For years, Barack Obama delivered a simple, memorable line on redistricting: “In America, politicians should not pick their voters; voters should pick their politicians.” He said it in 2016, and he appended a national mandate — the principle should apply “across the nation, not just in a select few states.”
Now, less than a decade later, the former president is reportedly singing a different tune — one that has Democrats and Republicans alike raising eyebrows, and even his own former attorney general conceding the shift is hard to square with their past positions.
According to a recent American Thinker column by Jeannie DeAngelis, Obama has in 2025–26 promoted and actively supported Democratic counter-redistricting efforts — the very practice he once condemned as letting politicians choose their voters. The catalyst: Texas’s mid-decade partisan congressional redistricting, which Republicans pushed through and which Democrats have decried as a power grab.
Obama’s new justification? That Democratic redistricting “levels the playing field.” That phrase, DeAngelis notes, echoes the rhetoric of Marxist socialists who want to “share the wealth” — except now it’s political wealth being redistributed, as the left attempts to redraw district boundaries to advance what Obama once called “fundamental transformation.”
From Condemnation to Adoption
The irony is thick. Obama spent years positioning himself as the evenhanded critic of gerrymandering, condemning whichever party drew lines for partisan advantage — while always, DeAngelis suggests, keeping an eye on what would help Democrats. Now he’s adopting the very tactic he criticized, and he’s doing so openly.
The most striking admission comes from Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general and a close confidant. Holder has publicly acknowledged that the redistricting approach he and Obama are now pushing “kind of goes against what we talked about” before. That’s a remarkable concession from a man who once headed the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and who, with Obama, spent years on Martha’s Vineyard decrying partisan maps.
DeAngelis argues that both men are embracing what they once called anti-democratic because they believe it’s necessary to advance their vision of democracy. But the question, she poses, is pointed: “Has the practice you and your cohorts repeatedly described as undemocratic become acceptable simply because your opponents have the advantage in the midterms?”
California is the test case. In response to Texas’s mid-decade gerrymander, California adopted its own redistricting effort — one that helped pass Proposition 50, which was passed just in time for the 2026 elections. In August 2025, Obama reportedly defended California’s response at a Martha’s Vineyard fundraiser, saying Texas was acting at the direction of a partisan White House, and he praised Gavin Newsom’s approach.
Alinsky Tactics and Political Flexibility
DeAngelis sees a pattern beyond redistricting. Obama, she notes, has shown surprising malleability on other principles when political circumstances shift — super-PACs, executive privilege, and raising the debt ceiling. He condemns a tactic, takes the high ground, and then, when it suits him, adopts it while rationalizing that circumstances forced his hand.
That, she suggests, is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook — the community organizer whose rules Obama studied in Chicago. Alinsky advised activists to “make the enemy live up to their own book of rules” while retaining tactical flexibility for themselves. In other words, hold your adversaries to their principles while allowing yourself to adapt as needed. That’s exactly what Obama is doing, DeAngelis argues: he’s using Republican tactics against them, a modern-day Scipio Africanus defeating Hannibal by turning the enemy’s own strengths against him.
The timing is no accident. With the midterms and 2028 looming, Democrats have called on their most “esteemed persuader” — the man who keeps popping up like Whac-A-Mole, in DeAngelis’s phrase, doling out advice on how redistricting could deliver victory from the jaws of defeat.
A Fundraiser Shrouded in Mystery
On August 31, 2026, Obama was scheduled to offer his “professorial advice” at a National Democratic Redistricting Committee fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard — an event, ironically, hosted by a man closely associated with the Obama-era “Fast and Furious” scandal. The fundraiser was held in a tony Massachusetts enclave, home to left-leaning voters who, DeAngelis notes, are more than willing to support policies they rarely have to endure themselves.
What exactly Obama told his audience remains unclear. DeAngelis speculates — based on past transcripts — that he may have warned of threats to democracy, vilified Trump, opposed ICE, or cautioned about Republican voter suppression. She also wonders whether he addressed the SAVE Act or voter ID laws. But one detail stands out: unlike his 2016 comments, the verbatim transcript of Obama’s “fighting fire with fire” event has not been published or released by major news outlets to date.
That lack of transparency, DeAngelis argues, is telling. It raises questions about what advice Obama actually gave beyond the basic premise of redistricting. Did he up the ante? Raise the stakes? Throw caution to the wind?
A Familiar Pattern
DeAngelis draws a sharp contrast: Obama’s 2016 comments were clear and public. His 2025–26 advocacy is real but less documented. And even when he speaks, he frames his reversal as a matter of fairness — that he’s only responding to Republican aggression, that he’s leveling the playing field.
But DeAngelis isn’t buying it. “This isn’t Obama humbly acquiescing to the brilliance of Republican political strategy,” she writes. “It’s a haughty, self-impressed man likely adopting some of what Saul Alinsky taught community activists in Chicago.”
The broader question, she says, is what other tactics Obama is willing to adopt — and what that means for the democratic principles he so often invokes. If the man who once said “politicians should not pick their voters” is now endorsing redistricting as a countermeasure, then Americans on both sides have reason to ask whether the principles were ever real, or just convenient.
As the midterms approach, the old standby is back in action — and this time, he’s not just defending democracy as he sees it. He’s borrowing from the other side’s playbook to do it.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/old-standby-obama-changes-his-tune-on-redistricting/