“Both Sides” of a Crooked Line

You have been warned to never wrestle with a pig.

And yet, political pig-wrestling matches are breaking out all over social media. Maybe you have been in one of them. Maybe I saw it and was inspired to come to your aid. I may even have typed a scathing rebuke of your opponent’s claims and brought into question his or her or their worth as a citizen or even as a human being.

Probably, that person was the type who would see my “his or her or their” and think that I must be one of those elementary school physicians who perform surprise gender-reassignment surgery on kindergartners and then remind the school nurse to get permission from the parents before administering Tylenol. That person was likely also the type who might use “there” or “they’re” as a possessive pronoun. They totally deserved that scathing rebuke, the one I typed and edited and read with great satisfaction and then deleted without posting.

When the metaphorical pig you are wrestling is someone whose inner troll was awakened by the election, you can expect every logical fallacy in the book, including a whole lot of false balance, or “bothsidesism.” You could write a list of Donald Trump’s ad hominem attacks as long as a Tolstoy novel, and then a second novel-length account of the name-calling and personal insults from the people around him. “Look at that,” you could say, pointing at the mountain of nastiness.

“Joe Biden called us garbage,” the troll would respond, wiping a tear at the memory, “so it’s both sides.”

Serial cheating?

Bill Clinton, so both sides.

University fraud, charity fraud, thirty-four convictions?

Biden Crime Family, and also a weaponized Department of Justice, so not even both sides, just Democrats.

A lifelong history of racism?

Strom Thurmond. Both sides.

But Strom Thurmond switched parties and became a Republican.

See? Both sides. (Warning: you may be about to enter a Republican vs. Democratic racism argument rivaled in stupidity only by the Republic-or-Democracy argument most of us matured out of just after puberty.)

Both sides, or at least voters from both sides, seem to agree on one issue: gerrymandering. It’s cheating. Everybody knows that, or at least everybody who knows what gerrymandering is. It is almost as bad as “Deflategate,” that time Tom Brady and the New England Patriots beat the Indianapolis Colts 45-7 in the AFC championship game entirely because Brady was throwing slightly under-inflated footballs. You may consider gerrymandering much more consequential than a football game, and I would agree, but significantly more Americans watched the Super Bowl in February than voted in November. So, priorities.

Partisan lawmakers drawing geometrically and geographically funky districts to guarantee their party more seats in the state legislature and in Congress is not a “both sides” issue. (Yes, you will definitely hear “both sides” in any media discussion of gerrymandering.) Republicans do it much more blatantly and to a much greater extent. A Brennan Center analysis compared current Congressional districts to thousands of examples of what districts could have looked like under Federal anti-gerrymandering legislation that died in the Senate in 2022. They found that gerrymandering gave Republicans an artificial net advantage of about sixteen seats. In other words, if it weren’t for gerrymandering, Democrats would likely be taking control of the U.S. House in 2025. The only consequence for the cheaters is more power. Democracy, disenfranchised voters, and the American people pay the price.

Since voters of all political persuasions mostly agree that gerrymandering is a rotten thing to do, state initiated measures seem like a logical route to countering it. That did not work in Ohio this year, and the reason it did not work is further proof that this is not a “both sides” issue. The AP headline on election night read, “Ohio voters reject replacing troubled mapmaking system with citizen-led redistricting commission.” The headline should have read, “Deceptive ballot language derails anti-gerrymandering amendment.”

The actual language for the measure (Ohio Issue 1) specifically banned partisan gerrymandering. However, the three Republicans on the 5-member Ohio Ballot Board voted for ballot language that said the opposite. The language Ohioans saw when they voted said the proposal would require gerrymandering of state legislative and congressional districts. Obama had The Audacity of Hope. Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board subscribe to the audacity of dishonesty.

Of course there was a lawsuit, and you know how that went. The three Democratic judges on the Ohio Supreme Court thought that requiring a thing was not the same as banning that thing. The four Republican judges felt that “required” and “banned” were essentially synonyms, and thus the ballot language was crystal clear and not at all deceptive.

After the definitely-not-deceived Ohio voters rejected Issue 1, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said—with a straight face, at least while in public—that the decision was “a huge win for Ohio voters, who deserve an honest explanation of what they’re being asked to decide.” Fortune favors the bold liar in Ohio.

LaRose’s office wrote the misleading ballot language for Issue 1, and he was one of the members of the Ohio Ballot Board who voted to approve it.

Not to be outdone in the audacious dishonesty contest, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman said “Ohio voters protected their power and their voice by defeating a well financed and secretly funded attack on democracy.” The first rule of attacking democracy is to accuse its defenders of attacking democracy. Huffman also added the usual garbage about outside interest groups. I’m sure he will stand against any cut-and-paste ALEC legislation that tries to worm its way into the Ohio State Senate.

Governor Mike Dewine (R-OH) opposed Issue 1, of course, but he does have a concept of a different plan.

Even Donald Trump appeared in an ad opposing it.

Oh, and the anti-gerrymandering legislation that died in the U.S. Senate in 2022? Every Republican in the House and Senate opposed it. It didn’t just die; they killed it.

Finally, remember how Donald Trump never conceded the 2020 election? Well, Kamala Harris didn’t call and concede to Trump until the morning after the 2024 election.

So, of course, both sides.

Semper Fi,

Trygve