A few quick points in response to Ned’s thoughtful post about congressional gerrymandering. First, the crux of the debate is how much value (if any) to place on a fair national map for the House of Representatives. I think that’s the most important issue in congressional redistricting. The House is a single legislative chamber. If it’s significantly biased in either party’s favor, then skewed representation—and skewed policy—will necessarily follow. That’s the critical thing to avoid, in my view: a House that does things that the American people don’t want it to do. But obviously, not everyone agrees with me, and folks that put little or no weight on a fairly constituted House will be repulsed by the idea of offsetting gerrymanders.

Second, as ever, it’s important not to confuse partisan gerrymandering with other evils. As I’ve previously pointed out, partisan fairness is orthogonal to competitiveness. In theory, you can have biased or unbiased maps that are competitive or uncompetitive. In practice, too, there’s no correlation between measures of partisan fairness and measures of competitiveness. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic gerrymanders we’re talking about aren’t particularly uncompetitive. They’re particularly biased—but that’s a different problem. Democrats have actually drawn quite a few districts they could lose in good Republican years, precisely so they have a shot to win even more districts in neutral or good Democratic years.

Third, and on a similar theme, Democratic gerrymandering is neither here nor there when it comes to pressures within the Republican caucus, McCarthy’s relationship with Trump, and so on. Republican gerrymanders might be relevant to those issues. But after the collapse of the FTVA, Republican gerrymanders are baked in. Does anyone think that Republican members of Congress will be more sensible, or that McCarthy will increase his distance from Trump, if there are fewer Democratic members of Congress from Illinois, Maryland, New York, etc.? I find the notion farfetched.

Lastly, we’re not the first to argue about whether congressional gerrymandering is best understood on a national or state-specific basis. Adam Cox wrote a great article about this very topic in the wake of Vieth. I encourage folks to check it out.