Does no one appreciate swing states with competitive statewide elections or should all be locked into one party or the other?
Clearly not the Florida GOP, considering their use of gerrymandering to lock up their hold on the legislature.
As did the IL Dems, but I don't support the resolution that would split Cook from the rest of IL. Anyway, my comment was about the statewide elections, not control of the legislature. 
I recognize that internal demographics can skew a legislative body compared to statewide results, and sometimes even neutral redistricting will not create a legislature that reflects the overall state vote.
I would argue that a redistricting process that spits out a legislature whose composition is unreflective of the overall state vote cannot truly be called "neutral".
I do agree that this proposal seems to be taking partisan advantage into account when drawing the lines; I don't know that it's much worse than 6 Californias on that front, but 6 Californias was pretty bad so that's not much of a compliment.
I was thinking of the 6 CAs myself, which is also a blatant political move under the guise of better representation. As laudable as a fair legislature is in redistricting, the demographics really can prevent it. If a minority population is uniformly spread in every precinct, they will hold a majority in no district.
Consider MA. It voted 61% in 2012 for Obama or 62% of the two-party vote. Mathematical analysis of districts predicts that the Dems should hold 74% of the seats based on their 2012 results (2% advantage for every 1% above 50%). The legislative boundaries largely follow town lines, yet the legislature is divided 36-4 in the Senate and 128-32 in the House. That is 82% Dem. Likewise all 9 CDs went to Dems, and there is some gerrymandering, but generally the best a Pub map can do is one CD that merely leans Dem, with hope in strong GOP years. That is not consistent with their voting share in the state. The demographic problem for the Pubs is that they are too dispersed in MA to form a majority in a CD, and then in only a fraction of the smaller legislative seats.
Well, what I'd actually like to see is a move away from strict FPTP districts and towards MMP- our current system is liable to be unfair one way or another and Massachusetts is, yes, an extreme case where you can't really even get to fair even when you put your thumb on the scale. In the meantime (because, let's be honest, MMP is a pipe dream) I'll support efforts to sand down the worst rough edges of geographic screwage, and yes that would include having a Republican-leaning district in MA.
