Democrats couldn't reconstruct under these terms unless they became a whole different party. They gain representation by promising to spend more: To provide more gifts, more government dependencies, more restrictions, more rule. Also, in the end, the majority of the current representatives and their class won't do it because they're in it for the riches and to create themselves as the elite class. If you want centered, integritous representation, ban lawyers and everyone making over $100,000 a year from government and enforce the Constitution strictly by prosecuting any actions that part from it.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters by serving as an organizational interface and coordinating mesh for a wide array of organizational linked publicly accessible decision making bodies that spanned economy-schooling/training-culture-science-government, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
If you think America is a democracy, then you should be supporting Donald Trump as he won the vote and represents the will of the majority. You should also support usurping the powers of Congress and treating the courts with contempt as these are all mechanisms designed to limit the government to protecting individual rights, which makes them undemocratic institutions.
Democracy is, in fact, "a rejection of constitutional operating system itself, the very premise that government power is bound by law," and represents a return to mob rule, which is how you get Trump and worse.
In other words, opposing Trump on the grounds of authoritarianism doesn't make sense if you're just going to turn around and support democracy. Only supporting rights-protecting government opposes authoritarianism. Everything else is just different flavors of authoritarianism.
The democrats are a party of big government authoritarians and are enormously responsible for today's crisis. They're not going to be reconstructing anything. In fact, given the precedent that Trump has set, I'd expect democrats to be even worse going forward. They can pretty much do anything they want, and the GOP can't oppose anything given what they've enabled.
But the issue facing us today has nothing to do with voting, or political parties. It's all about a historic crisis of expertise in the field of politics. Until we get political intellectuals who actually understand the subject and can effectively communicate it to the mainstream, our slide towards authoritarianism and third-world poverty will continue.
I would add to Jose's valid point only by saying that "majority rule" is a stupid idea if it means 50 percent plus 1 get to tear down institutions and radically change the form of governance. Such a "majority" (which, as Jose points out, Trump πππππ received) is too thin, and cannot likely be held (unless of course the party holding it resorts to lying and unconstitutional means to do so), which means the government (and the people) would face vicious volatility in governance based on the "swing voter" inclination in various elections. Not a good system at all. America worked best when there was a single "party" that had factions, but would "log roll" to get things done. Now, the "other" party is indeed portrayed as "the other". They are demons, enemies, insert your own pejorative. This won't work, of course. The center will not stand. The American experiment, will fall.
The American system is designed precisely to prevent characters like Trump from achieving high office through mechanisms like the Electoral College.
The Founders understood that politics is about defining the proper role of government, not about voting and elections. They were creating a rights-protecting republic, not a democracy. The former is what makes "America work best," the latter is authoritarian.
Today's political professionals don't understand even these baseline concepts. They don't know what rights actually are, and they have no idea what the proper role of government should be. Instead, everyone advocates for more state involvement in every aspect of our lives, which is inherently authoritarian, while hiding behind the word "democracy" because they mistakenly believe that voting makes a system liberal.
In other words, the system is fine. Our political professionals are the problem. They don't understand the system.
The situation is pretty hopeless. No other profession operates with such a low level of fundamental understanding by the very people running the field.
I'm sorry, but I find it comically ironical that "the American system is designed precisely [!] to prevent characters like Trump from achieving high office through mechanisms like the Electoral College", yet there he is. And he got there the first time ππππ because of the EC. He ππππ the popular vote by two full percentage points (no one achieved a majority of the popular vote).
No. The American system always relied on a certain level of 'character' to prevent sociopaths like Trump from obtaining high office. And 'character' is normative, and ill or undefined. It's like pornography, but in the opposite: 'You know it when you see it."
It's been known for some time (at least since Huey Long, but others will point out even earlier examples) that the system could be gamed, and how to do it. But there were always 'character transgressions' that voters simply would not tolerate. Over time however, one by one, these transgressions have been reduced to mere "locker-room talk", and such.
You can't have either a 'republic' or a 'democracy' without character. And American voters have chosen to elevate too many gravely flawed 'characters' to high political office. Now you've got one at the very top, and he's running amok.
Because everyone today believes that America is a democracy, electors are now legally or socially bound to follow the majority vote in their respective states. That is exactly how Trump "won" the Electoral College. If we instead understood that America is meant to be a rights-protecting republic, and if our electors were free to exercise independent judgment irrespective of the popular vote, a populist takeover would be far less likely to happen. (Keep in mind that the EC is just one of many constitutional mechanisms that no longer work correctly due to a lack of competent political professionals).
Obsessing over a candidate's "character" is merely a symptom of modern populism. While it does matter, it's not the most crucial factor. The single most important detail is whether the majority understands and supports the premise that the sole function of government is to protect individual rights.
Without that underlying cultural agreement, none of our constitutional mechanisms can work.
Well weβre getting pretty deep into the weeds here, because itβs also apparent that corporations were never intended to βbe peopleβ, but yet now they are.
You seem to claim that Iβm βobsessingβ over character. In a normative-based system, and thatβs exactly what the US is, and what the Founders counted on and felt essential, thatβs all youβve got, Iβm afraid.
And you seem to have a dearth of it now.
You canβt have a minimalist government only βassuring rightsβ if you have people without character exercising those rights.
The whole point of a constitution is to restrict government to the sole function of protecting individual rights, which inherently means a capitalist economic system.
In other words, a free-market economy driven by private enterprise is the ultimate goal of our constitutional design. The only alternative is authoritarianism.
This is not getting deep in the weeds; this is the entire issue in a nutshell. If the mainstream doesn't support a rights-protecting government (in politics) and capitalism (in economics), then the mainstream is effectively advocating for authoritarianism.
And if that's the case, then we don't need a constitution, voting, term limits, or any of these restrictive mechanisms at all. They serve no purpose as we're increasingly seeing today.
But this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Not to pick on you, since most political professionals make the same mistake, but the Electoral College exists precisely as a safeguard against the crowd installing a demagogue into the executive branch.
National popular voting for presidents is neither required by the Constitution, nor is it aligned with the republican values on which America is founded. Under the original constitutional design, only representatives to Congress are to be chosen directly by the people. Presidents are to be appointed by the independent electors chosen by each state. Not by a mass popular vote.
As Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 68, utilizing an intermediate body of electors would be "much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements." In other words, the mechanism was designed precisely to prevent the volatile mass movements we see today, like Jan 6. Sadly, because almost everyone now treats America as a "democracy," they view crucial stabilization mechanisms like the EC as the problem, when they are actually the solution.
This is what I'm talking about when I say we have a crisis of expertise in politics.
Your second sentence is an absolute denunciation of the Electoral College, then, since it obviously failed in the job you assume it was created to do.
I will say it again. Trump LOST the plurality in 2016. Clinton won the plurality. It is only BECAUSE of the EC that Trump ever darkened the Oval with his corrupt presence.
Our electors today are effectively bound to go along with the majority vote in their respective states instead of acting on their own judgment. So, because Trump won the majority vote in key swing states, he won the Electoral College.
This is completely contrary to how the mechanism is designed to function. The fact that this baseline failure is not even recognized by the mainstream is a damning indictment of our political experts.
Youβll have to define how βtodayβ is different from the past, and what βeffectively boundβ means. There have always been βfaithless electorsβ (the first were in 1796). But itβs always been a very small number, and they have πππππ changed the result of an election.
There have been > 23,000 EC votes βcastβ over time. There have been only 157 βfaithlessβ electors (about Β½ of 1 percent). Please tell me how βtodayβ is different. I reckon it is not.
Today is different because of Trump. One can argue that in all previous elections, the presidential candidates were equally flawed, but never this dangerous.
Historically, it made little difference how the electors cast their votes because the end result would be largely the same and other constitutional mechanisms, such as Congress, SCOTUS, term limits, impeachment, etc, would be relied upon to keep a president's rights-violating policies in check.
But Trump is an existential exception. Someone who should not have even been allowed on the ballot. Every branch of government is designed precisely to prevent an individual like this from holding power, yet every single branch failed in its job. This includes the Electoral College, which collapsed because our political professionals simply do not understand its purpose.
They honestly believe we're a democracy, ignoring the fact that if we actually were, we wouldn't need a constitution in the first place.
So should I "(support) Donald Trump as he won the vote and represents the will of the majority. You should also support usurping the powers of Congress and treating the courts with contempt as these are all mechanisms designed to limit the government to protecting individual rights, which makes them undemocratic institutions."
Or should I count on the Electoral College to be a "safeguard against the crowd installing a demagogue into the executive branch"?
I'm beginning to think you're an AI bot. I am embarrassed.
My point is that America, by design, is fundamentally undemocratic. It's a classical liberal political system (which, contrary to popular belief, is defined by a rights-protecting government and capitalism, not by voting.)
This is why we have a constitution and mechanisms like the Electoral College: to protect us from all forms of authoritarianism, including the tyranny of the majority.
Yet, the vast majority of our political professionals believe America is a democracy, and on those exact grounds, they oppose the Electoral College.
My argument is that if they truly believe this, then they might as well oppose the Constitution itself. It serves no purpose in a democracy.
A good start. Just a side add to this = Lets not forget that reforms and guardrails are needed for the Supreme Court. This is [also] a high priority, and I felt it needed to be explicitly said. Thanks!
Shikka, in a future piece, can you address the impact of democracy on the federal government? The 17th amendment, entitlement programs, 1972 McGovern Commission.
Can we really have an informed citizenry in 2026 with a government this massive with spending, regulations, debtβ¦.when people barely are engaged with much smaller local government?
We have towns, cities, counties, States that form thousands of democracies in this country that serve the people. What happens when we take the only institution in this country to serve the common good and turn it into the peopleβs government?
Political parties are weak today because they have to serve the people and the common good at the same time, which is not really possible. The Democrats, who have signaled that they plan to do some batcrap crazy initiatives to Congress and the courts when they take power, have contributed greatly to this cause. I donβt think turning the federal government into California will be good for the country based on management track record,β¦and yet the Democrats two favored picks for β28, Kamala and Gavin, are both from CA. That's scary.
All of our political institutions have functioned better for centuries than any others in human history. The issues we face today have nothing to do with the mechanisms laid out in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court requires no reforms or guardrails.
The real issue is that we lack political professionals in the mainstream who actually understand how these mechanisms function. Consequently, any institutional changes forced through today would necessarily be for the worse.
What we truly need are reforms and guardrails within the field of political commentary and higher standards for our political intellectuals.
Or we could remove money from politics. Politicians getting money from foreign governments like Israel and china is a lot worse than trumping pardoning some j6 crackpots.
It is normal politics though. And that will be utterly clear if the Democrats take power again in their current form. Pretending to be a democracy, mostly by shouting βour democracyβ with little else of substance, isnβt going to work. The reality of power and how it really works isnβt anything the current party cares to inform the plebs about. You think thereβs an iron hand now, but somehow that time when everyone was practically forced into an experimental injection, and then a lot of people died suddenly afterwards, is selectively forgotten. Some of us arenβt forgetting. Weβre also not going to forget how the current Democratic Party tried to institutionalize censorship. Weβre not going to forget that rioters tried to burn down the White House without consequence, yet protest over a sketchy election brought down the power of the state to hunt down and throw people in jail for misdemeanors. Weβre not going to forget that the so-called progressives were fine with the political imprisonment of their enemies, and cheered on our very own secret police who set them up to ruin their lives. Trump is ripping the mask off and you donβt like what you see, but you have no ideas other than to let the fraud waste and abuses to continue, just rebranded with a D in front. Cry, wail and moan some more. Itβs all you got.
I don't like the word reconstruction because the last one was essentially a glide path to Jim Crow America.
Restoration, although that word has its own baggage, is better.
Perhaps Reconstitution? After all it is the Constitutional framework that needs reform here.
The specific reforms laid out here are a great start although lowering the threshold for impeachment might create worse consequences than not removing any individual president and the thought of "secret votes" in the Senate gives me chills.
I don't think either party, as currently constituted, can win the political trust of the voters. Voters are mostly voting for what they perceive as the less toxic party regardless of the policies they offer.
I think there is a growing space and hunger for some authentically independent candidates from the center of the spectrum. In our tightly close balance of power a handful in both the Senate and House could wield significant influence on the behavior of the two parties. The notion of an independent national party is a 19th century obsession. Independents from both the right and left committed to a philosophy of bipartisan, good faith governance in the interests of their districts and states rather than benefits they can shake down from the parties might gain the interest of voters. Obviously rural districts would probably gravitate to more conservative (traditional) independents and more liberal constituencies toward more progressive ones. Will they offer a radical agenda? No. But they would have the power to reign in the other parties.
HOWEVER bread and butter kitchen table issues have a place in the campaign of reconstitution. Instead of just blaming Trump, or Biden, or Obama, etc. for the problems show how the economic issues are exacerbated by the dysfunctional behavior of both parties. Show how tax and spend Democrats and spend and borrow Republicans are bankrupting the nation. Show how corruption is affecting their economic condition.
The only campaign finance reform I am interested in is that every dollar donated to a candidate, a party, a PAC or SuperPAC must be identified with a donor. Sunshine not regulation is the best disinfectant.
The Constitutional framework needs no reform. The only thing that needs reform is the rule of law, the Constitution, being followed and any deviation from it being prosecuted.
I am not sure. Obviously enforcing the rule of law would be a great start but the political corruption of law enforcement and the judiciary has always been a weakness in the American system.
BUT given the Supreme Court we are likely going to have to live with for the next 30 years things we assume should be covered under the Constitution may need to be made explicit.
Corporations are not people.
Political funding can be regulated without violating the First Amendment.
Presidents are in fact subject to prosecution after their terms in office for crimes done under the cover of official acts.
The right to privacy needs to be made explicit in the Constitution.
Sadly, at this point, even a new equal rights amendment, which shouldn't be needed at all, needs to be made concrete in the Constitution.
Agree totally on the failure of the reconstruction, until the Warren court, the Roberts Court undid that legacy. Meanwhile, what reform put in place after Nixon has this guy not violated?
What interests me most is the broader question: every society depends on institutions, but institutions ultimately depend on human character. No constitutional design can fully replace civic virtue. The tension between the two seems permanent.
Typical ivory tower, pie in the sky Bulwarkian pontificating with no basis in reality. Most of your proposed βreformsβ require constitutional amendments. The Democrats didnβt even end the filibusterβa wholly undemocratic, non-constitutional procedural ruleβwhen they were in power, to preserve their leverage when they werenβt, and youβre stupid enough to think theyβll pass reforms that surrender future leverage, never mind the constitutional hurdles they have no chance of overcoming? Youβre not serious people but complete idiots.
> And yet Democratic leadership is preparing a midterm campaign that treats this as a side issue.
> There is a kernel of sense in this. Voters feel squeezed, and a party that ignores their pocketbook will lose.
What makes this sensible is that Dems have already tried telling voters how dangerous Trump was, and voters elected him anyway. Look, he spent 2016 lying constantly and won, then he did the same in 2020 and then labeled his campaign to steal the election "Stop the Steal" in 2020, then he committed a series of felonies and lied a whole lot more in 2024, and then voters delivered him more votes than ever before. I don't know why voters wouldn't see how bad he was, but I know Dems tried to alert voters to this and it didn't work.
In light of that, it makes sense to listen to whatever swing voters are griping about and give a message attuned to those gripes. I think if swing voters were mainly griping about Trump, you wouldn't even need to make ads complaining about the man, they'd vote for dems anyway. So, may as well talk about how Trump hurt the economy, whatever swing voters like about Dems, and whatever they hate about Repubs.
Why do you think itβs politically wise for the Democratic Party to run on a platform it has no hope of achieving anything toward in 2027 and 2028? Even if democrats take control of the House and Senate, they STILL wonβt be able to override vetos or break filibusters. None of your platform is remotely politically feasible for the next two years.
They will be able to investigate and to resist (and thatβs about it), so, IMO, they should campaign on exposing corruption and how awful this administration is. If your point is that they should also signal that theyβre building toward a reconstruction starting in 2029, thatβs totally valid; but running on a platform they have zero hope of implementing for the next two years is a terrible idea.
An interesting and well written essay; however, I do think it shares a common blind spot with many institutional reform arguments I see today. "Democracy", "the Constitution", and "institutions" are looked at mostly as national abstractions. But historically, American self-government needed noot just constitutional guardrails it also on a dense ecosystem of states, municipalities, local parties, civic organizations, universities, professional associations, locally anchored financial systems, and other intermediary institutions that dispersed authority and connected expertise to decision making. There are two ways to limit arbitrary power, constrain the center, or build a society where power is so widely distributed that domination cant happen in the first place. The essay focuses almost entirely on the former while largely overlooking the latter
Andy / Shiaka, one problem with your description of a parliamentary systemwide change. We still have our God given right to bear arm and we exercise it in massive numbers together with the fact we know how to use said arms and we will never allow the Socialist Democrats to destroy our country. Our President is systematically dealing with a world as it exists not done graduate seminar test case ideal. He and the great people in the administration are daily tearing down the pillars of support for the administrative state that Biden, Obama, and Clinton erected to plant their Socialist agenda. So dream onβ¦.
I hope you have an armored brougham in which you can be vaporized if/when you try to make your accelerationist fantasies come true. Youβre not an American.
The administration is not tearing down the administrative state. It's using it to gather riches and authority, in opposition to what it said it would do. Trump is just a giant ego, in most respects, putting his name on landmarks, etc. Congress should be reigning him in.
Democrats couldn't reconstruct under these terms unless they became a whole different party. They gain representation by promising to spend more: To provide more gifts, more government dependencies, more restrictions, more rule. Also, in the end, the majority of the current representatives and their class won't do it because they're in it for the riches and to create themselves as the elite class. If you want centered, integritous representation, ban lawyers and everyone making over $100,000 a year from government and enforce the Constitution strictly by prosecuting any actions that part from it.
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters by serving as an organizational interface and coordinating mesh for a wide array of organizational linked publicly accessible decision making bodies that spanned economy-schooling/training-culture-science-government, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
If you think America is a democracy, then you should be supporting Donald Trump as he won the vote and represents the will of the majority. You should also support usurping the powers of Congress and treating the courts with contempt as these are all mechanisms designed to limit the government to protecting individual rights, which makes them undemocratic institutions.
Democracy is, in fact, "a rejection of constitutional operating system itself, the very premise that government power is bound by law," and represents a return to mob rule, which is how you get Trump and worse.
In other words, opposing Trump on the grounds of authoritarianism doesn't make sense if you're just going to turn around and support democracy. Only supporting rights-protecting government opposes authoritarianism. Everything else is just different flavors of authoritarianism.
The democrats are a party of big government authoritarians and are enormously responsible for today's crisis. They're not going to be reconstructing anything. In fact, given the precedent that Trump has set, I'd expect democrats to be even worse going forward. They can pretty much do anything they want, and the GOP can't oppose anything given what they've enabled.
But the issue facing us today has nothing to do with voting, or political parties. It's all about a historic crisis of expertise in the field of politics. Until we get political intellectuals who actually understand the subject and can effectively communicate it to the mainstream, our slide towards authoritarianism and third-world poverty will continue.
I would add to Jose's valid point only by saying that "majority rule" is a stupid idea if it means 50 percent plus 1 get to tear down institutions and radically change the form of governance. Such a "majority" (which, as Jose points out, Trump πππππ received) is too thin, and cannot likely be held (unless of course the party holding it resorts to lying and unconstitutional means to do so), which means the government (and the people) would face vicious volatility in governance based on the "swing voter" inclination in various elections. Not a good system at all. America worked best when there was a single "party" that had factions, but would "log roll" to get things done. Now, the "other" party is indeed portrayed as "the other". They are demons, enemies, insert your own pejorative. This won't work, of course. The center will not stand. The American experiment, will fall.
The American system is designed precisely to prevent characters like Trump from achieving high office through mechanisms like the Electoral College.
The Founders understood that politics is about defining the proper role of government, not about voting and elections. They were creating a rights-protecting republic, not a democracy. The former is what makes "America work best," the latter is authoritarian.
Today's political professionals don't understand even these baseline concepts. They don't know what rights actually are, and they have no idea what the proper role of government should be. Instead, everyone advocates for more state involvement in every aspect of our lives, which is inherently authoritarian, while hiding behind the word "democracy" because they mistakenly believe that voting makes a system liberal.
In other words, the system is fine. Our political professionals are the problem. They don't understand the system.
The situation is pretty hopeless. No other profession operates with such a low level of fundamental understanding by the very people running the field.
This is the entire crisis.
I'm sorry, but I find it comically ironical that "the American system is designed precisely [!] to prevent characters like Trump from achieving high office through mechanisms like the Electoral College", yet there he is. And he got there the first time ππππ because of the EC. He ππππ the popular vote by two full percentage points (no one achieved a majority of the popular vote).
No. The American system always relied on a certain level of 'character' to prevent sociopaths like Trump from obtaining high office. And 'character' is normative, and ill or undefined. It's like pornography, but in the opposite: 'You know it when you see it."
It's been known for some time (at least since Huey Long, but others will point out even earlier examples) that the system could be gamed, and how to do it. But there were always 'character transgressions' that voters simply would not tolerate. Over time however, one by one, these transgressions have been reduced to mere "locker-room talk", and such.
You can't have either a 'republic' or a 'democracy' without character. And American voters have chosen to elevate too many gravely flawed 'characters' to high political office. Now you've got one at the very top, and he's running amok.
I don't think recovery is likely.
Because everyone today believes that America is a democracy, electors are now legally or socially bound to follow the majority vote in their respective states. That is exactly how Trump "won" the Electoral College. If we instead understood that America is meant to be a rights-protecting republic, and if our electors were free to exercise independent judgment irrespective of the popular vote, a populist takeover would be far less likely to happen. (Keep in mind that the EC is just one of many constitutional mechanisms that no longer work correctly due to a lack of competent political professionals).
Obsessing over a candidate's "character" is merely a symptom of modern populism. While it does matter, it's not the most crucial factor. The single most important detail is whether the majority understands and supports the premise that the sole function of government is to protect individual rights.
Without that underlying cultural agreement, none of our constitutional mechanisms can work.
Well weβre getting pretty deep into the weeds here, because itβs also apparent that corporations were never intended to βbe peopleβ, but yet now they are.
You seem to claim that Iβm βobsessingβ over character. In a normative-based system, and thatβs exactly what the US is, and what the Founders counted on and felt essential, thatβs all youβve got, Iβm afraid.
And you seem to have a dearth of it now.
You canβt have a minimalist government only βassuring rightsβ if you have people without character exercising those rights.
It isnβt working, because it wonβt work.
The whole point of a constitution is to restrict government to the sole function of protecting individual rights, which inherently means a capitalist economic system.
In other words, a free-market economy driven by private enterprise is the ultimate goal of our constitutional design. The only alternative is authoritarianism.
This is not getting deep in the weeds; this is the entire issue in a nutshell. If the mainstream doesn't support a rights-protecting government (in politics) and capitalism (in economics), then the mainstream is effectively advocating for authoritarianism.
And if that's the case, then we don't need a constitution, voting, term limits, or any of these restrictive mechanisms at all. They serve no purpose as we're increasingly seeing today.
Donald Trump has never captured a majority of the votes of the people of the United States.
He's only president thanks to a broken electoral system that places land area above the will of the people.
But this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Not to pick on you, since most political professionals make the same mistake, but the Electoral College exists precisely as a safeguard against the crowd installing a demagogue into the executive branch.
National popular voting for presidents is neither required by the Constitution, nor is it aligned with the republican values on which America is founded. Under the original constitutional design, only representatives to Congress are to be chosen directly by the people. Presidents are to be appointed by the independent electors chosen by each state. Not by a mass popular vote.
As Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 68, utilizing an intermediate body of electors would be "much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements." In other words, the mechanism was designed precisely to prevent the volatile mass movements we see today, like Jan 6. Sadly, because almost everyone now treats America as a "democracy," they view crucial stabilization mechanisms like the EC as the problem, when they are actually the solution.
This is what I'm talking about when I say we have a crisis of expertise in politics.
Your second sentence is an absolute denunciation of the Electoral College, then, since it obviously failed in the job you assume it was created to do.
I will say it again. Trump LOST the plurality in 2016. Clinton won the plurality. It is only BECAUSE of the EC that Trump ever darkened the Oval with his corrupt presence.
Our electors today are effectively bound to go along with the majority vote in their respective states instead of acting on their own judgment. So, because Trump won the majority vote in key swing states, he won the Electoral College.
This is completely contrary to how the mechanism is designed to function. The fact that this baseline failure is not even recognized by the mainstream is a damning indictment of our political experts.
Youβll have to define how βtodayβ is different from the past, and what βeffectively boundβ means. There have always been βfaithless electorsβ (the first were in 1796). But itβs always been a very small number, and they have πππππ changed the result of an election.
There have been > 23,000 EC votes βcastβ over time. There have been only 157 βfaithlessβ electors (about Β½ of 1 percent). Please tell me how βtodayβ is different. I reckon it is not.
Today is different because of Trump. One can argue that in all previous elections, the presidential candidates were equally flawed, but never this dangerous.
Historically, it made little difference how the electors cast their votes because the end result would be largely the same and other constitutional mechanisms, such as Congress, SCOTUS, term limits, impeachment, etc, would be relied upon to keep a president's rights-violating policies in check.
But Trump is an existential exception. Someone who should not have even been allowed on the ballot. Every branch of government is designed precisely to prevent an individual like this from holding power, yet every single branch failed in its job. This includes the Electoral College, which collapsed because our political professionals simply do not understand its purpose.
They honestly believe we're a democracy, ignoring the fact that if we actually were, we wouldn't need a constitution in the first place.
Nice shifting goal posts you got there.
So should I "(support) Donald Trump as he won the vote and represents the will of the majority. You should also support usurping the powers of Congress and treating the courts with contempt as these are all mechanisms designed to limit the government to protecting individual rights, which makes them undemocratic institutions."
Or should I count on the Electoral College to be a "safeguard against the crowd installing a demagogue into the executive branch"?
I'm beginning to think you're an AI bot. I am embarrassed.
My point is that America, by design, is fundamentally undemocratic. It's a classical liberal political system (which, contrary to popular belief, is defined by a rights-protecting government and capitalism, not by voting.)
This is why we have a constitution and mechanisms like the Electoral College: to protect us from all forms of authoritarianism, including the tyranny of the majority.
Yet, the vast majority of our political professionals believe America is a democracy, and on those exact grounds, they oppose the Electoral College.
My argument is that if they truly believe this, then they might as well oppose the Constitution itself. It serves no purpose in a democracy.
Definitely a bot. No coherent thesis. Takes contradictory positions to keep the conversation going.
Plonk!
But what's the contradiction?
A good start. Just a side add to this = Lets not forget that reforms and guardrails are needed for the Supreme Court. This is [also] a high priority, and I felt it needed to be explicitly said. Thanks!
We will be running a piece expressly on that next week
Shikka, in a future piece, can you address the impact of democracy on the federal government? The 17th amendment, entitlement programs, 1972 McGovern Commission.
Can we really have an informed citizenry in 2026 with a government this massive with spending, regulations, debtβ¦.when people barely are engaged with much smaller local government?
We have towns, cities, counties, States that form thousands of democracies in this country that serve the people. What happens when we take the only institution in this country to serve the common good and turn it into the peopleβs government?
Political parties are weak today because they have to serve the people and the common good at the same time, which is not really possible. The Democrats, who have signaled that they plan to do some batcrap crazy initiatives to Congress and the courts when they take power, have contributed greatly to this cause. I donβt think turning the federal government into California will be good for the country based on management track record,β¦and yet the Democrats two favored picks for β28, Kamala and Gavin, are both from CA. That's scary.
crap, sorry about misspelling your name!
Yeah nothing says guardrails like court packing
All of our political institutions have functioned better for centuries than any others in human history. The issues we face today have nothing to do with the mechanisms laid out in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court requires no reforms or guardrails.
The real issue is that we lack political professionals in the mainstream who actually understand how these mechanisms function. Consequently, any institutional changes forced through today would necessarily be for the worse.
What we truly need are reforms and guardrails within the field of political commentary and higher standards for our political intellectuals.
It other words, all the whining in the world makes not one whit of difference
Or we could remove money from politics. Politicians getting money from foreign governments like Israel and china is a lot worse than trumping pardoning some j6 crackpots.
It is normal politics though. And that will be utterly clear if the Democrats take power again in their current form. Pretending to be a democracy, mostly by shouting βour democracyβ with little else of substance, isnβt going to work. The reality of power and how it really works isnβt anything the current party cares to inform the plebs about. You think thereβs an iron hand now, but somehow that time when everyone was practically forced into an experimental injection, and then a lot of people died suddenly afterwards, is selectively forgotten. Some of us arenβt forgetting. Weβre also not going to forget how the current Democratic Party tried to institutionalize censorship. Weβre not going to forget that rioters tried to burn down the White House without consequence, yet protest over a sketchy election brought down the power of the state to hunt down and throw people in jail for misdemeanors. Weβre not going to forget that the so-called progressives were fine with the political imprisonment of their enemies, and cheered on our very own secret police who set them up to ruin their lives. Trump is ripping the mask off and you donβt like what you see, but you have no ideas other than to let the fraud waste and abuses to continue, just rebranded with a D in front. Cry, wail and moan some more. Itβs all you got.
I don't like the word reconstruction because the last one was essentially a glide path to Jim Crow America.
Restoration, although that word has its own baggage, is better.
Perhaps Reconstitution? After all it is the Constitutional framework that needs reform here.
The specific reforms laid out here are a great start although lowering the threshold for impeachment might create worse consequences than not removing any individual president and the thought of "secret votes" in the Senate gives me chills.
I don't think either party, as currently constituted, can win the political trust of the voters. Voters are mostly voting for what they perceive as the less toxic party regardless of the policies they offer.
I think there is a growing space and hunger for some authentically independent candidates from the center of the spectrum. In our tightly close balance of power a handful in both the Senate and House could wield significant influence on the behavior of the two parties. The notion of an independent national party is a 19th century obsession. Independents from both the right and left committed to a philosophy of bipartisan, good faith governance in the interests of their districts and states rather than benefits they can shake down from the parties might gain the interest of voters. Obviously rural districts would probably gravitate to more conservative (traditional) independents and more liberal constituencies toward more progressive ones. Will they offer a radical agenda? No. But they would have the power to reign in the other parties.
HOWEVER bread and butter kitchen table issues have a place in the campaign of reconstitution. Instead of just blaming Trump, or Biden, or Obama, etc. for the problems show how the economic issues are exacerbated by the dysfunctional behavior of both parties. Show how tax and spend Democrats and spend and borrow Republicans are bankrupting the nation. Show how corruption is affecting their economic condition.
The only campaign finance reform I am interested in is that every dollar donated to a candidate, a party, a PAC or SuperPAC must be identified with a donor. Sunshine not regulation is the best disinfectant.
The Constitutional framework needs no reform. The only thing that needs reform is the rule of law, the Constitution, being followed and any deviation from it being prosecuted.
I am not sure. Obviously enforcing the rule of law would be a great start but the political corruption of law enforcement and the judiciary has always been a weakness in the American system.
BUT given the Supreme Court we are likely going to have to live with for the next 30 years things we assume should be covered under the Constitution may need to be made explicit.
Corporations are not people.
Political funding can be regulated without violating the First Amendment.
Presidents are in fact subject to prosecution after their terms in office for crimes done under the cover of official acts.
The right to privacy needs to be made explicit in the Constitution.
Sadly, at this point, even a new equal rights amendment, which shouldn't be needed at all, needs to be made concrete in the Constitution.
Agree totally on the failure of the reconstruction, until the Warren court, the Roberts Court undid that legacy. Meanwhile, what reform put in place after Nixon has this guy not violated?
What interests me most is the broader question: every society depends on institutions, but institutions ultimately depend on human character. No constitutional design can fully replace civic virtue. The tension between the two seems permanent.
Typical ivory tower, pie in the sky Bulwarkian pontificating with no basis in reality. Most of your proposed βreformsβ require constitutional amendments. The Democrats didnβt even end the filibusterβa wholly undemocratic, non-constitutional procedural ruleβwhen they were in power, to preserve their leverage when they werenβt, and youβre stupid enough to think theyβll pass reforms that surrender future leverage, never mind the constitutional hurdles they have no chance of overcoming? Youβre not serious people but complete idiots.
Great parody. Hilarious how you blame Obamaβs dictatorial behavior on Trump.
No compromise
> And yet Democratic leadership is preparing a midterm campaign that treats this as a side issue.
> There is a kernel of sense in this. Voters feel squeezed, and a party that ignores their pocketbook will lose.
What makes this sensible is that Dems have already tried telling voters how dangerous Trump was, and voters elected him anyway. Look, he spent 2016 lying constantly and won, then he did the same in 2020 and then labeled his campaign to steal the election "Stop the Steal" in 2020, then he committed a series of felonies and lied a whole lot more in 2024, and then voters delivered him more votes than ever before. I don't know why voters wouldn't see how bad he was, but I know Dems tried to alert voters to this and it didn't work.
In light of that, it makes sense to listen to whatever swing voters are griping about and give a message attuned to those gripes. I think if swing voters were mainly griping about Trump, you wouldn't even need to make ads complaining about the man, they'd vote for dems anyway. So, may as well talk about how Trump hurt the economy, whatever swing voters like about Dems, and whatever they hate about Repubs.
Why do you think itβs politically wise for the Democratic Party to run on a platform it has no hope of achieving anything toward in 2027 and 2028? Even if democrats take control of the House and Senate, they STILL wonβt be able to override vetos or break filibusters. None of your platform is remotely politically feasible for the next two years.
They will be able to investigate and to resist (and thatβs about it), so, IMO, they should campaign on exposing corruption and how awful this administration is. If your point is that they should also signal that theyβre building toward a reconstruction starting in 2029, thatβs totally valid; but running on a platform they have zero hope of implementing for the next two years is a terrible idea.
An interesting and well written essay; however, I do think it shares a common blind spot with many institutional reform arguments I see today. "Democracy", "the Constitution", and "institutions" are looked at mostly as national abstractions. But historically, American self-government needed noot just constitutional guardrails it also on a dense ecosystem of states, municipalities, local parties, civic organizations, universities, professional associations, locally anchored financial systems, and other intermediary institutions that dispersed authority and connected expertise to decision making. There are two ways to limit arbitrary power, constrain the center, or build a society where power is so widely distributed that domination cant happen in the first place. The essay focuses almost entirely on the former while largely overlooking the latter
Iβm dying. You Bulwark guys keep outdoing yourselves. How is it even possible?
Andy / Shiaka, one problem with your description of a parliamentary systemwide change. We still have our God given right to bear arm and we exercise it in massive numbers together with the fact we know how to use said arms and we will never allow the Socialist Democrats to destroy our country. Our President is systematically dealing with a world as it exists not done graduate seminar test case ideal. He and the great people in the administration are daily tearing down the pillars of support for the administrative state that Biden, Obama, and Clinton erected to plant their Socialist agenda. So dream onβ¦.
Shikha!
Call me "Hose." (No, actually please don't.)
Thanks sorry for the spelling error.
I hope you have an armored brougham in which you can be vaporized if/when you try to make your accelerationist fantasies come true. Youβre not an American.
LM ha ha I enjoy the fact that you leftist malcontents has no sense of parodyβ¦.
The administration is not tearing down the administrative state. It's using it to gather riches and authority, in opposition to what it said it would do. Trump is just a giant ego, in most respects, putting his name on landmarks, etc. Congress should be reigning him in.
Hopefully reform of the executive branch extends to trimming in the expansive administrative state.