The Democrats are finally fighting dirty - will it be enough to win?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. Is it OK to redraw the map of a state to allow for certain seats to be won more easily by one party or another? Democratic Party that is taking up the cudgels, using the same weapons as the Republicans have done. The Republicans have argued that the referendum was unconstitutional. The real loser in all this is democracy. But if they have to hit below the belt, they'll hit below the belt. Who are the winners who are the losers in this? Well Donald Trump in Iran and in this redistricting battle in the United States not quite getting his way and he is so furious about it.

1:20Congresswoman Donald Trump is complaining about the results yesterday in Virginia he seems to be very distressed by this. What do you make of his anxieties. I'm so sorry for his heartbreak at this present moment and I look forward to adding two or rather 10 new Democratic colleagues in November. That is Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a beaming Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez after a vote in Virginia which carries out extensive redistricting in favour of the Democrats. And Donald Trump is pissed. The Democrats didn't want to go down this road, but they've been forced to by the Republicans. Is gerrymandering, is changing the political map now just going to be a feature of all US elections?

2:12Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. And it is not often that we take you into the weeds of the electoral system on this podcast. And that's for good reason that we try and paint a broader brushstroke for our listeners, for our viewers as they're coming to US politics. But this time round, we're going to zero in on one particular electoral race that happened this week on Tuesday night in Virginia, because the consequences of what Virginians voted for this week could be so far reaching in terms of how all future elections are fought.

2:59And it basically comes down to this really simple question. Is it OK to redraw the map of a state to allow for certain seats to be won more easily by one party or another? You might have said, gasp, of course it isn't. That sounds against all natural binary politics. It sounds the very definition of partisan politics. And yet what we are seeing now is a place where both parties, Republicans and Democrats, have arrived at a point where they are willing to redraw the map to help themselves win over a state and get more members of Congress in to the legislature. So the important thing to say about Virginia is not that Virginia is the first place to do this.

3:53It started in Texas, which is a Republican controlled state. And so other Democrat states are saying, well, hang on, if this is this is the rules of engagement now, we're going to do the same. And so there was this referendum on Tuesday night of the Virginian population. So it wasn't kind of just carved up. And 80 million dollars was spent just on this referendum in terms of advertising about trying to win over what would happen. And the result was that 51.5 percent of Virginians voted. Yeah, we're going to redistrict. We're going to redraw the map and it will be massively in Democrats favor. and 48.5 % voted against.

4:34And as Emily said, we don't normally get into the weeds on this stuff. But essentially, out of a 435-seat House of Representatives, 11 of those representatives come from Virginia. And the estimate now is that whereas in normal times it was roughly an equal number of Democrats and Republicans that would go to Congress, as a result of this map being redrawn, it's possible that there is only one safe Republican seat in Virginia and the other 10 are Democrat. Is it pretty? No. It's ugly as hell. But that's what the rules of engagement now it seems to be in US politics. Yeah. And it was a first test in a way for Abigail Spanberger, who became the Virginia Democrat in the special election last November to see if she would go along with it.

5:27And it was quite critical in the last couple of weeks of the campaign that she said, yep, I'm going to go and I will caucus. I will I will campaign for the Democrats. So essentially what you've got is voters in Virginia approving this lopsided congressional map, which reduces the number of Republican leaning districts and gives the Democrats a big helping hand. And Republicans are complaining, right? Oh, my God, this is disgusting. You know, this is not helpful to conservative leaning voters. You're actually jeopardizing our chance of winning. And they are right. This is exactly what that new map of Virginia does.

6:10It is essentially, I mean, let's be honest, gerrymandering is an attempt to thwart the will of the voters because it goes round the whole democratic process. is gerrymandering is not a new thing, right? It is as old as the Republic. I think it goes back to, is it Elbridge Gerry? Governor Elbridge Gerry? Good history. 1812. So this has been going on for 200 years. But the thing that you really have to understand, which I think is critical, is it didn't start with Texas. We will take you back to Texas and we'll remind you of the changes in Texas. It started in 2019 with a Supreme Court ruling. And the reason this is important is because the Supreme Court essentially made it legal.

6:53It was asked whether it is partisan, it is against the law for partisan gerrymandering to happen, and the court said they couldn't get involved, right? In other words, you do what you want. We don't want to get involved in political issues. So with that one judgment, the Supreme Court basically took their hands off the tiller and said, it's over to you. So roll forward to 2024, 2025. we saw Trump start to affect this process in Texas with five new areas, redrawing the map to make it much easier for Republicans to pick up five new seats in Texas. And there was an outcry. There was absolute outrage to the point where the Democrats, some of the stronger voices in the Democrats, responded.

7:40You'll remember Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, who said, I'm going to put on the ballot this term called Prop 50. If you go ahead and gerrymander Texas, I will do the same for California. In other words, he responded with a tit for tat war. And I do think this is critical. And we're going to come on to this later. But for a long time, the Democrats watched what the Republicans were doing and said, well, we're sticking to the rules. You know, we're going to stick to the rules. We don't want to see democracy go this way. If you're going to geomander, we're just going to show you how ethical we can be.

8:18And I think Newsom was one of the first voices who went, sod that. Sod that. And that is now being... And he won. Yeah. And that is now being picked up by Hakeem Jeffries. And he is the Democrat leader in the House, the minority leader. And if the Doms win the midterms in November, he would become the speaker following in the footsteps of Nancy Pelosi. and he held a news conference this week about what had happened in Virginia. This is what he had to say. These Republican extremists thought that we were going to step back. They had us confused. We were never going to step back. We're going to continue to fight back all the way through November 3rd, where Democrats will take back control of the House of Representatives so we can drive down the high cost of living, fix our broken health care system, clean up corruption, get ICE under control, stop this reckless and costly war of choice, end this national nightmare in America and continue our country's march toward a more perfect union.

9:23Just worth adding one thing. Needless to say, the Republicans have filed a legal objection to this And a Virginia judge has put a hold on implementing this map for the time being, because the Republicans have argued that the referendum was unconstitutional. I mean, it's kind of hard to think what is more constitutional than having a referendum, but we'll leave that to one side. So at the moment, you've got the Republicans having managed to get an injunction on this new map for Virginia. And of course, the new governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, is appealing that ruling. So that may go all the way to the Supreme Court as well.

10:09But surely what is good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander as well. So interesting. OK, this goose and gander thing, because I think Republicans were expecting Democrats to follow the rules. If I take you back to The Washington Post over the whole discussion of Texas, this is under Jeff Bezos, who obviously has pulled the paper in a very Trump friendly direction. He basically dismissed Democrats worries about Texas gerrymandering by arguing what's happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy. suddenly Virginia is redistricting and that same editorial board has come out and called it a power grab.

10:53Right. So there is immediately this discrepancy with what one side is allowed to do versus the other side. So just to kind of set the scene for you, you've got the Supreme Court ruling in 2019. You've then got Trump trying to change the map of Texas. You've got Gavin Newsom responding by saying we'll do the same in California. You've then got other states come to the equation. I think North Carolina is one. And Virginia has just voted to change its map. The next big focal ground is Florida. Now, Florida used to be a massive number of electoral seats in a swing state. This stopped feeling like a swing state about 10 years ago, really, with Donald Trump.

11:38But if Florida rechanges its districting, could it suddenly be back in the balance again? And Hakeem Jeffries, the man who wants to be Speaker in Congress, had a very strong message for Ron DeSantis. Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out. Now, if they go down the road of a DeSantis dummy mander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now, and under no circumstances are Texas Republicans picking up five seats. They'll be fortunate if they get two or three. While in California, we are going to get all five.

12:28The Republicans are dummy mandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast because they started this war. And we're going to finish it. So they started this war without working out how to finish it. And I don't want to draw parallels. I just see where you're going. Yeah, exactly. Another war. I mean, Donald Trump started this war. He was the one who said to Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, do this redistricting and we will hold the House. So he starts a war where the Democrats haven't laid down. They have fired back. And it's just like those bloody Iranians. They kept on firing back and they took over the Strait of All Moose.

13:09How bloody dare them? This hostage taking is quite effective when the other side's doing it to you. Exactly. And so you've seen now Donald Trump in Iran and in this redistricting battle, in the United States, not quite getting his way. And he is so furious about it. I've been posting on Truth Social. You know, this will come as a shock. I know it will come as a shock. But he declared after the result was announced for Virginia that there was ballot stuffing, that it was a fake election, that the election has been stolen. Rigged. All the stuff that we heard in 2020. Yeah. Well, this is what Ron DeSantis had to fire back at Hakeem Jeffries.

13:52And to be honest, Ron DeSantis probably sounds as confident as he has done for a while. This guy Jeffries popping off in Washington about Florida. He wants to be Speaker of the House. And he's kind of like, you know, more liberal than Pelosi and all this other stuff from New York City. I just want to know. I just say, oh, Florida, we're going to go after Florida. Please be my guest. I will pay for you to come down to Florida and campaign. I'll put you up in the Florida governor's mansion. We'll take you fishing. We'll do all this stuff. There's nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida than to see Jeffries, Hakeem Jeffries, everywhere around this state.

14:36Voters will not like what they see. They will not want that type of ideology. And so the door is open. The invitation's out there. I don't think there would be anything better for the Republican Party of Florida but to have Jeffries there. Now, I kind of feel bad for the guy because he's as left as they come. He's always going left. And yet the far left hates him. You know, they call him a dollar store Obama. They call him APAC Shakur, all these different derogatory names that they do. And so he's tried to ingratiate himself with there, but they're just not drinking the Kool-Aid. And so they give him a hard time.

15:10So I kind of feel bad for that. But please be my guest to come down in Florida. We would love to have you. Ron DeSantis, the pretty popular Florida governor, throwing out either a gauntlet or an invitation to Hakeem Jeffries to come and campaign in his state. Look, who are the winners? Who are the losers in this? Well, the winners will probably be the Democrats in Virginia and California. And they will be the losers in Texas and other places. although we can have a discussion about Texas and whether that is looking slightly more viable to change in the coming set of elections. But the real loser in all this is democracy.

15:51Right. Because and I think we're going to talk about this next, that the real problem. And I think if you go back to the words of political scientist Seth Maskett, who wrote last year, Democrats couldn't force the Republican Party to feel more reverent towards institutions and norms. They could only raise the costs of irreverence. Who are the losers? Everyone who'd actually like to be following the rules. But it could be that the Republicans, having started this, are the losers. There's some really extensive and very good reporting on Axios right now about the buyer's remorse being felt by Republicans with lawmakers, you know, saying that the blowback from this may outgain any wanes.

16:39I think it's a mistake in hindsight. This is a congressman from Nebraska, Don Bacon. They thought they could just do Texas and no one else is going to respond. We started a war. And they're now seeing a Democratic Party that is taking up the cudgels, using the same weapons as the Republicans had done, made the assumption that the Democrats would play nicely because they always believe in democracy and they're the good guys and they fought back very effectively. But where does this leave democracy? We'll come back to that in a moment.

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18:24The Newsagents USA. It was over 60 years ago that the Great Voting Rights Act, when LBJ was president, came into force. And that was the legislation that was designed to ensure that elections would be fair, that they would be free, that they wouldn't be gerrymandered, that you would have black people able to vote in districts where their votes would count. There would be no discrimination. There would be no voter suppression. And bit by bit, the Voting Rights Act is being gutted. And you talked about the 2019 ruling. There was also Citizens United. That ruling, which meant that you could spend whatever amount of money you wanted on an election.

19:10It was an arms race. There were no limits. People could spend whatever they raised. And so billionaires were trying to buy elections increasingly. And the latest manifestation of it is this redistricting war. Whereas what was meant to happen in America was once every 10 years, you would do redistricting, but it would be on metrics to do with. We want each electoral district to be roughly the same size in terms of the population. Sizing. Sizing. And that's perfectly normal. Well, if you've got massive depopulation in, say, a city like, I don't know, like Detroit after the financial crash, well, do you need as many congressmen and women being sent from Detroit to Washington?

19:51And that is what was meant to be happening. And bit by bit, you've seen this move towards redistricting, which is the nice euphemistic name for it, but which is essentially saying, right, we'll cut out all those bits of a district that are solidly for one party or another and make the district just safe for us. And whether the us is Republican or whether the us is Democrat. But, you know, this cycle, it started with Donald Trump and goading and encouraging Texas to be the first to go. Yeah. And there is one decision from the Supreme Court that we're still awaiting. And that is called Louisiana versus Calais.

20:32And what it could do is further muting voting rights, the Voting Rights Act, which would allow racial gerrymanders in the name of so-called colour blindness. Right. This is a sort of, you know, it's the it's the sort of counterversion to woke amongst conservatives or amongst Republicans who say, oh, stop trying to have, you know, an idea that black people vote there and white people vote there, even if it's actually reflected in the populations and the urban populations of a city. We want to be colourblind. If that happens, politicians would then have another free hand to draw districts along partisan lines and could see it as an invitation to return to racially discriminatory systems that previously entrenched the power of white voters.

21:19In other words, if this court decision comes through, it wouldn't just be gerrymandering of sort of particular areas. You could you could literally do it along racial lines as well. You could say we don't we don't want to think of black and white in our cities. We just want to see colorblindness. And it doesn't matter if there's a little loop that goes up here and around there and pulls that tree in and that letterbox in and all the rest of it. You could end up having black communities and white communities segregated by the very act that was brought in to try and get rid of all that. Yeah. And so you'd have an inner city area which might be very largely black, whereas before that population would have been distributed among all the suburban seats.

21:56And now you'll just have white suburban seats where they're absolutely rock solid Republican. That is what they are aiming to achieve. And I think what's interesting about this is that if you look at the history of the Democratic Party, they have stood out against redistricting. And it was interesting that the Republicans most effective ad in Virginia was to have Abigail Spanberger arguing, the Democrat governor arguing why redistricting is right and playing alongside it. Barack Obama from 10 years ago saying why redistricting is wrong, which brings us to Michelle Obama and the way she said the Democrats had to fight Donald Trump from a decade ago.

22:41How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is when they go low, we go high.

22:55I remember her giving that speech. It was at the convention that Hillary Clinton gave in 2016, the one that Hillary Clinton was expected to win, the election that she was expected to win. And there was such a rousing response to that, that sense that, you know, the Republican Party, the Trump Party, the MAGA Party could get down in the gutter. But the Democrats would be the holders of the, you know, the shining light on the hill, the citadel, the sort of sense of America being America. And she got such applause, such plaudits for sort of lifting up the party. and I think it's taken the Democrats a full 10 years to realise that, yeah, they can have morality in politics and they can have that sense of, you know, sort of an upright stance, but they're not going to win like that.

23:53The moral high ground doesn't win you an election. And so what is so fascinating about this is, yeah, too right. Obama didn't agree with gerrymandering because it is undemocratic. It should be illegal. The fact it's not illegal is the real problem in this whole thing. But it's taken the Democrats and it's taken probably somebody like Newsom who got under the Republican skin enough to say when they go low, we're going even lower, right? And change, we're just going to change it up. Yeah, and this is what has been so effective. I do think Donald Trump is startled that what they've fought back the democrats are meant to be the nice proper ones not they're not going to be squalid like we are we just thought you'd carry on doing what you were doing because you didn't mind losing as long as you felt good about it and i do think it's interesting that the other day i heard donald trump talking about yeah how governing parties tend to do really badly in midterm elections and tend to lose and i thought i think that's the first time i've heard Donald Trump conceding that he could be defeated.

25:02And I think that the Republicans are in a real mess over this redistricting because there are some pretty big states that are Democrat, like California, where, you know, if Prop 50 goes ahead, then that will deliver the Democrats X number of extra seats. We've already talked about Virginia. Now Florida is coming into play where the Republicans hope that that will work for them, although there are a number of significant Republicans in Florida who are against what DeSantis is proposing. So this is roiling the politics of America right now. But the Democrats are not going to back down on this. And they're thinking, look, if the Republicans try and massage it so that they don't lose control of the House, we're going to massage it just as much.

25:47Yeah. And I think in the last few years, the Democrats are pushing to the front the voices that aren't scared to pick a fight. So it's not the Michelle Obamas. It's not the sort of decency of Michelle Obama anymore that wins the day. It is people like Gavin Newsom, people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. here she is and there's a little bit of sound in the background bear with us but this is her telling it as it is what do you think a republican saying that you guys getting oh wow wow wow listen democrats have attempted and asked republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering and for 10 years republicans have said no republicans have fought for partisan gerrymanders across the United States of America.

26:42And these are the rules that they have set. And so if the Republican Party wanted to start this, they did this in North Carolina. They drew out three Democratic members of Congress in North Carolina. They drew out in Texas. They redid Texas. What they're just mad at is that they have been accustomed to a Democratic party that rolls over, doesn't fight and takes everything sitting down. And what they're mad at right now is that we are here in a new day. And we have been asking the Democratic party to stand up and fight. And now they did. And now the Republican party doesn't like the fact that they are fighting against someone who actually will stand up for the American people.

27:25And that is it. What she's referring to is that before 2019, some Democrat controlled states had actually tried to lead by example, they'd installed these non-partisan redistricting commissions to actually draw up the fair maps. And the Republicans loved that because they were like, oh yeah, you do you, we'll carry on doing what we want. And the Democrats, to coin this brilliant phrase, have now understood that that was just unilateral disarmament. They were laying down their weapons and nobody else was. And so that is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying, we're rearming, We're picking them up. And, you know, the other interesting thing about this is that we tend to portray the battles going on within the Democratic Party as being between left and right, between the progressive wing and the conservative wing.

28:14There is a pugilist wing now of the Democratic Party. And that's Gavin Newsom, who is considered to be on the more moderate wing. And it includes AOC, who's considered to be on the progressive wing. there is now a distinction between those who are really prepared to take off the gloves and get into a bare knuckle fight not played by the queensberry rules but if they have to hit below the belt yeah they'll hit below the belt because they know sure as hell the republicans will be doing the same to them yeah and we are too far out from a future presidential election to say which wing is going to win or is going to get through I mean, maybe it's even the front flank and the back, but it is quite possible that you send out your pugilists, your Cortez, your Newsoms to sort of cut through the jungle, if you like.

29:07And you pave the way for somebody who is a little bit calmer, a little bit quieter to then accede to the throne. I mean, it may not be that Newsom or Ocasio-Cortez become, you know, they might be the trailblazers rather than the presidents at the end of all this. But they are showing Democrats, I think, a new way of fighting back now. Yeah. And look, as we said, it's not exactly pretty. Of come November, of course, there will still be get out the vote campaigns. There will be people knocking on doors. There'll be people ringing you up to check whether you voted and all those other things. But a lot of the battle will have been fought beforehand in state houses across the country where they're trying to vote on how they can massage their electoral districts to favour the governing party in that state.