MONDAY: Numbers look better for congressional Dems!

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2026

Or so one survey says: Does the venerable Cook Political Report know what it's talking about?   

We can't necessarily answer your question! In Saturday's report, we came close to flipping our lid, noting that Amy Walter had told the New York Times the following, gruesome headline included:

The Midterms Ground Has Shifted

[...] 

Amy Walter: Before the court rulings, our Political Report rated 217 House districts as solidly Democratic or leaning toward Democrats and 16 seats that were tossups. In these tossup districts, each side had a 50-50 chance to win. They are seats that are the most vulnerable. Under that scenario, Democrats would need to win just one of those 16 tossups to reach a majority in the House.

Today we rate 207 districts as solidly Democratic or leaning toward Democrats and 18 as tossups. To win a majority, Democrats need to win at least 11 of the 50-50 contests (and hold all those leaning their way) in order to get a majority.   

According to Walter, the recent pair of high-profile court decisions had caused the ground to shift. Given the realities of Gerrymandering Past, and allowing for the likely shape of post-Callais Gerrymandering Future, the Cook Report found itself forced to slice the dogmeat remarkably thin.

Sad! Cook said the gerrymandering would leave only 18 seats—out of 435!—that they would rate as toss-ups. And yikes:

To squeak by with control of the House, Dems would have to win 11 of those seats in the fall.   

Does that assessment make sense? We ask because a new survey by the New York Times / Siena seems to be more optimistic. 

According to the new Times / Siena survey, the president's approvals are down to the lowest point yet. And then too, there's also this:  

A Crack in the Polling Floor Puts Trump in New Territory 

[...]

The most immediate political consequence is that Democrats appear increasingly well positioned for the midterm elections in November. The poll shows Democrats have a double-digit lead, 50 percent to 39 percent, when registered voters are asked which party’s candidate they’ll support for Congress. That’s a notable shift from Times/Siena polls earlier this cycle—which showed Democrats up two to five points.  

The Times is reporting a major advance in that statistic. Does that mean that Cook somehow has it wrong? 

At this site, we have no idea—and as we mentioned on Saturday, no one knows what kinds of schemes the White House may drag out if November is approaching and the numbers look bad. Beyond that, our guess would be this:

As a society, we've largely skated past the point where it can be assumed that traditional patterns will obtain in matters like this. We'll guess that no one can really say what's will happen this fall.

Dems have been winning special elections. But November's elections will involve incumbents, and that may help Republicans hold on to Republican-friendly seats. 

Or not!  We wish that Walter, who is perfectly sharp, had been questioned a bit more about the fundamentals behind Cook's gloomy findings.

For what it's worth, polling outfits have recently reported some gloomy numbers in the "which party do you favor" sweepstakes. Here was Harry Enten reporting a "Big Time Reality Check:"    

CNN’s Harry Enten Serves ‘Big Time Reality Check for Democrats’–Even Amid Trump’s Falling Poll Numbers

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten presented numbers that may worry Democrats, even amid President Donald Trump’s sinking approval ratings.

On Tuesday’s CNN News Central, John Berman cited a CNN survey where more than 70% blamed the president for increased costs, and asked Enten if Democrats were benefiting from such numbers. According to the poll, 77% of Americans blame Trump for higher costs of living.

“I think this poll serves as a big time reality check for Democrats, and that is it ain’t over yet, especially with the redistricting when we look ahead to the 2026 race for Congress. You would have thought that the Democrats’ lead would expand on the generic congressional ballot. It didn’t happen,” Enten reported.   

And so on from there. 

The Dems' lead on the generic congressional ballot had slipped from six points all the way down to three! As its report continued, Mediaite reported more of what Enten had gloomily said:   

[John] Berman later asked why Democrats aren’t “benefitting” if Trump’s numbers are falling amid the Iran war and high costs.

Enten reported that Trump’s approval rating is 36 points underwater on average, but Democrats are tying him in their own approval rating in surveys.

“There’s no way! There’s no way Republicans could possibly hold onto the House! But look at this: Which party is trusted more in the economy? It’s a tie among registered voters. Just because Donald Trump is unpopular doesn’t make Democrats popular. And when you match Democrats against Republicans, all of a sudden it is a dead heat [on the economy],” Enten said.  

Every poll is just one poll, and every poll is inaccurate to greater or lesser degree. Also, Enten can be a bit excitable—but in late April, a voluminous Harvard-Harris survey even came out saying this:   

Support for Democratic, Republican candidates tied among likely voters ahead of midterms: Poll   

Support for Democratic and Republican candidates is evenly split among likely midterm voters, according to a new poll. 

The Harvard-Harris poll found that 50 percent of likely voters said they would support a Democratic candidate and 50 percent said they would support a Republican.  

And so on from there. Harvard does it again!

This is a very challenging time. We only bring this up today because we reported what Walter said over the weekend. (Walter is perfectly sharp.)

For reasons we've mentioned in the past, this is a very dangerous time. We'd tend to offer this advice:   

Blue Americans, do no harm!

DECLINE: The president thinks we're in decline!

MONDAY, MAY 18, 2026

President Xi, that is: A finding has emerged from the sitting president's recent trip to China:   

A very tall man named Xi Jinping apparently thinks the United States is in a state of decline!

Aside from his friendship with President Trump—it's a friendship our president surely imagines—who is the real Xi Jinping? 

You rarely see his background described. The leading authority speaks:

Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese statesman and politician who is the fifth paramount leader of the People's Republic of China. He has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Party Central Military Commission (CMC) since 2012, the president of China and chairman of the State Central Military Commission since 2013.

The elder son of Xi Zhongxun's second marriage to Qi Xin, Xi is considered a princeling but kept a low-key image in his early career. As a teenager, his father was purged, and he was sent down to the rural village of Liangjiahe, Shaanxi, during the Cultural Revolution. He lived in a yaodong there, joined the CCP after several failed attempts, and served as the local party secretary. After studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student, Xi rose through the party ranks.

He has more jobs than Rubio does! He's president, chairman and paramount leader all rolled into one!

(Meanwhile, what's a "yaodong?" President Xi once lived in one. To examine that matter, click here.)

On his recent trip to China, our sitting president spent a fair amount of time pretending that he and President Xi share a deep personal friendship. In muted fashion, this echoes the sitting president's odd first-term behavior with respect to Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea. 

AI Overview, citing Reuters, recalls the madness into which our nation, now in headlong decline, has unmistakably fallen:   

The Trump-Kim "love letters" refer to a series of 27 personal, back-and-forth letters exchanged between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their unprecedented diplomatic engagements in 2018 and 2019. Trump famously declared that he and Kim "fell in love" after receiving the messages, which Kim reportedly filled with poetic flattery and referred to their friendship as a magical force.   

With respect to the question of decline, let the word go forth to the nations: 

Almost surely, our sitting president seems to be suffering from some form of "mental illness." Some degree of cognitive decline may now be layered atop that long-standing medical problem.

Also, our high-end press corps has sworn an oath according to which these blindingly obvious possibilities cannot be reported, explored or discussed.  Let it also be said that our high-end journalists wouldn't know how to discuss the topic of "mental illness" in this delicate context, even if they wanted to try. 

Let it further be said that our high-end journalists aren't especially sharp as a group, and they never have been. With respect to the question of decline, let it be said that no "decline" is involved in this part of our national affliction since there was no earlier lofty standard from which we were able to fall.

Back to President Xi! Did he really have the temerity to say, as our sitting president sat and watched, that our nation is in some form of decline?  

You can teach it flat or round! President Xi seems to have cited the so-called Thucydides Trap, which the leading authority discusses at some length, as you can see by clicking here. 

As for our sitting president, he later revealed—in his latest set of pitiful comments—what he apparently believes he heard his counterpart say. Headline included, here's the report by ABC News:  

Trump responds to Xi's 'Thucydides Trap' comment about America's decline   

President Donald Trump on Thursday responded to Chinese President Xi Jinping's comment about the "Thucydides Trap" during their state visit, in which Xi appeared to reference the political theory that a dominant power's fear of a rising power could lead to war.

Trump claimed his counterpart was not saying that the U.S. is currently a "declining nation," but that it was during former President Joe Biden's term.   

Xi, during his opening remarks on Wednesday, according to a live translation, said, "The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the U.S. overcome the 'Thucydides Trap' and create a new paradigm of major country relations?"

In his post to Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said, "When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct."

Pathetic? Pitiful? Childish? Sad? When the sitting president heard Xi say that our nation is in decline, he scurried away, then pretended that Xi had been talking about the way we were under "Sleepy Joe Biden."  

Sad! He played his pitiful nickname game as he interpreted the comments made by his imagined friend. He continued to kowtow to President Xi, praising the elegance of his remarks even as he bravely pretended that Xi hadn't said what he said.

"There was no apparent indication that Xi was referring to Biden in his statement," the ABC report mildly says. Here's the way the Wall Street Journal reported this same global embarrassment:

Trump Plays Down Xi’s View That U.S. Is in Decline   

President Trump sought to paper over differences of opinion with Xi Jinping, playing down the Chinese leader’s prior comments that the West is in decline.

“When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct,” Trump wrote on social media ahead of the second day of his summit in Beijing.

Xi has in recent years said, “The East is rising and the West is declining.” Though the wording broadly references “the West,” Chinese leadership, state-controlled media and political analysts specifically apply the phrase to the U.S. Beijing views American political polarization, societal divisions and economic shifts as clear markers of long-term American decline.

Beijing thinks our nation is in decline? Vladimir has given voice to that assessment too!

Indeed, given the mess into which we've proceeded, is there a sane person on the face of the earth who doesn't hold some such view? Meanwhile, concerning the mental health of the older president, now he's gone off and done this:

Trump Posts Bonkers Image of Himself Firing Missiles at Earth From Space  

President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself firing missiles at Earth from space on Sunday in a post promoting the U.S. Space Force.

In the image, simply titled “Space Force,” Trump could be seen in a spaceship or station pressing a big red button.

In the background, five monitor screens showed lasers hitting the Earth below and creating a huge, nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud, seemingly large enough to eradicate all human life on the planet, as the monitors read, “TARGET DESTROYED.”

The president also posted another Space Force image that showed him operating satellite weapons to destroy other satellite weapons in Earth’s orbit, next to a flag that read, “STACEBS SPACE FORCE.”

And so on from there. This sort of thing goes on and on, and then it continues from there.

Our president pictures himself as Jesus. Our president angrily says that David Sanger (the New York Times) has engaged in treason by asking a question our president doesn't like.

Everyone gets an insulting nickname. Everybody else is a traitor—and President Obama's middle name is "Hussein."

Still, our journalists refuse to describe what's sitting right there before them. Is some such country possibly in something like a state of decline? 

We'll agree with that assessment—but only if you throw "headlong" in. Only if you're willing to say that we're trapped in a (very dangerous) form of astonishing headlong decline.

A mental illness is an illness. That's even true of a serious mental illness. As with physical illness, it isn't the ill person's fault.

That said, mental illness can be very dangerous. And what sane person can fail to see that our roiling, flailing nation may be in a dangerous state of decline?

In Red America, tribal certainty continues to hold that the sitting president is a deal-maker of great genius. In fairness, over here in Blue America, we have our own unhelpful beliefs:

We have our own agitprop. We can be wrong at times too.

Are we a nation in decline? Perhaps more to the point, do we remain a nation at all—or have we instead become two?

We Blues keep churning Blue agitprop as the redistricting / gerrymandering wars grind on. It's 1892 all over again, or at least so we've been told, in this case by Stacey Abrams. 

(You may feel that that isn't what she said. We'd say that it pretty much is.)

Does it make sense to keep saying such things? We'll be exploring such questions all week as the American decline—accompanied by our own tribe's Blue decline—continue to grind on and on.

Tomorrow: The 1892 files

Update: We forgot to include this additional report from Mediaite:

Trump Mocks Political Rivals in Social Media Flurry, Including Pic of Gavin Newsom in a Mental Asylum

President Donald Trump digitally whacked a number of familiar political rivals on Sunday during a social media posting spree that included posting a picture of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) looking terrified inside a mental institution.

The president shared that post—and several others—on his Truth Social platform. Newsom—whom Trump often calls “Newscum”—is surrounded by the president’s name while huddled in a padded room in the fake picture

And so on from there. 

(For the record, he's known as "Newscum" on Truth Social. On The Five, he's known as "Greasy.") 

This goes on and on and on, as does the attendant high-end silence. To see the posts, click here.

ALL AGAINST ALL: Will Democrats take the House this fall?

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2026

Not so fast, Cook says: A funny thing happened to Black representation in the House on our way back to the summer of the year 1965.

Full disclosure! Based on current estimates, we actually aren't on our way back to that distant time. But before we revisit that fact, let's review a disastrous new prognostication from the Cook Political Report. 

The prognostication concerns the likely outcome of the great civil war in which we're now engaged. We refer to the current mid-census redistricting war—the current embarrassing, dumb but ongoing war of the all against all. 

Amy Walter delivered Cook's prognostication in an interview for the New York Times. The news she delivered was very bad, as the headline itself suggested:

The Midterms Ground Has Shifted

What are we to make of the midterms? Republicans are in a jam; inflation has jumped; the war in Iran is not going well. President Trump’s approval numbers are abysmal.

This year is different. Decisions from the Supreme Court have set off a wave of extreme partisan gerrymandering in G.O.P.-controlled Southern states — in some cases, like Alabama, while primary voting was already underway.

Amy Walter, the publisher and editor of The Cook Political Report, assessed the normal and unusual aspects of the 2026 midterms in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.  

John Guida: What have the redistricting struggle and the past two weeks done to change your sense of what we might expect from the midterms?

[...] 

Amy Walter: Before the court rulings, our Political Report rated 217 House districts as solidly Democratic or leaning toward Democrats and 16 seats that were tossups. In these tossup districts, each side had a 50-50 chance to win. They are seats that are the most vulnerable. Under that scenario, Democrats would need to win just one of those 16 tossups to reach a majority in the House.

Today we rate 207 districts as solidly Democratic or leaning toward Democrats and 18 as tossups. To win a majority, Democrats need to win at least 11 of the 50-50 contests (and hold all those leaning their way) in order to get a majority.

Good God! According to Walter, Democrats will have to win 11 of the 18 toss-up seats, without losing a single "solid or leaning Democratic" seat! 

That strikes us as a disastrous prognostication, especially since no one knows what sorts of election-tilting schemes the White House may put in effect. 

In a nod to lingering sanity, let us quickly add this:  

No one knows what else the sitting president may do to make himself even less popular. He may create a political environment in which it will be impossible for the Dems to fail to win.

That said, the sitting president won't be on the ballot this year. Hundreds of Democrats will be, and the Democratic Party is almost as unpopular as the sitting president is.

"We still see Democrats as the favorites for House control next year," Walter went on to say. "But they are no longer overwhelmingly favored," she felt she had to add, 

That strikes us as horrible news. And those predictions, however fallible, are coming from the Cook Report, the mother of all down-the-line, not crazy political think tanks.   

In the wake of recent court decisions, the Democrats may not retake the House! And of course, even if they retake the House and the Senate, the sitting president will remain in the Oval Office until early 2029, with all the uncertainty and all the danger that state of affairs suggests.  

But so it now seems, according to Cook, as the current war of the all against all continues to unfold. Dems are still favored to win, but 

Does President Xi see the United States as a nation in decline?  Please! We've suggested to you, for quite a few years, that we may already have attained the status of "failed state."  

Others see that as inanely alarmist—as a silly idea. It could always turn out that those people are right—or it could be that they're unable to see the situation which has slowly crept upon us, just as the fictional denizens of Camus' Oran were unable to see the signs of the plague which had invaded their seaside town as normal life sputtered along.

“We're going to look back in ten years and call this about the dumbest time in American history," Adam Kinzinger has recently said. You can see the video of his statement here. 

He quickly added these words: "I hope, at least." We're going to call him a dreamer.

That returns us to the funny thing that happened on our way back to the summer of 65. We refer to an overstatement by a high-profile Democrat, but also to a bit of news about a quartet of Republican members of the House.

As we noted yesterday, NBC News filed the report:

Democrats warn a third of the Congressional Black Caucus could be wiped out by redistricting wars

The Congressional Black Caucus, a power center in the Democratic Party for decades, saw its membership rise this Congress to an all-time high of 58 House members.

 Now, thanks to a Supreme Court redistricting ruling that’s expected to dramatically diminish Black representation on Capitol Hill, the CBC is fighting a five-alarm fire that could devastate its membership.

CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said as many as 19 of the caucus’ members could be affected by the redistricting wars in a worst-case scenario, though she noted it’s still fluid given that states are still drawing new maps in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. 

[...]   

“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” said longtime Rep. Bennie Thompson, who as the only Democrat in the Mississippi delegation is being targeted by Republicans. The court decision “potentially takes us back 60 years.”

[...]

Black representation isn’t dwindling on just the Democratic side of the aisle. All four Black GOP House members are either retiring or running for higher office, possibly leaving the Republican Conference with zero Black members next year.

Rep. Byron Donalds, a close Trump ally, is running for governor of Florida, while Rep. John James is running for governor of Michigan. Rep. Wesley Hunt lost his primary race for the Senate in Texas. And Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah is retiring.  

Rep. Thompson is a good, decent person—but he's also a person person, just like everyone else. Meanwhile, for the record:

Whatever you may think of the current warfare, there's no sign that we're on our way back to 1965, when there were only six Black members in the 435-member House of Representatives.  

"Jim Crow 2.0" or not, we won't be going back to that. That said:   

Several of the original 58 Black Democrats will, in fact, be losing their seats when their majority Black districts get dismantled in the coming weeks. For ourselves, we'll admit that we were struck by that additional passage about the career profiles of the four (4) Black Republicans currently in the House.  

It's hard to miss those numbers. There are way more Black Democrats serving in the House. In the House, Black Democrats outnumbered Black Republicans by 58-4 at the start of the current Congress.

That shouldn't be hugely surprising. Dating back into the 1960s, African Americans have much more commonly been Democrats, as everyone already knows. Still and all, this:

As is true of quite a few of the 58 Black Democrats, all four of the Black Republicans were elected to the House in majority white districts. For starters, here's the Cook Report's profile of Florida's 19th congressional district, the district which elected Rep. Donalds:   

Florida's 19th congressional district
69.7% White
19.1% Hispanic
5.9% Black

R+14

It's a solidly Republican district. But it's also heavily white, and it elected Donalds. 

By the same token, here's Cook's profile of the Michigan district which elected Rep. James:  

Michigan's 10th congressional district
72.8% White
13.3% Black
6.1% Asian
3.0% Hispanic

R+3

That's closer to a toss-up district. But like Donalds, James got elected in a district which is heavily white—and each man is now the likely GOP nominee for governor in his state.

(Rep. Hunt was elected from the Texas 38th congressional district; it's 9.6% Black. This year, he sought the GOP nomination for the Texas Senate seat; he gave it a shot and he lost. Rep. Owens, who is retiring, was elected from Utah's 4th district. According to Cook, the district is 74.2% white, 1.2% Black.)

We ourselves wouldn't have voted for any of those candidates. But Rep. Donalds will likely be the next governor of the Sunshine State—and given the uncertainty of the time, we'd give Rep. James a chance in Michigan. Through whatever acts of legerdemain, they seem to be movin' on up!

Is a lesson possibly lurking there for us, the frequently hapless Blues? For the political tribe which may not be able to retake the House this year, even in the face of the madness surrounding the GOP?

Xi thinks our nation is "in decline?" We'd float the term "failed state."

At any rate, the dumbness is general over the nation, much as Kinzinger says. But does some of that lack of insight come from us, the infallible Blues?

There's much more to be said about this war of the all against all—about this current redistricting war, a war we Dems may end up losing.  Different aspects of this situation seem to pile up as the days move along.

For that reason, we'll continue with this topic next week. We assume that the discussions, or in some cases the pseudo-discussions, will continue through the week.

Down in Memphis, Justin Pearson is staying in the race. Could he be the first since Gary Hart to come up with a new idea? 

Next week: Among quite a few other things, what the professors said.

Also, what Carl Hulse wrote about the way we got here. Also, have you seen a single discussion of the Callais ruling itself? Or have you seen nothing but agitprop—scripted cries all the way down?

We may even review the fuzzy judicial and journalistic language of the last quite a few years!

ALL AGAINST ALL: Black membership will be reduced next year!

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026

But it won't be reduced like that: What will happen to Black membership in the House in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais?   

Before we offer a current estimate, let's recall where membership stood at the start of the current Congress. This report, from Spectrum News, appeared in January 2025: 

A record 67 Black lawmakers are serving in the 119th Congress—a four-fold increase since 1975.

The number represents a historic milestone since the first Black member of Congress, Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, was elected in 1869. Black representation in Congress rose during Reconstruction, fell during the Jim Crow era, then grew through the 20th century due in part to the civil rights movement and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  

The 67 total Black members of Congress in 2025 include 62 Democrats and five Republicans.

The five Republicans serving on Capitol Hill—four in the House and one in the Senate—match the number in the last session of Congress and also represent the most since Reconstruction.  

Let's be clear on the overall numbers. Five of those 67 members were (and still are) members of the Senate. As the current Congress started, there were 62 Black members of the House—58 Democrats, but also four Republicans.  

How will those numbers be affected by the scramble to eliminate majority Black congressional districts in the wake of the Callais decision? In this recent news report, NBC News reported a current estimate:

Democrats warn a third of the Congressional Black Caucus could be wiped out by redistricting wars

The Congressional Black Caucus, a power center in the Democratic Party for decades, saw its membership rise this Congress to an all-time high of 58 House members.

 Now, thanks to a Supreme Court redistricting ruling that’s expected to dramatically diminish Black representation on Capitol Hill, the CBC is fighting a five-alarm fire that could devastate its membership.

CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said as many as 19 of the caucus’ members could be affected by the redistricting wars in a worst-case scenario, though she noted it’s still fluid given that states are still drawing new maps in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. 

“It’s devastating. People have sacrificed so much to make this a more perfect union. And here we are, in 2026, seeing this massive regression in all the gains that have been made. It’s painful,” Clarke told NBC News on Tuesday.

So goes that early estimate. "As many as 19 Democratic members could be affected," Rep. Clarke said.

For the record, several of the original Democratic 58 have died or have resigned. Three more have announced that they'll be retiring at the end of their current terms. 

(Two of the Republican members—Reps. Donalds and James—are the likely GOP nominees in gubernatorial races in Florida and Michigan. Throw in a retirement and an unsuccessful Senate run in Texas and none of the four Republican members will be back next year.)  

Almost surely, there will be fewer Black members in the House next year. As is almost always the rule, overstatements have followed.

“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is quoted saying in the NBC News report. Thompson is quoted saying that the Callais decision “potentially takes us back 60 years.” 

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, is also quoted calling the situation "a new form of Jim Crow." 

For the record, Rep. Thompson's calculation is almost surely wrong. Sixty years ago, there were only six Black members in the House!

Whatever you think of the Callais ruling, it won't be taking those numbers back to where they stood in 1965, or to anything close to that number. But that's the way the discourse routinely goes within our rapidly failing nation, even among us Blues.   

The number won't be that small, but the number will almost surely be smaller. As to how we got from there to here—as to how we got from six Black House members up to 62—we'll refer you to Carl Hulse's recent retrospective piece in the New York Times.  

How did we ever get this far? Also, what explains the way those numbers grew in the aftermath of the Voting Rights Act? 

As we noted yesterday, Jamelle Bouie laid out the numbers, and the timeline recording their growth, in this recent New York Times column:

John Roberts Believes in an America That Doesn’t Exist

[...]  

[I]t took a major amendment to the Voting Rights Act and a Supreme Court decision to give Black Americans the opportunity to win more than token representation in Congress. In 1982, Congress reauthorized and amended the V.R.A. to combat disparate impact in voting and electoral outcomes. Four years later, in 1986, a unanimous Supreme Court declared that the Voting Rights Act forbade voting schemes that impaired the ability of “cohesive” groups of language or minority groups to “participate equally in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.” Following this decision, states across the country—especially in the South—used the 1990 census and redistricting to create majority-minority state legislative and congressional districts where Black voters could elevate Black lawmakers and officials to federal office.

At the 10th anniversary of the [Voting Rights Act] in 1975, there were 17 Black members of Congress, up from six in 1965. All but one of them served in the House of Representatives. At the 20th anniversary in 1985, there were still only 20 Black Americans in the House (and none in the Senate). By 1995, however, there were 43 Black Americans serving as voting members of Congress, including one senator, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois. This, even after the Democratic Party suffered its largest congressional defeat of the postwar era. 

After that major amendment to the VRA, the numbers substantially grew. More specifically, majority- minority House districts were formed in the redistricting which followed the 1990 census. 

This raises a bit of a question:

Who was responsible for the creation of those new districts? Were Democratic legislatures creating those districts Were Republicans joining in?

Was this some sort of different age? Was this the dawning of an age in which the two parties chose to link hands to let a thousand flowers bloom?   

In this recent report in the New York Times, Carl Hulse explores that general question—and as was understood at the time, it wasn't quite as simple as that! In his recent retrospective, Hulse describes the political trade-offs which were involved as this remarkable change occurred. 

It's hard to imagine the current era without that impressive growth in Black congressional membership—a change which made the House of Representatives "look [much] more like America."

It's hard to imagine the current era without that significant change. We ourselves have always lived in a (naturally occurring) majority minority district—a district in which we've been represented by Kweisi Mfume and the late Elijah Cummings, with an earlier tenure by Rep. Parren J. Mitchell added in.

(They were "princes and princesses." That's what the late Rep. Mitchell would always tell the children at the Baltimore City elementary school where we were teaching fifth graders back at the start of the era. Unfailingly, he would deliver those words of affirmation, during a challenging time.)

As these things go, we've been lucky in the quality of the people we've been able to vote for. That said, Hulse describes the political complexities involved in the creation of those majority minority districts in places where "racial gerrymandering" was required to create such congressional maps.

He also describes the long, slow, steady political change in which the Republican Party took political control of the "Solid South" and seems to have acquired substantial control over the electoral map. 

There were tradeoffs involved in the gerrymandering which produced the larger numbers we have described. Based on an unusual comment Rep. Clyburn recently made, such tradeoffs may even live on today!

We want to walk you through the political history recalled in Hulse's report. We also want to tell you what we saw and heard on Velshi last weekend—what we saw and heard when the Harvard professor and the Princeton professor spoke with the (highly capable) rising star Harvard grad.  

All three of those people are good, decent people. Rep. Thompson is a good, decent person as well.

That said, we aren't going back to 1965, and this isn't Jim Crow all over again. The numbers will be down next year. But they won't be down like that

We aren't going back to 1965, and this isn't Jim Crow again! We Blues! Do we know how we look to other people when we refuse to stop making such claims?

Tomorrow: We'll have to move fast to cram it all in. 

On Monday morning, we expect to move on to the annals of headlong decline.