If section 2 goes down and Republicans start to aggressively redraw districts I wouldn’t underestimate Democrats’ ability to find religion and retaliate. States like Illinois could zero out Republicans. New York could do the same or close to it.
If that sounds implausible just look at how quickly opposition to gerrymandering dissipated in California.
There’s also the potential for districts to change very fast. I used to live in GA-6 and TX-7. Both were solidly red in 2014 and 2016. In 2018 they both elected Democrats.
First, before I get into criticisms, I want to say that I really appreciate the article, and that I am a big fan of Lakshya’s work.
But wow, this quote near the end really puts into perspective my disagreement with the optimistic contrarianism of this piece:
“In either case, the claims of impending one-party rule are a bit overblown. In reality, the net effect would really be that Republicans win the House three or four times as often as the Democrats.”
This is a strawman portrayal of those of us who are deeply worried about gutting section 2 of the VRA. It’s not about one-party rule that is impossible to topple. It’s about one-party rule that is *incredibly difficult* to topple.
If we transition to a system where the party that more often than not gets the most votes only wins a House majority ~25% of the time, then we are hardly a democracy at that point.
Pair that with Democrats’ modest (but growing) disadvantage in the Electoral College and their enormous disadvantage in the Senate, and we have every right to be scared for the future of democracy in this country.
Fair enough! The best thing that blue state voters can do is convince their local officials to be YIMBY-er - But it might take a bad reapportionment cycle to actually break through to a lot of folks unfortunately
I like you guys, but I'm going to be very critical here:
Reminding liberals that our nation's *non-illiberal* political party might possibly still win a majority of legislative seats — even after our nation's *illiberal* political party has done all they can to choose its voters for these seats (as opposed to allowing voters to choose their representatives, as should be the case in any *liberal* democracy, obvs.) — is a false and dangerous reassurance of the safety of our democracy.
Reminding us all how "it has happened before" that our liberal party has defeated our illiberal party by a 5-point margin — during an anti-GOP backlash in 2018 which was so notorious that it was actually given a name (the "Blue Wave") — and that, if it somehow happened again, it could erase an illiberal advantage, which has been *baked into the structure* of the elections themselves by that same illiberal party, is nothing short of false hope.
This essay is *self-destructive* propaganda, which encourages liberals and their allies to abandon concerns about the recognition of their political will, which is being openly — *openly* undermined by illiberals.
Republican gerrymanderers are not foolish. They employ software to draw districts which *optimize* their chances of winning — which, of course, means taking into account and mitigating the risk of margins in GOP districts being too thin. The danger of losses in GOP districts because of an unexpected surge in Democratic votes are diminished by the same design which maximizes their overall chances.
They've destroyed equity among voters by increasing the influence of Republican voters. That's what we're talking about, here.
You retroactively deny that you're trying to "tamp down fears of how unbalanced our politics is becoming" in the *very last paragraph* — but this is exactly what has been done by the previous 1500+ words — i.e. "…the claims of impending one-party rule are a bit overblown. In reality, the net effect would really be that Republicans win the House *three or four times* (!!) as often as the Democrats". [emphasis added]
This essay, as is, is so destructive that it might have been written directly by the GOP.
I think the fact that you're pulling out quotes *from the article* to claim the article doesn't show the proper amount of alarm kinda undercuts your argument.
I certainly did not feel placated by this article. But being clear-eyed about the barriers we need to overcome is better than both blind panic and over-pacification.
Overcoming a coordinated attempt to destroy liberalism from an organized, consolidated far-right, along a broad front including all three branches of federal government, along with state and local governments — not to mention cultural, educational, and even psychological fronts — is going to require a lot more than 1,500 words of "it's not so bad" and "we can do it!", preceding a confession at the end of it all that our chances of avoiding an illiberal federal legislature have just been diminished by *3-to-4 times* (!!)
To preserve democracy, liberals need to admit just how unpopular liberalism has become, and also recognize how many erstwhile liberals have moved to support a fascist option to replace it. Liberals should also note well how many oligarchs and how much of big business has shelved their former liberalism, to ally with these same fascists who they're counting on to defeat socialism and the left, while preserving their own interests. We're well past the point of squinting hard to see a path to victory by hoping for another, even bigger "blue wave".
The message should be that to overcome the far-right, liberals will need to join with socialists, and vice-versa, in an alliance which both supports a diminished version of socialism, and also diminishes liberalism somewhat. This is the hard medicine it seems liberals are reluctant to swallow — but it's the truth.
Your response assumes that "liberalism" has become unpopular... but is that true? An alternative explanation is that voters think the Democrats have rejected liberal ideals. I.e. Do things like "free speech" still matter to people? During the campaign, did they associate "free speech" more with the Democrats or the Republicans?
The other assumption you make is that Democrats have to embrace socialism. That's also a far reach. Do voters think the Democrats are too socialist or not socialist enough? I think the answer to that is like 80-20 for the first option.
Basically, I think it's hard for people to swallow what you're saying because the electoral and polling data runs completely counter to it.
Also, your original post was about the tone of the piece instead of the actual facts behind it. I want to question how you got from a more "hair-on-fire" tone to requiring more socialism.
In my opinion, the greater the urgency of a matter, the greater the need to look at data, think, and understand exactly what needs to be done to win power, and do that.
The mass appeal of liberalism is *absolutely* diminished. Notice who occupies the White House. It is not Ronald Reagan or George Bush. Notice how an entire erstwhile liberal-conservative party is now decidedly illiberal. Observe the messaging which has recruited these erstwhile liberals from their former positions during the past decade — its themes of obedience for party members, and punishment of "others". How many erstwhile *Democratic* liberals have become socialists? Recall the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, along with each subsequent election: how much support do you suppose there is *within* the Democratic Party for democratic socialism?
I reckon there must be something like 30%-40% nationwide, with well over half within a number of Democratic Party strongholds.
These former liberals are disgusted by a sociopolitical philosophy which has permitted — and encouraged — the consolidation of wealth and power within big business and oligarchs, at the expense of the middle and working classes. Review American socioeconomic demographics from the post-New Deal era until the 1970s and compare them with current demographics, which resemble the 1890s more than the 1960s. People are really angry about this.
Of course free speech still matters — Democrats fiercely defend free speech of course, but how often have illiberal Republicans complained about constraint of their own expressions? At least as often — and their complaints about it are very loud.
So many democratic socialists within the Democratic Party have supported Democratic liberal candidates so far, for the exclusive purpose of opposing fascist alternatives. This is as it should be, I think, but the reality is that this support may be widespread but it is not universal. It is also quite fickle. Imagine what might happen in a general election between a liberal candidate and a democratic socialist candidate. We don't have to imagine — there will be a mayoral election in NYC between such candidates in two weeks. The liberal in this contest may still win, but polls say he is behind by 10%-15%.
Even if a majority of Democrats, nationwide, wish for a more liberal party rather than a more socialist party as you say (I disagree with your margins) — the fact remains that Democratic Party liberals will absolutely lose elections to illiberal Republicans 10 times out of 10 without the support of democratic socialists and, for this reason, it's necessary to make changes to Democratic support for liberalism — to appeal not only to these democratic socialists, but also to erstwhile liberals who have grown so disgusted with liberalism to actually support fascism as an alternative. Many MAGA supporters don't wish for fascism, after all, but only for a replacement of the liberalism which has steadily diminished the quality of their lives during the past 50+ years.
We agree that this is an urgent matter, and I believe we agree how we must "understand exactly what needs to be done to win power, and do that".
The preference for an authoritarian power cosplaying as the party of free speech against the "cancel culture Democrats" does not imply the demise of liberalism as an ideology. Just that the Democrats recently have been uncomfortable on defending freedom of expression.
And 30-40% of Democrats who want the party to be more socialist seems about right. This is more or less exactly in line with the 80-20 estimate I gave for the total proportion of Americans. (In fact I might have been a little generous with the 20%) A proposition with that kind of support is a surefire loser.
Your point of the New York city mayoral race is kinda useless. Why do you think the electoral environment of NYC can map onto the electoral environments of the swing districts and states we need to win to regain political power? Do any of them share any notable similarities to NYC that might make this comparison valid? Specifically, anything that would make NYC a better model than other swing states that have elected Democrats like Georgia and Arizona?
By the way, I think you should define what your version of liberalism means. For example, I don't know anybody who would describe Mamdani as an "illiberal" candidate... but somehow you've made him into the enemy of liberalism? (For reference, I think my definition is closest to the version described in "How do we live with each other?") Is there a hidden part of Mamdani's platform that's going to ban freedom of expression? Rule by divine right instead of by ballot? I think this discussion will be much more fruitful if we're on the same page on how we're using this term.
Liberalism is a political philosophy based on freedom, equality, democracy, individual rights, and private property rights — with a preference for limited government, along with an emphasis on individualism, and the pursuit of happiness (so the saying goes). This description applies to the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris part of the Democratic Party, along with the pre-2016 GOP. The former Republican Party, to be clear, were what is known as a "liberal-conservative" party, despite the widespread misuse of both of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in American media.
I think that just about everyone would agree (myself included) that liberalism is a really great political philosophy, in theory. However, the outcome of liberal governments in practice has been demonstrated — on multiple occasions — to be a concentration of wealth and resources among an oligarchy whose privilege it becomes to use that wealth and those resources to apply financial, legal, and sometimes physical pressure on those with more limited resources, for the purpose of exploiting them.
Your assessment that a 30%-40% preference for socialism over liberalism within the Democratic Party also describes an 80%-20% preference for liberalism over socialism among the general public is not accurate. This is because you failed to account for non-Democrats who prefer socialism to liberalism. Many independents are repelled by both fascism and liberalism. Many supporters of fascism don't oppose socialism nearly so much as they despise liberalism, and there are many who have chosen fascism primarily — if not strictly — for the sake of opposing liberalism. The terms "socialism" and "socialist" have also been demonized by both liberal and right-wing media for generations, and this slander has created negative, though ignorant, associations in the thinking of those who've relied only on these sorts of info sources in their lives. Many of those who support fascism describe their views in socialist terms, although they have been trained by culture to not recognize them, or admit to them, or describe them as such.
In NYC, Mamdani has presented himself as a socialist. He opposes the liberalist exploitation of everyone who is now being exploited via capitalism. I did not say that he was "illiberal" however, nor would I, because he does seem to support democracy, along with individual rights — including the freedom of expression. I did not (and would not) say that he was "the enemy of liberalism", because of same these reasons.
I also don't think liberalism has met its "demise" — far from it. It's very clearly a major force in American politics — even in 2025. It has been *undeniably* diminished however, since at least 2016, by the rise of socialism on the left — and especially by the rise of fascism along the right, and the far-right.
Additionally, I never claimed that "the electoral environment of NYC can map onto the electoral environments of the swing districts and states". I brought up the NYC election only to illustrate what is happening in 2025 — within the Democratic Party — when a liberal opposes a socialist in what is, for all intents and purposes, a direct one-on-one contest. Support for socialism is stronger than many liberals are willing to admit.
Disgust for liberalism is also stronger than many liberals are willing to admit.
Fascism must be defeated, full stop. Liberals lack the influence needed to do this by themselves and absolutely *must* negotiate for the support of the most compatible potential ally with both enough clout, and enough anti-fascist enthusiasm, to be an effective partner in this project. The most "surefire loser" among liberal options right now, is to continue in their denial about the true extent of their appeal, and fail to make allowances for the sake of preventing the complete subversion of their philosophy.
To avoid this, they will need to abandon some of their emphasis on individualism, in favor of a bit more emphasis on policies designed for the benefit of our whole society instead, for the purpose of recruiting the support of allies whose philosophies insist on such things.
I know it’s a pipe dream, but I’d be interested in an article exploring what federal anti-gerrymandering legislation might look like. I think one of the many obstacles to enacting such a law is that there’s little consensus on how it would even work. Proportional representation is nice but just isn’t going to happen in our lifetimes, does that leave us aiming for something like a county line rule? Mandated independent commissions? It’d be nice if I had some concrete ideas for my representative to ignore rather than just vibes.
It’s out of the question for the next several administrations, but a full-blown nuclear gerrymandering war will absolutely affect public opinion. It’s already an 80-20 issue in the abstract.
I mean this is a country that banned alcohol by Constitutional amendment. And then 13 years later, unbanned it.
It's not easy by any means, but I think these things have a tendency to seem impossible up until nearly the moment it happens.
I guess another question here is how well the 80-20 translates into support for a specific proposal - whether enough of that 80% support proportional representation over more stopgap solutions like independent redistricting committees.
Deep blue and red districts have allowed the parties to get lazy. Most of their members have only party primaries to worry about. An uncompetitive district is also bad for voters, as usually the seat is captured by a party insider who only leaves when he or she wants to. Blacks may find that Republicans serve them better. THAT’S what the Democratic Party should be worried about!
But the republicans are designing uncompetitive districts. How are they serving blacks in Mississippi by splitting up everyone in the delta region so that people in the white suburbs of Jackson decide their representative?
How is that being racist? Why should a wealthy white family in Madison have the same interests of a black family in Greenville? Especially when voting patterns have shown that they in fact do not have the same interests.
I have a dream, a dream where districts are not chosen by the color of the constituents' skin, nor by the party letter on the constituents' voter registration, but rather by the content of... an algorithm mutually agreed upon by bipartisan committee.
Those algorithms often make things even more extreme precisely because they *don’t* account for the fact that people group themselves in very specific ways on the map. The better plan is to get rid of districts and move to something like Single Transferable Vote, so that voters get to choose their own coalitions for electing representatives, agnostic to whether those coalitions are geographic or ideological or other.
I'd guess they do a narrower gutting of Section 2 whereby states like Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana are not going to be able to totally eliminate their Dem reps. However, Louisiana would be able to remove one of the districts and so would Alabama, Georgia, etc. Roberts will say something like, you can't force proportional representation but minorities also cannot have zero representation via vote dilution.
I'm not sure how that would impact the math. Also, New York needs to gerrymander aggressively. The bigger concern is less about 2026, I think, and more about 2028. It would be very difficult to win the House by 5 points during a Presidential election year.
I think the SC can thread most partisan needles within their own logical structures if they so choose to, but wonder how they'd write that opinion (section 2 stands but should be interpreted as minimally as possible).
Do they shift the standard to did the state eliminate all minority maj districts while that is actually 'hard to do"? Seems like it would go too far into fairness and a nuetral map as a concept.
I’m not sure if this was supposed to be heartening? “Hey claims of one-party rule are overblown…. But republicans will win 3-4 times more often with this scheme, even if they’re firmly in the popular minority.”
That’s an awful system to be confronted to. Not to mention that with such a system so heavily weighted in their favor, republicans have no incentive not to continue bending the system even more. They won’t be afraid of backlash because the popular majority against them has to be large and decisive.
Ignoring whether "gutting section 2" is appropriate or necessary - this cycle of partisan retaliations is just disheartening.
If section 2 goes down and Republicans start to aggressively redraw districts I wouldn’t underestimate Democrats’ ability to find religion and retaliate. States like Illinois could zero out Republicans. New York could do the same or close to it.
If that sounds implausible just look at how quickly opposition to gerrymandering dissipated in California.
There’s also the potential for districts to change very fast. I used to live in GA-6 and TX-7. Both were solidly red in 2014 and 2016. In 2018 they both elected Democrats.
I think New York may be tougher legally, but yes. If Democrats get their supermajority back, they could create some real headway there in the maps.
First, before I get into criticisms, I want to say that I really appreciate the article, and that I am a big fan of Lakshya’s work.
But wow, this quote near the end really puts into perspective my disagreement with the optimistic contrarianism of this piece:
“In either case, the claims of impending one-party rule are a bit overblown. In reality, the net effect would really be that Republicans win the House three or four times as often as the Democrats.”
This is a strawman portrayal of those of us who are deeply worried about gutting section 2 of the VRA. It’s not about one-party rule that is impossible to topple. It’s about one-party rule that is *incredibly difficult* to topple.
If we transition to a system where the party that more often than not gets the most votes only wins a House majority ~25% of the time, then we are hardly a democracy at that point.
Pair that with Democrats’ modest (but growing) disadvantage in the Electoral College and their enormous disadvantage in the Senate, and we have every right to be scared for the future of democracy in this country.
Not sure this part is true: “Pair that with Democrats’ modest (but growing) disadvantage in the Electoral College”
Didn’t the EC bias decrease in 2024?
Fair point. I’m mostly referring to the trend noted here, where red states are gaining representation and blue states are losing it: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/25/us/politics/electoral-college-seats-republicans-democrats-redistricting.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Fair enough! The best thing that blue state voters can do is convince their local officials to be YIMBY-er - But it might take a bad reapportionment cycle to actually break through to a lot of folks unfortunately
I like you guys, but I'm going to be very critical here:
Reminding liberals that our nation's *non-illiberal* political party might possibly still win a majority of legislative seats — even after our nation's *illiberal* political party has done all they can to choose its voters for these seats (as opposed to allowing voters to choose their representatives, as should be the case in any *liberal* democracy, obvs.) — is a false and dangerous reassurance of the safety of our democracy.
Reminding us all how "it has happened before" that our liberal party has defeated our illiberal party by a 5-point margin — during an anti-GOP backlash in 2018 which was so notorious that it was actually given a name (the "Blue Wave") — and that, if it somehow happened again, it could erase an illiberal advantage, which has been *baked into the structure* of the elections themselves by that same illiberal party, is nothing short of false hope.
This essay is *self-destructive* propaganda, which encourages liberals and their allies to abandon concerns about the recognition of their political will, which is being openly — *openly* undermined by illiberals.
Republican gerrymanderers are not foolish. They employ software to draw districts which *optimize* their chances of winning — which, of course, means taking into account and mitigating the risk of margins in GOP districts being too thin. The danger of losses in GOP districts because of an unexpected surge in Democratic votes are diminished by the same design which maximizes their overall chances.
They've destroyed equity among voters by increasing the influence of Republican voters. That's what we're talking about, here.
You retroactively deny that you're trying to "tamp down fears of how unbalanced our politics is becoming" in the *very last paragraph* — but this is exactly what has been done by the previous 1500+ words — i.e. "…the claims of impending one-party rule are a bit overblown. In reality, the net effect would really be that Republicans win the House *three or four times* (!!) as often as the Democrats". [emphasis added]
This essay, as is, is so destructive that it might have been written directly by the GOP.
I think the fact that you're pulling out quotes *from the article* to claim the article doesn't show the proper amount of alarm kinda undercuts your argument.
I certainly did not feel placated by this article. But being clear-eyed about the barriers we need to overcome is better than both blind panic and over-pacification.
Overcoming a coordinated attempt to destroy liberalism from an organized, consolidated far-right, along a broad front including all three branches of federal government, along with state and local governments — not to mention cultural, educational, and even psychological fronts — is going to require a lot more than 1,500 words of "it's not so bad" and "we can do it!", preceding a confession at the end of it all that our chances of avoiding an illiberal federal legislature have just been diminished by *3-to-4 times* (!!)
To preserve democracy, liberals need to admit just how unpopular liberalism has become, and also recognize how many erstwhile liberals have moved to support a fascist option to replace it. Liberals should also note well how many oligarchs and how much of big business has shelved their former liberalism, to ally with these same fascists who they're counting on to defeat socialism and the left, while preserving their own interests. We're well past the point of squinting hard to see a path to victory by hoping for another, even bigger "blue wave".
The message should be that to overcome the far-right, liberals will need to join with socialists, and vice-versa, in an alliance which both supports a diminished version of socialism, and also diminishes liberalism somewhat. This is the hard medicine it seems liberals are reluctant to swallow — but it's the truth.
Your response assumes that "liberalism" has become unpopular... but is that true? An alternative explanation is that voters think the Democrats have rejected liberal ideals. I.e. Do things like "free speech" still matter to people? During the campaign, did they associate "free speech" more with the Democrats or the Republicans?
The other assumption you make is that Democrats have to embrace socialism. That's also a far reach. Do voters think the Democrats are too socialist or not socialist enough? I think the answer to that is like 80-20 for the first option.
Basically, I think it's hard for people to swallow what you're saying because the electoral and polling data runs completely counter to it.
Also, your original post was about the tone of the piece instead of the actual facts behind it. I want to question how you got from a more "hair-on-fire" tone to requiring more socialism.
In my opinion, the greater the urgency of a matter, the greater the need to look at data, think, and understand exactly what needs to be done to win power, and do that.
The mass appeal of liberalism is *absolutely* diminished. Notice who occupies the White House. It is not Ronald Reagan or George Bush. Notice how an entire erstwhile liberal-conservative party is now decidedly illiberal. Observe the messaging which has recruited these erstwhile liberals from their former positions during the past decade — its themes of obedience for party members, and punishment of "others". How many erstwhile *Democratic* liberals have become socialists? Recall the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, along with each subsequent election: how much support do you suppose there is *within* the Democratic Party for democratic socialism?
I reckon there must be something like 30%-40% nationwide, with well over half within a number of Democratic Party strongholds.
These former liberals are disgusted by a sociopolitical philosophy which has permitted — and encouraged — the consolidation of wealth and power within big business and oligarchs, at the expense of the middle and working classes. Review American socioeconomic demographics from the post-New Deal era until the 1970s and compare them with current demographics, which resemble the 1890s more than the 1960s. People are really angry about this.
Of course free speech still matters — Democrats fiercely defend free speech of course, but how often have illiberal Republicans complained about constraint of their own expressions? At least as often — and their complaints about it are very loud.
So many democratic socialists within the Democratic Party have supported Democratic liberal candidates so far, for the exclusive purpose of opposing fascist alternatives. This is as it should be, I think, but the reality is that this support may be widespread but it is not universal. It is also quite fickle. Imagine what might happen in a general election between a liberal candidate and a democratic socialist candidate. We don't have to imagine — there will be a mayoral election in NYC between such candidates in two weeks. The liberal in this contest may still win, but polls say he is behind by 10%-15%.
Even if a majority of Democrats, nationwide, wish for a more liberal party rather than a more socialist party as you say (I disagree with your margins) — the fact remains that Democratic Party liberals will absolutely lose elections to illiberal Republicans 10 times out of 10 without the support of democratic socialists and, for this reason, it's necessary to make changes to Democratic support for liberalism — to appeal not only to these democratic socialists, but also to erstwhile liberals who have grown so disgusted with liberalism to actually support fascism as an alternative. Many MAGA supporters don't wish for fascism, after all, but only for a replacement of the liberalism which has steadily diminished the quality of their lives during the past 50+ years.
We agree that this is an urgent matter, and I believe we agree how we must "understand exactly what needs to be done to win power, and do that".
So let's do it.
The preference for an authoritarian power cosplaying as the party of free speech against the "cancel culture Democrats" does not imply the demise of liberalism as an ideology. Just that the Democrats recently have been uncomfortable on defending freedom of expression.
And 30-40% of Democrats who want the party to be more socialist seems about right. This is more or less exactly in line with the 80-20 estimate I gave for the total proportion of Americans. (In fact I might have been a little generous with the 20%) A proposition with that kind of support is a surefire loser.
Your point of the New York city mayoral race is kinda useless. Why do you think the electoral environment of NYC can map onto the electoral environments of the swing districts and states we need to win to regain political power? Do any of them share any notable similarities to NYC that might make this comparison valid? Specifically, anything that would make NYC a better model than other swing states that have elected Democrats like Georgia and Arizona?
By the way, I think you should define what your version of liberalism means. For example, I don't know anybody who would describe Mamdani as an "illiberal" candidate... but somehow you've made him into the enemy of liberalism? (For reference, I think my definition is closest to the version described in "How do we live with each other?") Is there a hidden part of Mamdani's platform that's going to ban freedom of expression? Rule by divine right instead of by ballot? I think this discussion will be much more fruitful if we're on the same page on how we're using this term.
Liberalism is a political philosophy based on freedom, equality, democracy, individual rights, and private property rights — with a preference for limited government, along with an emphasis on individualism, and the pursuit of happiness (so the saying goes). This description applies to the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris part of the Democratic Party, along with the pre-2016 GOP. The former Republican Party, to be clear, were what is known as a "liberal-conservative" party, despite the widespread misuse of both of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in American media.
I think that just about everyone would agree (myself included) that liberalism is a really great political philosophy, in theory. However, the outcome of liberal governments in practice has been demonstrated — on multiple occasions — to be a concentration of wealth and resources among an oligarchy whose privilege it becomes to use that wealth and those resources to apply financial, legal, and sometimes physical pressure on those with more limited resources, for the purpose of exploiting them.
Your assessment that a 30%-40% preference for socialism over liberalism within the Democratic Party also describes an 80%-20% preference for liberalism over socialism among the general public is not accurate. This is because you failed to account for non-Democrats who prefer socialism to liberalism. Many independents are repelled by both fascism and liberalism. Many supporters of fascism don't oppose socialism nearly so much as they despise liberalism, and there are many who have chosen fascism primarily — if not strictly — for the sake of opposing liberalism. The terms "socialism" and "socialist" have also been demonized by both liberal and right-wing media for generations, and this slander has created negative, though ignorant, associations in the thinking of those who've relied only on these sorts of info sources in their lives. Many of those who support fascism describe their views in socialist terms, although they have been trained by culture to not recognize them, or admit to them, or describe them as such.
In NYC, Mamdani has presented himself as a socialist. He opposes the liberalist exploitation of everyone who is now being exploited via capitalism. I did not say that he was "illiberal" however, nor would I, because he does seem to support democracy, along with individual rights — including the freedom of expression. I did not (and would not) say that he was "the enemy of liberalism", because of same these reasons.
I also don't think liberalism has met its "demise" — far from it. It's very clearly a major force in American politics — even in 2025. It has been *undeniably* diminished however, since at least 2016, by the rise of socialism on the left — and especially by the rise of fascism along the right, and the far-right.
Additionally, I never claimed that "the electoral environment of NYC can map onto the electoral environments of the swing districts and states". I brought up the NYC election only to illustrate what is happening in 2025 — within the Democratic Party — when a liberal opposes a socialist in what is, for all intents and purposes, a direct one-on-one contest. Support for socialism is stronger than many liberals are willing to admit.
Disgust for liberalism is also stronger than many liberals are willing to admit.
Fascism must be defeated, full stop. Liberals lack the influence needed to do this by themselves and absolutely *must* negotiate for the support of the most compatible potential ally with both enough clout, and enough anti-fascist enthusiasm, to be an effective partner in this project. The most "surefire loser" among liberal options right now, is to continue in their denial about the true extent of their appeal, and fail to make allowances for the sake of preventing the complete subversion of their philosophy.
To avoid this, they will need to abandon some of their emphasis on individualism, in favor of a bit more emphasis on policies designed for the benefit of our whole society instead, for the purpose of recruiting the support of allies whose philosophies insist on such things.
I know it’s a pipe dream, but I’d be interested in an article exploring what federal anti-gerrymandering legislation might look like. I think one of the many obstacles to enacting such a law is that there’s little consensus on how it would even work. Proportional representation is nice but just isn’t going to happen in our lifetimes, does that leave us aiming for something like a county line rule? Mandated independent commissions? It’d be nice if I had some concrete ideas for my representative to ignore rather than just vibes.
It’s out of the question for the next several administrations, but a full-blown nuclear gerrymandering war will absolutely affect public opinion. It’s already an 80-20 issue in the abstract.
I mean this is a country that banned alcohol by Constitutional amendment. And then 13 years later, unbanned it.
It's not easy by any means, but I think these things have a tendency to seem impossible up until nearly the moment it happens.
I guess another question here is how well the 80-20 translates into support for a specific proposal - whether enough of that 80% support proportional representation over more stopgap solutions like independent redistricting committees.
Deep blue and red districts have allowed the parties to get lazy. Most of their members have only party primaries to worry about. An uncompetitive district is also bad for voters, as usually the seat is captured by a party insider who only leaves when he or she wants to. Blacks may find that Republicans serve them better. THAT’S what the Democratic Party should be worried about!
But the republicans are designing uncompetitive districts. How are they serving blacks in Mississippi by splitting up everyone in the delta region so that people in the white suburbs of Jackson decide their representative?
Let me ask you, has Jackson gotten better by being deep blue?
How is that being racist? Why should a wealthy white family in Madison have the same interests of a black family in Greenville? Especially when voting patterns have shown that they in fact do not have the same interests.
I have a dream, a dream where districts are not chosen by the color of the constituents' skin, nor by the party letter on the constituents' voter registration, but rather by the content of... an algorithm mutually agreed upon by bipartisan committee.
Those algorithms often make things even more extreme precisely because they *don’t* account for the fact that people group themselves in very specific ways on the map. The better plan is to get rid of districts and move to something like Single Transferable Vote, so that voters get to choose their own coalitions for electing representatives, agnostic to whether those coalitions are geographic or ideological or other.
I'd guess they do a narrower gutting of Section 2 whereby states like Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana are not going to be able to totally eliminate their Dem reps. However, Louisiana would be able to remove one of the districts and so would Alabama, Georgia, etc. Roberts will say something like, you can't force proportional representation but minorities also cannot have zero representation via vote dilution.
I'm not sure how that would impact the math. Also, New York needs to gerrymander aggressively. The bigger concern is less about 2026, I think, and more about 2028. It would be very difficult to win the House by 5 points during a Presidential election year.
I think the SC can thread most partisan needles within their own logical structures if they so choose to, but wonder how they'd write that opinion (section 2 stands but should be interpreted as minimally as possible).
Do they shift the standard to did the state eliminate all minority maj districts while that is actually 'hard to do"? Seems like it would go too far into fairness and a nuetral map as a concept.
I’m not sure if this was supposed to be heartening? “Hey claims of one-party rule are overblown…. But republicans will win 3-4 times more often with this scheme, even if they’re firmly in the popular minority.”
That’s an awful system to be confronted to. Not to mention that with such a system so heavily weighted in their favor, republicans have no incentive not to continue bending the system even more. They won’t be afraid of backlash because the popular majority against them has to be large and decisive.
I say, bring on the super competitive gerrymanders
Make more swing districts
Useful!!