On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a congressional map recently passed by state Democrats. The map was a mid-decade redraw designed to help the party offset similar moves by Republican states as the gerrymandering wars heat up across the nation. The new map in Virginia had favored Democrats in 10 districts and Republicans in just one.

Though Democrats are probably to still expected to win back the House, this ruling no doubt makes things harder. Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a publication out of the University of Virginia, rated 217 seats as at least “leaning” Democratic after the map initially passed, versus 205 seats that leaned Republican. Under the old map, which is now likely to be used in November, those figures were 213 and 208, respectively.

Adding insult to injury, the map was struck down just after the US Supreme Court’s recent Callais ruling, which could lead Democrats to lose up to 13 House seats in Southern states. Many in the party are surely despairing in the face of these developments. And yet, they may be a blessing in disguise, serving as a reminder that Democrats are unlikely to find their way back to sustained power without significant structural changes.

After losing the 2024 election, there was a brief moment when it seemed top Democrats were open to learning some tough lessons about how they had drifted away from the average voter, both ideologically and demographically. But this period was short-lived, quickly giving way to anti-Trump resistance following his return to office. Since then, efforts at serious party reform have all but vanished, and it appears Democrats are set on making the same mistakes they have previously made.

Rather than reforming, many in the party seem to be hoping they can just capitalize on anger against Trump. History has shown that this alone is rarely a path back to enduring power.

The reality is that the Democrats’ coalition today has grown more ideologically Left-wing — even as the country remains center-right — more concentrated in big, urban, metro areas, and less working-class than it was two decades ago. This has left it not only more out of step with the median American but also more geographically constrained. For example, both the Senate and Electoral College give outsized influence to smaller, more rural states with disproportionately high shares of white working-class voters — the exact demographic Democrats have been losing ground with since at least the start of the Trump era. This has put them at a disadvantage in both institutions, where elections take place at the state level, as the median state now leans to the right of the nation as a whole.

While the House is designed to be more representative, Democrats have not been spared there either. As their voters become more highly concentrated in urban areas, they are increasingly packed into overwhelmingly blue districts, even when the redistricting process is nonpartisan. This leaves fewer of them in other, less urban districts — and the remaining terrain, consequently, more favorable to Republicans. Gerrymandering has exacerbated the problem, as Republican states can now pack these voters with precision or even nix Democratic-leaning districts altogether.

It’s possible Democrats could resolve the gerrymandering problem by passing a national ban, but this requires not only winning a trifecta again but getting such a ban past the Senate filibuster. Moreover, the Virginia court ruling reinforces what has been clear for some time: the party will struggle to regularly compete for a ruling trifecta in Washington if it is incapable of appealing to voters in areas of the country that have abandoned Democrats.

Fixing this problem requires broadening their coalition to include truly moderate or even center-right voters and candidates. Democrats have been reluctant to do so in recent years, but perhaps the Virginia ruling will serve as a wake-up call that they have allowed their structural deficiencies to fester for too long.

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Michael Baharaeen is chief political analyst at The Liberal Patriot substack.

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