Ought Californians Cast Their Ballots to Redistrict and Fight Texas's Fire with Fire?

What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial congressional authority, has turned into a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; Trump, in recent months, has asserted additional of that control for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending seems to have mostly been stripped from Congress too; now, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, a great deal of the power to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the executive, with the White House claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all bills must currently be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, huge recurring essential comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when those fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many people are aware. At present, the federal government has been closed for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the presidency keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a majority in a body that has mostly abolished itself?

And yet Proposition 50, California’s ballot measure on district boundaries that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of progressives across the country. In part, it is a delayed reaction to developments occurring in other states: Republican-controlled states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while big blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan redistricting panels, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by Democrats, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly designed as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which implemented maps that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state initiative seems probable to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters react with fear and anger to Trump’s autocratic centralization of authority and seek ways to restrain his worst tendencies. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with blue states’ efforts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which red states do even more to design their districts so as to eliminate any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly democratic: it means, necessarily, that the influence of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is valuable considering each of these objections on their own terms. The first argument, that Prop 50 will spur the right to alter their own districts in response, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be compelled to act in antidemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to change boundaries that guarantee permanent positions for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a sort of sad wish for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be unappealing to our values, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, rather than the other way around; it is negative that elections are made noncompetitive. That these measures have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s control and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how much we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, precisely, that Prop 50’s additional five Democratic representatives will be sent to the capital to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a member of a institution with the authority to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to force members of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a news outlet writer