Obama Worked Behind the Scenes to Support California’s Redistricting Effort

Today the Washington Post has a tale as old as time, a story of outright hypocrisy by partisan actors. What makes this story noteworthy is that the partisans in question are Barack Obama and his former Attorney General Eric Holder.

Because this is a story about democrats published by the Washington Post, the hypocrisy angle is really buried. That word never appears in the story, but it’s there just beneath the surface. 

Back in 2016, Eric Holder founded a group called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC). The whole purpose of the NDRC was to gain control of the redistricting process in a way that would benefit democrats. Specifically, Holder wanted the group to fight the scourge of gerrymandering by Republicans. Their mantra was that they would help ensure fair maps were drawn so Republicans didn’t have an unfair advantage. [emphasis added]

Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday officially launched the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, billing it in a speech to the Center for American Progress Action Fund as the center of Democratic rebuilding in the era of President-elect Donald Trump and as Democrats’ main hope to roll back Republican gains in state legislatures and prepare for redistricting in 2020…

“We heard a lot in this past election about rigged systems, but I want to say the biggest rigged system in America is gerrymandering,” Holder said. “A system where the lines are drawn not to represent American communities, but benefit politicians. A system where politicians pick their voters.”

President Barack Obama will now take on a major role in the effort to rebuild the party’s presence in local offices with the NDRC, elevating its work from his post-presidency platform.

So since 2016, Obama and Holder have been behind this group which pushes for fair maps, using lawsuits against states when necessary to challenge maps they didn’t like.

And then President Trump pushed for Texas to redistrict prior to the midterms and all of that went right out the window. Obama and Holder immediately flipped from being the defenders of fair, impartial maps to conspiring with Gavin Newsom on how California could redistrict its own maps.

In late July, Barack Obama spoke with his former attorney general, Eric Holder, about how Democrats should respond to President Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade push to add five favorable U.S. House seats to protect the Republican majority. They had each spent days conflicted about what to do.

Both had previously championed nonpartisan redistricting. But they agreed that letting Trump’s effort in Texas go unanswered wasn’t an option. They kept coming back to a plan from California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) that would offset the move with five new Democratic-leaning seats. Within days, Holder drafted a statement endorsing the proposal and ran it by the former president, who quickly signed off. It marked a stark shift that, in their view, was a sign of the emergency measures they believed were required.

“We’re doing things that kind of go against what we talked about,” Holder said. But they decided, “we have to preserve our democracy if ultimately we’re going to heal it.”

California had already passed a law which made non-partisan redistricting part of its constitution, something Obama and Holder had supported. Now the game became how to bypass the rules they had previously supported.

Endorsing Newsom’s proposal ran counter to what the National Democratic Redistricting Committee — the Holder-founded group backed by Obama, which is focused on drawing nonpartisan maps — stood for…

By mid-August, Obama began lending his voice to the redistricting fight to ensure it received national attention. When Texas Democrats left the state for two weeks to temporarily block a GOP vote on the new map — prompting threats from Republicans, civil arrest and removal from office — Obama called in to one of their meetings at a secret location in Illinois to commend their stance.

Days later he announced his support for Prop. 50, California’s effort to gain 5 seats for Democrats.

“I want to see as a long-term goal that we do not have political gerrymandering in America. That would be my preference,” Obama said. “But I want to be very clear: Given that Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House … I have tremendous respect for how Governor Newsom has approached this.”

Obama and Holder are pretending they still care about non-partisan redistricting in the abstract but at this moment they’ve thrown all of that out the window. Right now they just care about winning, the same as President Trump.

Longer term, the Democrats are going to lose this fight because it’s likely the Supreme Court is going to put an end to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and that is going to result in a dozen or more GOP seats in southern states that, prior to this, haven’t been allowed to redraw their maps in ways that would take seats away from Democrats. No doubt if that happens, Obama and Holder will suddenly be against partisan redistricting once again.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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