Two opposing forces only exist in relation to one another.
Consider light. Light only exists as it relates to darkness. Without darkness, there would be no need to define light at all.
The same is true of good and evil. Each one gives the other its meaning.
It is my estimation that political parties work the same way.
A Democrat is only a Democrat because there are Republicans. A Republican is only a Republican because there are Democrats.
Remove one, and you haven’t strengthened the other, rather, you’ve eliminated the very thing that gave it definition.
I think about that this week as Tennessee’s Republican supermajority convenes a special session in Nashville to redraw the state’s congressional map.
Here in Tennessee, Republicans hold the governorship, the House, the Senate, and every seat on the state Supreme Court is held by a justice appointed by a Republican governor and confirmed by a Republican legislature.
That is not inherently good or bad, but the existence of a supermajority at all is worth examining.
A supermajority does not have to negotiate, and it does not have to consider opposing legislation. It does not have to listen to the other side, and in practice, it does not even have to listen to its own constituents. It can pass what it agrees on and stifle what it doesn’t, and no one can stop it.
We saw that during the January 2025 special legislative session, when multiple representatives voted against the expressed wishes of the people who sent them to Nashville during the voucher bill.
We are seeing it again now.
But here is what I want you to understand. This whole thing goes beyond Memphis and the people of Shelby County.
Voters across rural West Tennessee, people who voted 70% Republican in the last election and who will likely do so again; when you explain to them what this redistricting map actually does to their community, when you show them that their rural county is being pulled out of its majority-West Tennessee congressional district and placed into one stretching from a slice of Shelby County well into Middle Tennessee, something clicks, and they begin to see it.
The most conservative among us, when presented with what this map actually means for their representation in Washington, understands that their voice is being diluted just as surely as the voices of the people in Memphis. They understand that their 70% Republican votes, when combined with a third of Shelby County, create a reliable Republican majority that is convenient for ambitious Memphis-area state legislators who may have eyes on the next level, and who find the only thing standing in their way is that other party.
Rural West Tennessee voters aren’t being represented in this map, they’re being used.
This is political chess. The players are rearranging the pieces, and the pawns don’t get a vote on where they move.
Which brings me to the question I keep coming back to, the one that nobody on the floor in Nashville seems to be asking: what does it mean to have representation in Washington? What should it mean to have representation at any level of government?
Whatever the will of the Tennessee legislature turns out to be — and make no mistake, this is the will of the legislature, not the will of the people who elected its members — this moment ought to reignite that conversation among us, the electorate. We should be asking ourselves what we expect from the people we send to Nashville and Washington. We should be demanding an answer.
This editorial is not about party. It never has been. It doesn’t matter in the slightest which party is doing this, here at home or anywhere else in the country. When elected representatives use the people they serve as instruments of their own political ambition, it is wrong. No exceptions. No counterexamples can ever make it acceptable.
When one side wins everything, both sides lose something they may never get back.