Democrats Blinked and American Democracy Paid the Price
Every lever of power is being pulled to tilt the midterm, and it's bound to get worse
Once again, Democrats are failing to rise to the challenge against Republican dismantling of American democracy. And once again, voters are losing faith, with Democrats hitting new lows in party popularity, the perceived effectiveness of their leaders, and the growing number of Americans deregistering from the party.
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Yesterday, the redistricting wars began in earnest as Texas House Republicans finally met quorum to pass new congressional maps — maps designed to tilt several seats their way for the 2026 midterms.
Those not following closely might be scratching their heads: “Wait, didn’t Texas Democrats leave the state to block this?” You’d be right to remember that. But Texas Democrats failed in their one job, protecting democracy from the Republican machine, and returned home.
I’ve heard the arguments before, that Texas representatives only make about $500-600 a month, that they need other jobs to make ends meet, or that they can’t abandon their lives in the state for long.
Let’s be blunt, if your priority in politics is your personal well-being, not the well-being of the people you represent or the democratic institutions you swore to defend, then you should never have entered politics.
On this issue, Texas Democrats failed spectacularly. They returned to the state, handed Republicans the quorum they needed, and allowed the passage of rigged maps that will do lasting damage to American democracy.
Now California is pressing forward with retaliatory maps against Texas Republicans, as they should. Unilateral disarmament by Democrats is not an option when America’s democracy is at stake.
Democrats will lose this fight if more states heed Trump’s call to rig maps in their favor. The math simply isn’t on Democrats’ side if gerrymandering is pushed to its natural extremes.
Right now, we’re effectively banking on Republican state governments in places like Indiana and Missouri not to go further and strip Democrats of even more seats, and that’s not a bet I’d make in today’s political climate.
What people need to understand is that Trump will do everything in his power to force his party, at both the state and federal level, to rig the midterms as much as possible.
Trump’s main takeaway from his summit with Putin was to eliminate mail-in voting, after Putin allegedly played into Trump’s pre-existing election denialism by warning of fraud.
Pair this with restrictions we’ve seen before from Republican governments, such as purging voter rolls, pushing ID laws, cutting voting methods, and the assault on American democracy becomes clear.
One of my bigger concerns is Trump’s use of the National Guard in California and DC.
California was a testing ground for the Trump administration to see how much pushback they’d face for federalizing Guard troops and deploying them for political ends. The truth? There wasn’t enough backlash from the American people to dissuade them from doing it again.
Now the Guard is being used in DC, where the administration has full legal authority since it’s a federal jurisdiction. What we’ll see is whether these troops are used strictly as a show of force or as a tool to advance the administration’s agenda.
So far, it looks more like the latter.
Trump officials have openly discussed sending Guard troops to major blue-state cities like Baltimore, New York, and Chicago. Democratic governors must be ready to act if the administration ever pulls that trigger.
And what’s to stop Trump from deploying the Guard and federal agents to polling stations during next year’s midterms? These are the exact tactics we’ve seen from autocratic regimes abroad, and there’s no reason to think it can’t happen in America.
Democracy is on the ropes, and Trump is doing his damndest to break it.
The question is whether Democrats will finally rise to the occasion or buckle when the pressure mounts.