Race to the Bottom (with Addisu Demissie)

The political landscape is in freefall, and the Democratic Party is caught in a self-destructive spiral of its own making. In this episode of Hacks on Tap, political strategist Addisu Demissie joins hosts David Axelrod, John Heilman, and Mike Murphy to dissect a moment of profound national crisis: inflation surging past wages for the first time in three years, a war in Iran unraveling Trump’s economic narrative, and a Supreme Court decision that has effectively handed southern states the power to redraw congressional maps with near-total impunity. The result? A 'race to the bottom' in gerrymandering, where both parties have abandoned any pretense of fairness—Democrats now rushing to copy Republican tactics in California and Virginia, even as they claim to be fighting for democracy. The conversation turns to the existential threat posed by Trump’s legacy: not just his policies, but the normalization of chaos. When Hakeem Jeffries declares 'everything is on the table' for the Supreme Court, it’s not a threat—it’s a confession that the rules have already been broken. And yet, as Demissie warns, out-Trumping Trump is a strategy that risks destroying the very institutions Democrats claim to defend. The episode ends with a haunting question: if the only way to survive is to become the enemy, what does that mean for the future of American democracy?