Both Sides Do It, And That's The Point

For once, somebody found a use for Both Sides Do It that is both true and actually might help save the Republic, and of all places, it's Democratic party gerrymandering in New Jersey.

The Democratic lawmakers’ proposal would amend the New Jersey Constitution, and New Jersey voters would need to approve it through a ballot measure.

It overhauls the makeup of a redistricting committee to give more power to legislative leaders. It also establishes a “fairness test” requiring district maps to reflect how major political parties perform in statewide elections for governor, senator and president.

In New Jersey, which has not elected a Republican senator since 1972 and where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1 million voters, that standard ensures that the redistricting process would begin on an uneven playing field. (New Jersey did elect a Republican governor in 2013, but the state has been trending Democratic.)

“It institutionally strips away the will of the voter,” said Tom Kean Jr., the Republican leader in the Senate. “The will of the Republicans and unaffiliated voters in New Jersey would be ignored to the benefit of incumbent majority party legislators forever more.”
Proponents of the plan, Stephen M. Sweeney, the Senate president, and Nicholas P. Scutari, a co-sponsor of the bill, argue that the redistricting process is too often conducted behind closed doors by unelected officials and where deals are hashed out without any voter input.

By putting their plan before the electorate, supporters argue, New Jersey Democrats are letting voters decide how redistricting should be done.

“There’s nothing gerrymandering about it,” Mr. Scutari said. “If we have a significant advantage in voters, then you’re going to have a significant difference in legislative districts. If you took this matrix of guidelines and put it in Texas, you’d probably get significantly more legislative districts that favored Republicans.’’

It is, quite frankly, the Democrats lowering themselves to the level of Republicans in refashioning a state to entrench a permanent majority.   And as Kevin Drum puts it, it's about goddamn time.

I am all for this. Is that because I’m a political hack who eagerly looks forward to giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine? Of course not. It’s more that … it would … oh hell. Yes, that’s part of it. The prospect of watching Republicans whine and moan about this is really pretty delightful.

But here’s the real reason: this is the only thing that will ever get the Supreme Court off its butt to do something about gerrymandering. I’m dead serious here. Conservatives on the Supreme Court aren’t likely to ever address gerrymandering until it’s crystal clear that Democrats can be every bit as ruthless and shady as Republicans. As long as red-state Republicans pass bill after bill screwing Democrats, while blue states like California and New Jersey and New York do nothing, there will always be a majority on the Supreme Court to shrug it off as a “political” question and do nothing.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear a gerrymandering case later this year that merges a suit over Democratic gerrymandering in Maryland with a suit over Republican gerrymandering in Wisconsin. That’s a good start to getting them to take gerrymandering seriously, and the New Jersey stunt might force a bit of rethinking too. I hate the fact that I believe this, but I do, in fact, believe pretty strongly that conservatives on the Supreme Court will never strike down even the most egregious gerrymanders unless Democrats prove that they can play the game too. So let’s play.

Nothing quite convinces Republicans to attack a practice than to see Democrat benefiting from it, (see everything Obama ever did with executive power as an example.)  Maybe it'll get SCOTUS to clear the decks.  We'll see.

But like Drum said, Republicans made this ballgame, so let's play.