Raise your hand if your left-leaning friends whine about gerrymandering.
For well over a decade, liberals tried to convince voters of a myth that Republicans gerrymandered and Democrats did not.
Meanwhile, Democrats control all branches of the federal apparatus, yet the party behaves as though it realizes its time in power will be short.
That explains why Democrats spent most of 2021 desperately scrambling to push generations of progressive dreams into doomed legislatives packages.
They also failed to upend the U.S. Senate’s rules for unpopular ideas, like Washington, D.C. statehood, federalizing elections, and more.
And last month, the White House felt compelled to push a Supreme Court justice into premature retirement.
But nowhere have Democrats gone crazy like the legislative level, where the rush to erect progressive fortresses ahead of this fall’s midterms moves with alacrity.
Democrats have been far more aggressive and hypocritical in their gerrymandering efforts than Republicans. And despite the GOP controlling more state houses and governorships, Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman observed there will actually be more Biden-won congressional districts after redistricting than before.
National update: on the current trajectory, there will actually be a few *more* Biden-won congressional districts after redistricting than there are now (224/435).
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 22, 2021
Blue states like Colorado, Washington, and Virginia already redrew their congressional maps to protect Democrat incumbents at the expense of competitive elections.
In California, Democrats are pushing an outrageous gerrymander to take three Republicans off the board.
Maryland’s new congressional map has created at least seven safe Democrat seats while trying to draw out the state’s last remaining Republican congressman.
The biased map was adopted after the party rejected an alternative from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s “citizen advisory commission” that received an A grade from the Democrat-run Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Hogan called it an “egregious civil rights violation.”
His hapless liberal predecessor admitted a few years ago he was intentionally trying to turn Maryland’s map bluer.
In Illinois, chicanery rendered the GOP competitive in only three of the state’s 17 seats, even though Republicans won over 40% of the popular vote in 2020 elections.
New Jersey is another example of nefarious actions. An “independent commission” in the Garden State made a clever trade, when they erased a lone moderate Democrat representative to reduce any competitiveness in three liberal seats.
Late last month, New York Democrats unveiled an egregious redistricting map to advantage their party in 22 of the state’s 26 U.S. House seats and potentially cut in half the eight New York Republicans in Congress.
This was supposed to be drawn by an independent commission, but after plans deadlocked, Democrats simply produced the final partisan product.
Under the new lines in these states*, Biden carried 182/322 districts, up from 176/322 under the old lines (in the 11 states yet to redistrict, Biden carried 48/113 seats in 2020).
*Some states are still pending litigation.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 10, 2022
Eric Holder claimed for five years that Republicans are destroying democracy; somehow there’s not a peep from the former attorney general about this map, of course.
He’s not alone in his lies and hypocrisy.
There’s Marc Elias, a cantankerous liberal, who’s represented John Kerry, Al Franken, Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter in past conspiracies. He now runs around television slamming Republicans over election integrity.
Yet earlier this month, the Washington Free Beacon exposed Elias defending dubious gerrymandering tactics, while raking in millions from the DCCC, DSCC, and even Senate Leader Chuck Schumer’s PAC.
So much tomfoolery — and yet the good news: Democrats will still probably lose.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
