As I am writing this, Texas Democrats have fled the state in an effort to stop an effort by the GOP to impose an ambitious redistricting plan on them. California, Illinois, and New York are threatening to retaliate in kind. What should we make of this?
Two observations are pertinent. First, redistricting plans are intended to maximize the number of seats possessed by the party in power by reducing majorities in safe seats to a bare minimum. In a wave election, that can result in a boomerang gerrymander; the party that approved the redistricting could wind up actually losing seats. Second, this is the inevitable result of the Supreme Court’s decisions to step away from enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and to stay out of partisan gerrymandering cases altogether. There were some gentlemen’s agreements to avoid partisan warfare to protect the public interest before Trump, but Trump is as far from a gentleman as you can get, and the blue team isn’t about to disarm unilaterally.