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Former President Barack Obama this week inserted himself into the national debate over partisan gerrymandering with his proprietary blend of self-righteousness, self-interest and duplicity.
With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pushing through a new congressional map to benefit Republicans and California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeking to do the same for Democrats, Obama lent a weary world his wisdom.
“Over the long term, we shouldn’t have political gerrymandering in America, just a fair fight between Republicans and Democrats based on who’s got better ideas,” he began in a Wednesday post on X.
“But,” he stipulated.
But of course.
“Since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for how Gov. [Gavin] Newsom has approached this,” insisted Obama.
“He’s put forward a smart, measured approach in California, designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”
Who didn’t see that one coming?
Obama’s high opinion of himself has only ever been matched by his scorn for the masses.
He hopes no one will notice his blatant projection: Obama himself personally participated, to put it lightly, in a highly beneficial gerrymander over 20 years ago.
Without a doubt, the former president’s initial suggestion has merit.
It would be wonderful if House districts were drawn so as to be maximally representative of discrete communities, and to keep representatives maximally attuned to their constituents’ interests.
Perhaps one day the two parties will come together to ensure as much.
Alas, that’s not the world we live in today.
As it stands, both sides are locked in an unforgiving battle to enshrine the most structurally advantageous maps into law in as many states as possible.
In Illinois, where Texas Democrats initially fled to deny Abbott the quorum needed to pass his new map, Democrats represent 14 of 17 districts, or more than 82% of the state.
Yet Kamala Harris won Illinois last year by fewer than 11 percentage points, 54.4% to 43.5%.
Democrats achieved this feat by creating a map so preposterous that even Stephen Colbert felt compelled to ask Prairie State Gov. JB Pritzker about it during an otherwise softball interview.
In New Jersey, where President Donald Trump won 46% of the vote in 2024, the GOP holds just 25% of the congressional seats.
In Massachusetts, Trump won 36%, but Republicans hold none of the state’s nine seats.
Trump actually won Nevada, yet Democrats occupy three of its four spots in the House.
And in California, where Newsom is supposedly championing a “smart, measured approach” — and where a supposedly independent commission is responsible for redistricting — the GOP is already at a massive disadvantage.
Trump won over 38% of the vote in the country’s largest state, and Republicans represent only about 17% of its districts.
“We’re responding to what occurred in Texas. We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance,” Newsom declared before signing his plan into law on Thursday.
Just how much more lopsided must it be for elections to be “fair” to “the American people,” by which Newsom means “the Democratic Party”?
Now, it’s undeniable that Republicans have also drawn unrepresentative maps in states they control.
Wisconsin, Texas and the Carolinas are particularly damning examples.
But with both Team Red and Team Blue adopting no-holds-barred approaches to redistricting, honest observers must admit that gerrymandering is a bipartisan pastime in which all’s fair — even if it shouldn’t be.
And that’s precisely what makes Obama’s claim to the moral high ground so galling.
Newsom has every right to advance his undemocratic map; Obama has every right to support it.
They ought not insult our intelligence by flattering themselves, though.
They’re motivated by the same political objectives that Republicans are, not some nobler commitment to principle that excuses their actions — much less makes them deserving of praise.
Obama is the same ambitious, self-serving partisan he was back in 2001, when he personally helped draw an Illinois state Senate district to boost his political prospects after falling short in a House campaign the year prior.
The lines he created gave him new constituents in some of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods — donors he tapped to fuel his ascent to the US Senate and, not long after, the White House.
So much for only reluctantly endorsing Newsom’s proposal to retaliate against Texas: Obama himself embraced the power of the gerrymander in a smoke-filled room decades ago.
His haughty tone now is perfectly representative of the Democrats’ collective hero complex.
Not to mention their palpable disdain for the public, whom they believe can be duped into believing in it.
It adds insult to injury — and sanctimony to sin.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite.