"As New York Governor Kathy Hochul denounced the GOP’s aggressive attempt to gerrymander Democrats into political oblivion this week, she lamented her party’s built-in disadvantage. “I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back,” she told reporters.

As political metaphors go, it’s not a bad one. Hochul omitted a key detail, however: Democrats provided the rope themselves. For more than a decade, they’ve tried to be the party of good government on redistricting. But Democrats’ support for letting independent commissions draw legislative maps has cost them seats in key blue states, and their push to ban gerrymandering nationwide flopped in the courts and in Congress."