How political parties that can’t stand losing now and then lose it all | Opinion

I often tell my Davidson College students the only way to show a true commitment to diversity is to accept that other people’s voices, wants and preferences will sometimes supersede their own.

Sometimes, your opponent will win.

Sometimes, your opponent’s voice will be heard above yours.

Sometimes, even your most cherished belief will take a backseat to your opponent’s.

How you respond will determine if true diversity and inclusion are possible.

There is simply no other way.

If you always win, if your voice is the one leading every discussion and making every final decision, that’s not true diversity and inclusion, no matter how smart you are, no matter how moral you are, no matter how certain you are that yours is the best path.

It’s a hard lesson to absorb, especially given the growing certainty so many of us have begun clinging to about everything. We’re so certain that anything veering away from our beliefs is a personal attack, a betrayal if not an outright evil.

By the end of the semester, students get it. Every time.

That’s why I’m not worried about the students. I’m worried about the rest of us.

This tenet also applies to life in a functioning democracy, but a growing number of people are abandoning it.

Maybe the most important sign of a democracy’s health is that one group isn’t always in control. And we’ve had that the past few decades, with control of Congress and the White House essentially rotating between Democrats and Republicans.

A democracy’s health is determined less by what people do in victory than what they do in defeat. The violent insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, portended an intolerance for losing that threatens the nation’s two-and-a-half-century old experiment.

Thousands of Americans could not accept that their preferred presidential candidate lost the 2020 election, so they turned to conspiracy-fueled violence.

I won’t make this solely about Jan. 6. It’s bigger than that. It’s unfolding in Texas, too, as Republicans are trying to prevent losses in next year’s midterms by rigging the game today. The timing can’t be coincidence. This week, we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, maybe the most democratically important piece of legislation in our history. Meanwhile, Texas Republicans are trying to undo the progress made possible by that law by taking the unusual step of redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump, who instructed them to take five seats from Democrats through an aggressive gerrymander.

States usually wait for new Census data before redistricting. That happens once a decade. Texas is thumbing its nose at that long-held tradition.

Relatedly, a couple of years ago, Republicans in North Carolina got rid of a fair electoral map that had produced seven Republican winners and seven Democratic winners in Congress in 2022 — matching the state’s balanced voter registration numbers. The new map produced 10 Republican winners and only four Democrats in 2024.That one change is a major reason Republicans control the House of Representatives instead of Democrats.

I get that gerrymandering is as old as the republic and both parties have abused their power.

No one’s hands are clean. But in recent years, Republicans have been abusing their power more, taking even more extreme steps. While large blue states such as California and New York adopted independent redistricting commissions to ensure “one person, one vote” is more than an empty mantra, Republicans in Texas made sure they would remain in charge.

And so here we are.

Texas Republicans are threatening a highly partisan map and to arrest Democrats who fled the state in protest. Democrats in California, New York and elsewhere are exploring redistricting to offset what Texas is doing.

And a conservative Supreme Court is all but washing its hands of being a responsible steward of our democracy. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and more recently limited the ways federal courts can intervene in redistricting cases.

It’s easy to see how this current spiral will only get worse. All this because the supposed grownups in charge can’t accept a simple concept my students have been quick to embrace every time I’ve taught it.

I can see our democracy’s epitaph now: “Because we couldn’t stomach a little losing every now and again, we lost it all — forever.”

Issac J. Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.