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The ability to retaliate against Donald Trump’s power grabs and other outrages is a rare pleasure for Democrats, which is why Gavin Newsom’s counter-gerrymandering effort in California is so wildly popular among Democrats. If Democrats can’t stop Trump’s egregious policies in Congress (and they really can’t) and the U.S. Supreme Court is either enabling him or slow-walking efforts to rein him in (which it clearly is), then they need different arenas in which to contest his authoritarian ways. Since Trump chose to intervene in state-government prerogatives by ordering the Texas legislature to grab the GOP some new U.S. House districts, it made perfect sense for California to respond, even though it would require a constitutional amendment enacted via an insanely expensive ballot-initiative fight.
But Democrats shouldn’t reflexively ape Trump’s every excess, particularly in formulating an agenda for their eventual return to power. They currently have the high ground with a small but strategically critical share of voters who dislike partisan power grabs no matter who is carrying them out. These voters may not want to restore Democrats to power in 2026 or 2028 if they believe that when it comes to lawless conduct, “both sides do it.” It’s not some sort of lack of fighting spirit that makes Democrats value the Constitution, including such key restraints on presidential power as the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights. An essentially stable system of laws and institutions is what can keep America from lurching back and forth between authoritarian governments of the left and right every four years and eventually a meltdown of democracy itself.
Fortunately, much as many rank-and-file Democrats would relish a tit-for-tat fight to the end, current Democratic retaliatory efforts are measured and, more important, are necessary to the occasion.
Newsom’s Prop 50 isn’t a legislative coup like the one in Texas; it places the prospective congressional map before voters for their approval or disapproval. It doesn’t scrap California’s nonpartisan redistricting system in favor of the kind of pure legislative powers enjoyed by Texas Republicans; it puts it aside until the next regular round of redistricting when it will be resumed. And its goal isn’t some sort of Democratic seizure of power along the lines that Trump and his party are undertaking every day; its goal is to break the GOP trifecta in Washington next year so that Congress will no longer be a pure rubber stamp for whatever the president wants, making it possible for something approaching normalcy during the last two years of the Trump era.
Making that happen, and then presenting 2028 a real referendum on the future of the country, is the prize Democrats should value above the emotional satisfaction of turning the tables on Trump or the GOP once they return to power. It’s hard to maintain any sense of restraint or equilibrium about politics and government right now but, with skill and luck, we’ll someday remember this moment as a terrible aberration rather than a new normal.
