Are Democrats Finally Learning How to Play Hardball?

There has been surprising news recently on the decennial redistricting front. Following the 2020 general election, Democrats were convinced that they would be put at a severe disadvantage in the upcoming redistricting process. They believed that a strong Republican downballot showing would lead to gerrymandering that would eliminate many Democrats’ districts and create a harsher environment in which to compete. Gerrymandering was part of the general doom and gloom that took over the Democratic Party last year regarding their electoral prospects.

But in the past month, it has become clear that these concerns were premature at best. Democrats have maintained parity in most state maps. Some of the nation’s most egregious gerrymanders have been overturned or stalled by state courts, while other Republican-drawn maps were more favorable than Democrats had feared. At the same time, Democratic-led states have fully embraced partisan gerrymandering. As Eric Levitz noted last December,

The process in New York produced a map that gives Democrats a sizable advantage. Pending court challenges, this map will be enacted just a few weeks after Democrats rejected a bipartisan commission that had reached an impasse about how to proceed with redistricting. Ed Kilgore remarked about the redistricting process in New York that “the aggressive effort… has prompted accusations of hypocrisy toward Democrats, who have frequently campaigned against gerrymandering. Party officials say they are merely matching an example set by Republicans across the country.”

The Democratic reluctance to gerrymander did not end because Republicans started embracing the process. American political parties have been waging wars on electoral districts in some form or fashion ever since Elbridge Gerry’s original manipulated map. In this latest round of controversy, Republicans have been redrawing lines in capricious ways since 2010. They used sophisticated software, millions in corporate funding, and advanced demographic data to draw elaborate districts that diminished the voting strength of Democrats and African Americans.

Democrats’ main response to this approach for several years was not to embrace partisan gerrymandering on the other side. In fact, they routinely criticized states such as Maryland for going too far with pro-Democratic maps. Their solution was to identify gerrymandering as wrong and outside of the pale of Democratic decision-making. A nonpartisan approach would harm the party in Maryland at the same time it helped Democrats in Florida, Texas, or North Carolina.

But a sea change occurred in the middle of the Trump administration. Two developments altered the Democratic approach to redistricting. One was the decision of the Supreme Court in 2019 refusing to end gerrymandering on the basis that it was a “political question” outside of the scope of the Court. In that decision, the Court rejected the nonpartisan “efficiency gap” that Democrats had championed as their main alternative to partisan redistricting. The approach was dismissed out of hand, with Chief Justice John Roberts earlier referring to it as “sociological gobbledygook.”

Along with the nation’s highest court, Republicans at the state level started to simply ignore the decisions of nonpartisan commissions. After years of this behavior, the tide turned in the Democratic Party. As with campaign contributions, Democrats started to realize that they would no longer be able to compete on the national level if they did not start using the same tactics as their opponents. The decision in New York was simply the latest culmination of this Trump-era tack towards power politics.

It remains to be seen whether Democrats have the stomach for partisan redistricting. Democrats have had difficulty prioritizing political expediency over the ideals of activists and experts. Many Democrats still oppose redistricting for raw political gain and want the technocratic mapping commissions to succeed. But Democrats also still hate Republicans. They see the Republican Party as a fascist cabal devoted to a leader they despise. As long as these feelings exist within the party, an argument with the result that Republicans have more power, more seats, and a better chance of taking charge of the country will not garner any support.