Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat from Texas, was on television this morning offering a  novel political position that amounted to the following: Yes, we Democrats are hypocritical, and we have to be. So we should just own that and do what we have to do. What Democrats have to do, according to O’Rourke, is get back into power and stay there. The way to do that, he says, is to play the same gerrymandering game that Republicans do.

The Texas legislature is in special session tomorrow tackling several issues, including redrawing the state’s congressional districts. For years, the Democratic Party has decried Republican gerrymandering while whispering on the down low about their own. I interviewed the Campaign Legal Center’s Brent Ferguson  in February, who, as an expert on voting laws, made clear that both parties are guilty of gerrymandering. Statistics do bear out, though, that there are several more “red” states than blue that have made conscious efforts to redistrict in a way that ensures Republican control both in the state house and the U.S. House. O’Rourke today said Democrats must even that out.

When asked if he supports California Governor Gavin Newsom‘s effort to do the same for Democrats in California, he gave an unequivocal yes, saying the Democrats have spent too much time not wanting to look bad or, as he put it, “color outside the lines.“ While Republicans don’t care how anything looks as long as they stay in power.

He’s not wrong about the problem, and his solution to it may seem logical, fair and necessary. But make no mistake about it: if both parties are working toward choosing their own constituents, consciously and publicly, rather than having the people choose their representatives, then democracy is dead – at least they way we’ve come to know it. People on both sides of the political spectrum will argue that death of many components of the American way is a good thing. Come November 2026, we’re going to start to find out.