Fall Autumn Moon
Politics is a blood sport. At almost every level. Even in classrooms. I love it, too, but I’ve stepped away this year, maybe for good, maybe not.
(Elbridge Gerry, vice president in James Madison’s second term)
This comes up because of this fascinating article in the Atlantic: The League of Dangerous Mapmakers. The dangerous mapmakers are the backroom boys (all the ones in this article were men) who help draw and redraw congregational districts after each census. They’re seeking partisan advantage, safe seats for Republicans or Democrats, or failing that, turning a former safe seat into a swing seat. They also try to break blocks of the other parties most likely supporters by shifting neighborhoods here and there.
This is all called gerrymandering and I learned, for the first time in this article. the source of the term. James Madison, the country’s fourth president, had, in his second term, a vice-president named Elbridge Gerry. He was the governor of Massachusetts in 1812 when partisans created a Boston district that looked like a salamander. (picture) It was an obvious grab for power and ever since this black art has had a mixed name, one part politician and one part amphibian.
The author of this article makes a cogent argument that gerrymandering, kicked up a notch and engaged ruthlessly, is behind the hyperpartisan nature of congress.
His reasoning is this: The intention of gerrymandering is to create safe seats. A safe seat means a Republic or a Democrat can expect to win every time short of some unusual political year. In those circumstances elections are not won at the ballot box, but in party primaries. Party primaries have a much smaller number of voters. Those who do vote are most often people with a particular ideological knife they wish to sharpen with their district as grindstone.
The impact of this pushing of races out of general elections and into the primaries means that votes in congress are held to a more extreme test. This is why there are so many tea party congresspeople now and why their votes and their caucuses have little interest in negotiating.
Negotiating is the heart of the political process and these gerrymandered districts, to the degree they are dominant, render negotiations impossible. Thus, the fiscal cliff. The constant drawing of lines in the sand.
What to do? Uncertain. But it’s something all voters should greet with suspicion.
Does it happen here in Minnesota? Well, let’s look at the Minnesota 6th district. My district. Here’s the map. I’ve put it on its side so you can compare it to the original, salamander district. Pretty close, eh?
I don’t know the politics of the Boston district, but I’m willing to bet that, even in 1812, their demographic rationales were similar to those that form the Minnesota 6th, 200 years later. Those demographics are, more of our voters in these counties or cities than there are of yours.
The Minnesota 6th district was drawn to create a Republican safe seat by including metro suburban counties and attaching them, through a long neck, to Stearns county, filled with German Catholics. German Catholics vote a straight ticket based on a single issue: abortion and they are agin’ it.
Thus, not only does a Democrat have to be able to draw votes in heavily Republican metro suburban counties, but they also have to be pro-life, a rare to so-far non-existent breed of Democrat.
Does it all matter? Well, I’ve had the flakiest, most public, odd, big-haired congressional representative possible since 2007. Her politics are about as far from mine as it is possible to be, yet she represents me in each vote before the House of Representatives. It matters.
