It was a stirring speech that brought Democrats to tears. “When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level,” Michelle Obama told them in Philadelphia in 2016. “No, our motto is: ‘When they go low, we go high.’”
Fast forward to Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, speaking in Chicago this week. “This is not the Democratic party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to the knife fight,” he insisted. “This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we are going to fight fire with fire.”
It was a brutally honest acknowledgement of what a decade of Donald Trump’s politics has wrought. Out go the courtly and courteous playing-by-the-rules Democrats convinced that Maga is a passing phase, a fever that will break. In come a new generation of pugnacious Democrats prepared to take off the gloves and fight dirty.
The trigger for this scorched-earth approach is Trump’s push to find more Republican seats in the House of Representatives ahead of next year’s crucial midterm elections through gerrymandering, a process of manipulating electoral maps to benefit one party over another.
At the president’s urging, Texas Republicans have proposed new congressional districts aimed at flipping five Democratic-held seats, diluting the voting power of millions of people of colour and further skewing an already deeply partisan map in that state.
Trump also dispatched his vice-president, JD Vance, to Indiana to discuss redistricting with the state governor and legislative leaders in the hope of gaining one or two Republican seats. Separately, a top Republican leader in Florida announced plans to begin redistricting efforts in the president’s adopted home state.
After months of inertia and disunity in response to Trump, Democrats are now finding their voice and taking a stand. Democratic state legislators from Texas fled their home state to deny Republicans a quorum and prevent a vote on the proposed new map.
Democratic governors floated the possibility of rushing to redraw their own state maps in retaliation, even if their options are limited. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, wants Democratic gerrymandering in his state if Texas proceeds, though voters would have to bypass an independent redistricting commission.
Newsom said: “Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2026 election. We cannot sit back and watch this happen.”
Illinois governor JB Pritzker and New York governor Kathy Hochul have also declared their intent to push redistricting to neutralize Republican map-rigging. Pritzker denounced Trump as a “cheater” and said: “As far as I’m concerned, everything is on the table.”
Standing with six Texas Democrats who sought refuge in New York, Hochul told reporters: “I’m tired of fighting this fight with my hand tied behind my back. We are at war and that’s why the gloves are off – and I say bring it on.”
They have the backing of prominent party figures such as Eric Holder, a former attorney general under President Barack Obama. Holder, whose organisation has long campaigned to end gerrymandering, admitted this week that he has changed his position and now believes that Democrats should respond with their own redistricting.
Holder told the New York Times: “What’s driving Democrats is, I think, a legitimate response. I mean, it’s like the Germans have invaded France. Are you going to just say, “Well, we’re against war and we’re for the resolution of disputes in a peaceful way”? Sometimes you have to take up arms. And when confronted with this authoritarian, anti-democracy effort, we have to take up arms.”
The view is shared by another lifelong proponent of independent redistricting commissions. Norm Eisen, a lawyer and co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a nonpartisan group dedicated to free and fair elections, said: “It’s said you should never bring a knife to a gunfight. My view is that you should bring a bazooka to a gunfight.
“I believe we have no choice now but to respond with massive pro-democracy force to these autocratic manoeuvres by Trump and his enablers in Texas. I favour every Democratic state that has the power to do it maximizing the number of districts. If Texas blinks, they can back off as well.”
A mid-decade redistricting arms race makes some observers uneasy. They fear that Democrats will sacrifice the moral high ground by using anti-democratic measures in the name of democracy, evoking a statement often attributed to a US army major during the Vietnam war: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
Eisen acknowledges the “tremendous danger” of a race to the bottom. But he added: “If we spend time wringing our hands about that we may find we’ve lost our democracy while we tarried. The continuity of American democracy may depend on blue states responding with alacrity to what Trump and Texas have started. Democracy won’t survive that kind of asymmetry.”
Few Democrats personify the new bareknuckle approach better than Jasmine Crockett, who was among the leaders the last time Texas Democrats left the state to thwart Republicans in 2021. They stayed away for 38 days, although the Republican-led elections bill and voting restrictions eventually passed.
Now a congresswoman in Washington, Crockett argues that such tactics remain effective. “If it’s waking up the conscience of this country about why this is a terrible practice, then that is a win,” she told the Guardian in a phone interview this week. “If it is showing those who decided to stay on the couch during the last presidential there are Democrats that are willing and ready to fight – but you just got to give us a shot.”
Republicans have responded more aggressively to Texas Democrats’ efforts to stall procedure than they did four years ago. Senator John Cornyn said the FBI has agreed to help track down the Texas Democrats. Governor Greg Abbott said he is taking legal action to remove dozens of them from office.
Crockett believes the authoritarian threat is now so severe that Democrats must stand and fight. “They have taken our kindness for weakness,” she said. “Democrats are very much wanting to be fair.
“That is why you don’t find independent redistricting committees in Republican states; you find them in Democratic states. How can we fight when we tie our own hands behind our backs? It is so bad right now that we’ve got to do whatever we can to try to even the playing field somewhat.”
She added: “Democracy is currently hanging by a thread at this point. We’ve got one team that’s playing chess and another one that’s playing checkers. We got to play the same game. Unfortunately we have endured a lot of harm and there’s a lot of systems that have been broken in only the first seven months of this administration.”
Democrats have long been accused of timidity, showing more concern about being right than about being in power, eschewing vicious attacks on opponents with the notable exception of their own left wing. Joe Biden, then 78, sought to use his presidency to build bridges, restore bipartisanship and the soul of America.
Crockett, 44, represents a new generation of smash-mouth politicians ready for verbal combat. Last year her denunciation of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “bleach blonde bad-built butch body” at a congressional hearing became a meme. Last weekend she told a conference that Trump is “a piece of shit”, earning raucous cheers from her audience.
Crockett believes that the Democratic base is crying out for the party to be more bold-faced. “People are OK with you not having all the answers, but I don’t think that people are OK with you not being willing to fight on their behalf. When you sign up to be an elected representative on any level they expect you to be their voice.
“We’ve had this kind of over-pronouncement of Republican voices because they do whatever they want and then we’re just letting it happen. People are saying, ‘What is the point? I can never vote for the Republicans but what are you going to do?’
“It is about rebuilding that rapport and trust with our base and letting them know that we will be the fighters that they need – not only doing it in response, but we’ve actually got to be proactive.”
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has also been pursuing a gloves-off approach. He called Trump a “stone cold liar”, sued him for illegally federalising the national guard and, when threatened with arrest by border czar Tom Homan, retorted: “Arrest me. Let’s get it over with, tough guy.” Newsom filed a $787m defamation lawsuit against Fox News, accusing the network of falsely claiming he lied about a phone call with Trump in June.
Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “You’re seeing that the era of the Clintons and the Pelosis and the Bidens are yielding now to a new era of Democratic leaders. JB Pritzker’s emerged, Gavin’s emerged, Jasmine Crockett’s emerged. You’re seeing new voices emerge in this scrum, as you would expect in a democracy. There isn’t one person in charge.”
Even as they do battle in a more aggressive manner, Rosenberg argues, Democrats are obliged to make clear the values they striving to defend. “We’re in a fight for the future of our country and for our democracy,” he said. “We have to now operate out of patriotism and love of country and allow that to be our our north star and our guiding force through all of this.
“Not fighting means that you’re conceding and that you’re obeying in advance. In this case, this is where we decide to draw a line. We have to now go fight in this and go win it.”
