Tennessee Gerrymandering Challenge Fails, Just as Supreme Court Intended

[system1]

Originally published at: Tennessee Gerrymandering Challenge Fails, Just as Supreme Court Intended - TPM – Talking Points Memo

A panel of judges on Thursday unanimously rebuffed Black Tennesseans’ attempt to block the state’s new 9-0 Republican gerrymander. The panel was composed of one Obama appointee and two Trump appointees.  Tennessee Republicans were the first to act after the Supreme Court decided Callais, the case that virtually killed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and…

[srfromgr]

Sickening.

Garbage In. Garbage Out.

[sniffit]

Next up: “It is ok to pass state legislation stating that only one political party is permitted to exist, run for office or cast votes that are permitted to be legally counted in an election.”

[coprophagoussmile]

The residents of Memphis will have no meaningful representation in Congress at a time when their city leads the country in pedestrian fatalities, the number of deaths is still increasing year over year, and the victims are disproportionately poor and black. This is just one problem that requires federal involvement and funding to solve. Disenfranchisement kills, as intended.

Memphis’ #1 Ranking for Pedestrian Deaths | Smart City Memphis

[tiowally]

If Clarence ever discovers he’s black (even when it isn’t convenient) he’ll be horrified.

[dogselfie]

It’s a decades-long overcompensation, from Clarence the ultimate House Negro, as described by Malcolm X.

The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house–probably in the basement or the attic–but he still lived in the master’s house.

So whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, “We have good food,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, we have plenty of good food.” “We” have plenty of good food. When the master said that “we have a fine home here,” the house Negro said, “Yes, we have a fine home here.” When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he’d say, “What’s the matter boss, we sick?” His master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.

[Lacuna-Synecdoche]

@TPM

“The Supreme Court recently confirmed that the Purcell principle doesn’t prevent states from altering their own election rules — it discourages only federal courts from doing so […]”

So Tennessee is free to pass and enforce a new gerrymander on the eve of the midterm elections, but the courts can’t intervene to block it.

The next Tennessee congressional delegation will almost certainly be entirely Republican and, more likely than not, entirely white — serving a state that is about 16 percent Black and where 35 percent of voters cast a ballot for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Jim Crow, Two-Point-Oh.

Welcome to the New South.

It’s going to take decades to fix our judicial system, and Democrats need to develop the type of long-term perseverance necessary to: A) push those changes through, and B) keep them.

[robertbrk]

So if they do wind up with a 9-0 GOP delegation and the D’s take the House, play hardball. No good committee assignments, deaf ear to special funding requests across the State. Earmark funds for cities and specific city projects with strict language that forbids redirecting them outside of the cities.

No some of this will need to wait for a trifecta and all the things that must me changed, starting with ending the filibuster, expanding and conscribing the Court, and passing new voting rights legislation that bans partisan gerrymanders and their attendant cracking and packing. But there’s stuff that can be done, even within a single chamber.

Notably, not having a single member in the majority was precisely the reason Indiana chose not to pull this same game.

[paulw]

I wonder whether a democratic majority should simply refuse to seat, and slow walk the resulting litigation.