According to this recent report on Texas politics, it looks like even the last holdouts in Texas won't be able to salvage the infection that is what's left of the Republican Party for much longer. Soon, they will become extinct here. It's only a matter of time. They're losing ground steadily all across the nation and have been for decades. The world is a different place now and, clearly, not one that can accommodate the narrow-minded, short-sighted, hedonistic character of the 'party that's suiciding itself'. Though I am no Democrat either, I can't say I am sad to see this happening - nor will I be sad to witness the demise of the Democratic Party either. They're both corrupted and failed versions of what they are supposed to be. One day, when people start thinking long-term, stop trying to predict the future and just start being progressive and consider what is good for all people (not just their own groups - like little high school cliques), we will start to see something productive come from politics again. Somehow, I don't think that will be very soon, but I hope it will! ;) __________________________ • Texas: Late on Tuesday, as Donald Trump was busy defending white supremacists, a federal court in San Antonio struck down Texas’s congressional map on the grounds that the Republican lawmakers who drew it had engaged in intentional racial discrimination in violation of both the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. The court ordered lawmakers to swiftly lay out their plans to redraw the map, which is shown at the top of this post (click here for a larger version). The new districts will take effect for the 2018 midterm elections if this ruling survives a likely appeal to the Supreme Court. If the high court ultimately sustains this ruling, Democrats and Latinos could gain one congressional seat, but that’s a major disappointment compared to the two or even three seats that plaintiffs had hoped for. Specifically, the court invalidated Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold’s 27th District, which is based in Corpus Christi and branches northwest toward Austin and northeast toward the Houston area, and Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s 35th District, which connects San Antonio and Austin via a narrow tendril. Regarding the 27th, the judges ruled that removing Corpus Christi’s Nueces County from a Latino-majority district during redistricting in 2011 had deprived Latino voters there of the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice (most likely a Latino Democrat). Meanwhile, the court held that the narrowly Latino-majority 35th District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander whose configuration did not satisfy any compelling government interest. Indeed, said the judges, the district merely functioned to pack in Democratic voters to make the surrounding seats safe for white Republicans. What’s more, it was not even capable of consistently electing the preferred candidate of Latino voters since white Democrats from Austin have always had considerably higher turnout rates in Democratic primaries. Unfortunately, the court did not strike down Republican Rep. Will Hurd’s 23rd District, a huge beast that stretches from El Paso to San Antonio, something that multiple redistricting experts had expected to happen. Republicans intentionally diluted Latino voting strength in this district by adding low-turnout Latino populations and high-turnout white voters, giving the district a nominal Latino-majority population while ensuring that the actual electorate was majority-white. The fact that the court has left this district untouched is a major blow to Democratic hopes, but the swingy seat may nonetheless be winnable if 2018 turns out to be a good year for Democrats. In addition, the court declined to strike down any districts in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area even though plaintiffs—and an analysis by Daily Kos Elections—have repeatedly demonstrated that Republicans could have easily drawn another district in the region that would allow Latinos to elect their candidate of choice. While such an outcome was less likely than the prospect of the court ordering changes to the 23rd, its failure to materialize is nonetheless another disappointing aspect of this ruling. Overall, this ruling was about the best outcome that Republicans could have hoped for given the flagrantly unconstitutional abuse of race with regard to the 35th District—that is, at least for the 2018 cycle, since there’s one major catch for future elections that we’ll get to below. Republicans surprisingly will not call a special session, instead appealing to the Supreme Court to issue a stay. However, by taking this gamble, the GOP could wind up with a very unfavorable court-drawn map, and even with Neil Gorsuch’s ascension to the Supreme Court, victory is by no means guaranteed for the party. We’re also still awaiting a ruling from this same lower court panel on the validity of Texas’s state House districts, so Republicans may be waiting for that decision—which could require them to revisit yet another map—before coming back into that session. If Republican legislators do eventually hold a special session to fix the congressional lines, one possible remedy would place a largely Latino chunk of Nueces County in one of South Texas’s Latino-majority seats such as the 15th or 34th, both of which are already held by Democrats. Republican mapmakers could then shift the Latino-majority 28th (another Democratic district) away from San Antonio, allowing the 35th to drop its portion of Austin and contract to become a San Antonio-dominated district capable of electing a Latino candidate. Democrat Lloyd Doggett would thus likely get a new seat in Austin at the expense of a GOP congressman (either Michael McCaul in the 10th or Roger Williams in the 25th), while Republicans would pack Doggett’s seat with as many Democrats as possible to protect whichever of these two Republicans whose seat doesn’t get eliminated. While Republicans could try to crack Austin’s Travis County five or even six ways among GOP seats and eliminate Doggett, this would require even more tortured lines that could put several incumbents at risk in a Democratic wave and runs a greater risk of prompting the court to reject the map and draw its own. With Doggett staying in an Austin seat, Democrats would consequently gain a new Latino representative in the redrawn 35th District. Since Republicans will have to rearrange the lines in the San Antonio area, it’s possible they’ll wind up altering the 23rd District as well, but as noted above, they will not have to increase the proportion of Democratic-leaning Latino voters there as plaintiffs had hoped. Consequently, Texas will remain one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. As Daily Kos Elections has previously illustrated, a fully nonpartisan map could produce up to five additional Democratic representatives compared to the existing gerrymander, with three of those members likely being Latino. An entirely nonpartisan overhaul of Texas’s congressional lines was never in the cards, but this hypothetical map shows just how egregiously Texas Republicans have sought to squelch the voting rights of Latinos. These court-ordered changes will instead likely result in just a single additional seat for Democrats and Latinos, which is far short of the “Armageddon scenario” that some Republican legislators had feared. And while the court will have final approval over the new map, Republicans will likely argue that whatever new districts they come up with are based entirely on partisan (rather than racial) considerations), an argument that the Supreme Court has so far allowed. However, there is a major landmine lurking in this ruling. The court did not merely find that the GOP’s map discriminated against black and Latino voters—it held that the Republican lawmakers intentionally discriminated. This is a very important distinction, because this is now the fourth court ruling this year alone striking down one of the Texas GOP’s voting laws for intentional discrimination. Tuesday’s decision follows rulings striking down voter ID laws, the state’s 2011 legislative districts, and Texas’s congressional districts that were drawn in 2011 (which, confusingly, never went into effect, as we explained here, but were nevertheless invalidated). These repeated findings of discriminatory intent set the stage for a marquee battle over whether to utilize a provision of the Voting Rights Act that would place the entire state of Texas back under the “preclearance” regime of the Voting Rights Act. Under this provision of the VRA, all jurisdictions in the state Texas would have to clear any changes to voting procedures—from issues as seemingly small as the location of voting centers to matters as big as redistricting—with the Justice Department before they could take effect. Several predominantly Southern states with a history of racial discrimination had to preclear all such changes pursuant to the VRA until the Supreme Court gutted a critical provision of the law in a landmark 2013 ruling. In a decision that feels especially painful after Charlottesville, Chief Justice John Roberts notoriously opined that racial discrimination was largely a thing of the past. Republicans in states like Texas immediately proved him wrong by passing discriminatory voting changes as soon as they no longer had to seek preclearance. But thanks to another provision of the VRA, there’s a way to restore preclearance if a jurisdiction is found to engage in intentional discrimination. In this case, the jurisdiction in question is all of Texas, which could be placed under Justice Department supervision for up to 10 years—though of course, that would require yet another court battle. And while Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who infamously prosecuted civil rights advocates for voter fraud, will certainly allow Texas Republicans to pass their preferred voting laws, a future Democratic attorney general could deny preclearance and block these changes. The prospect of a Democratic Justice Department thwarting Texas Republicans from passing these laws could have critical implications for the next round of redistricting following the 2020 census, since denying preclearance is dramatically quicker than waiting for lawsuits to work their way through the judicial system. Indeed, as we explained in our background article, this current case has been ongoing for six years, with Republicans enjoying the benefits of their illegal gerrymander for three of this decade’s five election cycles. While Tuesday’s ruling is a modest victory for Democrats and Latino voting rights, it’s also another reminder that in redistricting, justice delayed is justice denied. ______________________________ Then again, I knew this would happen if Trump was elected. I also knew we'd probably be at war right now if Clinton were elected. The only thing that would have done is bought the Republican Party a little more time but, ultimately, they will Ah well, not much one can do when the political game is just a rigged grenade designed to explode before the vote even leaves your hand. -
