Racial Gerrymander Ban Will Long Reverberate
By J.R. Dunn
Louisiana v. Callais is one of the most consequential decisions of recent years. Like many of its kind, the actual implications haven’t yet sunk in. To say that they are both broad and profound is to understate to the point of depreciation. It’s possible, even likely, that this decision will become one of those, like Dred Scott or Roe, that is so epoch-making that using the full name isn’t necessary.
Louisiana v. Callais essentially bans redistricting on racial grounds. For nearly sixty years, the prevailing interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was that, to ensure racial parity in election results, certain districts had to be set aside to represent minorities alone. In practice, this meant black-majority voting districts. I know of no case where a district was created for Hispanics, Asians, or anybody else.
This enabled the Democrats to resort to gerrymandering, a term that nearly everyone has forgotten was intended as a pejorative. Voting districts were created “on behalf of blacks” that were in fact rotten boroughs, controlled by Democrats in perpetuity. This is one of those things, like fake Somalian day-care centers, that nobody ever mentioned and that we were all supposed to ignore, even though it represented blatant racism that undercuts both the language and spirit of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
For decades, the federal government has enforced this practice, with particular attention given to the states of the old Confederacy as being naturally more apt to transgress. That has now ended. The decision makes the practice illegal nationwide. Consequences are en route as we speak.
Louisiana v. Callais may well turn out to be one of those towering decisions that define an era and open up all kinds of possibilities.
First and foremost, the decision has changed the entire outlook toward the midterms. Until now, the GOP had been sinking into its customary pre-election gloom, fueled by the traditional midterm curse and the sorry record compiled by congressional RINOs over the past two years. This, despite Dem approval ratings sinking to 20 percent and many of their leading lights on the way to the courtroom, if not prison.
With the campaign season looming, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee immediately commenced redistricting. Tennessee completed the process in record time, with a new map voted in yesterday and immediately signed by Gov. Bill Lee, resulting in one new district.
Florida completed redistricting shortly before the decision came down, adding four seats for a total of five new GOP districts. Alabama and Mississippi will bring that total up to seven. If Louisiana and South Carolina move, which is likely, we can add another two, perhaps three.
Georgia could also act, but that’s unlikely under Brian Kemp, the RINO’s RINO, who would likely prefer to study the question for a year or two. No matter – an addition of 9-10 new seats would put the House well out of the Democrats’ reach.
Following Donald Trump laying his wrath upon the RINOs of Indiana, more opposition along those lines is unlikely. Blue states have threatened to start redistricting, but there are very few free seats left for them. Virginia’s redistricting is on hold now that the Supreme Court has ruled that it violates the state constitution, and that is unlikely to change before the election.
So what are the poor Dems to do? Resorting to their customary practice of lawsuits doesn’t seem to hold much promise. The Supreme Court has already beaten back one such attempt this week – a legal demand to recall the decision – and appears unlikely to revisit it. This being the top court, lower courts have nothing more to say. Congressional action is out of the question.
Which leaves violence, in the grand tradition of Tammany Hall and the Klan. Tennessee got a taste of this yesterday when the state house was mobbed by Antifa-type riffraff, who, with the cooperation of state Democrats, attempted to disrupt the redistricting vote by milling around the floor, shouting slogans, and setting off hand-held alarms and sirens.
Things are likely to get worse. We may well see a rerun of summer 2020 this year, with select cities facing the Antifa treatment. The problem with this is that mob violence can be expected only in blue cities. Even the Democrats must be aware that causing havoc in their own districts would be counterproductive, and the Antifa mob will not be eager to return to a red or purple city after the lesson they were taught at Kenosha.
Otherwise, there’s the possibility of a reversion to 19th-century electoral politics, when organized gangs such as the Plug-uglies and the Dead Rabbits alternately stormed or defended polling places to chase away rival voters and party officials, at times going so far as to seize the ballot boxes.
The final possibility is assassination. Here, Donald Trump has achieved a record that he probably doesn’t care to claim. I count five attempts, including the Iranian conspiracies that went nowhere. We witnessed another one this past week that may well have been aimed at JD Vance.
So why not lower the sights a bit and take down a few members of Congress? The Dems have their choice of maniacs among Antifa and the trannies. Historically, they’re no strangers to the method either. Recall the Alexandria baseball diamond shooting that nearly took the life of Steve Scalise.
What’s that? The Democrats wouldn’t dare? Really? Are you sure?
The one thing we can be certain of is that none of it will affect the outcome of the elections. It’s nothing more than histrionics, which the Democrats have long been known for. In fact, it’s about all they’re known for these days.
Beyond 2026, the effects of Louisiana v. Callais will continue, and perhaps even deepen. Its influence on the 2028 presidential election will be subtle but significant, if not decisive. Blacks formerly bound on the Democrat plantation under the control of corrupt trash like Alcee Hastings and Maxine Waters will have an opportunity to live like normal Americans under benign and honest GOP representatives (granted that we can find enough of those to go around).
Redistricting will give black voters a choice and open the eyes of the more naïve and ill-informed to the fact that Republicans are not the howling, white-hooded goblins that the media and the Dems have depicted. At the same time, it will force GOP politicians to engage with black constituents, something many of them have managed to avoid for several generations now. The result could well be a much calmer, more rational, and healthier political climate.
We may well see a rerun of summer 2020 this year, with select cities facing the Antifa treatment. Even Democrats must be aware that causing havoc in their own districts would be counterproductive. The Antifa mob will not be eager to return to a red or purple city after the lesson they were taught at Kenosha.
Over the longer term, the decision will help undermine Democrat control of the so-called “blue states.” The Democrat slogan here is a variant of that of the old Soviet Union: what’s ours is ours, what’s yours will be ours. It was taken for granted among totally nonpartisan commentators and political scientists that states, regions, and cities tended to shift toward the blue and that, once they turned blue, they remained blue forever.
Racialized voting districts were one of the key elements of Democrat control. Louisiana v. Callais has ended this as well, or at least triggered the process.
Granted, this involves demanding that RINOs man up, which may be too much to ask. But as the MAGA movement matures and more of its participants begin serving in state and federal offices, we’ll see more open-minded and less tradition-bound representatives, many of whom will be eager to overthrow the status quo.
Beyond all this will come other developments that can’t yet be foreseen. Hidden in futurity as they are, it’s impossible to say which way they will go. But it’s unlikely that they will be favorable to the Democrats. History has caught up at last to the Donks. It’s not a good year to be a Democrat.
Louisiana v. Callais may well turn out to be one of those towering decisions that define an era and open up all kinds of possibilities. We should be grateful to the Founders for their wisdom in establishing the self-correcting mechanism of the separation of powers in the first place, to John Marshall for his foresight in positioning the Supreme Court as the central pillar of our system, and even muster up a few words of praise for John Roberts, who has let us down so much and so often in recent years, for seeing his way to supporting this critical decision. (I believe that Roberts was jolted off the fence by the open threats of court packing from Hakeem Jeffries et al.) More evidence that a real change is sweeping across the American political landscape.
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