Now Is The Time To Maximize Republicans' Political Pain:

Democrats, I hope, will learn that they can play offense if they choose to play offense over the next year. And they can do just that if they simply ignore the court ruling against the Texas gerrymander and keep going in their defense of the country. It’s even more important now that Democratic-majority state legislatures go full bore with unfair districts, for fairness has no place here anymore.

People only change their minds when the pain of not changing surpasses the pain of changing. Republicans have to be made to feel extraordinary political pain if they are to cry uncle and say enough, please stop, we’re ready to talk about the independent redistricting our opponents have wanted for so many years (and voters have wanted in many purple states). They have to be turned into nothing more than a regional party that can't compete in blue and purple states before they have their come-to-independent-redistricting-loving Jesus moment.

Elected Democrats – if they want to come out of this authoritarian nightmare one day – have no choice but to make Republicans squeal with political agony. Every elected Democrat needs to follow the lead of Virginia Senate President Louise Lucas, who takes great pleasure in the prospect of fucking over her state’s Republican representatives via gerrymander. Lucas believes – correctly, I think – that her party can destroy the opposition with their own weapons. Lucas knows her opponents will refuse to stop this anti-democracy gerrymandering war until the political pain is too much to bear. She appears ready to explore Republicans’ pain tolerance.

It calls to mind Martin Luther King, Jr.'s musings on political power: "Power without love is reckless and abusive," he said, all but begging American liberals to stop cowering before the forces of segregation, "and love without power is sentimental and anemic. "Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

Enough redistricting in blue states in 2025 can all but ensure a Democratic majority that lasts into 2028 and 2030. Imagine that.

It's not in liberals' nature to turn the pain dial up to 11 for their opponents. Liberals want to get along, they want everyone to be rational actors. There has always been a hope among the Democratic Party's largely out-of-touch elites and large swaths of the rank-and-file that Republicans' fascist fever would eventually break and everyone could get back to technocratic management of a nation in decline. Thankfully there is no going back. Making it (almost) impossible for Republicans to win House seats in blue states is the one sure path to rock fucking bottom, and to see how much political agony Republicans can handle before they're ready to talk about fairness and the restoration of a functional democracy in the US.