POLITICS: Partisan gerrymanders feed extremism, the GOP’s young women problem and other commentary

Centrist: Partisan Gerrymanders Feed Extremism

“For partisan Democrats, it has become necessary to destroy U.S. democracy in order to save it,” grumbles Charles Lane at The Free Press. California’s Prop 50 will let Democratic lawmakers redraw GOP House districts out of existence by overruling the state law that empowered “a nonpartisan independent commission, rather than politicians, to draw its congressional lines.” Backers of “redistricting reform” in the early 2000s “believed it could defuse partisan polarization and help rebuild the political center.” In contrast, partisan redistricting “doesn’t counteract polarization,” instead “it reinforces it.” Since the only “political competition occurs within the dominant party’s primary,” those elected to office “answer only to the party base.” This pushes us toward “a country made up of 50 one-party states.”

Conservative: The GOP’s Young Women Problem

While “millions of words have been devoted to investigating the Democratic Party’s recent ‘young men’ problem,” few note the GOP’s “more severe” loss of support among young women, warns Becket Adams at National Review. “Considering that there are eight million more registered female voters than male voters,” and young women “are much more politically active than men their age, Republicans cannot afford to accept defeat on this front.” “But instead of panic or urgency, common reactions in conservative media and even GOP circles” include “mockery, disdain, and general disregard” of young female voters. “The Democratic Party’s attempts to reconnect with young men have thus far been deeply stupid and embarrassing,” but at least it’s “trying to correct its demographic challenges. The same can’t be said for the Republican Party.”

Urbanist: $30-an-hour Job-Killer

“Young voters eager for a pay bump” were excited when “Zohran Mamdani pledged to increase the city’s minimum hourly wage, from $16.50 to $30, by 2030” observes Santiago Vidal Calvo at City Journal. But that $30 is “higher than the city’s median wage,” so the new minimum, “if enacted, would make the city more costly for everyone.” Indeed, it would “create what economists call a ‘ripple effect,’” forcing all wages comparably higher, “hitting low-margin industries hardest,” leading to “job losses” because “firms remove or replace at least some of their workforce in response to new wage requirements.” Younger workers “stand to lose hours or even their jobs after a minimum-wage increase.”

Liberal: Dems’ Future Is Josh Shapiro

“The question that matters for the future of the Democratic Party,” argues The New York Times’ Binyamin Appelbaum, “is what kind of Democrat can win Pennsylvania” — yet “we already know the answer. His name is Josh Shapiro,” the governor who “has drawn more votes than anyone else running in the state” three times since 2016. Crucially, “in an era of widespread distrust in government, he has become the most popular politician in the nation’s most important battleground state by insisting that government can work.” It’s clear that the party won’t “return to the White House, nor reclaim Congress, until it learns to embrace centrist politicians like Mr. Shapiro”; “Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York does not demonstrate the viability of progressive candidates outside of a few big cities and coastal states.”

Science beat: Another Futile Climate Conference

“UN climate change conferences are exercises in futility,” scoffs Reason’s Ronald Bailey, as the 30th UN one opens in Brazil. Their “chief goal” is to stabilize greenhouse-gas concentrations, but those have instead grown steadily since 1992, along with temperatures. By last year, “the average global temperature” reached 1.55°C above the 1850-1900 baseline — proof that limiting the jump to 1.5°C, as climate warriors demand, is “not going to happen.” The good news: “Carbon emissions per unit of GDP” have been plunging; “markets are encouraging the adoption of low-carbon energy technologies and ever greater fuel efficiency.” If that trend continues, researchers calculate, “emissions will fall” 64% by 2100, leading to a “projected increase” in temps of just 2.4°C — which “basically rules out the worst-case climate change scenarios.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board