Blood From A Stone

 As I predicted, the GOP is not going to get a great deal more advantage from gerrymandering than they had in 2020. The simple truth is that they had already heavily gerrymandered most maps that they could and there simply isn't enough blood to squeeze from that particular stone. There is also the fact that Democrats have gerrymandered their own states when possible. While this is not "good" it is necessary.

Yglesias points out the problem with embracing our own gerrymanders, and...sure, I guess. But his solution is a pile of crap. He suggests states become proportional in their representation (PR). He does admit we would need more House seats, because you can't have proportional representation in a state like Vermont. Some states have proposed this for the Electoral College, and it demonstrates why this is a bad idea. Unless you dramatically expand the House to like 1,000 members, you're going to give a ton more seats to parties that don't really deserve them. He uses extreme examples like how Massachusetts doesn't have a single Republican member (in fact there is no Republican from all of New England), even though more than a third of Massholes voted for Trump.

The only real way to do PR is to do it in massive "districts." Basically make New England a district, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, etc, districts. Then you would spread the proportionality more smoothly. 

This, however, defeats the purpose of the House of Representatives. You're supposed to have a single person in DC who represents your reasonably compact district. PR denies you that. It would increase the power of parties because your placement on the party list (if you win 3 seats in the PR district, the top three names on your list are elected to the Congress) would be determined by the party, not the voters via primaries. Given how insane the GOP is becoming, is that really a path forward? 

If you want a Democrat from Arkansas or a Republican from Connecticut, the simple answer is to expand the size of the House.  If there were 800 House members, you would get a few crossover seats in solidly "Red" and "Blue" states. 

One thing I WOULD support is PR for the Senate. If you increase the size of the House to 800, then you have a much closer ties to your Rep. Removing the Senate as a state level representation would get rid of the absurdity of Wyoming have the same number of Senators as California. It would also reflect the increasingly national nature of our politics.

There is nothing sacred about the size of the House. Increasing it would not require a constitutional amendment, the way moving to some sort of PR system. It would make it harder to gerrymander seats, because the margins would be smaller and less predictable. 

Do that.