For those who were paying attention, there was actually a significantly more hopeful development last week.
For most Democrats, last week was downright depressing. It started with President Biden’s impassioned plea to Senators to end the filibuster in order to pass two desperately-needed election protection bills. It ended with Senator Kyrsten Sinema killing that idea in the cradle. For those who see the threat of a total meltdown of American democracy as very real and very near, it was a body blow. Ranging from deeply frustrated to downright enraged, many assumed that all hope was lost. They were wrong. Yes, losing those bills hurts. And Democrats shouldn’t give up on the federal level: The torrent of Republican laws to suppress votes and subvert elections remains a clear and present danger to American democracy, and perhaps to our the ability to hold together the country itself. But for those who were paying attention, there was actually a significantly more hopeful development last week. On Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court threw out the Republican legislature’s ludicrously gerrymandered congressional maps. It wasn’t the final word—but the final result is going to be a lot fairer than if self-serving politicians had their way. There’s a lesson here. If Democrats can pick their chins up and pause outrage-tweeting for a moment, they will see that the Ohio win didn’t just fall out of the sky. It will make a meaningful difference in making elections actually reflect the will of the voters, and can be replicated around the country. The Democrats may not be able to pass a big, sweeping federal law to comprehensively stop abuses. But that doesn’t mean they can’t grit and grind their way to achieve many similar protections in the states. What exactly did Democrats in Ohio do? “This happened because of five years of work by a lot of people,” says former Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, who helped orchestrate the effort.
