Cue The Outrage!

You may (or may not) have heard about the brouhaha kerfuffle imbroglio ado happening in the Texas state legislature, where a passel of Democrats have fled the state in order to deny a quorum and thus prevent - for now - the passing of a bill that will alter the state's Congressional districting map ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections in a way that might gain the GOP five seats.

Much outrage has been voiced by Democrats far and wide over this affront to... democracy?

Of course, they doth protest too much. The practice of drawing tortured district borders in order to tilt electoral outcomes dates back over 200 years. Way, way back in 1812, a fellow named Elbridge Gerry, a Founding Father who signed the Declaration, participated in the framing of the Constitution, served as the nation's fifth Vice President, and who happened to be the governor of Massachusetts at the time, signed a bill that created a long, skinny, and totally contrived district in order to win more seats for his party.

The district, which some concluded looked like a salamander, gave rise to the portmanteau "gerrymander," and this form of self-serving political machination has been with us ever since.

A couple years ago, after the 2022 midterms, I offered a bit about how the Democrats ran gerrymander-amok in New York, thumbing their noses at the referendum that the voters had recently passed requiring sane congressional district shapes. The New York judicial branch, which no sane person would presume to be right-leaning, concluded that the Dems' new map was such an affront to the law that they voided it in favor of a nonpartisan commission's re-drawing. The NY Dems' gambit likely cost the party four seats rather than gaining it four, and helped secure the House for the Republicans for Biden's final 2 years.

Undaunted by the smackdown - which was based, I reiterate, on a voter referendum against gerrymandering, NY Governor Kathy Hochul, one of the screech owls incensed by Texas's gerrymandering effort, is planning to try again. And she is hypocritically blaming Texas Republicans for forcing her hand.

It's amusing to see the Left so outraged at a bipartisan (multi-partisan, truth be told - we had different parties back when it started) tradition that dates back over two centuries. It's entertaining to look at three Blue state maps - Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts - and note the obvious gerrymandering in all of them.

Not that the Republicans are any different, of course. The difference between Texas and New York is that New Yorkers modified the state Constitution (and affirmed that modification in a second referendum) to prohibit or at least curtail gerrymandering, while Texans have not.

So, cry me a [redacted] river, Hochul (and CA Governor Gavin Newsom and IL Governor JB Pritzger). I don't like gerrymandering, but it's legal until the voters decide it's not, and this hyperbolic outrage and "it's OK when we do it but Texas is cheating" bullshit is nothing but outrage politics intended to play to voters' emotions rather than intellects.

For the record, it is unusual to redraw districts in non-Census years, but it has been done before. There is, as far as I know, nothing that legally prohibits Texas's action, and Texas is hardly the only state to "rig" its maps to favor the in-power party.

Again, I really don't like gerrymandering. It leads to skewed representation, such as the 44% of Illinois voters picking Trump but the GOP only holding 3 of 17 (18%) Congressional seats. In Newsom’s California, despite some limits on gerrymandering, Trump got 38% of the vote, but the GOP only holds 9 of 52 (17%) seats. Coincidentally, should Texas follow through on its plan, the Democrats will likely end up with 18% of the state’s Congressional delegation. How’s that for parity?

The answer to gerrymandering is what New York, Ohio, Florida and some other voters did - alter their states' Constitutions to prohibit it. The Supreme Court washed its hands of the matter in 2019, and I agree that this is properly a states-rights matter not to be decided at the Federal level.

Outrage machines are inversely proportional to power. The less power a party has, the more outraged its prominent voices become. This is the equivalent of lawyers pounding the table when they have neither the facts nor the law on their side. The louder someone screams, the more skeptical I am as to their claims. Texas's redistricting is cynical partisan politics, but the critics are as guilty as the perpetrators.

Want to impress me? Fix your own states.

Oh, wait - New York already did, but its governor wants to ignore that inconvenient truth and redraw districts in violation of the Constitutional amendment. Ditto for California, where a passel of restrictions are in place, but Newsom is rattling on about redistricting anyway.

Who's the bigger dirtbag, the governor who is being a base partisan but within what the law allows, or governors who defy the will of the voters?