On the Inside Scoop show last night, former VA Del. Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) really nailed it on why it’s essential that Virginia fight back against Trump’s attempts to rig the 2026 midterms by gerrymandering ONLY the “red” states. See below for highlights and video.
“…no one should be gerrymandering, and Democrats have proposed year after year after year national legislation at the federal level to prohibit gerrymandering throughout the 50 states…without the national amendment, then it’s a free-for-all. Then it’s…like boxing, right? The Queensberry rules, you shouldn’t hit below the belt. But when your opponent hits you below the belt, if you don’t hit below the belt, you’re in trouble…because there is no federal solution…And we should all – Democrats, all good Americans – should support a a federal law banning gerrymanding…But once Donald Trump decides to say democracy doesn’t matter, we’re not going to let the voters choose us, we’re going to choose the voters by drawing lines and orders Texas mid decade, not during the census years to change it, for the sole purpose, change its lines, give us five more seats. If you don’t fight fire with fire, you’re just going to lose…I’ll give you another example…if you’re playing Monopoly with someone and they keep taking $500, you know, out of the bank whenever they need it, that’s wrong and you shouldn’t do that. But you’re never going to win the game if you don’t also take $500 out of the bank….The answer is we should stop the theft, stop the corruption, stop the gerrymandering. But if the other side is doing it, and you’re not doing it, it only leads to to your loss of power. And then you can never stop gerrymandering.
I remember having this big fight with a lot of Virginians when it came to Amendment One, because a lot of Democrats said to me, ‘Mark, you know, we got to be good, gerrymandering’s wrong.’ And I’d say, ‘yes, gerrymandering is wrong.’ And they’d say, ‘so, we have to give up our our power in Virginia because Republicans will give up their power everywhere else.’ I said, ‘No, they won’t. No, they’re not going to do that. You’re naive. You’re nice. You mean well, you’re naive.’…It’s kind of like if someone punches you in the face and you’re like, ‘well, I’m a pacifist, so I’m just going to sit there and not punch back.’ And then you just get bloodied. It’s not the way it should be. We should live in a world of nonviolence. But when people break the rules, sometimes the only way to get people to follow the rules is to fight back using their terrible methods. And I know that sounds ugly and it sounds unfair, but I’m afraid we have to fight fire with fire.”
Any further questions? So now, the only question is whether Virginia Democrats push for a 10D-1R map or a 9D-2R map. Which do you prefer?
