For a while there, it appeared the great redistricting war of 2025-2026 would be fought to a draw, or even that Democrats could come out slightly ahead. That is no longer the case, and the way this conflict played out has made something distressingly clear: We are facing nothing less than the collapse of American democracy as we have known it.
This is a crisis, and the only thing that can keep us from spiraling even further downward is if Democrats — not always a group known for their courage and determination — confront it in a way that meets the magnitude of the challenge.
For that to happen, the Democratic Party has to become something it has not been in the past. Its collection of careful legislators and cautious campaigners must be reborn as bold, aggressive, creatively ruthless warriors willing to take steps they never contemplated before.
There are signs they might — the fact that they fought back at all against President Trump’s attempts to rig the midterms shows they have begun to understand what they’re up against. But now they have to go much farther — not just this year, and not just if they take back one or both houses of Congress in November, but toward a radical reform of the political system of the kind we haven’t seen in decades.
This started last summer when Donald Trump ordered Republicans, first in Texas and then in other states, to redraw their congressional district maps to deliver more GOP seats.
Most of them complied (Indiana was the exception), and Democrats in California and Virginia responded by putting measures on the ballot to get voters’ permission to do the same. This was a temporary response, they argued: We’ll stop Trump and the GOP from rigging the midterms now, then work toward a national system in which gerrymandering has been banished. The voters in both states agreed.
