Ten Years
Yesterday, the thought struck me that we are due for a new census in 2010—which in turn means that the 2008 vote will determine who gets to draw the boundaries for congressional districts. The timing of the census might well magnify the results of 2008, spreading its effect over a decade.
Gerrymanders are a permanent fixture of our political map, embraced with equal enthusiasm by both parties. One might expect more complaint, but it’s the incumbents who get to draw the lines, and it’s never in the incumbents’ interest to dispense with gerrymanders altogether, so they remain, even if specific districts get obliterated with the decennial taking of the census. Naturally, the districts are redrawn to the benefit of the sitting politicians first, and to the benefit of their party colleagues second, so those in power tend to remain there, largely immune to actual shifts in voter sentiment. Only with sudden, broad upsets in the political landscape do the districts get shaken up enough to alter party dominance, at which point the new party has a chance to award itself semi-permanent seats.
We may be undergoing such a shift right now. Maybe. It’s hard to tell before November just how far the widespread disgust with Bush and company will drag down Republicans generally. Even now, polls place McCain about even with Obama in the electoral college, though that may change abruptly if they continue to exhibit the same levels of charisma they have to date, and as critical attention is finally directed towards McCain in the wake of the prolonged Democratic primary. Many new voters signed up this year, whose voting is naturally hard to predict, and so lie beneath the polls’ radar—but those new voters are overwhelmingly fruits of Obama’s get-out-the-vote primary drive, so a huge reversal at the national level is entirely possible. Obama may prove to have enormous coat-tails.
But will such a reversal affect the Congressional districts, and with them, the long-term balance of power, stretching the anger felt in 2008 all the way to 2018, or even beyond? Although Congress itself might see a dramatic move toward the Democrats, it is not Congress which outlines the congressional districts. State legislatures do that. And I have strong doubts over just how far the backlash will extend.
It’s easy to blame the ills of the nation on the president, even if he isn’t responsible—which the current president very definitely is. It’s harder to blame a senator or representative; they make their decisions by committee, and besides, every time you pick a new one, your state loses seniority and prestige, and with them power to bring home the pork. Blaming state senator Joe Blow for the sins committed in Washington is a bit of a stretch, even when he supports those decisions in word and party activity.
Whether the particular sea change of a census-driven petrifaction of congressional power ultimately comes down to how much the enthusiastic new voters were driven by anger at the Republicans, and how much by infatuation with Obama himself. The former is likely to cause people who would otherwise remain inert to flick every (D) switch down the line, out of simple, uninformed spite. The latter is more likely to make voters think about their choice—or, if not, simply leave the column blank.
As much as I like the non-confrontational tone Obama has brought to his campaign, and the straight talk that puts McCain’s own slogan to shame, I find myself hoping, in part, that voters are less infatuated with him than very, very angry at the Republican machine.