State Sen. Phil Berger has some simple advice for Democrats who don't like the redistricting of the state legislature: Become Republicans.

Responding to complaints that the new districts aren't competitive, Berger, the Senate's Republican leader, said if the other party wants to win elections, "You're going to have to bring back the traditional North Carolina Democrat."

By that, he explained, he means pro-business, pro-gun Democrats. In fact, Bernie Sanders supporters and socialists are fairly rare among the current crop of state Democrats.

Perhaps he means "traditional" Democrats like the late U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, both of whom switched over to the GOP in the Nixon era. But those gentlemen were both vocal opponents of desegregation, which might not sit well with African Americans.

Berger, in fact, is being disingenuous. The fact is, through the miracles of computer-generated mapping, Republicans came up with districts that almost guarantee the re-election of most incumbent Honorables.

One analysis by the Raleigh News & Observer found that just 10 of the 50 state Senate seats and just 19 of the 120 House seats would be competitive in any meaningful sense.

This took some creativity. As our journalistic cousins at the Fayetteville Observer noted, a peculiar, tumor-shape extension was added onto the 21st Senate district in Cumberland County.

Why? Well, it just happens to include the site of state Sen. Ben Clark's new house. Republicans apparently didn't want Clark, a Democrat, running against Republican Sen. Wesley Meredith over in District 21.

Such tricks will ensure a veto-proof Republican majority in both houses of the General Assembly for the foreseeable future.

It also ensures the policy discourse in our legislative branch will be essentially limited to debates between conservatives and a couple of far-right loonies who keep filing secession bills and the like.

One-party rule wasn't good for North Carolina in the 1950s and '60s, when petty corruption often reigned unchecked. And it won't be good for North Carolina now.

At this point, our last hope lies in the courts. Federal courts have hinted at extreme suspicion of the legislature’s shenanigans, ruling against redistricting plans five separate times. Berger & Co. apparently hope that a new crop of Trump appointees will protect them, but with judges, you never know. The state Supreme Court may also weigh in.

The ultimate answer, as we've said before, is some non-partisan board or means, out of control of legislators, to map out districts. At the moment, though, we would settle for a system that’s even slightly sort of fair.