CHICAGO (Realist English). Eight years after Michelle Obama told Democrats, “When they go low, we go high”, party leaders are openly discarding that creed. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee meeting this week, chair Ken Martin declared: “This is not the Democratic party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to the knife fight. This is a new Democratic party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, and we are going to fight fire with fire.”
The shift marks a candid recognition of how a decade of Donald Trump’s politics has hardened the Democratic approach. Gone are the patient appeals to bipartisanship and faith that the MAGA era would fade. In their place: a readiness to match Republican tactics, even in the roughest arenas.
Gerrymandering as the trigger
The immediate catalyst is Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps in Republican-controlled states to secure more House seats before the 2026 midterms. In Texas, GOP proposals could flip five Democratic-held seats, weakening the voting power of millions of people of colour. Trump has also dispatched Vice-President JD Vance to Indiana to discuss map changes and encouraged similar moves in Florida.
Democrats have responded in kind. Texas state legislators fled to deny Republicans a quorum, stalling the vote. Governors in Democratic strongholds, including Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Kathy Hochul of New York, have signalled readiness to redraw their own maps in retaliation.
“Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2026 election,” Newsom said. “We cannot sit back and watch this happen.” Pritzker called Trump a “cheater” and vowed, “Everything is on the table.” Hochul, flanked by Texas Democrats in New York, declared: “We are at war and that’s why the gloves are off – bring it on.”
Former moderates endorse hardball
Even long-time advocates of independent redistricting have changed course. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s former attorney general, likened the situation to an invasion: “Sometimes you have to take up arms. When confronted with this authoritarian, anti-democracy effort, we have to take up arms.”
Legal strategist Norm Eisen, once a staunch defender of nonpartisan map-drawing, now calls for “massive pro-democracy force” in blue states: “If Texas blinks, they can back off. But if not, we must maximize the number of districts.”
Crockett and the rise of combative voices
No figure embodies the new posture more vividly than Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat who led a similar walkout in 2021 and is now in Congress. Known for her sharp verbal jabs — including a viral takedown of Marjorie Taylor Greene — Crockett insists Democrats must fight on equal terms: “They have taken our kindness for weakness. How can we fight when we tie our own hands behind our backs? We’ve got to even the playing field.”
She warns that “democracy is hanging by a thread” and says the party must rebuild trust with its base by being visibly and proactively combative.
Newsom’s gloves-off politics
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, has also leaned into confrontation: calling Trump a “stone cold liar,” suing him over the National Guard, challenging a border czar to “arrest me,” and filing a $787m defamation suit against Fox News.
A generational turn
Strategist Simon Rosenberg sees the emergence of new Democratic standard-bearers — Pritzker, Newsom, Crockett — as part of a broader leadership shift away from the Clinton–Pelosi–Biden era. But he insists the combative stance must be anchored in principle: “We’re in a fight for the future of our democracy. Not fighting means you’re conceding. This is where we draw the line — and win.”
