Virginia’s gerrymander flop makes Democrats more – Latest News
“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander didn’t age nicely.
On Friday, the House minority chief discovered that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not fairly as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to nearly remove Republican illustration within the purple state.
The courtroom simply cooked the social gathering’s notorious lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority within the House of Representatives.
It additionally cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic institution, which tossed apart any pretense of precept in a uncooked political gambit.
The ensuing faceplant is nothing short of legendary: Spanberger’s Democrats have succeeded in alienating half of the state.
For the governor, the courtroom’s determination was notably embarrassing.
Before assuming energy, Spanberger denounced gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.”
She ran as a average, however Spanberger instantly turned sharply left as soon as in workplace and known as for essentially the most excessive gerrymander within the nation.
The courtroom discovered that effort was not solely unconstitutional, however “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”
It characterised the state’s place as “a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.”
While some of us had beforehand expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to bypass the state structure, the media nearly completely relied on liberal consultants who predicted the new districts can be upheld.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks during a “Virginians For Fair Elections” canvassing occasion in Woodbridge, Virginia, US, on Saturday, April 18, 2026. Bloomberg by way of Getty Images
It was a calculated risk for Democrats, who’ve now burned their bridges with Virginia conservative and Republican voters.
As Winston Churchill stated, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Exhilarating and unforgettable: In a purple state the place politicians typically require crossover votes to prevail, the redistricting push was not simply partisan however personal for voters.
National Democrats will quickly “find out” whether or not Jeffries was proper to prematurely have a good time a victory that appeared to secure his anticipated elevation to Speaker of the House.
The social gathering is dealing with a probably catastrophic reversal of fortune.
When Democrats declared a gerrymandering conflict, some of us warned that the social gathering, with its already closely gerrymandered blue states, had far more to lose than the GOP did.
It was notably comical when Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to hitch the redistricting fray, though her state is so badly gerrymandered that it’s elected zero Republicans to the House for the reason that Nineteen Nineties.
Virginia, a state long against gerrymandering, has been thought-about the fairest state within the nation, with a distribution of congressional seats that carefully matches its partisan divide.
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Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican illustration, complete conflict broke out — and now purple states like Florida and Tennessee have moved ahead with their own redistricting.
On high of the truth that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court determination comes on the heels of the US Supreme Court’s ban on racial gerrymandering.
That means a dozen or more Democratic districts might now be deemed unconstitutional — and Louisiana and Mississippi are shifting to redistrict according to the Supreme Court’s determination.
The outcome may very well be a dramatic shift in districts favoring the GOP.
To make issues worse for the Democratic Party, a new census in 2030 will appropriate the errors that erroneously awarded them a number of districts after the 2020 census.
Those corrections, and the continuing exodus from high-tax blue states to booming purple ones, might translate into even more congressional beneficial properties for the GOP.
That prospect of a political apocalypse has Democratic strategists pushing for radical adjustments in Washington earlier than it’s too late.
Top precedence: packing the Supreme Court as quickly as they retake energy.
As Virginia has proven, an impartial courtroom can unravel the best-laid plans.
Democratic politicians, pundits and professors have been brazenly pushing for increasing the high courtroom to 13 members with 4 new liberal additions, as a way to rubber-stamp the unconventional adjustments needed to keep the social gathering in energy.
James Carville not too long ago advised Democratic politicians that they’ve no alternative however to pack the courtroom, declaring “F–k it . . . Just do it.”
He instructed, nonetheless, that they won’t wish to inform the voters.
“Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he stated. “Just do it.”
Last week, Jeffries declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering.
After the Virginia courtroom’s ruling, the annoyed Democratic institution is ever more prone to echo him — and to transcend.
Many Democrats at the moment are “all in” with this radical agenda.
With the courts declaring their redistricting efforts unconstitutional, it’s the constitutional system itself that may now should go.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling writer of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
