This was an interesting take from Kentucky’s junior senator (soon to be senior senator) on state Republican musings on eradicating Democrats from the U.S. Congress:

Contrary to what Rand Paul says, the issue isn’t “both sides,” which plays well in the corporate media. Republicans started this in Texas. The Orange Menace demanded it, and when Indiana didn’t do it, he threatened Hoosiers’ entire Republican Party. And, just to be clear, Kentucky MAGAts in the state legislature went off on their own and threatened my congressional district.

But the reality is that gerrymandering has always been a feature, not a bug in our political system.

Here’s some easy-to-understand racial redistricting.

Let’s say the below image is a state shaped like a circle (call it Circlevania), and let’s say it’s made up of four parts (green, orange, purple and, in the center, white):

Although the sizes of each segment aren’t exactly proportionate in terms of land mass, demographically they are true representations of four ethnic groups: the Greens, the Oranges, the Purples and the Whites, representing 25 percent of the population each. The Greens, Oranges and Purples, accounting for 75 percent of the total population live in suburban or rural areas and vote conservative, while the Whites, who vote liberal and are concentrated in the center of Circlevania, make up the 25 percent of the remaining population and live in an urban area.

Now, Circlevania has four electoral votes, and the Circlevania state legislature is drawing up four congressional districts. The obvious solution is to give one electoral vote to each of the demographic groups, because, by ethnicity, each demographic group represents the same number of voters.

But conservatives in the Circlevania legislature have a Super Majority, and they don’t want the White liberals to have any representation, so they vote to adopt this map of Circlevania as its electoral preference, under the guise of “We’re not racists. We don’t see color.”:

Do you see what just happened? The 25 percent of Whites who were in the middle of the state are now sliced into each of the four congressional districts, where they make up only 6.25 percent of the voting population in each district. So, based on earlier demographics, what was once three conservative and one liberal congressional district has been magically transformed into four conservative ethnically mixed congressional districts.

That is a simplified analysis of what happens in congressional redistricting. This is what states did throughout U.S. history to deny votes to their non-White citizens.

That is what Texas did when it redrew its racially discriminatory congressional map, which is supported by a MAGAt infested U.S. Supreme Court.

And that is what Kentucky MAGA Republicans want to do to get rid of our only Democratic congressman (and honestly, he has been no great champion of liberal or progressive causes) in our tiny district on the map (remember, land doesn’t vote) that has just as many people as every other district in the state.