By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – Kamala Harris made Joe Biden forget how to be Joe Biden.

Maybe she even made him forget that he was Joe Biden, former vice president of the United States and a man whose greatest political gift was the ability to ooze empathy.

The moment came during the second night of the three-ring circus of a Democratic presidential debate in Miami. The debate format featured 10 candidates and almost as many moderators each night.

Given the size of the field and the number of media interrogators it’s surprising the fire marshal allowed the event to proceed.

In such crowded circumstances, each candidate’s challenge was to separate herself or himself from the pack and connect with a large slice of America.

A handful – Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Cory Booker and Indiana’s Pete Buttigieg – did just that.

But none of them made more of an impact than Harris did.

The first-term California U.S. senator and former prosecutor went after the big dog, frontrunner Biden, and took him down in a way that combined both grace and grit.

The climax occurred when Harris and Biden talked about race, segregation and busing. Biden had made news by touting his chummy relationships in the old days with segregationist members of the U.S. Senate as evidence of his ability to get things done in a bipartisan fashion.

Harris’s takedown was note-perfect.

She began by lowering her voice and saying she didn’t believe Biden was a racist himself. But she talked about how hurtful it was to her personally as an African-American – in the process, establishing herself as the champion of all Americans who have felt dispossessed, disregarded or disenfranchised – to speak so uncritically of people who would deny her both her rights and her full measure of humanity.

Then she went after Biden’s troubled and contradictory record on busing. She spoke of her own experience as a little girl riding the bus to integrate her school in California and how overwhelming that was for someone so young.

Biden in his best form would have responded at a human level. Perhaps the best public moment the man ever has had occurred in the 2008 vice presidential debate when he dealt with an implied charge from opponent Sarah Palin that he was elitist and out of touch by talking about his anguish and doubt he felt after losing his first wife and his infant daughter in an accident. He made it clear he had reservoirs of pain to draw upon that would help him understand others’ suffering.

But Biden didn’t do that this time. He didn’t even acknowledge Harris’s pain.

Instead, he looked stunned.

Then he flailed.

He tried reciting his legislative record. When that didn’t seem to be working, he resorted to spouting gibberish.

It was a devastating turn of events for Biden. His strongest argument for claiming the Democratic presidential nomination is that he is the most electable candidate.

But most Americans watching the debate saw him dissolve into blathering before their eyes and couldn’t help thinking that, come general election time, President Donald Trump would carve Biden up into thin slices just right for sandwich servings.

The former vice president was the biggest loser at the debate. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke also did himself no favors by showing up with little more than a smile and an ability to speak Spanish as his case to make.

The other big loser was NBC. The network apparently decided that the best way to simplify an event that already was overcrowded and confusing was to overcrowd and confuse it even more. Everyone, it seemed, who ever had worked at NBC got a chance to moderate.

If the debate had gone on much longer, I’m pretty sure the network would have given anyone who ever had taken a tour of the NBC studios a chance at the mic.

Where do things go from here?

Well, Biden now looks vulnerable in a way he didn’t before. Expect the other candidates to study what Harris did and go after him in a similar fashion.

The former vice president will have to fashion a better response than sputtering nonsense.

And Harris?

She sent a strong signal that anyone who wants to tangle with someone as tough as she is had better bring friends along.

A lot of them.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Victoria Ratliff
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday 5-4 along conservative-liberal lines that the federal courts don’t have a role in policing partisan gerrymandering.

“The Supreme Court had the opportunity today to put an end to partisan gerrymandering once and for all, and they chose not to do that,” said Julia Vaughn, policy director for Common Cause Indiana.

In making that decision, the nation’s high court turned its back on voters, she added, which is why her organization in partnership with others will continue to work for redistricting reform in the Indiana General Assembly.

The Supreme Court issued the gerrymandering ruling in two cases—North Carolina where district lines were drawn to favor Republicans and Maryland where they were drawn to favor Democrats.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in writing for the majority, said partisan gerrymandering, or the issue of drawing legislative district maps to benefit one party over the other, is not a matter for the federal courts.

After reciting a brief history of gerrymandering in the United States, Roberts wrote:

“To hold that legislators cannot take partisan interest into account when drawing district lines would essentially countermand the Framers’ decision to entrust districting to political entities. The ‘central problem’ is not determining whether a jurisdiction has engaged in partisan gerrymandering. It is ‘determining when political gerrymandering has gone too far.”

Roberts concluded that the parties in both the Maryland and North Carolina cases were asking the courts to determine what’s fair when legislative boundary lines are drawn.

“Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” Roberts wrote. “But the fact that such ger­rymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles’ does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judi­ciary.

“We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing a strong dissent, said that partisan gerrymandering deprives citizens of their right to participate equally in the political process.

“For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities,” she said.

Roberts noted in his opinion that some states have turned over legislative redistricting to nonpartisan, independent commissions.

But in Indiana, efforts to get the state legislature to support redistricting reforms and create an independent group to do the job have failed repeatedly.

Vaughn said Common Cause and the Indiana Coalition for Independent Redistricting won’t give up. The group, which includes the Hoosier Environmental Council and the League of Women Voters among other, has one last chance in the 2020 legislative session for redistricting reforms to pass. That is because new legislative district boundaries will be drawn in 2021, after the results of the 2020 census are finalized.

Even if the group fails to get an independent commission created, members can still work with lawmakers to create a more transparent and open process to draw the lines, Vaughn said.

“For too long the general assembly has had a monopoly on this process,” she said. “We can use technology to open this up to every Hoosier who has an interest and an idea.”

Voters are living with district boundary lines drawn after the 2010 census which gave Republicans overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.

In 2018 general election, for example, Republican challenger Mike Braun defeated incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly for the U.S. Senate seat by a 55% to 45% margin, a split that roughly reflects the divide between the two parties across Indiana.

But the composition of the Indiana House and Senate doesn’t reflect those percentages. In the House, Democrats hold 33 of 100 seats and in the Senate, 10 of 50 seats, which gives Republicans a supermajority in both chambers. As a result, Democrats are not needed for a quorum to conduct business.

Indiana’s delegation in the U.S. House is equally lopsided—seven of nine members are Republicans, or 78%.

Rep. Phil GiaQuinta, D-Fort Wayne, released a statement on the ruling. He said that legislators need to act in the absence of the court’s ability to step in.

Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, agreed.

“We will no longer be able to fall back on the ability of the federal government to prevent politicians from choosing their voters instead of the other way around,” he said.

Vaughn said gerrymandering undermines democracy because “it’s telling Hoosiers that ‘your vote counts less than your neighbors across town.”

Victoria Ratliff is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalists.