Profoundly depressing.
I can understand the logic of the majority ruling (explained reasonably well here in The Atlantic), but I profoundly disagree.
“The constitution is not a suicide pact”. One side has legally managed to twist the system to short circuit democracy to such a degree that I believe it imperils democracy itself. And as the quote suggests, the imperilling of democracy is cause for the courts to act, even if by some reading, the action is legal.
The court, by decreeing that any legal political act must be tolerated no matter the harm to the nation, has legitimized the subversion of democracy if you can game the system “legally”.
American democracy has always been inherently less stable by having only two parties. Luckily for the USA, no party has ever held such sway that they could essentially destroy their opponent, and so far the public has never been ready to tolerate such an attempt.
But if the Republicans manage to subvert democracy to such an extent that they maintain power for years or decades after they have lost the support of the most of the populace, I fear for democracy itself. No power lasts forever if an alternative exists, and inevitably, no matter the advantages the Republicans accrue for themselves, they will be insufficient as they grow more corrupt and alienated from the electorate. (As any party in power gradually becomes.)
And when they do, eventually the inflated strength given to them by rigging the game becomes a profound weakness. The danger of making every Republican vote count to win the most seats, is that when the day comes when there aren’t enough Republican votes, you lose all the seats.
And on that day they will face a reckoning of a populace that has been denied effective franchise for decades and the wrath of political opponents who will demand vengeance and justice - an end to the Republican party itself. And in delivering well-deserved broadly-supported justice, democracy dies.
In the face of the court’s ruling, I can only hope that the Republican experiment in attacking the heart of the American political system fails sooner rather than later. Not just for the sake of Democrats over the next decade, but for both Republicans and Democrats over the next century.
