The Democrat Party's plan for maintaining control of Congress in the 2022 midterms rests more on the courts than the ballot box.
UPDATE: Democrats' early hopes for redistricting gains founder amid string of legal reversals
By The World Tribune, February 6, 2022
Republicans have the momentum to overturn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s five-seat majority in the House, where 29 Democrats have announced they are not running for re-election.
But Democrats have the "sue to blue" strategy, which was formulated by Obama era Attorney General Eric Holder and has already proven effective.
Approximately 75 congressional districts nationwide will be finalized in courtrooms in the coming months, Politico reported.
If Democrats are indeed able to win the lion's share of those court-drawn districts and keep the majority in Congress, much of the credit will go to Holder and his National Democratic Redistricting Committee, analysts say.
"The Left is at full pitch on its voting 'reform' campaign—accusing Republican states of 'rigging' elections with laws to suppress the minority vote," Kimberly Stassel wrote for the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 3 "They insist Democrats’ proposed federal takeover of state elections is the only thing that will save the country, the Constitution, justice and the cosmos. They claim the stakes are so high that it is necessary to blow up the Senate filibuster and strip all 50 states of their longtime power to set election rules. They also declare anyone who isn’t on board a racist."
Ohio and Missouri GOP are Latest Republican-Led States to help Dems on Redistricting
As the Obama administration attorney general in 2016, Holder launched the National Democratic Redistricting Committee with the aim of stripping Republicans legislatures of the ability to draw districts, handing the job to “nonpartisan” commissions or courts.
Democrats lost some 1,000 down-ballot seats during the tenure of President Barack Obama, "handing the GOP a distinct advantage in the 2010 redistricting cycle," Strassel noted. "It was a bitter pill, and Holder was tasked with developing an antidote. He mounted an effort to recapture state legislatures, but his bigger contribution was in litigation and in reframing the debate. He cloaked his party’s brass-knuckle effort as a fight for truth, racial justice and the American way. GOP redistricting: racist, undemocratic, rigged. Democratic redistricting: goodness, light, frolicking puppies."
Republicans, in theory, "should also be crushing the 2020 redistricting process," Strassel added. "Voters over the past decade fled blue states, and Democrats failed to break the GOP’s state dominance. Instead, with this week’s completion of New York’s redistricting map, Mr. Holder’s long 'justice' con proved a stunning success. Despite all the GOP’s structural advantages, Democrats may be headed into this year’s midterms on even footing, or even with a slight leg up."
Supreme Court Ruling on Alabama Voting Maps could End Dems' Charade to Gain Advantage!
Holder's "sue to blue" strategy "has cleared the field for blue states to gerrymander the bejeesus out of their maps. New York’s map (which even the senior counsel at the left-leaning Brennan Center’s Democracy Project called a 'master class' in gerrymandering) will likely allow Democrats to seize four to five of the GOP’s current eight seats. Illinois snatched another two. Oregon Democrats created a new district and promptly handed it to themselves. Add partisan advantages in California, Maryland and New Jersey. And the courts in these blue states are so relentlessly partisan, Democrats face no risk of a judge striking down their efforts," Strassel wrote.
Big Media have taken notice of how “weirdly well” Democrats are performing in nationwide redistricting battles. “[A]ccording to at least one analyst, there is actually an outside chance that the final map will be tilted, ever so slightly, in the Democrats’ favor,” the New York Magazine reported in December.
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