What are the necessary steps to save American democracy if a pro-democracy coalition is in control of our government? This is just about saving our democracy, so we aren’t talking about reversing the MAHA (the H isn’t a typo) agenda in and of itself. Reversing the anti-Enlightenment mentality behind it is IMO necessary. Some kind of massive reform to how Congress operates such as eliminating the filibuster, and better aligning a presidential system’s structure with a politics that has the party discipline of a parliamentary system is necessary; granting statehood to Puerto Rico and DC is not. I’m not saying statehood isn’t a good idea, I’m saying it’s not a necessary part of stopping the next fascist wannabe. (As I’m writing this list I realized a lot of people might react, but if we do these things, that just gives the fascists permission to do it to. My response is, they’ll do it anyway so who cares. Plus, the intent of this list is to make it vastly more difficult, and preferably impossible, for this shit to happen again, at least for the foreseeable future.) (Also as I’m writing this list, I’m realizing that many of these things have the important but tangential benefit of ENcouraging those who favor democracy and DIScouraging fascists. Courage is an important part of any warfare, and if we are going to avoid literal, fighting warfare, we need to prosecute the war for democracy with every tool we have.) 1. An unrelenting criminal investigation into everything related to this administration. I would go so far as to create a new section in DOJ. If a bunch of lawyers’ jobs depend on them continuing to find criminality, they’re going to be like the Energizer bunny. They’ll keep going and going and going…. Trump and Miller and Noem and dozens of others should be imprisoned. 2. Destroy Elon Musk. Destroy his wealth and if/when any criminality is found, destroy his freedom. He’s the most visible Trump supporter, so destroying him is a necessary warning sign to any centibillionaires who might in a few years’ time consider backing another fascist. End all of his deals with the government. Finally, AIUI he committed immigration fraud back in the 1990s. If it’s legal to take his citizenship away from him, do it. 3. Abolish ICE. For one thing, it’s a fascist paramilitary force. For another, again, it’s a warning for the future. Making 10s of thousands of fascist thugs unemployed with the stroke of a pen shows what will happen to fascist collaborators in the future. 4. Un-do all of the various corrupt mergers happening under this administration. Show the money people that any gain from aligning with fascists can be undone. Also, many of those mergers have involved news media. A misinformed citizenry is dangerous. 5. Extreme Supreme Court reform. And if the Supremes try to stop it, go Andrew Jackson on them. The federal court system literally has no independent power. It can’t take your money, and it can’t take your freedom, because they don’t control anyone carrying guns. Yet right now it acts as a super legislature. 6. As I mentioned at the outset, extreme Congressional reform. The Senate is supposed to be a saucer that cools the tea (some cliche like that.). It’s had a chance to do that now for almost a decade and it has failed. Part of that reform probably is putting in a bunch of rules that give the 99% of congressmen who aren’t the Speaker and the Majority leader power. Allow them to buck party leadership and build cross party coalitions. 7. Something has to be done about how the modern economy allows individuals to amass what I’ll call transnational wealth, the kind of wealth that makes it extremely hard, if not impossible, for any government to control them. This will likely require massive international cooperation so that someplace like Luxembourg or the Caymans can’t opt out. Create a system whereby the Caymans are faced with an offer they can’t refuse. 8. Reduce the financialization of our economy. Far too much American talent is diverted into gaming the financial system instead of innovating in fields that make America and Americans wealthier and healthier and happier. And as more and more wealth is diverted to the financial industry, it becomes more and more powerful and harder to rein in, so this might be a “do it now or it will be too late” item on the to-do list. 9. A massive overhaul of how we do elections. Break the conservative/Republican ideal that preventing one illegal vote is worth preventing 1000 legal votes. Require states to have non partisan redistricting, or cut them off from highway funds, disaster relief, etc. Make those states an offer they can’t refuse. 10. The pardon power has always been the loaded gun on the wall of a Chekhov play. Trump has fired that weapon. It’s the ultimate tool for fascists, because quite literally, Trump could hire a hitman to kill Jerome Powell and then pardon everyone. Whether it needs to be completely eliminated, or bureaucratized like in most states where someone wanting a pardon has to get past some committee before getting to the president, I don’t know. 10 was good enough for God and Moses and the Bill of Rights, so I’ll stop here. Looking forward to thoughtful additions to this list.
Items 2, 4, 7 and 8 are all directly related to the Citizens United decision and the rest are indirectly related. We have the government the sociopathic billionaires and their petit bourgeois desire.
The Second Amendment has shown itself to be only useful to the oppressors - none of these gun people have risen up to fight the actual tyranny that is taking place in our country right now, only the imaginary tyranny in their heads caused by the Civil Rights Act or when a woman or a person of color isn't sufficiently deferential to them. We should get rid of it and start grabbing guns. (Easier said than done.)
Go back to how media was in the past, more local, without individuals being able to buy up major media networks. In the old days wasn't it along the lines of one person/company could not own more than 6 tv or radio stations?
Without gerrymandering reform, adding seats is the opposite of what we need because it will give fascists more opportunities to use the biased judiciary to rig the final results. Adding 2 Democratic senators and 1 Democratic representative isnt going to do anything to prevent Donald Junior wining in 2032 nor will it do anything to slow him down in his attempts to perfect his father’s fascism. Unless your proposal is to give DC 200 electoral votes and 50 senators and 150 representatives? That would help.
Good points overall. As an aside, nothing infuriates me more than to hear elected Dems wishy-washy comments about ICE. The latest no later than yesterday was Cory Booker talking about the need to have ICE retrained..WHAT THE ******** DUDE....The only response is ABOLISH ICE.
Civics education that's worth a hard fart and fines (Australia I believe does 20 bucks) for failing to vote. We the People are now absentee landlords and the tenants are field-dressing deer in the living room.
You might recall that gun sales surged when Barack Hussein took office. One of my favorite memes now that ICE is a rogue Trumpy police force
I’m going to add #11. We need to do the inverse of what Trump has done with, for example, the presidential portraits. We need to turn the federal government into an antifascist propaganda organ. Change historical markers, order history museums to tell the antifascist story, etc.
My big brain idea is this. Obviously this is pie in the sky and would lack public support. I'm musing here. Let's redo the House and the Senate from a sheer it makes more sense to flatten power in Congress. The more mouths the harder it is to bribe people. I think the ten most populous states should each be given an additional senator. That one will never happen, but my plan for the house makes a lot more sense. I think that every 100,000 people in this country should have someone in the House of Representatives representing them. And I think instead of them going to Washington DC, with today's technology they should be required to mostly stay at home in their districts, with let's say a meeting in DC once every two months to hammer things out. This would 1) make it much more affordable for anyone to run for Congress 2) make Representatives much more accessible to the people that they represent, 3) make it much harder for pork projects to get placed into bills as there are just so many mouths to feed 4) would encourage representatives to work together, and 5) create more opportunities for good leaders to grab spotlights and give us more potential senate options. Now such a move would increase the power of the Senate to which I propose the following. Two term limit for Senators and a four term limit for members of the House. That way you get a maximum of 20 years for public service. Anyone found guilty of using their position to enrich themselves? Criminal penalties. Jail time.
If we're talking about changing the Senate, why not just get rid of it? There's no reason why a small number of people who live within one set of arbitrary lines in the map should have the same say as a larger number of people who live within a different set of arbitrary lines on the map. The entire idea of a bicameral legislature comes from the UK parliament which has one representative body, and a body which literally represents the aristocracy. But the House of Lords doesn't have nearly as much power as the US Senate does. Other countries that have a Senate equivalent also don't give it as much power as the US Senate - the Canadian and Australian Senates are deliberately non-representative but they don't approve justices or anything like that. "But the States need equal representation somewhere!" Why? What is a state, other than a set of lines on a map and an administrative subdivision of the country? The people in the states vote for House members, and they have a governor and a state legislature to take care of their state specific needs. Maybe the Senate served a purpose in the past but things change.
There is one thing you need to consider when proposing pie-in-the-sky scenarios: United States is a country held together by its Constitution to an extent that no other country is. A country like France or Germany can get an entirely new Constitution and still be France and Germany. United States cannot. United States was deliberately formed as a federal entity composed of smaller sovereign entities. You cannot get rid of the Senate without a new Constitutional Convention - and some of the states who joined under the old rules might not wish to join under the new ones. Unless you are contemplating the use of force, that would basically mean dissolving the Unites States and starting anew with another polity in its place. Which might not have the same borders, by the way. There is no appetite in the United States for such radical changes. This is why the talk about a military coup in the other thread was pointless. It is true that, as some pointed out, we cannot rely on the officer corps to save us. However, assuming that, by some absurd scenario, the Armed Forces decided to take matter into their hands and arrest Trump... how much do you want to bet that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries would come out to condemn the action and say "rule of law must prevail, the Armed Forces overstepped, etc"?
Counterpoint--the whole thing is about to fall apart anyway. Why NOT start thinking about how we might put it back together again?
"Mr. Franklin - what kind of government do we have?" "A racist Constitutional republic. And you have to keep it" "Oh, OK. I'm fine with that"
Well, yes, but: 1. We need to have a clear understanding what these proposals might actually entail and be clear eyed that they might mean, quite literally, dissolving the country. 2. Superdave referred to "a pro-democracy coalition is in control of our government", so I assumed he had in mind a decisive Democrat victory in 2026 and 2028. That is not enough. If such a victory occurs, there is going to be a lot of politicians who would jump over each other in order to return to the status-quo pre-2016 - and a sizeable segment of voters - the usual centrists - who would push in the same direction. You are not going to get enough support for some of these measures unless the situation degenerates to the point of a civil war.
A senate where the biggest state has 100 times as many people as the smallest state is incredibly anti-democratic. But you’re never getting the turkeys to vote for thanksgiving. The only way that might fly is if somehow the House uses the power of the purse to coerce all of the small states.
Any new laws that restrict presidential power should take effect January 20, 2033. No more unilateral disarmament.
I'm a Southerner. I'm also bright enough to realize that my state doesn't need any more influence over the rest of the country than it already has. In factm it needs a great seal less. The same can be said for the states around me.