New York Times Shocked, Shocked That Democrats Fighting Back After Trump Ordered Gerrymanders
OK sure, Trump started it, but shouldn't Dems do the honorable thing and lose?
Virginians are voting today on an initiative to redraw voting maps, in response to Donald Trump’s push to make states with GOP majorities add Republican congressional districts before the midterms. If the mid-decade reapportionment plan is approved by voters, 10 of Virginia’s congressional districts would have a Democratic advantage, a big change from the state’s current delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans.
Today’s special election would not be happening at all if Trump hadn’t ordered Republicans last summer to create gerrymandered maps that gave the GOP a further advantage beyond what they’d already gerrymandered. It was clear even then that people were starting to get sick of him and his party, and Trump already admitted to Republicans in January that “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.” And of course he keeps fantasizing about canceling the elections altogether, or at least making sure they’re run only by his party. But don’t worry, he was only “joking” again and again and again.
So far, new (further) rigged electoral maps have been adopted by Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina, with Florida set to hold a special session starting April 28, to give Republicans an even greater advantage than the state’s existing majority of 20 GOP and eight Democratic seats.
So hell yes, Virginia is looking to join California in pushing back against the Trump gerrymanders, at least until some semblance of sanity is restored (and we can pass a national law eliminating gerrymanders. Remember when that was almost possible?)
And right on cue, the New York Times is fretting that Democrats have abandoned their usual opposition to gerrymandering, and isn’t that remarkably hypocritical of them? The headline, “Democrats Once Loathed Gerrymandering. Now They’re Pushing for It,” doesn’t include the words “Tut-tut” or “most unseemly,” but hardly needs to.
If the current New York Times headline writers were zapped back in time to December 8 1941, they’d say “FDR Once Advocated Neutrality, Now He's Calling For Declaration Of War.”
Politics reporter Nick Corasaniti does at least acknowledge that Trump started the redistricting war, but constantly suggests that Democrats are the ones behaving badly by trying to offset Trump’s map rigging. Oh, this is such a sad development on both sides.
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According to Corasaniti, this isn’t about attempting to balance out the Trump gerrymanders, it’s a matter of personal pique on the part of Democrats:
In deep-blue California, the politics of redistricting in 2026 turned out to be quite simple: Democrats may dislike gerrymandering, but they despise Trump more.
Whether that is also true of voters in lighter-blue Virginia will be the big question on Tuesday night.
Look, guy, Californians certainly do despise Trump, but if he hadn’t demanded gerrymanders in Republican-held states, they wouldn’t have needed to take action to offset them.
We’re told that Democrats and independents suddenly became very alarmed about gerrymandering last summer, when “the issue became a political football,” and that Democrats opposed partisan redistricting by 81 percent in an August Reuters/Ipsos poll. (Independents were 66 percent against, too.)
Oh sure, there was a bit of a partisan skew in the poll, the Times notes:
Just 36 percent of Republicans said the same, perhaps because of the news coverage of Texas’ redistricting plan at the time. But the party appeared hesitant on the issue: Only 38 percent of Republicans supported the redistricting push, and 25 percent were unsure. Broadly, 59 percent of all Americans were opposed.
In strict compliance with “Murc’s Law,” Corasaniti explains that Republicans had a good reason to be happy with gerrymandering, so they get a pass, especially since their distaste for gerrymandering is already low. But when Democrats decide they’ll get their hands dirty and fight back, that’s a shocking reversal, not simply realpolitik.
California’s November referendum to redraw maps to balance out the Texas gerrymander passed with 64 percent of the vote, but Corasaniti explains that was just how Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats “framed the redistricting push.”
Again and again, the piece suggests the election was about animus against Trump, not a rational effort to balance out the Texas gerrymander. Look at how mean those Californians were!
Liberal supporters of the California referendum ran ads arguing that the gerrymandering was necessary because of Trump. Each of the top five most-aired ads in California supporting the referendum centered on the president.
“You have the power to stand up to Donald Trump,” Newsom said in one ad, where he was joined by former President Barack Obama, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and other Democratic luminaries.
Even the temporary nature of the measure supposedly reflects personal distaste toward Great Leader, we’re told: “The California measure is also temporary, expiring in 2030 with the new census — and, conveniently, after Trump leaves office.”
Gosh, Californians hate Trump! Or maybe they’re a bunch of crazy optimists who hope that once he’s gone, it won’t be necessary to counter his malign efforts to skew the vote for his party.
In Virginia, Democratic proponents of today’s ballot initiative are very clear-eyed that this isn’t mainly about disliking Trump, it’s about restoring balance after he’s plopped down his mass on the teeter-totter:
“We didn’t start this fight, but I’m saying to Virginia, we need to finish it,” Delores McQuinn, a Democratic member of the House of Delegates, told CNN at a rally in the final days of the redistricting campaign. “We can help level the playing field.”
We do, however, sorta wish the Times had accompanied its Very Concerned Analysis with this Associated Press map (it’s interactive on the AP site) of the states that have actually voted to give themselves a partisan advantage. (Why they made Utah blue is anyone’s guess; maybe they didn’t want California to be lonely.)
We are not a geologist or a rocket surgeon, but it sure looks to us like Republican states have done a lot more redistricting than Democratic ones, even considering the size of California’s electorate. As the AP story notes, the redistricting efforts could net the GOP nine new seats in Congress, and Democrats six. But that’s only if you assume the same voting patterns as 2024, which is looking unlikely, especially in new districts where the Republican advantage is pretty slim.
So far, polls in Virginia suggest the referendum will be far closer than in California; while Democrats are confident, they’re emphasizing that turnout will be everything. Given the overwhelming rejection of Trumpism in last fall’s election, there’s every reason to be hopeful that voters will show up again today.
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Today's NYT, transported back in time to December 8 1941: "FDR Once Advocated Neutrality, Now He's Calling For Declaration Of War"
Nerdy explanation of why Utah is blue, per the AP story: Not even a legislative change; a judge ordered a new map where Democrats would have a chance of winning one seat, and so far the lege has been unsuccessful in overturning the order.