Left and Right Netroots

ProfessorBainbridge blogged Meanwhile, over on the left side of the netroots, liberal bloggers plan primary challenges against moderate Democrats in Congress who depart from the left's cut-and-run orthodoxy.

What they don't realize is that they won because they were in the center. Replacing them with extreme lefties increases the chance the Republicans will win.

There is a considerable chance such efforts will be successful, at least on the House side. The national disgrace of gerrymandering has created a system in which the vast majority of House seats are safe for one of the two parties. As a result, the real action is in the primaries, which tend to be dominated by activists. As a result, we see the polarization of Congress, as GOP candidates tend hard right to win their primaries and vice-versa for the Democrats. Now the netroots plan to exacerbate the problem.

The solution seems obvious. A national system of nonpartisan redistricting designed to maximize the number of truly competitive seats. In such a system, candidates would succeed by appealing to the center rather than the extremes, which in turn would reduce the destructive influence of the rabid partisans on both sides of the net.

IMHO the way to do that is to use computers programmed to select the most compact districts possible, without any knowledge of the polotical affiliation.

Of course, I won't be holding my breath.