The new redistricted Congressional map proposed by the Democrats. Illinois loses one seat in the House and the Democrat map attempts to have the GOP lose two seats in the House and the Democrats gain one. If this is approved by the Democrat controlled legislature and signed by the Democrat governor, a lead pipe certainty, it will be subject to court challenge. I actually think the Democrats have overreached themselves. If 2022 is a bad year for the Democrats I could see instead of a 14-3 split a 10-7 split. Gerrymandering is a black art, and if the dominant party gets too piggish, unpleasant surprises can occur in relatively close districts set up to get the maximum seats possible instead of showing restraint and having fewer, but safer, seats for the party holding the whip hand. A bad economy could place downstate and the suburbs in the hands of the GOP at the polls. We shall see.
Demomander
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“Gerrymandering is a black art, and if the dominant party gets too piggish…”
Yes! I don’t know why nobody ever pays attention to this. It’s like a Jenga game. Those first few moves, you can go higher without risking instability, but after a certain point you’re just begging for a pile of blocks.
My district in South Eastern Massachusetts (dark yellow) extends a tendril into Boston for just enough “votes” to keep it safely 51% Democrat.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Congressional_Districts_in_Massachusetts,_since_2013.tif
The Cape is where old wealth liberals retire so that’s safe.
Alas, it would take a major gerrymander to get Lake County in a Republican district. Rather than districts, why not assign congressmen to represent random SSN’s. Couldn’t be worse.
Something eerily similar going on here. Small, relatively conservative, rural communities are being forcibly married to large, mostly left-leaning coastal towns and cities. In one case, the umbilical stretches thinly some 50 miles inland from the coast. Nothing to see here…