The Democrats’ race-based regime is collapsing? Oh boy, that's rough!

Ok, I realize that many of you hate Voldemort, with good reason (I might add). But I think we can all find common ground here, hold hands and together hate politicians in general.

Kumbaya! Namaste. And remember, this is a glorious new day. Go out there and drill it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJMtn6IJeE

The Democrats’ race-based regime is collapsing

By Daniel McCarthy, The Spectator

Thursday, April 30, 2026

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Louisiana v. Callais et al has inevitably drawn strong criticism. In ruling that electoral districts cannot be redefined along racial lines, the Court stands accused of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act, crippling civil-rights law and effectively disenfranchising minority voters.

What the Supreme Court has “gutted” is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering

But the Court’s decision was correct on the merits. It also represents a great retrenchment that’s taking place in American politics.

The rules by which our political system operates have been overdue a revision – not the rules codified in the Constitution but the thicker web of precedents and practices that have served as a second constitution since the 1960s, or in some cases since the 1930s.

Yesterday’s decision will have the near-term practical effect of helping Republicans fortify their position going into November’s midterm elections, improving their chances of holding onto their majority in the House of Representative.

But the long-term effect of the ruling also promises to strengthen the GOP, as the racial regime on which the Democratic Party has long depended collapses.

What the Court’s Republican-appointed majority has actually “gutted” is not the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but a nakedly racial form of gerrymandering.

Louisiana had been ordered by lower courts to redraw its congressional districts to ensure that not one, but two districts would be majority-black, virtually guaranteeing that two of the state’s six members of Congress would also be black – so a third of the congressional delegation would match the roughly one-third of the state’s black population.

In effect, representation by race was assumed to be more important than representation by geography or anything else.

The Voting Rights Act has long been used to ensure that certain areas will have representation by one race. This racial gerrymandering, mostly adopted in the South, would apply to state legislative districts as well as federal congressional districts.

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It’s obvious why such a heavy-handed approach might appear reasonable in the immediate wake of segregation. More than sixty years later, however, it can’t be argued that it’s a response to discrimination because it’s now an enduring form of discrimination in its own right – in essence a set-aside or quota not in the private sector but in the legislative branch of government itself, at the state and national levels alike.

This has served the Democratic party very well, not only because the black legislators elected by these black-majority districts are usually Democrats to begin with, but also because the very existence of these districts is a kind of bribe or reward Democrats provide to a loyal constituency and its leaders. It’s a racial spoils system.

Now it might be over, and Democrats will have to make a different kind of case to black voters – indeed to all voters in districts which are no longer so racially segregated.

Catch the irony – separating blacks from other voters, in order to create more majority-black districts, is a kind of segregation.

The Democrats, who were the party of the white segregationists, too, came to see segregation for the sake of additional black representation as a positive good.

Needless to say, in a state such as Louisiana where the population is one-third black, perfect proportional integration of every congressional district or state-legislative district would result in one third of the voters in each district being black. That would be complete integration. It would also be politically inconvenient.

In reality, of course, geography matters, and racial and other groups are not evenly distributed throughout any state. But the Supreme Court has now ruled boundaries shouldn’t be carved up just for racial reasons. The decision allows for race to be a factor when there has been clear discrimination against a group, but racially-oriented districting can no longer be a normal practice. And without that practice, Democrats will have lost the keystone to the strategy they’ve long relied on in the South.

That doesn’t mean they’re finished in the region. Virginia is more “blue” than “red” overall, even though Republicans remain competitive there. North Carolina and Georgia have Republican leanings but still produce embarrassments for the GOP.

The Republican “solid South” didn’t last long. Yet the loss of racial gerrymandering will be felt by Democrats long beyond this November’s midterms – which, despite the wave of non-racial gerrymandering this year, still present Republicans with high hurdles to maintaining their majority.

Even if Republicans come out ahead in the tit-for-tat redistricting efforts now taking place, they may still be overcome by voter horror at the cost of gasoline and so much else.

Yet however rough the weather Republicans are heading into in November, their long-range outlook is bright.

Republican states are flourishing while big Democratic states – including the biggest, California – are losing population and major employers. The rules Democrats wrote to their own advantage in the heady days of the New Deal and Great Society are slowly being rewritten or repealed.

The second constitution is giving way to something like the actual Constitution.

But Democrats will be prepared to write new rules for their benefit as soon as they get the chance. Look for calls to pack the Supreme Court with liberals and to make Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico into states to grow louder. The rules themselves are now stakes in the game.

That’s not because Republicans are acting selfishly – at least not entirely. The more important point is that the rationales behind the norms that served Democrats so well in the 20th century are losing salience and authority, not least legal authority.

Segregation in the name of fighting segregation was always a bad idea, but at one point it may have seemed like a lesser evil than letting the effects of Jim Crow linger.

Sixty years on, this racial policy has long since demonstrated the limits of what it can accomplish and promises nothing new, just the perpetuation of the spoils system. What was once for many Americans a hope has become a scam. And now the Supreme Court has said it must end.