ALL AGAINST ALL: We Blues keep looking for ways to lose...

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2026

...this war of the all against all: Why does a person watch Fox & Friends Weekend? Perhaps for the chance to see presentations like the we'll link to below.   

It was quite a presentation! Here's the way it went down:

Yesterday morning, in the 6 o'clock hour, the friends were discussing the sudden turn of events in the redistricting wars.

For one thing, the state of Virginia's Supreme Court had rejected Virginia's proposed redistricting map—the map which was designed to let Virginia's Dems win ten of eleven House seats.

Also, the United States Supreme Court had ruled that co-called "racial gerrymandering"—the deliberate construction of so-called "majority minority" congressional districts—violates constitutional strictures.

With that pair of judicial decisions, the tide does perhaps seem to have turned against the Democrats in the ongoing, highly unusual, mid-census redistricting war. As our former nation slides toward the sea, it's turning into a "war of the all against all"—something resembling the kind of war Thomas Hobbes once described:

Bellum omnium contra omnes

Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning "the war of all against all," is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651)...   

In Leviathan itself, Hobbes speaks of "war of every one against every one," of "a war of every man against every man" and of "a perpetual war of every man against his neighbor," but the Latin phrase occurs in De Cive.

And so on from there.

In Hobbes, it's every individual for him or herself without the various protections afforded by the state. In fairness, that isn't quite what we're facing today, as the nation's governors change district maps like hockey teams changing lines in the fly.

This isn't quite "the war of the all against all." But if you throw in cable news and the nation's podcasts, it starts to come pretty darn close!

In the current redistricting war, it's a war into which two tribes may descend when one or both has abandoned all adherence to prevailing societal norms—and sure enough:

We're now suck in a deeply consequential partisan war. And, though your mileage may differ from ours, it seems to us that those of us in Blue America keep looking for ways to lose it!

We return you now to the conversation we watched on yesterday's Fox & Friends Weekend:

Yesterday morning, there they sat! Two of the regular weekend friends were present, joined by substitute friend Kevin Corke. 

As you can see by clicking our link, a festive atmosphere prevailed. 

The friends were chuckling about the recent turn of events in the redistricting rampage. We'll start with Rachel Campos-Duffy, who chuckled as she said this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (5/10/26): It's so crazy. They always go back to this!

First of all, we've been talking about the freakout on the side of the Democrats. We haven't been talking about the elation that's been happening on the Republican side, because this is not—

They weren't sure how this was going to turn out, and it really did come up roses for them.

Briefly, let's be fair:

At this point, it does look like the Republicans may emerge as winners of this race-to-the-bottom redistricting war—of this Red versus Blue tribal war which pits the all against all.

Maybe it won't turn out that way! But maybe it actually will. 

Imaginably, the GOP could retain control of the House in November's midterm elections! But plainly, that's the way it seemed to the friends as their presentation continued:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (continuing directly): Look at this map. It really couldn't have been worse for the Democrats, but they started this war. 

It's just that the Republicans ended up looking like they're going to be winning this one.  And it's going to save them in the midterms, Kevin!

CORKE: I think so, for sure. 

Say what? It was the Democrats who started this highly unusual mid-census redistricting war? That's what Campos-Duffy said, and no one challenged her statement.  

Full disclosure! As our nation continues to split in two, we the people, Red and Blue, tend to hear differing sets of factual claims:

In Blue America, we hear that President Trump started this highly unusual war when he insisted that the state of Texas rework its House map.  

That's what we Blues hear. But over on the Fox News Channel, viewers tend to hear that it really started in New York, or possibly up in the New England states, where no Republican House members currently exist. 

(The New England states have twenty-one House members. At present, all twenty-one are Democrats.)

For better or worse, those are the dueling presentations our two tribes tend to hear. Whatever she may have meant by her statement, you can see what Campos-Duffy now said. 

Moments before, she had played tape of five liberals and Democrats allegedly bemoaning the newly emerging state of play in the redistricting wars. Speaking of the last person shown, this is what Campos-Duffy, interrupted by Corke, had laughingly said:  

CAMPOS-DUFFY [laughing]: They're going back to that one! It's not gonna work!  You started this—

CORKE: I was looking this up, and I can't believe he actually said that! I've got it in my notes. Come on!

CAMPOS-DUFFY (as shown above): It's so crazy. They always go back to this!...   

And so on from there. The friends were chuckling about what had been said—but what were they laughing about? 

They were chuckling about what Elie Mystal had said. On Saturday, he had appeared on the Velshi show on MS NOW. 

It isn't going to work, Campos Duffy said—but what was she laughing about? As you can see on the Fox & Friends Weekend tape, here's (a tiny part of) what Mystal had said:  

MYSTAL (videotape, 5/9/26): It is being framed as a Democrat versus Republican issue, as a battle for the soul of the House of Representatives. It is not. It is an attack by white people against the very concept of black representation. It is Jim Crow 2.0.

CAMPOS-DUFFY [laughing]: They're going back to that one! It's not gonna work!   

So it went as the friends played a brief excerpt from Mystal's extensive remarks. Rightly or wrongly, the friends all thought that Mystal's approach wasn't going to work for Dems.

You can see Mystal's full remarks on the Velshi program simply by clicking this. Regarding his extensive remarks, we would offer this:   

Except at one brief point, Mystal didn't criticize President Trump, or Republican pols, for the new redistricting surge in some southern states. Instead, he seemed to criticize "white people." 

In fact, he seemed to frame the situation that way again and again and again. By clicking, you can see Mystal's full remarks, with Velshi nodding along:

Rightly or wrongly, he said the United States Supreme Court had issued "a white supremacist decision." He said the decision by the Court was "an attack on black people specifically" in search of "a reconstituted apartheid state." 

He compared the Supreme Court's decision to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), adding this:  

When white people get it in their heads that they are allowed—to use Trump's word, that they are "entitled"—to be this racist, that's the kind of generational-long timeline we're talking about.

Soon, he added this remark about These White People Today:

White people aren't going through a phase right now. They have decided, since 1964, that the project of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, based on fairness and justice, is not a project they want to be in.

At one point, he did refer to"the few whites of good conscience" which our country apparently contains. He said they've worked in favor of that project, but then he added this:

Unless white people get over themselves, unless they reverse themselves and their ancestors and their voting habits since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they will get exactly the racist country that they have long desired.

These White People Today! Mystal went on at substantial length, with Velshi seeming to agree with his striking generalizations. 

Mystal was speaking about the peregrinations of the venerable Voting Rights Act—about its absurdly complex and incoherent political / judicial history. But mostly, it seemed that he was speaking about These White People Today.

Over the weekend, we saw several chunks of peculiar commentary on several MS NOW programs. That said, Mystal's presentation, which on one occasion seemed downright delusional, pretty much took the cake.

On this campus, reaction was instantaneous:

There we go again, one young analyst cried. The youngster then took a guess—a guess with which we're inclined to agree: 

There we go again, she cried. This isn't going to work!

Campos-Duffy most likely had it right! Or so this youngster surmised.

Tomorrow: Pathways to defeat