Barack Obama’s former attorney general, Eric Holder, shamelessly tried to have it both ways on gerrymandering on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Typical Democrat that he is, he insisted that it’s both a threat to democracy and a necessary tool to save it.
Host Kristen Welker pressed Holder, the head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, over the contradiction. She pointed out that his group’s homepage says, “There is no ‘offseason’ in redistricting. Gerrymandering poses a critical threat to our democracy.” Yet Holder argued Democrats must use gerrymandering “in order to save our democracy.”
Holder doubled down, saying, “There’s no question that gerrymandering is a threat to our democracy. It allows politicians to pick their voters as opposed to citizens choosing their representatives.” But then he tried to justify Democratic efforts, insisting that “authoritarian moves are being made by the White House through various states, Texas most prominent among them, and there has to be a response to that.”
He framed the Democratic gerrymandering push as a “temporary way” to respond to what he called a crisis in Texas. “After this crisis has passed, we get back to the fight against gerrymandering by anybody,” Holder said, trying to suggest this is a short-term tactic rather than an endorsement.
Wait a second—is Holder really trying to claim he’s been fighting both Democrat and Republican gerrymandering? That’s a stretch. If that were true, his group would be targeting the notoriously partisan maps in Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and other heavily gerrymandered Democratic strongholds.
Make no mistake about it, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee’s primary goal is to maximize Democratic representation in Congress through strategic redistricting. While the NDRC publicly frames its mission as “protecting democracy” and “fighting gerrymandering,” in practice it focuses almost exclusively on targeting Republican-drawn maps and doesn’t challenge gerrymandering in Democratic-controlled states.
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Welker pressed Holder on the risk Democrats face in undermining public trust by using gerrymandering—the very tactic he claims to oppose. Holder dismissed the concern, framing Democratic gerrymandering as a defensive, “temporary” response to Republican gerrymandering.
But this defense is disingenuous. Democrats are actually the worst offenders when it comes to gerrymandering, with states like Illinois, Maryland, and New York showcasing some of the most aggressively drawn partisan maps in the country. On top of that, Barack Obama’s own rise to power would have never happened without gerrymandering. Holder’s refusal to acknowledge this glaring hypocrisy exposes the shameless double standard Democrats apply to election fairness.
Holder’s attempt to paint gerrymandering as both a serious threat and a necessary tool perfectly encapsulates the cynical hypocrisy at play—a tactic that only serves to erode trust in the democratic system Democrats claim to defend.
Holder’s attempt to have it both ways—calling gerrymandering a threat to democracy while insisting Democrats must use it to “save” democracy—is the kind of cynical doublespeak we’ve come to expect from the left on this issue. They claim to fight for fairness while shamelessly exploiting the very tactics that rig the system in their favor. If Democrats were serious about ending gerrymandering, they’d take on their own heavily gerrymandered states instead of just targeting Republicans. But they don’t, because their priority is power, not principle.
