Unilateral disarmament is the worst kind

As Republicans pass one ultra-aggressive partisan and racial gerrymander after another, too many Democrats show that they’re not wartime consiglieres, and Maryland Dems decided to protect an MAGA seditionist:

In the late night hours following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris found himself in the middle of a fight.

The hard-right member, and the only Republican in Maryland’s delegation, had spoken out against certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes during a debate on the House floor. Later that night, Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb said in a speech that the Republican objectors should’ve been “ashamed” of their “lies,” especially after what they had seen earlier in the day. A shouting match, and then a confrontation in the aisle between the two sides, ensued, prompting the deputy sergeant-at-arms to get in the middle and break things up. The whole thing was defused before coming to blows, but Harris would later vote with 137 of his House Republican colleagues to uphold the objection. A couple of weeks later, after new security measures had been put in place at the Capitol, Harris was caught by security carrying a gun outside of the House floor.

This is a member of Congress whom Maryland Democrats, in complete control over their redistricting process given their state legislative supermajorities, had a chance to draw into oblivion ahead of the next election cycle. In doing so, they could not only have gotten rid of a representative Democrats consider one of the worst of the worst, but they could’ve helped the national Democratic Party counteract Republicans’ national redistricting advantage ahead of the 2022 midterms. Democrats have only a few states where they can play offense in redistricting, and Maryland is one of them.

And yet. When Maryland Democrats sat down to draw a new map, one that could have gone from a 7–1 Democratic advantage to an easy 8–0 shutout, they flinched. The map that the state’s General Assembly passed this week would make Harris’ district more competitive, but FiveThirtyEight still rates it as Republican-leaning, as does the Cook Political Report.

Gerrymandering is an extremely bad practice. It should have been ruled justiciable and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and it should be banned by Congress. But in the absence of a national rule allowing Republicans to maximally gerrymander while not responding in kind makes the democratic deficit much larger.