In sports we say that’s why we play the game. In horse racing, that’s why we run the race. The whole point is that outcomes are uncertain. But in politics, we increasingly behave as though results were preordained. If a candidate loses, she must have been flawed. If a legislature breaks ranks, there must have been some hidden inevitability all along. The narrative gets written backward from the scoreboard.
So how do you explain South Carolina holding its ground on its congressional map?
South Carolina has long cultivated a reputation for independence — a certain contrarian streak toward outside authority. Historically, that instinct often served deeply unjust ends, tied to slavery, segregation, and the defense of elite power. But the instinct itself — the reflexive resistance to external pressure — still seems to distinguish the state from some of its southern neighbors. Even today, the state’s political culture carries a faint pride in doing things its own way.
And the gains from redrawing the map were hardly extraordinary. One Democratic seat, perhaps. And the seat in question belonged to Jim Clyburn — a civil-rights icon and, in many ways, a state treasure. What exactly was the payoff? And was it worth the political and legal risk?
Yes, voting had already begun, as it had in other states aligned with the Trump administration’s redistricting push. But South Carolina’s timing was slightly different. Could that have mattered? Or does some old-fashioned instinct still persist — that representation ought to bear at least some resemblance to the popular vote, even if no one says so out loud?
It’s hard to know precisely why South Carolina bucked the trend. Competing explanations can be offered, and each has its own logic. But that, in a sense, is the point. Politics is not physics. States, like people, sometimes behave in ways that defy the models built to predict them.
Politics remains one of the few realms where human beings still surprise the experts.
And that’s why we run the race.