I’m not so sure the Supreme Court got it wrong when they threw out one of Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts. The six conservatives who voted to invalidate the gerrymandering that created the district argued that Black voters no longer need such protections as were accorded them by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, when segregation was rampant, Jim Crow still ruled much of the South, and Blacks were still denied many of the rights the rest of us enjoyed. According to the Republican majority on SCOTUS, Blacks now have their place at the table. Nobody and nothing is stopping them from voting for the candidates of their choice. So the elaborate mechanisms of the Voting Rights Act are now anachronisms.
I tend to agree. All Americans are free to vote, finally, so there’s no need to create special districts that guarantee one party or the other will prevail. Let’s just let the two parties slug it out.
But what about California, you ask? After all, Newsom and the Democrats (and 64.4% of California voters) chose to redistrict the state in order to elect more Democrats. Isn’t that exactly what SCOTUS just declared unconstitutional?
Well, the definition of “unconstitutional” is whatever the Supreme Court says it is, and they haven’t yet declared Proposition 50 unconstitutional; all they did is toss out that one Louisiana district. So, for the moment, Prop 50 is legal. I myself voted for Prop 50 because Trump started this latest stupid war by demanding redistricting in Texas, and as Newsom said, we have to fight back. If SCOTUS wants to issue some broad, sweeping edict banning all gerrymandering, fine; but I don’t know how they’re going to do that, unless they start from some arbitrary date going forward (they would never dare to undo all the redistricting that’s already been done). And even then, how are they going to recognize a gerrymander when they see it? Yes, if it curls like a meandering river, it’s probably gerrymandered, but each challenge will be met with legal resistance, and there are 435 electoral districts in the U.S., so any significant number of challenges would choke the court system, which already is overloaded.
But back to Black voting rights. In my humble opinion Black people have the complete right to vote, in any election in the U.S. Ditto for White people, Gay people, disabled people, veterans or non-veterans, immigrants—you name the group and, if they’re citizens, they’re 100% entitled to vote. So why not invalidate a Louisiana district whose lines were clearly artificially adjusted to guarantee a Democratic victory? Democrats are responding that this SCOTUS decision represents a fatal blow to voting rights in America, but I don’t see it that way. Let each party and each candidate offer their views on all the issues, let the voters listen and decide and vote the way they want, and we’ll figure out how to live with the results.
I, personally, believe that some blend of Democratic and Republican ideas is the best—being careful to excise all religious influences, especially the malign evangelicals. Let us get rid of Trump and his baleful legacy, get back to being a proper democracy, and put this ugly, stupid little MAGA era behind us. As for which party to vote for, I remain a Democrat, and I entirely agree with Barney Frank, who said the other day that Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable. Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win.” That agenda is called, for lack of a better term, “woke.” The American people don’t like it, they know it when the see it, and they will punish any politician and political party that advocates it.
Steve Heimoff