It's About The Fight: Why It Matters That Texas Democrats Left The State

Texas Democrats' dramatic flight is meant to warn the nation that "our democracy is being stolen right in front of our eyes." Their act of defiance is about the fight, they say.

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“It takes an act of defiance like this to wake up the country and let them know that our democracy is being stolen right in front of our eyes,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio in an interview with the Texas Tribune reported by Kayla Guo. “If we’re going to be the spark that lights that fire, then we’re doing our jobs.”

Five days into over 50 Texas Democratic lawmakers’ walkout, Texas Democrats understand that they are fighting what appears to be a losing battle in Texas. But winning that battle is not why they left the state; they left the state to raise awareness in the rest of the country. They left to get the American people to understand what’s at stake as Republicans rig maps to steal seats in the upcoming midterms.

Texas Democrats are currently being shielded by Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, as Texas Republicans push to have them arrested. Texas Democrats even say the FBI has agreed to hunt down the Democratic lawmakers for them. The Texas Democrats are facing threats to their own positions, as Republican state leaders say they will remove them from office or take leadership positions away. They are also facing $500-per-day fines.

They are doing all of that knowing they cannot stop Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott from spitting on the Constitution and the U.S. flag for Donald Trump. Still, they hope to stay away until the end of this special session, on August 19, even knowing that Abbott can simply call another special session, according to Friday reporting by the Texas Tribune.

Appeasement is a Failed Strategy

There’s a lot of debate among Democrats right now about whether or not they should fight back against Republicans “finding five seats” for Trump in Texas at his demand.

Of course, it turns out Trump is demanding many other red states “find” the mafia-esque boss more seats, amounting to somewhere around 12 seats, in what Punchbowl News called a “bareknuckled power play.”

They detailed that Republicans are hoping to net “a minimum of three House seats in Florida,” “the five seats in Texas, one each in Missouri and Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio, where state law mandates a redraw ahead of 2026.”

They add, “The Supreme Court also has yet to rule in a high-profile Louisiana redistricting case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act that could further alter next year’s congressional landscape.”

Fighting Ivory Tower Syndrome

Democrats are torn about how to respond, with some still trying to appeal to Republicans’ better angels, saying we can’t go back once Republicans commence redistricting specifically at the despot’s command — out in broad daylight.

That is a fool’s errand, I’m afraid. Republicans have no shame or honor left. They don’t care about process or the Constitution. They have abandoned their ideals and principles about individual liberty and state’s rights. There is nothing they will not do for Donald Trump, or rather, for their own power. Because that is the motivating factor for the bootlicking lawmakers and governors.

Here’s but one example of Republicans’ Machiavellian war on the founding principles upon which the United States is built, reported in the Texas Tribune newsletter about reporting by Eleanor Klibanoff (emphasis mine):

An expulsion attempt: Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to have missing members’ seats declared vacant, particularly targeting Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic leader. He filed a petition to have Wu removed from office. Legal experts say the emergency legal filing goes against Texas’ own founding documents, centuries of legal precedent and a recent Supreme Court of Texas ruling. And Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican, filed his own brief saying that Abbott doesn’t have the authority to bring this type of case.

Republicans do not care about democracy. As the Republican Party grew more and more extreme over the last two decades, they found they couldn’t win if they played by the rules. And so they have ben rigging the game for years now.

And while there are few elected officials who are not power hungry, both parties do not “do it” on the same level at all. In fact, one of the challenges facing Democrats is that they have insisted on independent commissions drawing these maps. For years, Democrats have pushed this high-minded notion, which in the pre-divided-by-conservative-culture-wars days was both aspirational and appropriate.

But today, such ideas are quaint. They are the ideas of a party operating in a nation that valued principles and had a media that held people in power to account.

That is not the world we live in today. We can dislike this all we want, but it will not change the reality we face.

Reality about the state of U.S. ‘democracy’