Winning the Battle, But Losing The War
Winning the Battle, But Losing The War
Unexpectedly, House redistricting didn't turn out so badly for Democrats, but for the country as a whole it's yet another source of national division. And RIP Harry Reid
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
A Silver Lining For Democrats
As we approach the end of 2021 it’s hard to find much reason for cheer among Democrats. Joe Biden’s poll numbers remain in dismal shape. Currently, the Build Back Better agenda is going nowhere in the Senate and with the Omicron wave, hopes that life in America will soon return to normal feels like a pipe dream. But the end of the year has brought one silver lining for Democrats — and in the most unlikely of places: redistricting.
The annual process of redrawing congressional districts has been viewed, for some time, as a potential disaster for Democrats, particularly with Republicans controlling most of the country’s state legislatures. But something very strange happened on the way to the latest Democratic disaster … it didn’t happen.
According to Dave Wasserman, the Cook Political Report’s redistricting guru, the number of “Biden-won congressional districts” actually increased. There are now 224 out of 435. That’s more than half. According to Joel Wertheim, an analyst with DataProgress, redistricting may end up being a net positive for Democrats.
When redistricting is finished, more districts in 2022 will be to the left of Joe Biden’s 4.5-point national margin against Trump than in 2020, and there is an outside chance that the median seat will be to the left of the nation as a whole.
How did this happen? Amazingly, one of the key reasons is that Democrats were simply more ruthless. In the handful of states where Democrats have a trifecta (both chambers of the state legislatures and the governor’s mansion), Illinois, Oregon, and New York, Democrats were extremely aggressive and maximized the party’s chances of picking up seats. As many as nine seats could change hands in just these three seats. Republicans took the opposite approach — solidifying the position of incumbent lawmakers, like in Texas. In the places where Democrats outsourced redistricting to independent commissions, they did pretty well too. In California, Democrats will enjoy a potential 44-8 advantage (though they could have done even better if they had redrawn the House maps in a partisan manner).
Part of the Democrats’ apparent success is because they did so poorly the last time district lines were redrawn — in 2010. In many states, there’s only so much that Republicans could do to improve their position. Quite simply, there aren’t many seats to add. In other states, like Texas, Republicans decided to invest more in protecting GOP incumbents rather than trying to pick up new seats. In two states (North Carolina and Ohio), Republicans were super-aggressive, but their new maps are facing court challenges, and if the maps are reversed (which seems possible), the advantage for Democrats will grow larger.
To be sure, none of this means that Democrats are likely to hold on to the House next Fall. Democrats are still protecting more close seats than Republicans. There are also more significant historical trends at play. The party that wins the White House almost always loses seats two years later in congressional midterms. When you combine that with Biden’s still lousy poll numbers, Democrats are at a significant disadvantage. But at least they won’t be fighting it out in 2022 with a further check against them because of redistricting.
Having Said That ….
While redistricting has not been bad for the Democratic Party, it is terrible for democracy. More from Dave Wasserman.
The number of highly competitive House races has been cut nearly in half. US congressional races are already barely even competitive. In 2020, close House races were as rare as unicorns.
A mere 36 out of 434 House races were decided by less than 5 percent. Only 16 House members currently represent districts won by the party’s other presidential nominee. In 2009, that number was 83. A major reason for this shift is polarization and the decline in ticket-splitting. But it’s also a factor that both parties have redrawn districts in such a way to largely eliminate competitive races. Redistricting in 2021 is only making that situation worse.
Make no mistake; this situation is bad for democracy. When members of Congress don’t have to worry about losing reelection, it makes them less accountable to their constituents. Moreover, if House members are disproportionately reliant on partisan support, they are incentivized to legislate in a way that prizes the views of said partisans. So a lack of competitive districts only feeds the polarization currently undermining our nation’s politics. Even worse, by removing competitive seats from the equation, you get even fewer moderate members of Congress, which makes already difficult bipartisan compromise virtually impossible to achieve. There is now even less reason for members of Congress to work across the aisle since most reside in districts in which partisanship takes precedence. That’s bad for governance, and it undermines democracy. Redistricting has become simply another way for incumbents to remain in office and avoid democratic accountability, all the while increasing our nation’s political divisions. In short, Democrats won the redistricting battle, but the country is losing the war.
RIP Harry Reid
Not sure I could sum up Harry Reid’s life much better than Jon Ralston does right here:
There will never be another like him.
Not a chance.
Oh sure, there will be leaders who grew up in unimaginable poverty. Or those who are more workhorse than showhorse. Or who dominate their state’s political apparatus.
But no one will ever have the conjunctions Harry Reid put together: A poor kid from Nowhere USA who escaped his hardscrabble beginnings and became the state’s youngest-ever lieutenant governor and then lost both a U.S. Senate race (by 600 votes) and mayor’s race (in a landslide) and then was resurrected by his mentor (Gov. Mike O’Callaghan) to serve as the state’s top casino regulator where he confronted the mob and both helped and was investigated by the FBI and who seized on a new congressional seat to return to elected politics and who then won the same Senate seat he lost 12 years earlier and who ascended to heights where no Nevadan had gone before and who saved a president’s first-term agenda and who became Nevada’s electoral gatekeeper, creating and destroying candidacies, and who made a tiny state a national force that mattered and who is, barely arguably, the most important public figure in Nevada history.
I will, however, add this. In 2009-10, Harry Reid, with no votes to spare, wrangled every Senate Democrat (and independents who caucused with the Democrats) to support comprehensive health care reform (Obamacare), which had eluded Democrats for more than 60 years. Granted, LBJ had his significant achievements as Senate Majority Leader — like the 1957 Civil Rights Act. But what Reid did on health care, in the face of intractable GOP opposition, is one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in American legislative history and is one for which there is no obvious precedent. Also, as Ralston makes clear, Reid was one tough, and at times nasty, SOB. RIP Harry.
What’s Going On
If you have a gun in your home, get rid of it. It won’t protect you, and it will only make it more likely that someone in your home will die from gun violence.
Performative assholery is now the gateway drug for participation in Republican politics.
I’ve been binging on my former Boston Globe colleague Ty Burr’s best of 2021 movie list. I loved “One Sudden Move” and “The Card Counter.” “Don’t Look Up,” which is not on Ty’s list, is fine — if your thing is heavy-handed satire. My favorite movie of the year — and mind you, I’ve seen about five new movies this year — was “Nine Days.” I’ll be curious if anything else I see from 2021 tops a film that is among the most beautiful I’ve seen in years.
My kids dragged me to see “Sing 2,” which, truth be told, was kind of adorable. We also did a mini-Hitchcock binge over Christmas. The kids loved “Rear Window” (obviously) and “Dial M For Murder” and only just liked “North By Northwest,” which was surprising. I think for them, the love story between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint was not that interesting. However, it got me to go watch “Notorious” and Shadow of Doubt,” which I’d never seen, and both were fantastic, especially the former.This interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is excellent and offers a good explanation for why the CDC changed its guidance on COVID quarantines from 10 days to 5 days.
