DEMOS / DEMOCRATIZATION: Eric Holder states his view!

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2026

But what did he actually say? Friend, it's very much as we told you all the way back on May 2: 

We tend to admire Eric Holder on this sprawling campus. 

In that original admission, we said we wouldn't mention the principal reason for our admiration. It involves Holder's contradiction, when he was serving as attorney general, of a key piece of Blue American agitprop, and so we fear that it might make the occasional reader dislike him.    

For that reason, we'll skip that bit of behavior again. But who the heck is Eric Holder? The moving finger writes, but still can't quite move on:  

Eric Holder

Eric Himpton Holder Jr. (born January 21, 1951) is an American lawyer who served as the 82nd United States attorney general from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, Holder was the first African American to hold the position.

Born in New York City to a middle-class family of Bajan origin, Holder graduated from Stuyvesant High School, Columbia College, and Columbia Law School. Following law school, he worked for the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice for twelve years. He next served as a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia before being appointed by President Bill Clinton as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and subsequently U.S. deputy attorney general.  

And so on from there, with distinction. We regard the person in question as decent and highly sane.

(For the record, "Bajan" is a reference to Barbados, where Holder's father and maternal grandparents were born.)

We like this guy around here. That said, we ask a basic question again, the same question we asked on May 2:   

What does Holder think we Blues should do in response to the Supreme Court's Callais decision?   

What should we angry Blues do? Yesterday, print editions of the New York Times included a guest essay by Holder concerning that very question. Headline included, here's where his proposal begins:   

This Redistricting Chaos Must End 

[...]   

When Democrats eventually take control of Congress and the White House, top of their list should be banning partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting, along with reviving protections against racial gerrymandering and guarding against other forms of voter suppression. Democratic senators should exempt such a bill from being filibustered, preventing Republicans from blocking it. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema prevented this from happening in 2021 when Democrats had the power to do it, which is one reason the country is in its current mess.   

We agree with the general thrust of Holder's essay, as signaled in that headline. Ideally, the current rush toward "partisan gerrymandering" should be brought to an end.  

That said, will normal elections take place this fall? Will Democrats ever control the White House and the Congress again?  

We can't necessarily say that normal elections will proceed. But Holder assumes that Democrats will achieve full control at some point, and he says this again and again:

He says that Democrats should pass legislation which outlaws "partisan gerrymandering." 

Partisan gerrymanders have to go—but what is Holder's stance with respect to "racial gerrymandering?" We've read his essay more than once. And yet, just as it was at the start of the month, we still aren't able to say.

Citizens, listen up! Holder uses the term "partisan gerrymandering" six separate times in his essay. He leaves no doubt about his view—it's time for that practice to go.  

On the other hand, he refers to "racial gerrymandering" only once, in the passage we've posted above, and he does so somewhat murkily. Indeed, what's his prescription concerning that practice?

We can guess, but we can't really say.

We need "protections against racial gerrymandering," Holder explicitly says. It sounds like racial gerrymandering is an undesirable practice. 

But does that mean that states should be forbidden from creating the weirdly shaped "majority Black" congressional districts under review in Callais? We're going to guess that it possibly doesn't—but Holder, who is perfectly capable, is never quite willing to say.

In such ways, our floundering discourse constantly fails. We can't be sure, but we'll guess that Holder's view about "racial gerrymandering" may go like this:

Friend, there are two different practices which get described as "racial gerrymandering." We refer to the equal-but-opposite rhyming practices known as "packing" and "cracking."

In the practice known as "packing," a state legislature creates a sprawling, weirdly shaped congressional district for the purpose of making the district majority Black. 

In the practice known as "cracking," a state legislature splits a pre-existing majority Black area into two or more different congressional districts. Or it disassembles a gerrymandered majority Black district which its predecessors may have created in the past.

"Packing" creates congressional districts which are majority Black. "Cracking" splits such districts apart. 

Each practice has been described as "racial gerrymandering" down through the years. Our guess would be this:

We'll guess that Holder would seek protections against "cracking," but might let "packing" proceed, as it's been done in the past.

That would be our own best guess, but we don't actually know. Even in his lengthy guest essay, Holder fails to clarify this matter—and then too, we find this largely incoherent effort by Ezra Klein and a specialist guest:

THE EZRA KLEIN SHOW
How to End the Gerrymandering Doom Loop Forever

The piece appears at the New York Times site. Klein is understood to be one of the paper's brightest players, as he most probably is.

That said, the lengthy transcript goes on forever. If you listen to the audiotape of the discussion, you'll spend an hour and fourteen minutes—and we can't say that any part of this confusing topic gets clarified along the way. 

With that in mind, we offer this warning: 

When we the people can't speak with clarity, the agitprop tends to take over.

Is our nation in decline? Could it be that we've already became a failed state, but we just don't know it yet?

Our answer to that second question is a provisional yes. In our view, it's a form of "democratization" which has brought us to this low place. 

We'll continue from there on the morrow. For today, we'll leave you with this:

We the people have very limited cognitive skills. We routinely get lost in the mist as we try to explain elementary concepts, and at such times we may be inclined to move to the memorized agitprop.

Bajan refers to sun-splashed Barbados. Demos is (or was) a Greek term referring to us the people, an eternally challenged group.

We admire Holder at this site. With respect to this fascinatingly complex matter, we'd like to see him speak with greater clarity. We'd like to see him do better.

Tomorrow: Lord Russell's ginormous IQ?