US House Redistricting: Tennessee

[Skill and Chance]

I'm reading on Twitter that the 7-2 map might be preserved, but we will have to see what happens.

If that is the case, I wonder if they give Cooper a "Blue Dog" R+2 seat so they can pick it up when he retires.  Alternatively, if they are concerned about the growth of blue Nashville, they could vote-sink Cooper into a 60%+ Obama seat...

[Skill and Chance]

I'm reading on Twitter that the 7-2 map might be preserved, but we will have to see what happens.

If that is the case, I wonder if they give Cooper a "Blue Dog" R+2 seat so they can pick it up when he retires.  Alternatively, if they are concerned about the growth of blue Nashville, they could vote-sink Cooper into a 60%+ Obama seat...

If you give him everything blue or 50/50 in Davidson and draw the district down to Murfreesboro, you get a 61% Obama seat.  If they don't give him an R+8, I'll bet this is what they do.

[Skill and Chance]

Washington is the maximum Republicans could theoretically get.

That is a statement of profound ignorance. For instance, Slade Gordon's proposal was five Republican, four Democratic, and one swing seat.

Okay, and the best Democrats could possibly do (think MD or IL) is 8 Democratic, one swing seat, and one Republican.  A fair map produced by negotiation between the two parties should fall roughly in the middle of the partisan extremes.  We ended up with 5D-4R-1S, which is an awful lot closer to 4D-5R-1S than 8D-1R-1S. Therefore, Republicans got a better deal here, just like Democrats got a better deal in AZ.