Bezos Post: legislators arrogating themselves power contrary to the will of the voters is not a threat to democracy

This isn’t just some individual wingnut affirmative action hire, this is the official position of the editorial board:

Texas Republicans forged ahead Wednesday with their plan to prematurely redraw the state’s congressional map. Partisan gerrymandering is never pretty, no matter which side is doing it, but hold the apocalyptic warnings about the end of democracy. Republicans’ gambit could well prove shortsighted.

[…]

Redistricting is an inherently political issue. Even if Texas’s move triggers an arms race, the trend will not put American democracy on life support. One silver lining of the gerrymander wars is that they might remind Americans how much Congress should matter.

The legislative branch has been increasingly passive as a policymaking body, serving primarily as a sword to investigate presidents or a shield to protect them. Time is better spent worrying about congressional fecklessness.

Is this the personal liberties, or the free markets?

Anyway, these specious non-sequiturs about how democracy can solve the problem of people being denied representation have shown up from Frankfurter to Roberts and remain stupid in theory and erroneous in practice. They also make claims about how the gerrymanders might not work as planned that continue to misunderstand (or “misunderstand”) just how solid the gerrymanders produced with contemporary computer models are, John Roberts’s belief that social science is witchcraft notwithstanding.

Congress surrendering its constitutional authority is indeed a major problem. It’s also obvious that extreme partisan gerrymanders done at the direct behest of the president will make the problem worse rather than better.