As a storytelling device, you always want to escalate the stakes: The greater the stakes, the greater the drama.
It’s something you hear in the film industry a lot: “Oh, the hero’s just a congressman. Maybe we could make him the president?” “Instead of blowing up a single city, Mr. Lucas, could the Death Star blow up the whole dang planet?”
But it probably works better as a rhetorical device in politics.
When the GOP is fighting tooth-and-nail for a 38% tax rate and the DNC insists on 41%, it’s kinda tricky to stoke the sparks of moral outrage. The contrast is too dulled to animate either base.
Marginal gains are minimally exciting. (Yawn.)
That’s why politicians lie about the stakes: Every election is always “The most important election of our lifetime!” And we’re already hearing this from our “friends” in the Democratic Party: This won’t be another boring, inconsequential turf-war between the left and the right; nay, the 2026 midterms will be a CRUSADE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY!
As such, they feel perfectly entitled to do anything and everything to win.
Including, it seems, “unilaterally” adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as new U.S. states — and packing the Supreme Court with four new liberal justices (who’ll serve for life, of course).
PJ Media’s intrepid reporter Matt Margolis broke this story on Thursday, but in case you missed it, James Carville officially endorsed those tactics for the good of our country:
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville on Thursday suggested Democrats should add two states to the country and expand the Supreme Court in order to “save democracy.”
“They are just going to have to unilaterally add Puerto Rico and District of Columbia as states, … They’re just going to have to do it. And they may have to expand the [Supreme Court] to 13 members,” Carville said during a Thursday podcast episode.
Carville, like so many on the left, is up in arms over the Texas plan to redraw its congressional districts. The Democrats are furiously trying to paint the GOP’s actions as un-American and undemocratic:
Carville says conditions are drastic, citing the GOP push to add five additional House seats in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterms, and require a more forward approach if Democrats capture the White House and both chambers of Congress.
“If you want to save democracy, I think you got to do all of those things because we just are moving further and further away from being anything close to democracy,” he added.
But gerrymandering is absolutely not new, nor is it un-American. As we noted yesterday:
Because the Democrats are 100% convinced that Trump is a wannabe tyrant and an existential threat to democracy, EVERYTHING Trump says and does is seen through that prism. So, when Texas tries to redraw its congressional districts, there’s no sense of self-awareness by the Left — that gerrymandering has been a bipartisan boondoggle for a very long time: It’s named after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who served in office from 1810 to 1812.
Say what you want about the horrors of gerrymandering, but it’s been part of American politics for over 210 years!
And it’s why the DNC’s options are so limited: The Democrats only control 15 states, and of those, they’ve already gerrymandered ‘em into twisted, bizarre shapes that protect Democratic politicians. That’s why Massachusetts liberals can’t call a special session and redraw its GOP-friendly district: There are no GOP-friendly districts!
Trump won 1.2 million votes in Massachusetts, yet a Democrat represents every single congressional district. Not one Republican congressman in the entire state! (What a weird coincidence.)
Even the Washington Post noted the problem:
Meanwhile, past gerrymandering has left Democrats with fewer opportunities left to counter those moves. “It’s not that Democrats haven’t been fighting this war. It’s that they are out of ammunition and targets,” says David Daley, a senior fellow at the reform organization FairVote and author of the provocatively titled book, “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count.” [emphasis added]
Republicans, however, have full legislative control of 50% more states than the Democrats (23 states to 15) — including electorally-rich states like Texas, Ohio, and Florida. Whereas the Radical Left devoured all its low-hanging fruit eons ago, the Republican garden is still overflowing with delicious, mouthwatering, low-hanging goodies.
All in all, it may give MAGA a 10 to 12-seat pickup in the House.
And the Democrats don’t like it one bit: How dare those Republicans fight fire with fire! (If anything, liberals should’ve accused the GOP of “cultural appropriation”: “Gerrymandering is our thing!”)
So here we are. Trump will press the GOP’s advantage on redistricting, and the Democrats won’t be able to keep pace. For all Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bluster, even mighty California cannot offset the collective weight of Florida, Texas, Ohio, and the rest of Flyover Country. (Sorry, DNC: That’s the price you pay for focusing only on the coasts.) Maybe it’ll be enough to blunt the historical headwinds that party in power faces in midterms; maybe it won’t.
But either way, the Democratic response will come with a vengeance: Two new states — a packed Supreme Court — the radical transformation of the United States. We'd better get ready for the rhetoric to escalate.
After all, to “save democracy,” anything goes.
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