When Democratic legislators in Texas returned to work on Monday after going AWOL for a couple of weeks, a small group of supporters at the chamber shouted, “This is what democracy looks like.”
One must agree, if not for the reason that the partisans intended. Elected representatives going to work to do what they were elected to do, cast up or down votes, and have them tallied against those of rival elected representatives is, indeed, what democracy looks like. Voters distribute power and balance the parties according to their views, and the chamber reflects that in deciding policy.
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What the Democratic base meant, however, is that democracy looks like elected representatives disrupting government, preventing it from functioning by absconding from the state, and denying the legislature a quorum with which to conduct business.
Because America was born in revolution and a refusal to abide by the law, there is a self-aggrandizing reflex among low-caliber officials and their followers to trumpet any form of disruption as a shining example of democracy in action. If a rabble blocks a bridge, defaces a public monument, hammers on the doors of the Supreme Court, or abandons its legislative duty, it can bank on cheap plaudits.
A good example of the type of Democrat who goes in for this sort of thing is Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, who returned to Austin, pumping his fist in the air and depicting himself as a fighter against racism while saying the Democratic walkout had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
He and his fellow Democrats had raised public awareness of “illegal” and “discriminatory” gerrymandering of congressional districts. He was referring to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s demand that the legislature redraw the state district map at President Donald Trump’s request, to make Republicans likely to win five extra seats in the 2026 election. The new map would distribute GOP support in each district in such a way as to overcome increased but nevertheless comfortably beatable Democratic minorities.
Congressional maps are usually redrawn every 10 years to take account of population shifts revealed by census data. Democrats denounce what’s being done in Texas because we’re between censuses and because they say the redistricting will prevent black voters from electing black representatives — hence the charges of illegality and racism. We’ll see what the courts say.
In the meantime, however, it should be said that although there is a good case to be made against gerrymandering, it is not best made by a hypocritical Democratic Party that gerrymanders state maps to make them even more skewed and partisan than the GOP does.
Look at California, which Wu cited as helping defend democracy with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s intended move to gain five Democratic seats to counterbalance Abbott in Texas.
Left unmentioned by the party of the Left is that California already has a map far more skewed than Texas does. It is indeed more distorted than Texas would become even after the Abbott gerrymander. As the Washington Examiner recently explained, Republicans hold 66% of Texas congressional seats compared to Trump’s 56% of the vote, but Democrats hold 82% of California seats even though former Vice President Kamala Harris only won 59% of the presidential votes there. The Golden State skew is nearly 2 1/2 times as extreme as the imbalance in the Lone Star State. Newsom’s plan would widen that gap from 24 points to 33 points, the most lopsided in the nation.
So much for Democrats’ burning passion to protect democracy and ensure that minorities are not disenfranchised!
The Texas gerrymander, which will now proceed at full speed, has set off a chain reaction with blue and red states rushing to redraw their maps for partisan advantage. This is regrettable, for one wants politicians to be elected in response to public opinion rather than because they are skilled in cartography.
But the real reason Democrats howl about new maps redrawn out of kilter with the census is that they hope they will be back in power when the next national census is conducted in 2030. They want to outlast Trump and America’s current Republican moment. Political fortunes wax and wane, and the Democrats hope the next redrawing will come at a time when they are not so powerless and do not rank so low in public approval. They want to deny their political opponents’ majorities to undo more of the damage that left-liberal policy has inflicted on America.
So this is not about principle, no matter how much leftist politicians clamor about it, and no matter how cleverly their attorneys will argue in court. As ever, this is about power politics. Oscar Wilde wrote in The Importance of Being Earnest that the truth is rarely pure and never simple. It’s best to keep that maxim in mind when reviewing messianic Democratic incantations — “racist,” “discrimination,” “democracy.”