This morning, Sam Shirazi put out a new podcast that’s very much worth listening to, as it: a) is about an extremely important issue if you care about having a competitive democracy; b) is very timely, given what’s happening in Texas (“Trump’s Texas Gerrymander Is Supercharging a New War on Democracy”) and in other red states, where they’re busy gerrymandering Democrats into oblivion; c) implies important lessons for Democrats going forward, specifically in terms of the old “when they go low, we go high” mantra – a mantra that’s absolutely killing us, as one side (the MAGA GOP) does WHATEVER IT TAKES (including violating the law, the constitution, long-standing norms, etc) to win and wield power, while Democrats…well, do what Democrats always do, which is to be super “nice,” wimpy, pathetic, etc.
The bottom line, of course, is that Democrats need to stop being pathetic, weak, etc., and also need to ditch their terminal naivete and unilateral disarmament. For a great summary of how that played out in Virginia, see below for some highlights from Sam’s new podcast. Also, after each bullet point, see my comments in blue/bold/parentheses.
- “What changed was really this push by Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps. And this has been partly pushed by national Republicans and Donald Trump because they feel like they can get more seats out of Texas in terms that will favor the Republicans.” (Note that when Democrats held a national “trifecta” – the White House, the US Senate, the US House – they tried to pass HR1, “intended to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, ban partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.” But while HR1 passed the US House in 2020 on a near-party-line vote, it was blocked in the US Senate because of the filibuster, along with Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition. And thus, Democrats did NOT succeed in passing national legislation to ditch gerrymandering, which means that the issue remained to be decided on a state-by-state basis. So the key then was, if Republicans were going to try and gerrymander Democrats out of existence in the states they controlled, it made literally ZERO sense for Democrats to unilaterally disarm. And yet, in numerous states – including Virginia – that’s exactly what Democrats did, whether based on cluelessness, terminal naivete, idiocy or what. Ugh.)
- “Now, obviously, Democrats are not happy about this, and they basically said we have to do something. So a number of Democratic-leaning states have said that they might do mid-decade redistricting to kind of counter what the Texas Republicans are trying to push… this might set off some sort of arms race in next few months to see which states can redistrict. And potentially that’ll have an impact on the midterms.” (So apparently, at least SOME Democrats are finally waking the hell up and realizing that Republicans are playing dirty, trying to gerrymander Democrats out of existence regardless of what’s right, constitutional, legal, etc, and that maybe – just MAYBE – Democrats ought to fight back, albeit belatedly?)
- “Republicans think we might as well see how much we can push this, see how many seats we can get. Because realistically, 2026 is going to be a tough environment for Republicans…” (Right – Republicans are going to push this as far as they can take it, and as far as the right-wing Supreme Court lets them…which is probably all the way out of democracy.)
- “…we’ll have to wait and see what happens in Texas. But it’s definitely starting this conversation about redistricting. When should people redistrict? When is it appropriate? When is it not appropriate? Should you gerrymander? Should you not gerrymander?” (I mean, ideally, gerrymandering shouldn’t ever be a “thing” at all, because it’s a perversion of one-person-one-vote and other core principles of democracy. But again, and really this can’t be overstated – REPUBLICANS DON’T GIVE A F*** ABOUT DEMOCRACY, SO DEMOCRATS MUST NEVER UNILATERALLY DISARM. And yes, the ALL CAPS indicates how pissed I am – and we all should be – about this.)
- “…from [a] Democratic perspective, one school of thought is that basically Virginia Democrats unilaterally disarmed, because if you think about 2021, Democrats had a trifecta. They could have gerrymandered the map had it not been for this redistricting reform. And while I think most Democrats probably think in an abstract sense, theoretical sense, yeah, gerrymandering is not good. But the reality is these Republican states like Texas and Florida, they are going to gerrymander to the max…It doesn’t really make sense to unilaterally disarm in Democratic states while the Republicans are gerrymandering to the max.” (Sam Shirazi is being very fair and evenhanded, but the fact is, that “one school of thought” which says “Virginia Democrats unilaterally disarmed” is correct, while the other school of thought is just terminally naive and destructive, in that “It doesn’t really make sense to unilaterally disarm in Democratic states while the Republicans are gerrymandering to the max.” Here in Virginia, the results of that unilateral disarmament by Democrats include, among other things, the replacement of the superb Rep. Elaine Luria in VA02 by the horrendous Rep. Jen Kiggans; entrenching Rep. Rob Wittman in VA01, when he should have been in a highly competitive seat; making VA05 almost unwinnable, and de facto enabling their election of a literal insurrectionist, John McGuire, to Congress; making it harder for Democrats to build a large majority in the State Senate; etc. And for what exactly? So that unilateral disarmament supporters could pat themselves on the back about their purity, while allowing Republicans to destroy our democracy? Brilliant, huh?)
- “So there was an amendment put for a constitutional vote in 2020. And realistically, when you put a redistricting amendment on the ballot, it’s almost going to certainly pass. So it passed in 2020… long story short, the constitutional amendment was put on the ballot in 2020 for voters to vote on, and they voted for it.” (Because all most voters needed to hear – given that they HATE partisan gerrymandering, and for good reason! – was “this amendment gets rid of partisan gerrymandering.” Except that when you looked into the amendment as written, the entire thing was a sham, designed to fail and be kicked over to two “Special Masters” – in this case, the Democrats picked someone eminently qualified to do so, while Republicans picked a partisan hack – to draw Virginia’s lines for the next decade. Greeeeaaaat.)
- “I think the way the redistricting commission in Virginia was set up was really bound to fail… Virginia created this redistricting commission, but it included some members of the legislature and it included, it had to include an even number of people from both basically the Democrats and the Republicans. And there really wasn’t any role and vision for independence. So you basically had this commission that was half Democrats, half Republicans, and they, in order to pass anything, they needed super majority. And there was no tiebreaker. And even if they passed something, which seemed pretty unlikely, the legislature would then have to vote up or down on their final proposal. And so it was this kind of crazy convoluted process that honestly didn’t make a whole lot of sense to have a redistricting commission like that.” (Excellent summary by Sam Shirazi of why the redistricting commission was “really bound to fail” in the very way it was set up. For that reason alone, of course, NO DEMOCRAT should have supported/voted for this amendment. And yet that’s exactly what happened – see here for the votes on this bill, patroned by then-Sen. George Barker – ironically, he lost his primary in significant part because his district was changed in a big way thanks to the redistricting amendment he pushed so hard, lol – and also by then-Senate-Democratic-Leader Dick Saslaw. Also note that this amendment only narrrowly passed the House of Delegates, with Republicans of course voting for it, but also with a handful of Democrats – pushed by groups like 1VA2021 and the League of Women Voters – also voting for it. Maddening.)
- “…you have these three places and they’re all pretty similar, but then they’re in they’re in these separate, you know they’re they’re not in the same district, which just to me is a little bit crazy.” (Sam Shirazi points out some of the weirdness in the lines drawn by the Special Masters, including in the Blacksburg area. One might even argue that this amendment actually did NOT get rid of gerrymandering – or at least get rid of ridiculously drawn districts – after all.)
- “…this redistricting commission is now in the Virginia Constitution. So that means no matter who wins, doesn’t matter if the Democrats get a clean sweep this year in Virginia, they cannot redistrict in the middle of the cycle because that would violate the Virginia constitution…while you’re hearing about these conversations about redistricting, I don’t think Virginia is really going to be too much in play unless something starts happening for maybe 2028 and changing the Virginia Constitution.” (So yeah, now that it’s in the Virginia constitution, it’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to get rid of. Which is why, back in 2020, some of us – raises hand! LOL – urged people not to vote for this amendment, given that it was fatally flawed. Unfortunately, too many Democrats went with the terminally naive argument that we should go ahead with it, even if it had major flaws and even if it constituted unilateral disarmament in the face of a go-for-the-jugular, rip-their-lungs-out-and-laugh-while-doing-so MAGA Republican Party. And now…here we are, with Texas Republicans moving to gerrymander their way into a US House majority in 2026, regardless of what the majority of voters want, and with Virginia Democrats not being able to do a damn thing about it. Let’s just hope that passing that redistricting amendment doesn’t turn out to be one of the factors in destroying our democracy, but honestly, that’s what it’s looking like right now…)
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