Playing By Their Own Rules Puts Democrats at a Disadvantage
It's hard to win a street fight under Marquess of Queensberry rules.
The YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen contends, “The Left is Good Governing Itself into Obscurity.” After a few paragraphs ranting about the Virginia Supreme Court striking down the gerrymandering amendment on technical grounds, he gets to his core argument:
For too long, the left has been so desperate to practice “good government” that they’re good governing themselves into obscurity. Meanwhile, the right has no issues whatsoever with flaunting their blatant pursuit of power. Republicans drew 191 districts in 2024. Democrats, with their votes and procedures, managed to take only 75.
Cohen offers no explanation for his math here, although he may well have done so in previous posts. As best I can tell, he’s relying on an analysis by Michael Li and Peter Miller (“How Gerrymandering Tilts the 2024 Race for the House“) for the leftist but quite reputable Brennan Center for Justice, which concluded,
Both parties engaged in gerrymandering after the 2020 census, but, overall, the bias in this cycle’s maps strongly favors Republicans due primarily to aggressive gerrymandering in GOP strongholds in the South and Midwest. In total, the Brennan Center estimates that this gerrymandering will give Republicans an advantage of around 16 House seats in the 2024 race to control Congress compared to fair maps.
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This decade, as last, Republicans disproportionately controlled the redistricting process, drawing 191 (or 44 percent) of the districts that will be used in this year’s elections. By contrast, Democrats fully controlled the drawing of only 75 districts. The rest were drawn by commissions, courts, or divided governments.
State courts also played a role in creating Republican advantages, because courts in states where Republicans drew maps (many of them with judges elected in partisan elections) have been much less inclined to police partisan gerrymandering than their counterparts in Democratic states.
lt’s an issue that I’ve pointed to before, notably in a May 2022 op-ed for the New York Daily News, “Democrats’ dangerous gerrymandering disarmament.”
At any rate, Cohen urges,
This isn’t the time for process. We don’t have the luxury of time for votes. “Good government theater” isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s not good enough to get caught trying. We need to succeed, because this is existential. The window to save this democracy is closing, but it’s not closed. If our elected officials don’t have the stomach, they need to step aside.
So what needs to happen now – and it needs to happen now – is that Democrat-led states need to set aside procedure and redraw the maps. New York, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, and – yes you – Colorado need to get to work and get it done. Do it in 2026 if possible. By 2028 is non-negotiable. There is no excuse for waiting. I don’t want to hear about practicing good government, because you know what’s not ‘good government’? Letting our democracy slide into autocracy. Step up or step aside.
NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie goes further, declaring, “Democrats Who Are Soft on Republicans Have Got to Go.” He directs his frustration at Virginia Democrats:
Key Virginia Democrats quickly acquiesced to the decision. Don Scott, the speaker of the House of Delegates, said, “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court,” while Gov. Abigail Spanberger said that she was “disappointed” but didn’t challenge the ruling or the court’s authority.
This is a mistake.
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[T]he court that has gone beyond the scope of its authority. And the correct response is to fight back in the name of the people, who made their choice in a free and fair contest.
Democrats must meet the moment. Or move over for people who will.
He does not specify how to translate “fight back” or “meet the moment” into action. For his part, Commonwealth Attorney General Jay Jones has put out a statement declaring, “My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s election.” We shall see what that means, but I’m skeptical given that early voting for the primaries begins next month. (It would ordinarily have already started, but was pushed back on a one-time-only basis because of the referendum.)
Bouie’s critique of the court’s 4-3 decision is similar to my co-blogger Steven Taylor’s (“The Petty Ruling in Virginia“). While I thought it perfectly reasonable, I’m sympathetic to Steven’s argument that, given that the court could just as plausibly ruled the other way, they should have deferred to the will of the people.
Bouie, though, goes further:
The referendum wasn’t just an election; it was the people of Virginia exercising their right to amend their Constitution as they see fit. On what basis can the State Supreme Court, a creature of that Constitution, invalidate a sovereign decision of the whole people? The court may have the right to say what the law is, but this doesn’t extend to a veto over the people’s right to change the fundamental rules of their political system.
But, of course, the whole point of a constitution is to create binding rules on the structure of the government. If the will of a slim majority of the legislature or those showing up to vote in a referendum is sufficient to change it, then the constitution is moot.
The Framers arguably made our federal Constitution too difficult to amend. Amendments must be proposed either by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress (290 Representatives and 67 Senators) or by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds (34) of state legislatures and then ratified by three-fourths (37) of the states. That’s a high bar, indeed.
Amending the Virginia Constitution requires approval by a simple majority in both houses of the General Assembly across two consecutive sessions, separated by a general election for the House of Delegates, followed by ratification from a majority of voters in a referendum. That’s a considerably lower bar, basically ensuring only that the majority support for the amendment is sustained for a few months. The state’s supreme court ruled that, because the amendment passed the state legislature the first time after voting for the House of Delegates was already underway, the requirement had not been met. As already noted, I could preach it either way.
Still, Cohen’s point is a fair one. Because Democrats have instituted redistricting commissions—often in their state constitutions—to create relatively fair Congressional Districts, they are at a severe disadvantage in the gerrymandering wars. In the short run, they should, as Jones urges, do everything legal to fight back. In the longer run, they should work to enact good governance measures like nonpartisan districting commissions nationwide through an Act of Congress.
Of course, that’s hard to do when the system is rigged to make it harder to win seats in Congress.
I think people are complaining about rhetoric. Which, to me, seems silly.
The first rule of a political observer is, “don’t pay much attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do.”
How rhetoric works to motivate people is not at all straightforward, though many think that it’s as simple as “more fiery rhetoric means more motivated voters and activists”. I have my skepticism about that. Some of the best leaders we’ve had, some of the best fighters, did not employ fiery rhetoric. Not at all.