Not so Blue Monday by @BloggersRUs

Not so Blue Monday

by Tom Sullivan

Not to dampen your enthusiasm for your local congressional races (I have a few favorites), but if you live in a red state odds are the Democratic challenger in your GOP-held district is running that marathon wearing ankle weights. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sent back to a lower court a suit over GOP gerrymandering in my state of North Carolina. The Washington Post reports:

The lower court will need to decide whether the plaintiffs had the proper legal standing to bring the case.

The Supreme Court recently considered the question of partisan gerrymandering in cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. The court has never found a map so infected by politics that it violated the constitutional rights of voters.

But the justices did not rule on the merits of the issue. The court said plaintiffs in Wisconsin did not have the proper legal standing and that the Maryland case was in too preliminary a stage.

North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature has implemented a map under which Republicans hold 10 of the 13 congressional seats. The GOP’s domination of the congressional delegation belies North Carolina’s recent history as a battleground state. It has a Democratic governor and attorney general, who have declined to defend the maps.
If there is a form of election rigging North Carolina Republicans haven't tried since taking over legislative control in 2011, they either haven't found the time or it hasn't been invented yet. The voter ID law targeting African American voters "with almost surgical precision" struck down by a lower court failed to win review by SCOTUS last year.

Rep. David Lewis explained the GOP congressional maps he helped draw, saying, “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats.”

Statewide in 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in North Carolina 49.8 percent to 46.2 percent. But the GOP controls over three-quarters of NC's congressional districts.

If the GOP controlled your state's 2011 redistricting, even with a Trump backlash/blue wave/mid-term advantage, Democrats running for Congress in Republican-held districts are running wearing ankle weights. Some will win even so. But this structural tilt is not fixable in Congress. You need to get involved NOW in retaking control of your state legislature's House and Senate. That's where the real fight is heading into 2018 and 2020. You may loathe the occupant of the Oval Office, but while you are howling into the Trumpish wind, the GOP is stealing power from under your nose. Democrats won't regain control of redistricting and the U.S. House of Representatives without it.

Keep fighting.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.