One of many nice conceits of California is its place on the leading edge — of trend, tradition, expertise, politics and different aspects of the methods we reside and thrive.
Not so with Proposition 50.
The redistricting measure, which handed resoundingly Tuesday, doesn’t break any floor, chart a contemporary course or shed any mild on a greater pathway ahead.
It’s, to make use of a favourite phrase of California’s governor, merely the newest iteration of what has come to outline at this time’s politics of fractiousness and division.
The truth is, the redistricting measure and the partisan passions it stirred supply an ideal reflection of the place we stand as a splintered nation: Democrats overwhelmingly supported it. Republicans had been overwhelmingly opposed.
Nothing new or novel about that.
Unintended penalties
And if Proposition 50 performs out as meant, it may make issues worse, heightening the nation’s polarization and growing the animosity in Washington that’s rotting our authorities and politics from the within out.
You’re welcome.
The argument in favor of Proposition 50 — and it’s a robust one — is that California was merely responding to the scheming and underhanded actions of a rogue chief government who desperately must be checked and balanced.
The one obvious restraint on President Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulse is whether or not he thinks he can get away with one thing, as congressional Republicans and a supine Supreme Courtroom look the opposite approach.
With GOP management of the Home hanging by the merest of threads, Trump got down to enhance his social gathering’s prospects within the midterm election by browbeating Texas Republicans into redrawing the state’s congressional traces lengthy earlier than it was time. Trump’s hope subsequent yr is to achieve as many as 5 of the state’s Home seats.
And with that the redistricting battle was joined, as states throughout the nation regarded to rejigger their congressional boundaries to learn one social gathering or the opposite.
The upshot is that much more politicians now have the luxurious of choosing their voters, as a substitute of the opposite approach round, and if that doesn’t trouble you perhaps you’re not all that large a fan of consultant democracy or the desire of the individuals.
Historical past and Trump’s sagging approval scores — particularly concerning the economic system — counsel that Democrats are properly positioned to achieve a minimum of the handful of seats wanted to take management of the Home, even with out resorting to the machinations of Proposition 50.
Ball in Supreme Courtroom
There’s, after all, no assure.
Gerrymandering apart, a pending Supreme Courtroom resolution that would intestine the Voting Rights Act may ship Republicans properly over a dozen seats, vastly growing the percentages of the GOP sustaining energy.
What is for certain is that Proposition 50 will in impact disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of California Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who already really feel ignored and irrelevant to the workings of their dwelling state.
Too unhealthy for them, you may say. However that feeling of neglect frays religion in our political system and might breed a form of to-hell-with-it cynicism that makes electing and cheering on a “disruptor” like Trump appear to be an inexpensive and interesting response.
(And, sure, disenfranchisement is simply as unhealthy when it targets Democratic voters who’ve been nullified in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri and different GOP-run states.)
Worse, slanting political traces in order that one social gathering or the opposite is assured victory solely widens the gulf that has helped flip Washington’s into its present slough of dysfunction.
The dearth of competitors means the best concern many lawmakers have just isn’t the prospect of dropping to the opposite social gathering in a normal election however reasonably being snuffed out in a main by a extra ideological and excessive challenger.
That makes cooperation and cross-party compromise, a vital lubricant to the best way Washington is meant to work, all of the tougher to realize.
Witness the federal government shutdown, now in its document thirty sixth day. Then think about a Congress seated in January 2027 with much more lawmakers assured reelection and anxious primarily with appeasing their social gathering’s activist base.
Forgivable, flawed
The animating impulse behind Proposition 50 is comprehensible.
Trump is working the most openly corrupt administration in trendy historical past. He’s gone past transgressing political and presidential norms to brazenly trampling on the Structure.
He’s made it plain he cares solely about those that help him, which excludes nearly all of People who didn’t want to see Trump’s return to the White Home.
As if anybody wanted reminding, his (patently false) bleating a couple of “rigged” California election, issued simply minutes after the polls opened Tuesday, confirmed how reckless, misguided and profoundly irresponsible the president is.
With the midterm election nonetheless practically a yr off — and the 2028 presidential contest eons away — lots of these offended or despondent over the benighted state of our union desperately needed to do one thing to push again.
Proposition 50, nevertheless, was a shortsighted answer.
It’s ashes.
Mark Barabak is a Los Angeles Instances columnist. ©2025 Los Angeles Instances. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
