It’s a Shadow War because neither side wants to admit that one is going on, but one is going on.
The big gap between Democratic success at the presidential level and elsewhere “is a real dilemma, I think, for democracy really, not just the Democratic Party,” said Rep. David Price of North Carolina, a 14-term congressman and former Duke University political scientist. He said Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia display the “most egregious” examples of gerrymandered districts for congressional and state legislative races.
This long-practiced brand of partisan map-making, Price said, helps Republicans control the legislatures of states that vote Democratic for president. But in a sign of local Democrats’ struggles to change voters’ minds, Price said the best prospect for reversing the trend – in the South, at least – is in lawsuits that allege racial bias in the way Republicans drew district boundaries.
Continue reading More from the Shadow War between White and Black Democratic legislators.