Trump’s Canceling Democracy; The Left Needs A Different, Smarter Playbook

Primaries Are Far More Important Than Most Voters Understand

The 2026 midterms are already underway— and if you blink, you might miss them entirely. No, Señor Trumpanzee hasn’t officially “canceled” them yet, but he and his lackeys are moving swiftly to make sure ithey doesn’t matter who you vote for.

Will Bunch laid it out in stark terms yesterday: Trump and his MAGA allies are using aggressive mid-decade redistricting to rig the game before the first ballot is cast. Starting in Texas, where Democrats are being threatened with FBI roundups and legal expulsion for resisting gerrymandering schemes, the White House is working with Republican governors in Indiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Florida… to redraw congressional maps in real time— long before the next census, and long before most Americans realize what’s happening. Don’t call it voter suppression; it’s voter nullification.

The goal is simple: erase Democratic votes through precision gerrymandering in Black and Latino districts, especially in states where the GOP has a lock on both state government and state courts. Trump knows that if Democrats win back Congress next year, hes likely to face a third impeachment—  along with renewed investigations into everything from crypto grift to his rapey Epstein ties. He— or Stephen Miller— also knows he doesn’t have to cancel the election outright if he can rig the playing field so badly that the outcome is predetermined.

This is what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism”—where democratic institutions technically exist, but they’re hollowed out from within. The evening news still airs. The Supreme Court still issues rulings. But none of it can stop the advance of a regime determined to maintain power no matter the cost. That’s not an exaggeration. The Supreme Court just quietly agreed to take up a Louisiana case that could be used to finish off what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. That ruling is likely green-light a wave of similar gerrymanders across the South— obliterating hard-won civil rights gains from Selma to Houston.

And yet, even as this frontal assault on democracy accelerates, too many liberals are distracted by the spectacle of “fighting fire with fire.” California, New York and Illinois are responding with threats— possibly empty— of their own aggressive redistricting counterattacks to eliminate Republican seats. It might feel like justice in the short term, but in the long term, it just accelerates a bipartisan arms race that hollows out the very idea of representative government.

As is always the case, Bunch is right: this isn’t a healthy democracy. It’s a zombie democracy. The forms persist, like they did immediately after the demise of the Weimer Republic, but the substance is gone… without the inconvenience of a direct vote on shit-canning democracy. So what can progressives do? How do you fight back against a rigged system without reinforcing it?

That’s where Waleed Shahid’s strategic intervention is essential. Progressives, he argued, need to back off, at least for now, playing defense in unwinnable swing districts and start consolidating real ideological power where they already have it: in safer blue territory. It’s a counterintuitive idea in an era obsessed with flipping purple seats. But Shahid makes the case that the left’s biggest wins— from AOC’s upset over Joe Crowley to the rise of leaders like Greg Casar and Summer Lee— haven’t come from battlegrounds. They’ve come from deep blue districts where progressives can govern boldly, organize freely, and shift the Democratic Party’s center of gravity from the inside out. (Let’s not wander into the Zohar Mamdani race today and just stick to federal races for now.)

That’s how the Tea Party did it. They didn’t start by winning swing voters in Pennsylvania. They took over safe red districts and used them as ideological fortresses, gradually dragging the GOP toward full-blown Trumpism. Progressives, he proposes, must now adopt the same long game— building a disciplined bloc of unapologetic advocates for progressive values in solid Democratic districts and using that bloc to push the party, and the country, toward multiracial social democracy.

Don’t think of it as a retreat. Waleed sees it as sequencing. He’s urging us to build power at the edge and then pull the center towards us. That means making hard choices. As he notes— and here’s where we part company to some extent—  candidates like Dan Osborn in red constituenecies may be good people with decent politics, but they’re forced to moderate on crucial issues like Medicare for All, policing, and immigration just to stay competitive. The left should support them— but not divert limited resources to those races at the expense of primarying entrenched corporate Democrats in blue strongholds, where the payoff is bigger and longer lasting.

Progressives need to stop mistaking visibility for leverage. Real political power doesn’t come from cable hits or viral speeches. It comes from votes, blocs and the ability to credibly threaten the status quo. That means building infrastructure, cultivating ideological clarity, and treating safe blue seats as what they are: launchpads for realignment.

And make no mistake— time is short. Trump and his enablers are doing everything they can to lock in minority rule by manipulating the system before 2026. But their project is brittle. It depends on Democrats being divided, disoriented, and distracted. If the left can unify around a smart, focused strategy— one that builds power at the root rather than chasing it at the margins— it can not only resist the authoritarian wave, but turn the tide.

History shows us how. The labor movement didn’t start in the Senate. It started in shop floors and union halls. Civil rights didn’t begin in swing districts. It began in the Jim Crow South, where Black organizers dared to demand more than the possible. The right built its revolution from deep red turf. Now it’s time for the left to reclaim blue America—  and use it to rebuild a democracy worth believing in. Missing the advantages and opportunities of a blue wave, though, is political malpractice.

Blue America will continue doing just what Shahid is advocating— as well as working to flip districts with progressives worth fighting for— nothing for seats where a Democrat is just better than the Republican, but in seats where the Democrat is the real thing, the way Mark Pinsley, Randy Bryce, Randy Villegas (not Jasmeet Bains), Emily Berge (albeit not Rebecca Cook), Eric Descheenie and Travis Terrell are.