Episode 132 - Gerry's Salamander

Democrats are screaming that Republican gerrymandering is destroying "our democracy." But Red states are only doing what Blue states have done for decades. And by no longer acting like the stupid party, Republicans are likely to increase their majority in the House.

Transcript

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Welcome to Careful Consideration of Our Common Concerns. I'm Dr. Ted Noel. And GLASS is once again in session. Our latest political flap has been to do with something called gerrymandering. Democrats are screaming that our democracy is being torn apart by Republicans who are gerrymandering. And one has to ask, what in the world is a gerrymander? Well, the word comes from 1812. Elbridge Jerry, who was one of our founding fathers and one of the authors of the Constitution, was governor of Massachusetts. And he signed off on a legislative district. Now I'm thinking it's a congressional district, but I'm not certain. In any case, if you looked at it on a map, it looked like the weirdest thing in the world. And the opponents of this action said it looked like a mythical salamander, which was some sort of a noxious beast that was a cousin to a dragon. And they called this Jerry's Salamander. Well, that's an awful lot of words, and it became known as a gerrymander. Now, basically, the idea here is you're going to carve out a district so that you can make it safe for yourself, for your friends, or whatever, for whatever purpose you're creating this screwball district. And Wayne Dawkins, who was a black professor at Morgan State University in 2014, quipped that instead of voters choosing their politicians, a gerrymander allowed the politicians to choose their voters. And this is absolutely, unquestionably true. But let's look and see if the Democrats are crying about something that's real, or they're crying about, well, let's just call it crocodile tears. And when we look at what's going on, it started with Texas redistricting at the urging of President Trump. And in their redistricting, they probably wiped out five Democrat districts. And understandably, the Democrats screamed and they hollered and they went to court, and the courts told them, stuff it. This is political advantage. It's perfectly legal. You don't get to say anything about it. And the five new districts for Republicans showed up in Texas. California said, Oh, we got to do the same thing. And so they redistricted, and the Republicans, understandably, sued. And what they sued about was the idea that this was a racially organized gerrymander and was unlawful. The Supreme Court basically waved them away and said, forget about it. Then we have other states that have gone along, and there was a case called Louisiana v. Calais. And in the state of Louisiana, there was a black majority, a minority majority district created to elect probably a black Democrat. And it was done because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act said that they had to do it. Well, there was a suit brought that this was unconstitutional. Now let's back up a little bit and look at that. The case of importance was students for fair admissions versus Harvard. And that was several years ago. And in it, Chief Justice John Roberts made a point. He says the way to stop uh racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. People is people. Black is not a politically cognizable entity. That is, you can't do things based on what their skin color is. There might have been a reason for this back when the Voting Rights Act was passed, but the fact is it ain't legal now. And so students for fair admissions versus Harvard shut down racial considerations in admission at schools that take federal money. Now, curiously, it doesn't seem to have affected racial admissions much. The schools have played various games to make this happen, but the fact remains that that's the governing law. Well, Louisiana v. Calais was heard early this year. And three weeks after it was heard, the uh conference was held where it was very clear it was a 6-3 vote. The 6-3 was fixed in stone, and the three liberal Democrat women sat on their dissenting opinions, and they sat on them, and they sat on them, and they were hoping to make it wait until it was too late for anybody to act. Well, Supreme Court ultimately got the decision out, and there were other comments that came out that said, you guys just sat on it. You need to be actually do your job instead of trying to play politics with this. But the moment Louisiana versus Calais came out, Louisiana reverted back to the older uh map because it wasn't legal. And immediately following on the footsteps of Louisiana, Tennessee held a special session, and there was a black majority district based in Memphis. They got rid of it. They moved things around in a way that probably got rid of a Democrat seat. Now, the curious thing there was it was held by a white Democrat elected in a black majority district. Curious. It was a Democrat majority district, and they re-ran things. And it's very clear that this is not going to be overturned, just going to sit there. That's the way it is. Well, then we know that Texas got and started at Florida is redistricting. We're wiping out four Democrat seats in Florida. Indiana refused to do it. South Carolina has just refused to do it. And what you have is a number of rhinos who refuse to admit that politics is war. It just isn't played with guns most of the time. It is, as some have said, it's a blood sport. And what the Democrats have done is to scream, oh, you're taking away our con our representative, actually, our democracy. And you have to ask, whose democracy are we taking away? Well, it turns out we're taking away the Democrats' democracy, not the Americans' democracy, because first of all, we have a republic, not a democracy, but we elect our representatives democratically. And we are taking away something the Democrats have been doing for a long time. And they're saying, well, we've got to do this and that and the other. And they may be able to steal one or two seats somewhere else. Virginia was the big one. They rushed through an election to change the rules in Virginia so they could immediately redistrict. Well, the Virginia Supreme Court heard the case before the election, or I should say, during the election, and they said, we're going to wait until we see what happens, because if this thing fails in the election, we don't need to do anything. Well, it won in the election by three or four points. And the Supreme Court then heard the case on the merits. And they said, You violated the law. Your constitution says you've got to do things in a certain order. And you didn't follow the order, therefore, this whole election gets thrown out. And the Democrats, oh, you're throwing away the votes of three million people. No, the votes were never properly given because the election wasn't proper in the first place. It didn't follow the rules. Well, they immediately appealed it to the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court brushed them off. So it's over. Virginia doesn't get to redistrict and get its extra five seats. But the Democrats have now shown who they are that they will do anything they can for power, pure and simple. Now, I'm not going to go into all of the ballot stuff, that's for another time. But the fact is, they will cheat any way they can. And they're following the A.J. Foyt rule. If any of you remember, he was a race driver, won the Indy 500 three times. And his basic rule was it ain't cheating if you don't get caught. Well, they've been caught. And Abigail Spanberger, who managed to promise her way into getting elected in Virginia, said, no, we're not going to redistrict, and we're not going to do this. The instant she got in, she immediately pushed for redistricting. She immediately pushed for banning guns and proved that Democrats will do whatever they can to get what they want. And they don't give, well, pick your metaphor. They don't care about the law. They simply do not care. They are liars and cheats. And they will cheat as far as they can. Now, let's go back again. Because remember, Jerry's salamander was not the only one that followed. And if you look in New England, you have to look and say, okay, how many Republicans are there versus Democrats? And roughly speaking, there's 40 plus percent Republicans all through New England. And you have to ask, how many New England representatives in Congress are Republicans? The answer is zero. Why? New England has been fully gerrymandered. As a matter of fact, I asked Grok to look for me. And the question was, how many states have multiple congressional districts and not one Republican? So for example, you could have a small state that was all Democrat. And as it turns out, states with multiple congressional districts, and all Democrats, hundred percent Democrat representation in Congress, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Rhode Island. Okay. And California right now has 16% of its congressional representatives Republican. Before it redistricted, it's now going to go down to about 5%. Illinois, 18%, going to go down more. So what you have now is nothing new. The Democrats are screaming, Hakeem Jeffries, this will not stand. Abigail Spanberger, I told you, is going ignoring the will of three million Virginians. And in Tennessee, I told you about, they were screaming about you're taking away our black representation. No, we're taking away Democrat because the guy who's representing that black district is a white man. This is purely about politics. So as we look at all of the circumstances out there, redistricting has the potential to give Republicans 27 more seats. That's a big advantage. It will probably give us about 15 when all is said and done. And what's going on here is nothing new. And the Democrats have absolutely nothing to complain about because they set the example. Well, Republicans under Donald Trump are starting to wisen up. And we are going, enough is enough. If they're going to fight fire, you know, use a flamethrower. We're not going to hold up a shield. We're going to have a flamethrower of our own. And what really needs to happen is a constitutional amendment, or Congress could do it, but it's unlikely at present. You simply say we will have a rule that all congressional districts are compact. And you measure compactness by measuring the ratio of the perimeter of the district to the area of the district. That is, a square district will have a fairly low number. One of these screwball districts that is drawn in order to prevent the other party from getting something will have a radically different number. And you say that those districts now have to have all recognizable boundaries, which might be highways, rivers, etc. And you just say they're compact. Second, you say that no district may be apportioned on the basis of anything other than the whole number of voting age citizens residing therein. I think if we did that, we'd find, yeah, there are going to be a lot of squaling and gnashing of teeth. You're going to have a lot of Republicans lose seats, you're going to have a lot of Democrats lose seat. And when all of it shakes out, you're going to see the Republicans having a lot more seats in the House. And the Democrats aren't going to be able to do their evil. So this is where we go right now. So you're now prepared for the test? Get out and let's work on making things happen. Until next time, the message is what matters. I'm Dr. Ted Noel.