David Brooks: Gerrymandering Districts By Race Created Fewer And Fewer Swing Districts
PBS NEWSHOUR: David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including a consequential Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.
AMNA NAWAZ, PBS NEWSHOUR: And I’m going to ask you about another big story this week that deserves way more attention in time that we can give it right now, but the Supreme Court decision that prompted headlines like this, USA Today saying “The Supreme Court sides against Black voters in a blow to the landmark civil rights law.” Politico said “The Voting Rights Act is now a dead letter.” Reuters said “The U.S. Supreme Court under Roberts takes a wrecking ball to the Voting Rights Act.” David, as you know, this is a 6-3 decision along partisan lines. It’s about a Louisiana map, right, that created a second Black — majority-Black congressional district. And there’s now been a series of rulings that have weakened the VRA over time. What does all this mean? DAVID BROOKS, THE ATLANTIC: I wasn’t a fan of the original gerrymandering rules that were set up mostly in the early ’90s. And they did the noble thing of increasing Black representation in the House, but they did it by cramming all the Democrats into one little district so there would be more Republicans. And so what happened is, there were a rise of Black members. But you also see Republican majorities. And that was the deal they cut with each other. And I thought it was not a deal that was good for democracy, because it created fewer and fewer swing districts. That era looks like the pinnacle of Periclean democracy compared to where we are today. Now we have all seen what’s happened in Texas and California and places like that. But this will turn that over the next several years into super-drive. And so we’re looking at like 2030, when the census comes around again, we will have marginally barely any swing districts in America. And that would mean voters have barely any opportunity to throw one party out or another for bad behavior. It also means we will be stuck for the foreseeable future with an evenly divided House. And all those things are terrible for democracy. And it’s going to be up to some post-Trump president to say, this is a national problem. We’re going to solve it all at once with a coalition, obviously, of the states. And we’re going to redraw these maps. JONATHAN CAPEHART, MS NOW: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is what killed Jim Crow. The VRA is only 61 years old. When it was passed and became law, it was the first time America truly was a democracy, meaning that the words in the Constitution equally applied to all of its citizens, including African Americans, by giving them the right to vote, 61 years. I am 58 years old. My mother is 84. So my mother is older than true American democracy. And so for those justices in the majority to say that, oh, well racism is over in voting and we don’t need this anymore, I keep thinking about what Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent in the Shelby v. Holder case, which invalidated Section 5, the preclearance portion. And she wrote: “Throwing out preclearance, when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes, is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” And so for Justice Alito to focus on the elections of 2008 and 2012, when there was a Black man on the ballot, to say that racial disparities are no longer a problem, and then ignoring that Shelby in 2013 led to just a rush of changes in voting laws in the states, is to ignore reality and to ignore history and to drag us back to a time when America was not America.
