Why does America have elected officials? If a visiting alien were introduced to the Democratic Party and asked that question, he’d surely say the purpose is to accumulate, consolidate, and hold power. This is the state of that party in 2026.

Of course, this is not a new development. The Democratic Party has been moving from a traditional political group (with a long history of proposing poor ideas) to a mob that wants to rule over the country rather than represent voters, defend the Constitution, and uphold the rule of law.

There’s no better example of this than the tantrum the party is pitching over the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling that broke their effort to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to eliminate all but one Republican district in a state where more than 46% of the voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump in 2024.

Four of the seven justices found that the Democrats’ “legislative process employed to advance” the voter referendum that approved the new map not only violated the state constitution, but it was “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

The headline over George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley’s New York Post op-ed says the ruling suggests the legal slapdown has left the Democrats “dangerous.” Somewhat like a cornered feral beast, we’d said.

Because they didn’t get their way, Democratic Party grandees are reportedly considering retiring the justices on the Virginia Supreme Court and replacing them with justices who will rehear the case and rubber-stamp the new congressional map.

This is outright defiance of a legitimate court ruling. But then we’ve seen how street Democrats, who serve as useful idiots for party apparatchiks, behave when elections and lawmaking don’t go their way: They resort to violence. Laws, traditions, and propriety are flouted rather than followed by the party of the left that moves harder in that direction every day.

Decent people would accept the ruling and try to win seats the honest way, with better policies and candidates that Main Street America would be comfortable with. (It seems Democrat Don Scott, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, might be one such person — he’s said: “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia.”)

Instead, voters are tormented by the likes of:

– James Carville, the infamous Clinton strategist who said “if the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress” after the 2028 elections, “I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13.” He advised Democrats to hide their intentions from voters.

– Tennessee State Rep. Antonio Parkinson, who wants Memphis to secede from Tennessee because the new congressional map eliminates the state’s only “black” district (which has been represented by a white male Democrat since 2007). “You don’t have to redraw maps when you let us out,” Parkinson said.

– A series of wannabe presidential assassins, who have acted on the rhetoric that the Democrats and their media confederates have spewed for more than a decade.

What policies do Democrats offer that make it so important for them to have complete political power that they will cheat, steal, and lie to gain full, tyrannical, nothing-outside-the-state control?

None.

The policies that the Democrats line up behind are nothing more than a way to increase the scope of, and their unyielding grip on, the government that they want to run. They yammer on about “no kings,” but that’s what they actually want: A monarchy that has the fig leaf of elections that only they can win and is entirely under their control.

Issues and Insights Editorial Board