MILWAUKEE — As I leave the land of my spotty youth and leave behind most of the 2022 midterm elections, I do so with a real nostalgia for the following provision of the U.S. Constitution:

Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

This was placed into the new Constitution as a further device to exorcize the evil spirits of the Articles of Confederation, which blew goats. The passage has gone largely unexamined almost since it was adopted with the rest of the Constitution. (For example, it’s hardly mentioned in the Federalist Papers, and the Supreme Court, when it has taken up the subject at all, is incoherent on it.) But whatever “a Republican Form of Government” means, it cannot possibly mean the situation as it stands in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Party got 51 percent of the vote statewide. This got the Democrats…30 percent of the seats in the state legislature. Any reasonable definition of “a Republican Form of Government” cannot possibly include this kind of result. It is completely and utterly a product of grotesque partisan gerrymandering sanctioned by the Supreme Court in its disgraceful decision Rucho v. Common Cause three years ago.

The die was cast on this atrocity last April, when the state supreme court ruled that this year’s elections would be contested on the ludicrous maps produced by the state legislature, itself the product of past gerrymanders. The U.S. Supreme Court was a critical accessory after the fact. From Wisconsin Public Radio:

It was a reversal for Hagedorn, who joined the court's liberals in early March to choose a legislative map drawn by Gov. Tony Evers. But after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Hagedorn's ruling based on the way it applied the federal Voting Rights Act to draw Black-majority districts in Milwaukee, it sent the case back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to consider all over again.

You will note that the carefully manufactured conservative majority on the court was not shy about meddling with maps in this instance.

"We could construct one ourselves or with the assistance of an expert, but time and our institutional limitations make that unrealistic at this juncture," Hagedorn wrote. "The remaining option is to choose one of the proposed maps we received as the baseline. Only one proposal was represented as race-neutral in its construction: the maps submitted by the Legislature.”

For Democrats, the decision was likely the worst-possible outcome. For the past decade, they've felt the sting of the 2011 map, which Republicans drew when they controlled all branches of state government. Even during years when Democratic candidates have performed well statewide, Republicans have maintained large majorities in the Legislature, thanks in part to a map that political scientists have said is among the biggest partisan gerrymanders in modern U.S. history. The new map, drawn by Republicans and made law by four justices on the state Supreme Court Friday, further entrenched that advantage, giving Republicans a realistic shot at a two-thirds majority that would let them override a governor's veto. It took effect despite being vetoed by Evers last year and being initially rejected by the state Supreme Court last month.

The best chance that Wisconsin has to unf*ck itself here comes next April, when an election could bring a Democratic majority to the state supreme court, which theoretically could open the door to maps that less closely resemble a game of three-card monte. Of course, John Roberts and the gang put the kibosh on the last attempt at unf*cking last April. The roundness and completeness with which extreme conservatism has deformed the American republic is occasionally stunning.