For years, Democrats framed gerrymandering as a fundamental threat to democracy.
Former president Barack Obama once called it “a sneaky way for politicians to consolidate as much power as they can.” Obama’s former attorney general, Eric Holder, helped launch a national campaign to end partisan redistricting, warning that it disenfranchises voters and erodes trust in government.
And yet, something has shifted.
“All’s fair in love and war,” declared New York governor Kathy Hochul (D), speaking to reporters on Monday. Flanking her were Democratic Texas state legislators who had just fled their state to keep their Republican colleagues from having the quorum they needed to redraw congressional maps in their favor.
“If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they’re leaving us no choice,” said Hochul. “We must do the same.”
Since Monday’s meeting with Hochul, the Texas lawmakers have been to Illinois and Boston to meet with Democratic officials, including Massachusetts governor Maura Healey (D), who echoed Hochul’s words by saying Republican officials’ gerrymandering efforts in Texas leave states like hers “with no choice.”
Holder too now says the current crisis justifies abandoning his once-held principle that gerrymandering is a threat to democracy — at least temporarily. “Extraordinary steps” are necessary, he told the New York Times, to save democracy so it can be “ultimately healed.”
Gerrymandering is the process of drawing political maps to achieve partisan outcomes in an election. For example, a political party that controls a state legislature may decide to concentrate voters favorable to their party within certain districts — or lump together enclaves favorable to their opponents — as a tactic for winning elections. This process has been widely denounced as antidemocratic because instead of voters choosing their representatives, politicians have effectively done it for them. In several states, such as California and New York, independent commissions have been structured via ballot measures to combat gerrymandering by removing the redistricting process from partisan hands.
Since President Donald Trump’s rise in politics — and especially after his attempt to overturn the 2020 election — Democrats have doubled down on their role as defenders of voting rights and democratic norms. In a twist of meaning, they are now invoking that same language to justify their own blatant embrace of gerrymandering. Hochul even likened her efforts to the revolutionary spirit that founded American democracy 250 years ago.
Democrats themselves have not been above gerrymandering, though they’ve by and large recognized it as an undemocratic tactic and have put up greater guardrails to stop it than Republicans.
In 2021, US senators voted along party lines on a bill to ban partisan gerrymandering and prohibit mid-decade redistricting, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans opposed.
Yet recently, New York’s state legislature has taken up Hochul’s calls to embrace gerrymandering as a political tactic, with Democratic state senator Michael Gianaris and assemblymember Micah Lasher proposing a state constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to bypass the independent commission and engage in off-year redistricting if another state moves to do it first.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has flirted with a similar proposal, citing this moment as a grave enough threat to democracy to suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission. Speaking with reporters, Newsom hinted at sending a new map proposal to voters in a special election, noting, “They can go back in 2030 to original form, with our independent redistricting intact.” He then invoked Abraham Lincoln: “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Granted, what makes the current moment especially troubling is the allegation that Trump’s aides pushed the Texas legislature to redraw the maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. Clearly, this is a dangerous escalation of presidential interference in the design of congressional districts for political gain.
But the Democratic response — to match the power grab with one of their own — only deepens the legitimacy crisis. Rather than building public trust, it reinforces the view that democracy is just a game of procedural warfare, played by elites who change the rules when they lose.
By putting redistricting back into the hands of partisan legislatures, Democrats like Newsom and Hochul aren’t just copying Republican tactics — they’re actively eroding a layer of public accountability that voters themselves fought to establish. Worse still, by rigging maps to create safer districts for their own party, they insulate their elected officials from competition and dissent. In the name of “saving democracy,” they’re making it harder for democracy to function.
Marc Elias, a high-profile Democratic election lawyer, has long positioned himself as a leader in the “pro-democracy” movement — a coalition that claims to stand above partisan politics in defense of democratic norms. But Elias’s recent comments show just how blurry the line between defending democracy and protecting partisan power has become.
In the past, Elias supported federal legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering altogether. But on a recent appearance with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on his news platform Democracy Docket, he called on Democrats to aggressively redraw maps in every state they control — not to make the process fair but to punish Republicans. He argues that if Democrats gerrymander harder, they can make GOP lawmakers in swing districts suffer until they pressure their own party to stop. “Fight fire with fire,” he urges. “If they do five seats in Texas,” he said, “there will be fifteen at risk elsewhere.”
This isn’t about safeguarding democracy but about applying pressure. Voters are sidelined while electoral maps become bargaining chips in a power struggle between elites. The irony, of course, is that this tactical turn is being made by the very same liberal actors like Elias who once told us that gerrymandering was a moral affront to democracy itself.
In the same clip, Elias says the quiet part out loud: “Eventually we need to all get off this cliff,” he said, “but we’re only going to get there when Republicans realize that this is not fruitful for them . . . that following Donald Trump down this path will lead to their own electoral defeat.”
Elias’s claim that gerrymandering is merely a temporary fix, just until Trump is gone, rests on a dangerous illusion. It assumes Trump is an isolated threat rather than a symptom of a much deeper legitimacy crisis. Even if Trump disappears, the forces that brought him to power — economic decline, institutional distrust, elite failure — aren’t going anywhere.
You can’t solve a long-term political breakdown with short-term procedural tricks. And once Democrats redraw maps in their favor, what incentive is there to give that power back? The temporary “fix” could very well become the new normal. What starts as a strategy to protect democracy from Trump could quickly morph into a bipartisan consensus to shield incumbents, suppress participation, and manage outcomes from above. That’s not a return to democratic stability — it’s how you entrench the decay that made Trump possible in the first place.
Some defenders of this approach might argue that Democrats don’t really want to gerrymander. That their threats to do so in New York or California are simply tactical — a form of leverage to force Republicans in places like Texas to back down. In this telling, Democrats are still representing moral leadership; they’re just playing a clever game to defend democracy by threatening to subvert it themselves.
But this is not moral leadership. It’s brinkmanship. And the problem with using gerrymandering as leverage is that it trains the public to see democracy as exactly that — a weapon in an insider battle between elites. It may be dressed up in moral rhetoric, but it amounts to the same transactional logic that has eroded trust in both parties: say one thing, do another, and call it strategy.
Even if Democrats never follow through, the threat alone signals to voters that the institutions meant to protect fairness and accountability can be overridden for the sake of short-term tactical wins.
Other Democrats argue gerrymandering is a necessary evil: if Democrats don’t redraw the maps, they’ll lose the chance to govern. In other words, rigging the maps back is the only realistic option — Democrats can’t save democracy unless they first neutralize Republican manipulation.
Many Americans are rightly frustrated by the lack of “fight” the Democrats have shown, particularly since Trump’s reelection. They will argue that at least the Democrats here are proposing to do something.
But this logic collapses under scrutiny.
First, there’s no guarantee that these power grabs will translate into real legislative success. In fact, the opposite is often true: safe seats reduce responsiveness and incentivize incumbents to cater to special interests rather than constituents.
Second, any agenda passed through rigged maps and manipulated procedures will lack legitimacy and reinforce the same kind of backlash that brought Trump to power in the first place.
Third, gerrymandering to get back at Republicans is not the real, serious action the American people deserve from their leaders. Instead, it’s another performative gesture in which Democrats get to wield lofty rhetoric about American democracy while, literally in this case, preserving their own seats of power.
Most important, this is not a temporary compromise. It’s a full abandonment of the principles Democrats claimed to stand for. Gerrymandering as a bargaining chip is not an honest attempt to save democracy. It’s a power grab — justified in the language of moral necessity but indistinguishable in practice from the abuses they once decried.
Such actions hint at a bleak future — one where elections are battles of map-rigging, not of ideas. Where power comes not from consent, but from engineering outcomes behind closed doors. And where voters are reduced to pawns in a game between elite factions.
If Democrats truly want to defeat Trumpism, they should reject this race to the bottom and make their case to the American people. Not just about why Trump is dangerous but about why they deserve to govern. Not with tricks constructed in backrooms but with public trust.
There is, of course, a path back to legitimacy and success that doesn’t involve rigging the game but that demands Democrats reckon with their own role in creating the conditions that define this moment: the collapse of trust, the disappearance of economic security, and the sense of abandonment felt across class and geography.
That means finally taking on corporate power and getting big money out of politics. It means rebuilding a social contract that provides dignity and stability. These aren’t fringe ideas; they’re widely popular — and they’re the path back to genuine democratic legitimacy.
American voters have drawn the direct link between protecting democracy and getting money out of politics. Nearly eight in ten support a constitutional amendment to limit the influence of money in politics, while 82 percent see money in politics as a threat to democracy. Meanwhile, 70 percent of Americans say that constituents of a district have too little influence over their elected leaders, compared with lobbyists and special interest groups. Much like money in politics, gerrymandering manipulates the structure of representation itself.
Redistricting might win a few seats in the short term. But it won’t restore trust, renew faith, or defeat Trumpism. Only a politics built on democratic consent can do that.
Which is why Newsom’s Monday remarks to the press were so revealing. Speaking of Republicans, he said, “These folks don’t play by the rules. If they can’t win playing the game with the existing set of rules, they’ll change the rules.” Democrats, by now proposing to rewrite the rules themselves, are admitting that they too cannot win under the existing ones.
Democrats can reject the game altogether — not by surrendering, but by fighting on different terms. That means building the kind of broad, popular agenda that forces a realignment, one that can win even within unfair systems. That’s not fantasy. That’s how transformational politics has always worked through movements that broke the rules by rising above them, not stooping to meet them.
The labor movement, for example, secured the forty-hour workweek because workers shut down factories and built coalitions across differences, proving the collective power of the people’s will was greater than those seeking to rig the system. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) didn’t game the rules to take over the Democratic establishment when he ran for president; he mobilized a class-based popular movement that ultimately forced the establishment to concede ideological ground to the Left. Sanders didn’t win the presidency, but the movement won terrain.
This path may be harder and slower, but it’s the only way to build power, legitimacy, and accountability, which is the foundation of any healthy democracy.
If Democrats want to restore democratic legitimacy, they should start by restoring trust. Not by insulating themselves from the will of the people but by embracing it. If your defense of democracy requires you to do the very things you once called a threat, you’re not saving it. You’re showing the public that the great American project was negotiable all along. And that’s a far steeper price to pay.
Great Job Evelyn Quartz & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
