Democrats Can Dominate the Redistricting War

That is, if they want to.

“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”

— Sir Arthur Harris, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the RAF Bomber Command

On April 29th, 2026, the United States Supreme Court officially dismantled the last remaining pillar of America’s post-1964 multiracial democracy. In a 6-3 decision decades in the making, the court’s far-right supermajority sanctified the states’ supposed right to draw any kind of partisan gerrymander they wish, even when the effect of it is to violate the ban on racially discriminatory maps in Section II of the Voting Rights Act. Although the majority took pains to hide how much they changed and made sure not to fully declare Section II unconstitutional, the revolutionary effect of their revolutionary decision could be seen in what happened afterwards: a mad dash by states across the Deep South to eliminate VRA district after VRA district, some of them decades old, and deny their nonwhite citizens any chance of having federal representation.

Since we’re all adults here, I’ll start off by acknowledging the overwhelmingly obvious: that this was a political decision made by a Republican body with the intention of benefitting the GOP, just like all of the other voting rights decisions made by the Roberts Court. It is not a coincidence whatsoever that it came down in the midst of a nationwide redistricting war that the right started. Since long before the emergence of Donald Trump, the GOP has been attempting to use the gaps in the American political system and the complacency of liberals the country over to eliminate representative democracy in this country by rigging the U.S. House of Representatives decisively in their favor. Not only are they trying to do it now, but they have successfully done it before. After their commanding wins in the 2010 midterms, new Republican-controlled state governments the country over drew such wildly balanced maps the lower chamber was rendered all but unwinnable for Democrats for years.

It was a brazen, authoritarian scheme, and it never could have been accomplished if not for the astounding complacency of liberals in the early-to-mid 2010s. For whatever reason, the Democratic Party simply sat on its hands over the entire period, choosing to lull themselves to sleep with fantasies of a permanently Democratic White House over reckoning with how thoroughly they had been locked out of power. To the extent that the party put together any sort of organized response, it was an extremely belated push by Barack Obama and Eric Holder for independent redistricting commissions that only succeeded in tying the hands of Democrats in the states they controlled. While the party was able to win the chamber back in 2018 and 2020, that was because of a once-in-a-generation educational realignment that broke the GOP’s old gerrymanders—not any effort on their end to level the playing field. Even as they spiraled into a 24/7 panic about the state of democracy after January 6th, liberals never thought to grant themselves the powers to reshape the Congressional map that their opponents always enjoyed. In effect, they chose to let the fairness of the House as a competitive body rest on the GOP’s willingness to let it be so.

Over the past year, this state of affairs has come to its logical conclusion. With an entirely new cycle of Republican-friendly data to guide their decision-making, GOP-controlled state governments the country have swiftly redrawn their maps to cut out Democratic seat after Democratic seat. This made some blue states finally try to respond, but they were gravely restricted by the existence of constitutionally mandated independent redistricting commissions (thanks, Obama). Between this, the Callais decision, and the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia to overturn the state’s 10-1 Democratic map on a technicality, Republicans have been able to build a truly meaningful advantage in the national House map for this cycle, large enough for them to still contend for and even win the chamber even while losing nationally by as much as three or four points.

Given that Democrats currently enjoy an expanding generic ballot lead somewhere between seven and eight points at the moment, it is unlikely that this new state of affairs will change the ultimate outcome in November (although it could significantly curtail the size of a future Democratic majority). That’s also not what matters to the right. For the Supreme Court and the rest of the Republican Party, the real prize is 2028, a presidential election year where things are expected to be much tighter than the blue wave that looks to be on tap this cycle. Not only will the current advantage of three-to-four points that they’ve currently built up stand to be extremely impactful in the event of a closely fought race, but the new guidelines created by the court will allow them to go after even more seats in states that they weren’t able to target in time for this cycle. From Georgia to Mississippi to South Carolina to possibly even Texas once again, Republicans will have free reign to add more and more seats to their column in advance of the next presidential election, to such an extent that their advantage could reach the same size that it was in the early 2010s if they are not met with a response.

That “if,” though, is quite a very big “if.” While it’s perhaps understandable that the Supreme Court and the Republican lawyers who challenged Section II assumed that Democrats would simply let them run wild based on their behavior during the right’s last big power grab, things have changed quite a lot since the 2010s. Between the successful redistricting in California and the near-miss attempt in Virginia, liberals have shown that they are finally willing to fight fire with fire, to the point of drawing maps just as brutal as the worst that the GOP has ever cooked up. It was already a strong response, and Callias just doused it with jet fuel. Now that Section II is officially eliminated, both the will and capacity for Democrats to punish Republicans has been massively expanded, to such an extent that the court’s latest attempt to help the GOP could end up as one of the biggest self-owns in American political history.

What I’m referring to here isn’t merely that Democrats could cancel out current and potential Republican redraws and re-create a fair national map. It’s something far more than that—something that would have been completely unimaginable just a few weeks ago. Thanks to the court’s decision, the legal and political barriers to future Democratic redraws in blue and purple states have been eased to such a dramatic extent that it’s entirely within the party’s power to grant themselves a significant structural advantage in the House in time for the 2028 elections regardless of what the GOP does. If they go far enough, they could guarantee themselves a win in the chamber even if they lose by as much as they did in 2024, if not more.

The path here isn’t ethical, proportional, or even all that likely to happen. It’s simply something that will be completely within the party’s power by next year if they just choose to do it, and it could stop Trumpism in its tracks.

Operation GQP Destruction, or; How the Left can Completely Block the Right From Power by 2028