As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” In coming months, Democrats are going to need all the first-rate intelligence they can find, and it starts right now with gerrymandering. They’re going to have to be for it as well as against it.
Being for it is easy. Backed by Republican myrmidons in Congress and enablers on the Supine Court, Donald Trump has fecklessly fined, fired, and flouted his way through his second presidency. The first chance to end this spree won’t come until the 2026 midterm elections, when voters could hand one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats. Trump would enter Lame Duckville, and J. D. Vance and other surviving hopefuls would start revving up their own golden escalators.
Trump knows what’s at stake; after all, what oil sheikh wants to buy the influence of an outgoing president? And so, to reinforce the House Republicans’ twiggy majority, Trump importuned Texas governor Greg Abbott to re-draw the state’s congressional districts, saying quite openly that the party is “entitled to five more seats.”
Abbott immediately stepped up his busy schedule of distracting voters from the mounting pile of Old Testament–size catastrophes that have occurred under his watch, and called the Texas legislature into special session to rescue the sinking president from voters who have had enough of him playing Pin the Tariff on the Donkey and blockading the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Texas Democrats, as under-manned as the defenders of the Alamo, have little hope of stopping Abbott, but there is a chance to nullify him. The Democratic governors of California, New York, and Illinois have indicated a willingness to fight fire with fire and engage in some retaliatory gerrymandering. (Ironically, California was a leader in independent re-districting; former Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, no fan of Trump, disapproves of the proposal.)
It’s an ugly answer. Gerrymandering is naked chicanery, contemptuous of voters’ rights and democratic values. It encourages partisanship, feeds extremism, discourages compromise, and turbocharges the power of money.
But right now, there’s no better answer. Trump has already installed the National Guard in two American cities. He’s jettisoned due process, fired honest public servants, and harassed universities, law firms, and news organizations, and waged a personal jihad against critics high and low, from first administration bureaucrats like Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs to the targets du jour, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. The Democrats can’t let him scheme his way past the one barrier that might contain him.
Shortly after the Civil War began, federal troops arrested a Maryland man suspected of conspiring with armed secessionists. Because they didn’t have a warrant, the chief justice of the Supreme Court demanded his release. Lincoln ignored the order, asking, “Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?” Today Democrats might fairly ask, “Are all Democratic norms but one to be ignored, and the Government head right into the crapper?”
As proposed, the California plan is supposed to be temporary, and that’s as it should be. In the long run, Democrats can’t win by being anything other than democratic. Remember, when Trump won in 2016, he campaigned as an outsider. He ran against “the Swamp,” and voters helped him beat the Establishment of both parties. Their reward? An administration full of billionaires, and a Big Beautiful Bill that features tax cuts for upper-income Americans alongside steep cuts in Medicaid, nutrition programs, and Obamacare subsidies. Not only is the Swamp still with us; it’s swampier than ever.
In the midterm elections of 1994, nearly every Republican candidate for Congress pledged to support a set of eight reforms called the Contract with America. The reforms affected the internal function of the House, not policy, but the specifics were less important than the approach. The Contract gave the Republicans an identity and a cause that carried them to majorities in both houses of Congress.
In 2026, the Democrats need to do more than oppose Trump. They need to offer voters a Contract with Democracy. They should start by promising to outlaw gerrymandering, then pledge to end dark money in political campaigns, to establish term limits for Supreme Court justices, to eliminate the Electoral College, and to pass the E.R.A. and a new voting-rights act.
These objectives may seem procedural and dull, but process precedes outcomes. The system needs updating. Trump offered to Make America Great Again. He hasn’t, and he can’t. America won’t be great again until it becomes a democracy again.
Jamie Malanowski is the author of several books, including Commander Will Cushing: Daredevil Hero of the Civil War
