It is really interesting to watch political hypocrisy play out from the outside.

For years Democrats in Louisiana have decried Republican “gerrymandering” as un-democratic, just downright unfair. They ignored reality as they blamed their poor showing at the polls on Republican efforts to prevent them for attracting voters. But now they are all about gerrymandering to create a second majority minority Congressional District, a seat that would be designed to be reliably Democratic.

Politics is a rough game and characteristically the media in Louisiana has put its fingers on the scales of balance in favor of Democrats. As the campaign to help the Democratic Party gerrymander a safe District heats up, don’t be surprised to see growing hysteria unleashed through editorials and news reports directed against purported un-democratic Republicans. While predictable such behavior slights voters because it is the people that elect the members of the Legislature, and those members on behalf of the people ultimately decide redistricting. Acting in accord with American political tradition, it is the people that have chosen to make the majority of the Legislature Republican, and without a doubt it is not un-democratic when the people expect their legislators to act as Republicans.

No one should be naïve enough to believe the Democrats and their media allies would think twice about preserving their majority should they ever again have one in Louisiana. And, in such an unlikely circumstance, don’t ever expect to see media attacks on Democrats challenging their fairness credentials.

In Louisiana the expression of democratic principles are not based on power politics defined by the minority Party. They are fundamentally an expression of the will of the majority of voters. And the democratic expression of that will is the actions taken by their elected representatives within the legislative body. In the extant circumstance fairness is the expression of democracy as demonstrated by decisions of elected legislators acting on behalf of the majority of their constituents. In 2021 Louisiana the majority of Louisiana voters did not elect their representatives to assist Democrats in a quest to gain more power than they should enjoy based upon their weak performance at the polls. Any such action would be by the very definition unfair to that majority of voters.

As efforts heat up by Democrats to gerrymander an artificial political district when no natural district exists, they are violating the very principle of fair democracy that they claim to espouse. Even the strategy that a politically dependable subset of people could be cobbled together just to ensure a Democratic Party advantage is an insult to the American way. Such blatant hypocrisy should be called out as un-democratic by the media, but that will never happen.

By law the governor, even for political advantage of his Party, can use the veto to obstruct the will of the Legislature, technically the will of the people. The Legislature in return has the power to override him. In practice I contend that any attempt to use a veto for base political advantage is the definition of un-democratic values and unfairness to the voters and should be rigorously challenged.