As we all know by now, the Democratic path to recapturing the House of Representatives is steep. According to Daily Kos Elections' House ratings for 2014, Democrats will have to take all Tossup seats, all seats that currently Lean Republican and at least five seats that are currently estimated as Likely Republican. This is far from an easy task and would require a Democratic wave scenario that could only have been possible if the poll numbers from just after the shutdown, before the Obamacare rollout started, had stayed as they were until the midterm elections. This will not happen, but we are allowed to dream, aren't we?
There are many reasons for why reinstalling Nancy Pelosi as Speaker is such a daunting task, including strong incumbents and geography, but most importantly, many states have been subjected to Republican legislatures making gerrymandering into an art. One of the most egregious examples are, of course, Pennsylvania. Do you see the tail stretching up from the Pittsburgh-based 14th absorbing Democrats from the now-fallen Democratic Congressmen Altmire and Critz in the 12th? The raised arm of Cruella de Vil taking in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the 17th? The whale-formed 16th, designed to combine Republican Lancaster County with enough Democratic turf in the Philadelphia suburbs to shore up the 7th, which in itself is a spectacular Rorschach Blot from the deepest pits of Rep. Pat Meehan's navel? Those are all the work of crafty, competent and aggressive Republican map-makers wanting to ensure a Republican delegation staying in place and keeping John Boehner as third in the line of succession to the Presidency. Today, only 5 of the 18 PA Representatives are Democrats, in a state that the Democrats haven't lost since Mike Dukakis went up against George H. W. Bush in 1988. And there is little reason to believe that these numbers will change until the next redistricting is to take place in 2020.
However, there is a way out of this nightmarish map, but it requires an environment for 2014 that is better than expected for the Democrats. The Republican majorities in the legislature are surprisingly slim, at 26-23 in the State Senate and 110-92 in the State House of Representatives with one vacancy in each chamber. If the best-case scenario happens, the Democrats could regain the trifecta and enact a mid-decade redistricting.
When it comes to redistricting, there are two conflicting progressive ideals that we have to take into account: electing more and better Democrats and preserving communities of interest in fair and balanced districts. Usually, the former goal wins out, especially among politicians (just look at the Illinois map!).
My goal was to make a map of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts that would be gerrymandered for the Democrats, but still aesthetically and principially being improvements over the current maps. It would be safe for all incumbents (Brady, Fattah, Doyle and Cartwright), and not break any Pennsylvanian parochial rules (Keep Bucks whole, separate Lancaster and York).
As with all maps, the result can always be improved upon, but my goal was a map that a hypothetical Democratic trifecta could implement in real life - and the maps that we get in real life are seldom as perfect as those that the Internet artists make. If you want to see my humble proposition, please follow me beyond the squiggle...
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