Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is apparently determined to demonstrate that he is capable of being as stupid as the Democratic Governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger. The policy question is exactly the same and each has decided to throw reason to the winds in order to appease their party’s fanatics. They are now cheerleaders for gerrymandering, a system in which politicians choose their voters, not the other way around.
In 2024, Florida’s Democrats captured 43% of the vote with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. They also held 11 of Florida’s 27 House seats, or 41% of the total. Currently they hold 29%. And now, compliments of Mr DeSantis’s new maps, the Republicans are poised to bring Democratic seats down to 14% of the delegation. Lest we forget that while Florida has been trending red recently, Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012.
And for what are the Republicans gaming the system? To potentially, and I emphasize potentially, gain maybe 4 or 5 seats. Which they may very well lose if there is a blue wave. And if history is any guide, the prospect of a blue wave seems to be gaining speed daily.
This is no way to run an airline. The most fanatic candidates tend to chosen by fanatic primary voters who are least likely to talk to “the other side”. Or to quote John Stuart Mill on the subject, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
In a word what we wind up with is an electorate that is even more ignorant, more set in its ways and less likely to consider its own opinions than it was before. Hardly a recipe for success. But a wonderful recipe for marketing outrage to the gullible.
Maybe, just maybe, the parties should try talking to voters and try appealing to them instead of stoking outrage. They might be pleasantly surprised. Then again they may not be. But at least we might avoid the nonsense we are subjected to daily.
JFB
