The Democrats have lost the redistricting battle. On the bright side for Democrats the Republicans can now be said to be the party of gerrymandering. That might not be a good thing for the GOP on the first Tuesday in November. Democrats should be concerned but not overly alarmed. They may have lost the battle but their chances of winning the war remain strong.

The courts have resurrected the segregationist south and it’s open season on “colored-folk” voters in the former Confederacy once again. If there were ever a real-time, real-life example of why the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was needed what we are seeing now tells you everything you need to know. The bulk of the most egregious attempts to disenfranchise duly elected black southern officials are on track to succeed. A sense of panic is, or at least was initially setting in. That level of panic may however be premature.

If the red-state race to redistrict congressional voting boundaries looks frantic that’s because it is. Legislators in those states are literally throwing caution to the wind in their haste to deliver a precious few seats to the Republican effort to hold on to control of the U.S. House of Representatives. What drives that? Fear. They’re feeling it.

Another thing that causes fear in Republican congressional circles is the never ending melt-down in progress at the White House. If there is one question Republicans on Capitol Hill want answered it has to be, what next? War in the middle east? You got it. Involvement with a child sex trafficker by the President? Clearly documented. Naked corruption? In your face. Storm troopers beating people down in the streets? Gone fully viral. You name the dead horse, Donald Trump has dragged it into directly into the center of the 2026 midterm elections.

Donald Trump is for democrats the great equalizer. He can always be counted upon to create golden campaign opportunities for the opposition. The Democrats would certainly do well to capitalize, but even that is not really required. Before it’s over Trump’s ox-goring rampage will have taken the car from every garage and the chicken from every pot. There will be no group, no constituency left un-humiliated.

During the Biden years which were, if nothing else relatively hysteria free Americans largely forgot the final year of Trump’s first rein of terror. It was gone and with each passing day it became less real. This was a dangerously out of control individual in command of the country’s national security and more specifically its vast nuclear arsenal. To say that there were concerns in 2019 would be a significant understatement. Trump’s is back now and the fear of what he might do has returned with him.

What do the Democrats need to do regain control of the House and maybe even the Senate? Number one, let Trump do the heavy lifting. Let his truly outrageous conduct create big opportunities. Number two, run good races. Meet people where they are. Speak directly to their concerns. Not as salesmen but as neighbors. And lastly, and I’ll write more on this later, drop the political marketing, which the voters absolutely hate and get back to political organizing, which the voters find purpose in.