David Brooks: There Used To Be Some “Shame” In Gerrymandering, Now It’s Just Nakedly Partisan
PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including Israel’s plans to exert more control over Gaza have been criticized by global leaders but the Trump administration’s response has been muted, the Texas redistricting battle and Trump’s makeover of the White House.
GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Want to shift our focus now to domestic politics and the redistricting fight. You have got more than 50 Texas Democratic legislators who left that state to block a GOP effort to redraw congressional maps. Governor Abbott said that they won’t be able to wait out this redistricting push. And this is escalated to the FBI agreeing to help chase down the quorum-breaking Democrats. David, at the center of this, as you well know, is this effort to stall this mid-decade redistricting plan aimed at giving Republicans five additional seats in Congress. Democrats say this amounts to cheating. What do you make of this effort by Democrats to flee the state? Is this a bold defense of democratic rights or is this a just a real provocative escalation? DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, the fleeing is just a shtick they have done before and hasn’t actually worked too well in the past. The thing here is the corrosion of democracy. And this is how slow it is. And maybe this is why the streets aren’t erupting in America, because there’s always been gerrymandering, but usually there were some sense of shame. Like, we’re not going to totally ring the game completely. And so even in Texas there were Democratic seats. Even in California there were Republican seats. And – but now the shame is gone. And so what we’re seeing is people just becoming nakedly partisan. And it’s people deciding – not even pretending we’re going to put democracy about party. We’re going to put party above everything. And that is what’s happening and I guess about to happen in California as well. And so it’s funny how much of our system required some sense of you would feel ashamed of betraying your democracy. You would have thought they would have rigged all the seats already, so there’d be no seats to get through redistricting. But there was some sense of shame. But now it’s gone. And when you destroy the norms, that people feel responsible to something higher than party, when you destroy that norm, it turns out there’s still a lot left to destroy.
