First of all, don't make the mistake of assuming that my disappointment and disdain over how conservatives have been behaving since 2008 is about being a Democrat. Their behaviors have been far worse than anything liberals exhibited under the Bush Administration; and this behavior exponentially worsened to the point where they found themselves more than comfortable with a man like Donald Trump. The fact that conservatives have pushed themselves so far to the right that most of the spectrum, to include other Republicans ("rinos"), is now simply "the left," should send off alarms.
Second, you are right about California's distant past, but it demonstrates the system working, where a political Party may not get away with it. This opinionated article reveals only part of the story, avoids the issue, and draws a bad conclusion for it:
1980: Thirty-eight years ago, Democrats did orchestrate a gerrymandering plan that was more than obvious. For this reason, Republicans successfully placed a veto referendum on the primary ballot and California voters overwhelmingly rejected it in 1982. However, the California Supreme Court justices were majority appointed by Democrat Jerry Brown and they ordered the rejected districts to be used because only it was "practicable." Democrats won 60% of the congressional seats. Democrats still lost the statewide elections and lost the governorship to a Republican (Pete Wilson). However, the outgoing Democrat used his remaining hours in office to sign the rejected redistricting plan into law.
1990: Twenty-eight years ago, the new Republican governor (Wilson) vetoed that redistricting plan based on the new 1990 census. It was obviously partisan as hell anyway and he rightfully argued that it violated the federal Voting Rights Act. Only one of Brown's chosen Supreme Court justices remained the rest had been removed in recall elections. Governor Wilson asked and the California Supreme Court agreed to appoint special masters to perform the redistricting.
2000: Eighteen years ago, after the 2000 year census, the legislature was obliged to set new district boundaries. The Republican and Democratic parties came to an agreement to gerrymander the boundaries. It was mutually decided that the status quo in terms of balance of power would be preserved. With this goal, districts were assigned to voters in such a way that they were dominated by one or the other party, with few districts that could be considered competitive. In only a few cases did this require extremely convoluted boundaries.
Together, as they square off, both Parties have been back and forth with the California population since 2000. Some of the problem is that the Californian population is politically widespread and cannot be neatly placed into representative districts. Hence, the crap show in 1982. But before 2000, it was about correcting what Democrats did in 1982, which did include gross gerrymandering and court packing.
But this distant past is not the widespread GOP national problem that we have today and it actually fits nicely into my narrative about how far out in right-field conservatives have traveled. The author concludes with "as the worm turns." But this is not the same thing at all and this is definitely a new playbook. In 1982, voters rejected what the Democratic Party pulled. Before 1990, voters rejected all but one of those political judges. This is not today's world. Today we are experiencing a GOP-driven extremist world where zero-sum is all that matters. Voters today are perfectly fine with the GOP racially gerrymandering, stacking courts, slashing polling places, racist voter ID laws, and stacking gubernatorial Democrat cabinets with their own agents. We have seen this in North Carolina, Wisconsin,
Georgia,
North Dakota, and
Indiana.
The system is no longer working because voters don't want it to. "Whatever it takes," right? I guess we are back to my disappointment and disdain here.
