The Democrat Party has spent years wrapping itself in the language of democracy, fairness, voting rights, and all that. They love racial gerrymandering; they love partisan gerrymandering. But wait — as of a few minutes ago, they’re really, really opposed to gerrymandering when they talk about Florida. But, in a few minutes, they’ll support it again when talking about Virginia.
You really could get a headache from all the flip-flopping the Democrats do on gerrymandering in just a few days. A real doozy I’ve heard recently is that Democrats want to ban gerrymandering. Oh, that’s cute. Have you seen the way they’ve carved up blue states for decades?
Look, I think it’s time everyone finally be honest here. Democrats don’t hate gerrymandering in principle. They love it. They rely on it. They can’t live without it. Their real problem is that Republicans finally started playing the same game — and now Democrats can't stop crying foul.
So what's actually going on here, and why does it matter heading into the 2026 midterms?
Let's run through the tape, shall we?
When Texas redistricted to push back against years of Democrat-engineered maps elsewhere, Democrats were furious. When California cooked up its own gerrymander, they cheered. North Carolina redrew its lines — outrage. Virginia pursued a map that would flip a 6–5 Democrat-Republican congressional split to a jaw-dropping 10–1 Democrat advantage — suddenly, they were all in. Then Florida passed a new map, and, like clockwork, Democrats were against it again.
The pattern isn't subtle. Their position on gerrymandering depends entirely on which party benefits. If it’s their party, they’re okay with it. There is nothing principled about their position on gerrymandering.
Just look at their reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which ruled racial gerrymandering unconstitutional. Democrats predictably reacted with outrage, panic, and soiled undergarments.
Even Barack Obama had to chime in.
"Today's Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act," Obama wrote, "freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities — so long as they do it under the guise of 'partisanship' rather than explicit 'racial bias.'" He went further, claiming the ruling is "just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach."
Powerful stuff, right? There's just one problem.
Obama had just been championing Virginia's gerrymandering push — a map that literally eliminated two Voting Rights Act districts in exchange for raw partisan gain.
Mind you, Obama was advocating for voters in Virginia to do this exact thing last week when they erased two VRA districts in favor of political gerrymanders. https://t.co/09rgjkHGO4
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) April 30, 2026
Yeah, so Obama was encouraging Virginia voters to approve an amendment erasing those VRA districts just a week before he published his Louisiana screed.
Look, we know that for decades Democrats have been the chief aggressors in gerrymandering, largely without consequence. Republicans have been redrawing maps to correct for the advantages Democrats built through past gerrymanders. Republicans didn’t start the redistricting wars; Democrats did. It just took a long time for Republicans to fight back, and that’s why Democrats are furious.
