Susie Madrak already posted about how progressive Democrat Aftyn Behn’s double-digit overperformance in Tuesday’s special election probably frightened the s**t out of Republicans across the country. That’s not counting the fact that Behn says she plans to run again in the upcoming midterms.
Rep. Jamie Raskin brought up another way Behn’s electoral loss was probably a bigger loss for Republicans. She likely threw their big gerrymandering plot into disarray, if not stopped it altogether.
“Unless you’ve got a district that's up 15, 20, 25 points, you're not going to be interested” in gerrymandering it,” Raskin said on MS Now Tuesday night.
That’s because, as host Lawrence O’Donnell further explained, you have to take Republican voters out of a very safe Republican district and redistribute them so that they can swing another district. Those Republicans representing districts won by 18, 22 or 12 points are told, O’Donnell said, “You don't need to win by 12, you can win by eight, you can win by seven. It'll be fine. We're going to shave off 3 or 4% of your Republican vote from your district and move it over here.”
But now, with Behn having turned a 22+ district into a 9+ point one, Republicans will be a whole lot less eager to shave points off their own districts.
How delicious it would be to watch the Trump gerrymandering plan fizzle out or, better yet, totally backfire!
