klr wrote:How bad is the gerrymandering at the congressional district level? That seems to be the sticking point here.
And what would there be to stop democrats from trying to do something similar in states that traditionally vote Republican?
Gerrymandering is probably the biggest root problem causing the gridlock in Congress today. Most seats are "safe", meaning they are in districts virtually certain to elect one party or the other, regardless of which idiot is running on that party's ticket. And for candidates to remain competitive, they (especially Republicans! Democrats don't have a Tea Party equivalent, and they're not worried about being called a DINO. but Republicans being called a RINO who doesn't pass a conservative purity test are in trouble with the party Base) are more worried about primary election challenges from within their own party than general election challenges against the opposition party. So to protect themselves from primary challengers, members of Congress from both parties (but again,
especially Republicans) tend to be people who are more liberal or conservative, depending on the district, than their rank-and-file constituents.
One difficulty in correcting the problem is the geographic makeup of liberals & conservatives. The basic rule-of-thumb is that liberals tend to live in denser urban areas and conservatives are more rural and spread out, hence the difficulty in creating more equitable districts.
To answer your second question, there is really nothing stopping Democrats from doing anything similar. When Democrats control state legislatures & governor's mansions, they tend to gerrymander as well - though I don't ever recall other cases of such naked attempts to rig the electoral college in order to influence Presidential elections (btw Republicans... does it strike you as coincidental that this new tactic is suddenly springing up in various battleground states at the same time? Occam's Razor should lead us to conclude that the national party leadership is behind it rather than various state senators all coming up with it simultaneously - hence we
can blame the GOP itself as undemocratic rather than singling out a few mid-level politicians). At the moment the Republicans have some key upper hands at these levels. But yes, gerrymandering itself is a flaw that both parties will exploit where they can because they have the incentive to do so as well as disincentive not to do so.
