As I mentioned last week, I am not totally convinced by the theory that adding a citizenship question to the Census would be a clear win for the Republicans. So if today's Supreme Court decisions had each gone the other way, I would be pretty happy. Unfortunately, that's not how they went.
The Court's decision to end any challenge of congressional districts on the basis of hyper-partisanship is going to be a disaster that will erode democracy. But I also think that if current demographic trends continue, Republicans are going to have a harder and harder time holding on to state houses, no matter how lopsided the lines are drawn. So it might not be long before hyper-partisan redistricting becomes something more available to Democrats than Republicans. It will be fun to watch the youngish conservatives Justices, like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, suddenly change their tune if the tables turn after 2030.
The silver lining is these two are the last two decisions of the term. The Supreme Court will be in recess until October, and for the first few months they will mostly just be deciding what cases to take and hearing arguments from cases they already decided to hear. So we won't have any more terrible decisions for probably at least six months or so. And by that time any awful decision will be close enough to the election to give a boost of outrage to the liberal electorate. Of course, the Justices know that. So either they will delay announcing their most monstrous decisions until the October 2020 term or they will decided to forge ahead with their monstrousness and at least we get the boost of outrage.
The Court's decision to end any challenge of congressional districts on the basis of hyper-partisanship is going to be a disaster that will erode democracy. But I also think that if current demographic trends continue, Republicans are going to have a harder and harder time holding on to state houses, no matter how lopsided the lines are drawn. So it might not be long before hyper-partisan redistricting becomes something more available to Democrats than Republicans. It will be fun to watch the youngish conservatives Justices, like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, suddenly change their tune if the tables turn after 2030.
The silver lining is these two are the last two decisions of the term. The Supreme Court will be in recess until October, and for the first few months they will mostly just be deciding what cases to take and hearing arguments from cases they already decided to hear. So we won't have any more terrible decisions for probably at least six months or so. And by that time any awful decision will be close enough to the election to give a boost of outrage to the liberal electorate. Of course, the Justices know that. So either they will delay announcing their most monstrous decisions until the October 2020 term or they will decided to forge ahead with their monstrousness and at least we get the boost of outrage.
