moment ago, Louisiana versus Calais. It's, you know, in the wake of that, now a bunch of the southern states are looking to deal with their maps. And the Supreme Court just gave the go ahead to Alabama to do that. Louisiana already gotten the green light to go do that. It will not be just them. And there's a piece in the New York Times about where we stand with overall redistricting in the country. And I don't have to read you much of the article other than the headline, which is that the Republicans are still drawing house maps while the Democrats are stuck. Why is that? Ultimately, it's because the political possibility of redrawing maps has basically been done in the Democratic states, for the most part. For the most part. Where it can be done, it kind of has been done. And the Republican states, especially in the wake of that Supreme Court decision, have at least a little bit of an additional opportunity to do whatever they're doing and to redraw their maps. So the redistricting battle continues, but it is very much, as I've been saying for now two weeks, at the disadvantage of the Democratic Party. Because they just don't have as many tools in the toolbox. And they never did. I just, you know, I don't mean to repeat myself or anything, but I always thought it was a bizarre fight to pick. I mean, if you want to talk about, say, like the moral standing of it.
I mean, you can certainly, I suppose, make a defense of it because Texas started and you think it was unfair that they were doing that. And I would actually agree they should not. I don't like, I think there should be a constitutional amendment that says no, no mid, no mid decade redistricting period, unless there is some sort of an extraordinary circumstance, which I can't even think of what I would grant for one, but whatever. I suppose you could put that little plug in there just in case. But. Ultimately, I would like it if nobody did this ever. Because here's the thing. What's the point of doing any of this ever? Like, why are we doing it every 10 years? Why not every 5? Why not every 20? Why not every 13? What's the point of doing it every 10? The point of doing it every 10 is that we do a census every 10. So as we figure out who lives where, we change things up. We give the state legislatures an opportunity to draw the new maps accordingly because people shift where they live over the years. The second district in Maine, for instance, has had to stretch and contort itself a little bit differently because population growth is happening in southern Maine. It's not happening in northern Maine. And therefore, that line changes. So you got to do that, right? So you got to do it at some interval. Since the census already does that every 10 years, great time, great interval. Well done. Bravo. So that certainly makes sense. But it should not be subjected to what we're seeing now, which is just partisan nonsense. Just tribal ridiculousness. And you can say, if you're the Democratic Party, the Texas started it. I hear that a lot. I got a lot of texts are saying that yesterday. It's well, this is all because of Texas. Texas did it. Texas is fault. And I would have to remind you a couple things. The first thing that I would remind you of is that no, Texas did not start it. They may have started this round of it. That's true. And you can say Trump started it because he basically talked to the people in Texas and said, please do this. And then they did do it. And they wanted to do it anyway. So it's not like it was much of a, it wasn't hard to convince them at all, right? My point here is only that. This is a longstanding 200 plus year American tradition. It's just getting stupider. It's just getting more unfortunate. You know, the, every election is an opportunity to try to rig the rules and change the game in your favor is, is now, we're in Hatfield's and McCoy's territory here, right? Like, you can't even find the original sin. You could say it was Texas, but then I can go back to the redistricting that was done in New York in the cycle before it. I mean, what Texas did is exactly what New York did. It's like, I want to win more. So I'm going to redraw the map accordingly. You know, in New York, just as an example, there was a really weird phenomenon for a very long time. The Republicans, even despite the fact that it was a blue state and that it was... you know, kind of lost to them in a lot of ways. They actually into the mid, I think almost the 2010s or 12 or 14, somewhere around there, they actually still controlled the state Senate. It was this weird, unbroken line of control. The Republicans just had the state Senate in New York. And that was the thing that prevented for a very, very long time, really unfortunate and stupid gerrymandering in New York congressional districts. They still weren't great, but there was some sort of a backstop there that said, no, you can't do that.
But then when it went away, they were like, all right, we get to do whatever we want to now. So let's redraw them and give ourselves as much partisan advantage as possible. And I remember the last time they redrew it. I mean, I don't know if it was like two, three, four seats that they eliminated there. So you want to talk about Texas? Let's talk about New York. Let's talk about New York. Let's talk about the Republican state that did it before that. Let's talk about the Democratic state that did it before that. Where do you start? Where do you start? So given the fact that I don't think that if you want to play the moral authority card and say, well, they stand in it first, I don't think you can. And I don't think, you know, certainly with how you've behaved, if you think what they've done is bad, when you do it more in reverse, you completely remove any moral standing you had. So, you know, don't give me that line. Okay. But even if you wanted to play that card, you still have to just do math and you still have to look at the map and you have to say to yourself, well, is this a smart tactical move on our part? Politically speaking, should we do this? I realize you have this impulse to do it to get back at them and to fight back and whatever. But is it smart? And it was never smart. It was never smart. It was never smart for the Democrats to do it. It was smart for the Republicans to do it, yes, because they have more to gain. They have more tools in the toolbox, as I said a moment ago. They have more to work with. So it was basically a good fight to pick for one side and a bad fight to pick for the other. And yet, the side that it was bad for was the one that really picked it. I mean, this is really, if you want to take, you know, sort of like take a look at this whole story and say whose fault is it. I actually would say it's Gavin Newsom's fault. Again, you can definitely say Texas for starting the process. Yes. So you could definitely point the finger at them a little bit. But the decision to like overtly inject redistricting as a matter of standing with or opposing the president and making that a central part of the resistance. and encouraging everyone else in the rest of the country to do so as well because it's the way we quote unquote fight back in the resistance. He was the one that really started that. It was California's push. Virginia didn't do that until California already had. And a couple of other states started to follow suit. I think it was a very unfortunate decision to try to politicize redistricting to that effect. What would have been much wiser for them. And, you know, if there's some parallel universe out there, that this happened in it's a much better universe for the democrats right they saw what texas did they said that sucks they called it out i mean you want moral authority right point at it say shame on you bad dog right don't do that that's what you would say to them and then make political hay out of it You know, use it as a campaign tool. You know, you use it as yet another example of the dastardly Republicans doing something evil or whatever you want to do. But you would be losing like three or four seats, which you don't love. You don't love that. You don't love it. You don't love it. But you're probably going to lose more than three or four now. When Alabama's done, when Louisiana's done, when everybody else is that Florida's done, when they're all done.
I've seen some estimates say that this is maybe upwards of 12 to 20 by the time it's all finished in terms of a net advantage for the Republicans. Now maybe that's, we'll see, that's to all finish and we'll see how it all shapes up. But it's very obviously going to be worse than just the four that Texas would have represented. So it was a foolish fight to pick that will leave them at a basic disadvantage, which may actually jeopardize their ability to win back the house possibly. Hakeem Jeffries is out there now saying, I guarantee it. He's doing the Joe Namath. He's like, we'll win, I guarantee. He's doing that thing. And maybe they will. Because they still can. I mean, you know, Republicans in 2010 took something like 54 seats. that did belong to the Democrats, you know, when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker both times, those were rather large waves of, I think, 30 or 40. I have to go back and see what the numbers were. But, you know, when there's a big enough wave that happens, you know, it'll overwhelm all this. You know, the Republicans might be doing better than they otherwise would have, but, you know, they still would lose. But if it's not one of those ways, see, the second midterm is very frequently not good for the party in power. But it's usually not as bad as the first midterm. It's not a lock solid rule, but it's pretty common where you see a big loss in the first midterm. And then in the second midterm, you see a, yeah, it's a loss, but it wasn't that bad. You know, 10 seats, 15 seats, five seats, you know, that kind of thing. So if that's the kind of election it is, then this redistricting battle actually will almost certainly impair all the ability for the Democrats to win back Congress, which would just send them into orbit if that ended up happening. So that's my take on where we're at right now with it.