When the Democrats Saunter Into Action — 4/27/26

Allowing politicians to draw their own district lines is like letting teenagers set their own curfews. There is an inherent conflict of interest, so no matter how admirable everyone’s motives may be at the beginning of the process, self-interest will inevitably take over at the moment of truth. 

Most of us learned in social studies class that gerrymandering is a fundamentally corrupt activity that robs voters of the opportunity of legitimate choices in their elections. The challenge for Virginia Democrats last week was how to convince the electorate that doing a bad thing to stop a worse thing is actually a good thing. 

When Donald Trump saw an opportunity last year to protect the flimsy House Republican majority in the upcoming midterm elections by imposing a mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other deep-red states, the Democrats wandered into action. California Gov. Gavin Newsom acted quickly to pass a statewide ballot initiative that is likely to create five additional Democratic seats in his state. But while the GOP moved forward with similar efforts in states they control, Democrats in Maryland, Illinois, Washington, and elsewhere have defeated, delayed, or disregarded their own opportunities to redraw district lines in their favor.

As a result, Virginia became the most important decision point on how these redistricting wars would be settled. Democrats outraised and outspent the Republican opposition by a mammoth 3-1 margin but ran a sheepish, almost apologetic campaign that barely eked out a narrow victory. But even an unconvincing win is still a win, and it appears that Democrats could gain as many as four additional House seats this fall. While Republicans could still pick up a few seats in Florida’s line-drawing special legislative session this week, it now looks like the great redistricting wars of the 2026 midterms will end up as pretty close to a tie.

For Trump and his GOP colleagues, who had originally seen this as an opportunity to tilt the congressional field decidedly in their favor, a break-even outcome is an embarrassing defeat. Inflation, affordability, and Iran have combined to create a political climate that has greatly enhanced the likelihood of a Democratic House majority next year, and Trump’s struggles with Latino voters as a result of his administration’s hyper-aggressive border and deportation agenda could cost Republicans House seats in border states where the Hispanic-American vote is determinative.

But the Democrats’ slender triumph in Virginia suggests strategic and philosophical challenges that their party may face this November and again in 2028. The measure’s backers seemed to have resigned themselves to a hesitant and often ambivalent message. They readily admitted that gerrymandering is an intentional subversion of the voters’ will but tentatively argued that employing Trump’s methods to defeat Trump will lead to less Trump-ian policy. They share their internal agonizing in public, which provided to be a less-than-empowering battle cry.

“Nobody wants to do this. I don’t want to do this,” said one Democratic legislator. “(But) we can’t sit back and wait.”

“I believe that people should choose their representatives. Representatives shouldn’t choose their people,” lamented another. “We’ve been pushed into a situation not of our own choosing.”

Neither was the type of bumper sticker material to inspire loyal backers to the polls or to convince the undecided. But their fundraising advantage proved decisive—barely.

Large majorities of Americans disapprove of Trump’s presidency. They also know that Democrats strongly disagree with the president. But “At least we’re not him” is an insufficient alternative. The Virginia Democrats’ struggle to explain what they could accomplish with these extra House seats suggests a party that is still deciding not just how to communicate with voters, but what to say to them.

The most assertive Democratic messengers of the moment on the national stage, such as Newsom and J.B. Pritzker and perhaps Ruben Gallego, are most aggressive when they are attacking Trump himself. But progressives from the Bernie-AOC wing of the party, like Graham Platner and Jasmine Crockett, are usually the only other Democrats who are equally forceful on other matters. While their messages are definitionally most impactful with the committed progressive faithful, winning national elections and battleground state campaigns requires wooing swing voters too.

Virginia did pass this redistricting measure, but the campaign for it should be a reminder for Democrats that diffidence is rarely a winning campaign strategy. A party that doesn’t believe in its methods or its message is a party that does not believe in itself. Which makes convincing voters to believe in them that much more difficult.