On Friday, Democrats received a massive body blow when Virginia’s Supreme Court nullified the state’s ballot initiative that voters passed last month to allow for the creation of four new Democratic-leaning districts ahead of the midterm elections.
Immediately, President Donald Trump celebrated the decision.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander.”
Trump’s statements carry too much hypocrisy to bear. The normally staid and proper Democrats in Virginia took this route because Trump had demanded that Texas, Missouri and North Carolina redistrict.
Trump did so to avoid the normal midterm trend where the president’s party usually loses control of the House of Representatives in a midterm election. And after a handful of Republicans in Indiana defied his demands, Trump’s political apparatus steamrolled five of them in the primary on Tuesday.
By contrast, Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger gave a tepid response.
“I am disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November in the midterm elections because in those elections we — the voters — will have the final say,” she posted.
As if this were not enough, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Louisiana — a state with two Democratic districts with large Black populations — had to redraw its congressional map, virtually nullifying the Voting Rights Act.
Republican-dominated states responded almost immediately.
By contrast, so far, only California has been able to respond when voters there redrew its map to add five Democratic-leaning districts. New Jersey, New York and Colorado Democrats will all need to go through similar processes.
It reveals a fundamental failure of Democrats. For the past 15 years, they turned their states into laboratories for democracy, seeing if redistricting commissions would work.
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