This year's midterm elections aren't just about who wins in November; they're about who wins fights over gerrymandering taking place right now.
Nowhere is the battle fiercer than in Virginia, a state where voters just six years ago approved a constitutional amendment to take partisanship out of congressional redistricting.
Now Democrats want to make an exception to the rule Virginia voters approved by a nearly two-thirds majority in 2020:
They want this year's congressional map to be drawn up by their own state legislators, erasing the districts set up by the bipartisan board established by the amendment just a few years back.
It's no surprise when a state like Texas or California that leans overwhelmingly toward one party indulges in partisan gerrymandering.
But Virginia is a purple state, and its congressional representation — six Democrats, five Republicans — currently reflects that.
Yet, if Democrats get their way on April 21, they'll be able to seize 10 of Virginia's 11 congressional seats for themselves, in the most brazenly unjust reapportionment seen anywhere in decades.
This isn't about making a blue state bluer or a red state redder; this one's an effort to manufacture a virtual monopoly for one party, depriving millions of the other party's voters of their representation.
One thing the sheer audacity of this move suggests is that Democrats nationwide aren't quite as confident as they pretend to be about winning the midterms fair and square.
If they expect voters coast to coast to repudiate Trump's GOP in a landslide, why resort to such extreme measures in a place like Virginia?
Either Democrats are more worried than they let on, or they want to do more than just win — they want to annihilate their competition.
They're proving far more ruthless than Republicans, who balked at the opportunity last year to redraw Indiana's congressional map from a 7-2 partisan split to a 9-seat GOP sweep.
What Democrats are attempting in Virginia is tantamount to legalized election theft, if voters are unwise enough to approve the amendment they're pushing.
There's a political cost for this attack on small-d democracy: Gov. Abigail Spanberger, for one, is paying a price in her polling.
She was elected by a whopping 15-point margin last year and was soon touted as the Democrats' new face of moderation, which is why she was the party's choice to respond to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address this year.
Yet her approval ratings are already poor, with a Washington Post survey at the end of March finding 47% of those polled gave her a passing grade, while 46% disapproved of her performance in office so far.
The numbers are similar to polling on the amendment to give Virginia's Democrat-controlled legislature the power to draw the congressional districts for the midterms: 50% say they approve, 47% disapprove.
The amendment can pass with a simple majority, but if the polls are right, Democrats have no margin to spare, and early voting reports so far indicate there's particularly strong turnout in Republican areas of the state.
The early vote is outpacing early voting in last year's gubernatorial election, too.
Arguably, the amendment shouldn't be on the ballot at all: it's faced several legal challenges, with the state Supreme Court ultimately deciding the April 21 election can proceed even while doubts about its legality remain to be settled later.
The very wording of the amendment is illegal, Republicans contend, since state law specifies the text accompanying the measure "shall be limited to a neutral explanation," while the amendment itself is tendentiously worded as an attempt to "restore fairness."
Who wouldn't vote to restore fairness?
The campaign for the amendment has been a master class in deceit and manipulation, with even news outlets in the deep-blue D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia noting the copious use of "pink slime" techniques by the "Yes" side.
Those techniques involve propaganda disguised to look impartial — like a made-to-purpose publication branded as The Virginia Independent, which the Arlington-based news site ARLNow.com describes as "a partisan newspaper advancing Democrats' arguments."
That slime has been flooding into voters' mailboxes, including mine.
Maybe my blue suburb hasn't been a target of whatever efforts the Republicans are making — though the other possibility is that the GOP just isn't trying as hard.
Texas kicked off the latest wave of redistricting ahead of the midterms, as Republicans there looked to widen their advantage over the Democrats.
Yet as the divergent examples of Indiana and Virginia show, it's the Democrats who are more hellbent on winning, even if they have to turn state constitutions into confetti to do it.
Politics is a test of wills-and if Republicans fail this one, they'll almost certainly fail in November, too.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print