It's bad enough that the Democratic Party is the distinct minority in Washington, holding neither the majorities in Congress or the grand political prize of the White House.

But take a look at the states.

The party has lost over 800 seats in state legislatures since 2008. It holds only 31 of the 98 state legislative chambers, and for the first time in history, not a single one in the South. Only 15 of the nation's 50 governors are Democrats.

In many ways, North Carolina is a case study of the Democrats' misfortune. The party ran the state for decades, and now holds barely a third of its legislative seats. Though Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won the governor's race in 2016, Republicans in the legislature have curtailed his executive powers and overridden his vetoes – including that of the state's budget in June. Nevertheless, the party is hoping to build off its lone bright spot.

"Roy Cooper defeated the sitting governor and that election has emboldened our ongoing efforts over the last several years to retake the legislature," says Wayne Goodwin, the chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party and former state commissioner of insurance.

To win back seats, many Democrats nationwide are turning to issues such as single payer health care or economic populism . But Cooper and North Carolina Democrats' new campaign, called " Break the Majority ," focuses primarily on the issue of partisan redistricting.

"The number one goal and paramount part of our mission as Democrats is to break the Republican supermajority, so of course the effort sort of named itself," says Goodwin.

That supermajority, and other Republican statehouse takeovers across the nation, was no accident, he says.

"The Republicans spent decades preparing themselves for the moment they found themselves in the majority," Goodwin says. "I'm not gonna discuss in detail our long game efforts but it is clear that we have learned what is needed to battle in the political arena these days."

Goodwin and other Democratic leaders say they are aggressively recruiting candidates across the state, and have begun to prioritize local offices like school board and county commissioner.

"Not only are they the farm team they also help recruit and help shape the future," Goodwin says. "Both parties have adopted the permanent campaign."

To compete in North Carolina, Democrats will have to break through a red wall. Republicans gained control of the legislature in 2010, and with it, the map-drawing process. The number of competitive races for the legislature has plummeted ever since.

"Very rarely do you have contested races in a general election and people want choices," says Goodwin.

That so-called gerrymandering, by which lawmakers contort district lines to maximize their political power, has a greater impact on North Carolinians' lives than they may realize, he says.

"When you're talking about whether schools receive adequate funding, whether teachers receive adequate compensation, and there are concerns about roads being paved and water being clean it's important to give folks choices and that resonates," Goodwin says.

Whether that political message will entice the state's winnable voters remains to be seen.

"For the average voter, if you ask them to rank pocketbook issues versus redistricting, pocketbook issues are always gonna win out," says Michael Bitzer, a political science professor and provost at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. "The priority is gonna be what affects my wallet not necessary my district."

That dichotomy highlights the dilemma facing Democrats nationwide: whether to focus on urban, more liberal voters in the big cities and counties or the dwindling, more conservative voters in rural areas.

If North Carolina's Democrats are aiming for the latter, redistricting may not be the best issue, says Michael Cooper Jr., an attorney in Wilkesboro and a former Democratic volunteer who writes occasionally for U.S. News.

"The only people who really care about (redistricting) are going to vote for Democrats anyway," Cooper says. Though the rural western part of the state voted strongly for Donald Trump, those voters could be still won over, he says. "These are places where Bill Clinton used to win. These were all Democratic areas; can they come back?"

In North Carolina's urban areas, however, the issue of partisan gerrymandering may have more traction with voters.

Sean Kernick, 40, is one such voter. Kernick, a freelance artist, painted a 900-square-foot mural in downtown Raleigh to highlight the issue.

A mural in Raleigh, North Carolina (Courtesy of Sean Kernick)

"Any way you look at it, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, gerrymandering is vandalism," Kernick says. "When lines are drawn like that to rig an election, it's not an issue that's far removed from your own house – it's removing your voice in our democratic process."

Kernick says gerrymandering wasn't a very visible issue until recent years.

"When the maps got all screwy here in North Carolina, I don't think gerrymandering was a household name. People in my circle didn't really understand it," he says. But the issue has since caught on. "The funny thing about gerrymandering is as soon as you explain what it is they really don't believe it exists, like they think you're lying."

But it does exist, and it's been hard to ignore in recent years, says Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, which advocates for a nonpartisan redistricting process.

"A growing number of business leaders are weighing in on this where in the past they had not. Also a growing number of local elected leaders," Phillips says."The gerrymandering the current majority party has done might be more blatant than in past years. The state is much more out of whack in terms of representation."

Indeed, courts have ruled that several of the redistricting plans Republicans drew after the 2010 elections were unconstitutional.

In the legislative complex in downtown Raleigh, state lawmakers are holding hearings on the court-ordered redrawing of the legislative maps. But Republican lawmakers have taken their time redrawing the map, and many are skeptical the new version will be substantially different.

"When we've had a congressional map thrown out and the Supreme Court says, 'You racially gerrymandered, you gotta redraw,' the problem is those same people get to draw it again, and that's what happened," Phillips says.

Republican leaders announced earlier this summer that the same architect behind the gerrymandered 2011 map, redistricting mastermind Tom Hofeller, would lead the latest effort.

"I'm angered that they didn't choose a different consultant who will actually listen to the court and follow the law," says Goodwin, the state party chair. "Anything this consultant produces will be highly questioned."

Goodwin's counterpart, North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Dallas Woodhouse, has argued that Hofeller and the lawmakers on the redistricting committee have no obligation to draw a bipartisan map.

"We do not elect people on a system of parliament like they do in Europe," Woodhouse said at a recent public hearing on the new map. "It is not the job of this committee to make a political party that lost 76 counties in the presidential election competitive when it cannot do so itself in huge areas of state."

Woodhouse, and many nonpartisan experts, point out that Democrats' lack of representation is due in large part to issues like population sorting – when voters move to like-minded communities. Clustering – when voters settle in compact urban areas, where Democratic candidates run up huge margins – also works against the party.

"The minority party has a geographic problem that it needs to correct and it is not the job of this committee to do that," Woodhouse added.

Those geographic problems, and the Democrats' other political problems that accompany it, won't get any easier in the coming years, says Bitzer, the political science professor.

"Even after the new maps are drawn Republicans are gonna use that to ensure their supermajority come not just 2018, but more importantly 2020," when another Census will mean the party in power can control the redistricting process for the following decade, he says.

For Democrats, it may all come down to the courts. Legal challenges to the current state and federal legislative district lines are moving through an array of state and federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to take up a redistricting case out of Wisconsin that could determine the constitutional fate of partisan redistricting nationwide.