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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced a plan to end democracy to save democracy. Democracy, as everyone who watches CNN knows, is in a precarious state and urgently needs to be saved by protecting it from those who want to destroy it for the wrong reasons by destroying it for the right reasons. And the right reason is ending electoral democracy.
In that noble democratic spirit, California, where Republicans are occasionally allowed out in public, just not in the streets of major cities, announced plans to reduce the number of its 52 congressional seats that Republicans are allowed to hold in the state from 9 to 3.
California has 5.7 million registered Republicans to 10.3 million registered Democrats (and another nearly 7 million people who refuse to choose a political party despite the best efforts of the DMV, the Department of Cannabis Control and Jimmy Kimmel Live!) and Trump won 38% of the vote there which means that statistically Republicans ought to have more seats than that even if all they did was run a random masked guy named Bob in every single election.
Instead, California has state primaries, including Senate races, in which Democrats compete against other Democrats, as if the state were run by Communist China (instead of merely being used as a model and stash house by a succession of Democrat governors.)
How do California Democrats, who make up 45% of registered voters, control 82% of the congressional seats and all of the state government? Fraud, the use of taxpayer-funded community groups for political organizing to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and also massive gerrymandering of a kind that would have made any machine Democrat from a century ago weep tears of shame and then hide out in a cemetery to consult with his voters.
Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to take the Democrats from controlling a mere 82% of congressional seats to controlling 94% of congressional seats. To put that into context, this is a more extreme domination by an authoritarian ruling party than in Communist China. In the National People’s Congress, only 86% of the delegates belong to the Chinese Communist Party (while the others, like members of the DSA and the WFP in America, belong to organizations controlled by the Communist Party). Even Vladimir Putin settled for 88% of the vote.
Newsom looked at China and Russia, and decided that he could do better and go for 94%.
There are minor technical issues with Newsom’s plan: it’s unconstitutional, illegal and makes California look like Russia with more bleached blondes. In 2008, and a last gasp of actual democracy, a majority of Californians voted in favor of Proposition 11, to add a constitutional amendment creating an independent commission to control redistricting. In 2010, 59.5% of voters voted to have that commission set congressional districts. The commission, which currently includes Isra Ahmad, formerly of the Division of Equity & Social Justice on the ‘independent’ side, and Sara Sadhwani of CHIRLA, the group linked to the recent illegal alien riots, on the Democrat side, is a farce. But at least it’s a constitutional farce.
Unsatisfied with how gerrymandered the not especially independent commission already made California, Gov. Newsom would like to sideline even the pretense of any kind of legal system and seize control over redistricting to eliminate the 38% of the state’s voters who backed Trump (electorally for now, perhaps more definitively down the road) by either asking voters to sideline the commission (previous Dem efforts to do that have failed) or by simply ignoring the commission on the theory that the threat to democracy is too grave to allow for democracy.
“We’re in a different moment right now. Texas Republicans are rigging the game for 2026. We’re not going to play by the same old rules if it means risking democracy,” Gov. Newsom declared.
The rules being the rule of law.
Talk of Republicans gerrymandering Texas to create more Republican seats serves as the pretext, but Texas has 25 Republican seats and 12 Democrat seats. If Republican redistricting plans go through, then Democrats would have as many seats in Texas as Republicans do in California. Newsom isn’t protesting unfairness, he’s protesting the idea of Democrats in Texas being treated the way that Republicans are in California. And his form of protest is to double down on gerrymandering, which he deplores in Texas, but celebrates in California.
When Republicans gerrymander, it threatens democracy, but when Democrats gerrymander, they’re saving democracy. This makes sense if you understand democracy, not as one man, woman or xer with one vote, but Democrats winning every election and controlling everything.
It’s easy to tell whether Texas or California is more (small d) democratic by the behavior of their minority parties. Democrats have a longtime project for flipping Texas while Republicans have given up on flipping California. Democrats clearly believe there’s more democracy in Texas than Republicans believe that there is in California. Democracy doesn’t need saving in Texas, but it long ago signed a DNR form and made out its last will and testament in California.
And not just California.
“States where Democrats would have complete control over any redistricting, such as Illinois and Maryland, are already gerrymandered heavily in their favor. Squeezing more Democratic seats out of those states would be a challenge,” the New York Times admitted.
“At this moment, it seems very clear that self defense is something we have to put as a priority,” House Majority Leader David Moon warned, threatening to open redistricting to kill the single Republican seat left in Maryland.
In Maryland, where Trump won 34% of the vote, there are eight congressional seats with just one of them held by a Republican for 87% Democrat control. Moon is proposing 100% one party control.for numbers in line with Kim Jong Un’s numbers over in Moon’s neighboring North Korea
In Illinois, where Trump won 43% of the vote, there are 14 Democrats and only 3 Republicans for 82% control by the ruling party.
Even if Texas were to go ahead with its plan, it would be at 78% Republican control.
But is Texas really gerrymandering or undoing gerrymanders inflicted by partisan implementation of the Voting Rights Act and the creation of majority-minority Democrat ‘coalition’ districts? The erosion of VRA enforced gerrymandering has made it more possible to not base districts on the skin color of the people living in them. And while gerrymandering is corrupt, racial gerrymandering combines racism and corruption for something even more toxic.
The Democrats aren’t protesting gerrymandering in Texas, they’re protecting it, even while threatening to gerrymander their states harder until there’s nothing left except Democrats.
“Never bring a knife to a gunfight,” Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey threatened, as the slimy former Goldman Sachs tycoon tried to sound like a movie mobster. “We’re from Jersey, baby, and we won’t be laying down.”
Trump won 46% of the vote in New Jersey. The state’s congressional delegation has 9 Democrats and 3 Republicans even though there are 1.6 million registered Republicans to 2.3 million registered Democrats along with 2.5 million unaffiliated voters.
When 36% of the voters control 75% of the seats, the only place Murphy should be lying down (and should have been in all along) is the same place the mobsters he’s initiating were sent to.
Even the media has been forced to admit that the Democrat threats to super-gerrymander their states if Texas redistricts are hollow because they’re already as gerrymandered as they can go. The only way to push their one-party control even further is by, as Newsom is proposing to do, bypassing constitutional and legal blocks to seize total control and create one-party states.
That would end democracy, but sometimes you have to destroy democracy to save democracy..