“There’s no consequence or penalty for Trump redrawing the maps in Texas mid-decade,” the former statewide hopeful tells Texas Monthly. “Stop pretending like there is.”
There’s an internal cost to gerrymandering that the moderate Republicans are paying in spades. The Dick Cheney wing of the party drew all these cloistered bright-red districts, only to see neoconservatives forced out of the party by their distilled MAGA base 20 years later.
I think conservative Democrats (of which Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are increasingly aligned) see a gerrymandered blue state majority presenting a similar threat. Rather than a rump caucus of Pelosis and Durbins and Cuomos, they’d be threatened with upstart campaigns from more Mamdanis and Soto-Martinezes and Ilhan Omars.
Who wants that?
So liberals will make noise about fighting fire with fire. But then they’ll sit on their hands, fully aware that a MAGA majority benefits conservative Dems who can present themselves as “the only other viable alternative” in purple districts. They don’t want to run more AOCs or Sanderses. They want more Slotkins and Schiffs and John Delaneys.
There’s an internal cost to gerrymandering that the moderate Republicans are paying in spades. The Dick Cheney wing of the party drew all these cloistered bright-red districts, only to see neoconservatives forced out of the party by their distilled MAGA base 20 years later.
I think conservative Democrats (of which Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are increasingly aligned) see a gerrymandered blue state majority presenting a similar threat. Rather than a rump caucus of Pelosis and Durbins and Cuomos, they’d be threatened with upstart campaigns from more Mamdanis and Soto-Martinezes and Ilhan Omars.
Who wants that?
So liberals will make noise about fighting fire with fire. But then they’ll sit on their hands, fully aware that a MAGA majority benefits conservative Dems who can present themselves as “the only other viable alternative” in purple districts. They don’t want to run more AOCs or Sanderses. They want more Slotkins and Schiffs and John Delaneys.
Hopefully they are starting to realize they don’t have a choice. Either run more AOCs or cede all power to Republicans.
Given how the party behaved in '20, '22, and '24, I think they’ve already made their choice.