New York Times columnist David Brooks and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart were greatly disturbed on Friday’s PBS News Hour at Texas’s mid-decade redistricting efforts, calling them part of the “corrosion of democracy” and “cheating by legal means,” and insist this is something worse than standard gerrymandering.
Host Geoff Bennett began with Brooks, “Democrats say this amounts to cheating. What do you make of this effort by Democrats to flee the state? Is this a bold defense of democratic rights or is this a — just a real provocative escalation?”
Brooks dismissed the fleeing as “a shtick” that has a poor track record of success, but on the main issue claimed, “The thing here is the corrosion of democracy. And this is how slow it is. And maybe this is why the streets aren't erupting in America, because there's always been gerrymandering, but usually there was some sense of shame. Like, we're not going to totally rig the game completely. And so even in Texas there were Democratic seats. Even in California there were Republican seats.”
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