Kevin Drum gets it
Over at Political Animal, Kevin Drum talks about hwy he’d love to support the Republican’s plan to reform gerrymandering in California, but can’t:
So why am I depressed? Because the insanely partisan atmosphere of contemporary American politics means I can’t support this proposal even though I think it would be good for the state. After watching Texas Republicans ram through a brutally gerrymandered mid-decade redistricting that gained the Republican party four congressional seats in the 2004 election, how stupid would a California Democrat have to be to agree to meekly support a goo-goo proposal that would have the effect of giving Republicans more seats in yet another state? Guys like Tom DeLay and Hugh Hewitt would be guffawing in their beers for days about our terminal naivete if we went along with this. Raw power would be their ally in red states and appeals to progressive idealism would be their ally in the blue states. That’s quite a combination.
So as much as I hate myself for this, count me out. Gerrymandering is a national problem, and it ought to be dealt with nationally so that both blue states and red states are affected equally. If George Bush were serious about reform, instead of advancing hack ideology as a response to phony crises, he’d spend his time on this instead of Social Security and tort reform. But he’s not and he won’t. And so we’re stuck.