How the Democrats Became the Party That Brings Pencils to a Knife Fight

[BeyondGeography]

When Texas Republicans announced last month that they would redraw congressional maps for the explicit purpose of picking up five seats currently held by Democrats, they shocked the Democratic Party into action. Within days, Eric Holder, the former attorney general who has spent his post-White House career fighting to end gerrymandering, said he was done playing by the rules. It was time to rig the maps, too. “Progressives and Democrats are uncomfortable with the acquisition and the use of power in ways that Republicans are not,” Mr. Holder said. “And that time has got to be over. We need to be unabashed in our desire to acquire power, and then to use power.”

…Democratic voters may be wondering what took so long. When asked to describe their party, a full quarter of Democrats used words like “weak,” “ineffective” or “apathetic,” according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only two in 10 Democrats had positive things to say about the Democratic Party.

…The Democratic Party has long had two distinct political styles. To borrow Mr. Martin’s formulation, it’s the knives versus the pencils. For more than a century, a more ruthless, transactional model dominated Democratic politics, for better and for worse. But since the 1970s, the experts with the pencils have come to run the show. And it is increasingly clear that this model has hindered the party’s ability to deliver, even to its most loyal supporters.

…During the Obama administration, this version of democracy seemed to involve an unyielding faith in bipartisanship, even as Republicans were growing fiercer in their tactics…”The reality of the situation, one that never quite hit home with the Obama team, was that the technocratic, consensus-driven, bipartisan approach to government favored by the president and by professional-class liberals was simply no match for Republican obstruction,” Nicole Hemmer, a political historian at Vanderbilt University, writes in an essay titled “The Professional-Class Presidency of Barack Obama.” “It wasn’t that Republicans were stronger or more powerful than Democrats; they were simply employing a different mode of politics.”

…A more difficult issue for the party may not just be about how Democrats fight, but about what they might fight for. By embracing a high-minded, technical style of governance, the party has diminished its ability to excite the public with ideas that tangibly affect people’s lives. Meanwhile, campaign promises that do have mass appeal — whether they are from Mr. Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders or the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — are often vetted and laughed out of the classroom by the party’s leaders and in-house technocrats. While Democrats dismissed as absurd fantasy Mr. Trump’s promise to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and sanded off the details of their own immigration policy, voters merely heard that Mr. Trump would make the border a top priority. “You get this mishmash of policies that are technically more rigorous than what Republicans offer. But whether it’s Trump or Sanders, the policies are simple and at least I can remember them,” said Timothy Shenk, professor of history at George Washington University and author of “Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics.” “In real-world politics that counts so much more than the compendium of policies that are so massive you have no idea what’s actually going to happen.”

Read at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/magazine/gerrymandering-democrats-texas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek8.O_wS.pzdsNHiP95Fn&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[msongs]

1. we go high was a disaster for the party, except for the elites nt

[Oeditpus Rex]

16. I said that, more or less,

four years before she did.

I love Michelle to death, but when W got re-elected, I said, "We've got to get just as nasty as they are." It was one of my first comments in this forum.

I've been saying it ever since.

[NewHendoLib]

2. we bring water balloons to a nuclear war. It is embarrassing and has been for many years.

[FHRRK]

3. We can push blames to politicians, but IMO it is our own damn fault

There would be major pushback here regarding terminology and techniques.

For example, if two years ago a post stated “Trump is Putin’s bitch,” there would be a greater than 50 percent chance of a hide.

State all Republicans need to be ostracized, pre Trump would have been another hide, with a ton of responses that we need to find common ground.

We need to own our own unilateral disarmament.

[leftstreet]

4. You can't fight back without using offensive terms?

What possible use is name-calling vs calling for popular policies

"Trump is Putin's *itch!!"

vs

"Single Payer Healthcare for ALL!!"

[FHRRK]

12. Seriously!

Bubba in dip shit Dumbfuckistan has no idea what single payer means!

His ignorant ass knows exactly what being someone’s bitch means.

You want to win and move forward or be the purity police stating we can be better?

Now, do I expect 77 million ignorant Americans to comprehend anything, FUCK NO! I want thier ignorant asses to stay the fuck home and not vote.

[Oeditpus Rex]

17. That's likely been said more than a million times

in the last 20 years or so. What has it gotten us?

If you don't want to be offended or offensive, I suggest you stay out of major league politics. That's pretty much the same as "When they go low, we go high," which hasn't worked, either.

[BannonsLiver]

6. Totally agree on all counts.

The “we go high when they go low” and “my honorable friend across the aisle” eras are over. This is a bubble and not reflective of the outside world. In the outside world people can call Trump whatever they want and not worry about sanctimonious blather and condemnation for communicating how people actually communicate.

[dalton99a]

8. No shit.

[betsuni]

19. Two years ago? In 2016 Hillary Clinton called Trump a puppet of Putin during a debate, why would

anyone here get in trouble for saying what everybody has known for many many years.

[tman]

5. I see we're going through the blame Obama phase of introspection again

Lazy and mostly ahistorical but an easy lever to pull.

[dalton99a]

7. Kick

The Democratic Party is the party that follows the rules, even when no one else does. While Republicans — in the Trump era, especially — may engage in degrading democracy for partisan ends, Democrats insist they are answering a higher call, with fealty above all to principle and procedure. As Michelle Obama famously put it in 2016 at the Democratic National Convention, “When they go low, we go high.”

Political scientists and historians have observed that while the modern Republican Party became more ruthless about defeating its political enemies, breaking whatever norms were required, Democrats effectively stood in place, hoping for a return to bipartisan comity and defending the status quo that their opponents were smashing. The Democrats became the party of procedure.

[LudwigPastorius]

9. The New York Times is on the case!

[live love laugh]

10. No sarcasm smiley?

[LudwigPastorius]

11. Didn't think it necessary, as the NYT Pitchbot Twitter account is itself a parody.

[bigtree]

13. when has Jia Lynn Yang ever written about ANYTHING our party has done right?

...when/where the fuck did she become some authority on Democrats; or even politics for that matter?

We don't need projection and conjecture from someone who has NEVER advocated on behalf of the party, in any way.

And what fucking rule are we supposed to be breaking?

NO ONE in the Democratic party is advocating 'rigging the maps,' ffs.

That's what Texas republicans and other maga governors have done by advancing maps merely forwarded by their majorities in state legislatures.

What Newsom is going to do is put the maps to a vote by putting them on the ballot.

Newsom will work with other state legislators to introduce a constitutional amendment circumventing the state’s strict laws that prohibit map changes in the middle of a decade. The governor is expected to release the proposed map by the end of this week, and the state Legislature could meet as early as next week to approve the changes.

The new map would then be voted on during a special election in November and, if approved, would stay in affect until the census is taken again in 2030. After that, the state would return to its current laws that require maps to be drawn by an independent citizen’s commission.
https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/08/14/newsom-announces-map-retaliation-plans/

...this is what you get with people who make money writing bullshit about Democrats.

[betsuni]

14. Is this about Republicans being the exciting fun party that lets you stay up late watching horror movies and

have ice cream for breakfast while the Democrats are boring and think too much?

[TheBlackAdder]

15. He killed three people with a fucking pencil

I'd add the pencil scene, but it's a little gory for some.

[Lancero]

18. We need those pencils though, how else is Chuck gonna write his strongly worded letters?