We Americans talk a lot about democracy. Those conversations multiplied during this year’s election cycle, when it became obvious that democracy was under attack by a MAGA base that preferred Trump’s promised autocracy. That said, those conversations rarely focus on the Founders’ approach to democratic governance, and the constitutional mechanisms they employed as a result of their concerns.
It is a truism that the Founders weren’t fans of what they called “the passions of the majority.” In addition to limiting the right to vote to those they trusted with that power–White guys with property–they crafted a system that limited the operation of democratic decision-making; the Bill of Rights was a list of things that government was forbidden to do even when a majority of voters wanted government to do them. The limitations were founded on that libertarian premise I frequently cite, a belief that government action is legitimate when necessary to prevent citizen A from harming the person or property of citizen B, but not when government is trying to restrict an individual”s personal liberties, the choices that–in Jefferson’s famous words–neither pick a neighbor’s pocket nor break his leg.
The Founders’ decision to restrict the areas that were remitted to democratic decision-making is why many people who don’t really understand that basic framework often claim that America wasn’t intended to be a democracy, but a republic. To be accurate, our system is a democratic republic, in which we elect representatives who are supposed to respond to the democratic will of the people when legislating in the large number of policy areas where majority rule is appropriate.
Those of us who have been sounding the alarm over America’s retreat from democracy have pointed to the growing lack of proper representation–and the numerous systemic flaws that have separated government’s performance from the expressed will of its citizens. Thanks to pervasive gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the filibuster, and the composition of the U.S. Senate, among other undemocratic systemic mechanisms, elected officials have increasingly felt free to ignore even clear expressions of popular sentiment.
That retreat from representative democracy isn’t simply a federal phenomenon; it occurs with regularity at the state level. Two recent examples may illustrate the point.
Example one: In the wake of the Dobbs decision, several state legislatures imposed draconian bans on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. Polling clearly showed that–in most of those states–large majorities of voters opposed those bans, and subsequently, in states where the electorate had the opportunity to oppose the bans through referenda (a democratic mechanism not available in my state), they overturned them.
Example two: Right-wing ideologues have waged consistent war against public schools. In a number of states, legislatures send tax dollars to private schools–predominantly religious schools–through voucher programs. I have posted numerous times about the negative effects of those programs: their failure to improve educational outcomes, their disproportionate use by upper-middle-class families, and the degree to which they deprive public schools of critically-needed resources.
When citizens of a state are able to vote on those programs, they lose.
In ballot initiatives, voters delivered a stunning rebuke to school vouchers, which siphon scarce and critical funding from public schools—which serve 90 percent of students—and redirect it to private institutions with no accountability.
Although the outcome of the 2024 election may test the resolve of the most committed and determined public education advocate, educators and their allies can find strength and inspiration in what happened in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kentucky. In those states, support for public schools was put on the ballot and won a resounding victory.
As the NEA President noted,
“Voters rejected diverting public school funding to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools, just like they have done every time vouchers have been on the ballot. The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form.”
Thanks to the distortions in our electoral systems, voters in the United States have been steadily losing the right to democratically direct their governments. The 2024 election was different only because the further threat to democratic decision-making was so transparent. The truth is that, thanks to the operation of the cited anti-democratic mechanisms (aided and abetted by low levels of civic literacy and engagement and funded by the plutocrats), the voice of the people has become more and more irrelevant.
The cranks and ideologues have used those poorly-understood mechanisms to attain and retain public office, and they no longer feel constrained by the demonstrable wishes of even large majorities.
If and when the resistance manages to overcome MAGA, that will only be a beginning. We haven’t had majority rule–aka democracy– for quite some time.
“We haven’t had majority rule–aka democracy– for quite some time.” And here we are. Not mentioned was the codification of corruption by the corrupt SCOTUS when they found for Citizens United to legalize bribery through anonymous contributions to political candidates.
SCOTUS is now totally in the pocket of right-wing ideologues because they’ve been right-wing ideologues their entire careers. They appointed by the Bush doofusses and Trump the felon. What else would we expect.
Vote Republican and watch your democracy die. Vote Republican and watch your civil rights go up the spout. Vote Republican and watch your economy collapse. Well done voters.
Many thinkers in the field of organizing collective efforts identify management and leadership as seperate skills.
Management is invested in making bureaucratic hierarchical organizatios efficient and leadership in creating and directing purposeful culture well suited to the times.
The Constitution and the law brilliantly designs government that favors no one and protects anyone from everyone but not from everything.
Within our borders the responsibility to enforce that protection is largely vested in a combination of executive agencies from every level of government and outside our borders by our State Department and military.
We owe our historically best level of safety and comfort to that organization and the laws they enforce.
It was that kind of thinking that led the founders of the US to design three co-equal branches of government: the Legislative, Executive and Judicial.
The same functions are necessary to address every collective human effort but governments are designed to be very long-lasting compared to families, corporations and institutions and therefore to adapt to a wider range ever evolving times.
MAGA government is not skilled at management because it prefers chaos, nor is it particularly skilled at bringing about a culture better suited for the near future which requires agility and resilience to keep up with the pace of change.
What it is skilled at rewarding is a particular sub-culture based on redistributing power and wealth to increasingly fewer people, making more and more extreme a tendency that the US is traditionally very strong at anyway.
This has been clear to those who have been engaged in civic discourse for some time. We need an action plan. How do we move that third of the country who have either given up or who never cared in the first place?
First, it seems we need to identify them. Second, we need to ask why they don’t vote. Only after we know who and why can we address their issues.
I know in the last election many progressives stayed home, because they were unhappy with the Dems’ position in the Middle East and they weren’t wrong about the issue. What they failed to do was consider the outcome of a tRump Presidency. I imagine that Orange Jesus is salivating over the prospect of his name on hotels on the Gaza Shore. Maybe he can use a part of the two billion his son-in-law scammed from the Saudis to create a little slice of paradise on that piece of Palestine? They will probably not make that mistake again.
So that brings me back to those who just don’t vote, regardless of the issues. A couple of days ago I proposed making voting mandatory, like the Australians do. It might be worth a try.
“Thanks to pervasive gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the filibuster, and the composition of the U.S. Senate…’ – those barriers to a fair and effective governance are the bane of our existence, so to speak. Depressing to contemplate, but reversing or even tampering with any of those negative pieces of political life in the US would be virtually impossible, given the rules for change any of them require. Gerrymandering has been successfully challenged but is constantly being utilized by nearly all voting entities and thus hard to keep up with, and the filibuster rule has been overturned only to be reversed when politically expedient. Eliminating the Electoral College would require a Constitutional amendment – two thirds of both houses of Congress or of all state legislatures must first propose it, then three fourths of all states must ratify it – and the Senate can actually change its makeup from within (abolishment would, I assume, come with the same requirements of abolishment of the Electoral College) including the rules for the filibuster as well as cloture, to make it more representative of population considerations. Meanwhile, we should immediately start the whole process by eliminating both the filibuster and gerrymandering. That would go a long way toward a more democratic America.
Peggy,
Agree completely with your idea. Mandatory voting is also the law in Ecuador. Gosh. Imagine insisting that democracy should work.
“Thanks to the distortions in our electoral systems, voters in the United States have been steadily losing the right to democratically direct their governments.”
There also appears to be the assumption that with our loss of the right to democratically direct our governments that we have joined the criminal mind bent of those coming to full power due to this recent election. I have received, for reasons totally unknown to me, two unsolicited E-mails; “Insider Stock Trading” and “Profit Making Journal” as if I were of the New York Stock Market income level. Both appeared to be offering information along the lines of Trump and his ilk who would bilk the honest stock market traders…if there are any honest stock market traders in evidence in this current economy. The Stock Market reports are not “The Voice Of The People” but are pointed to as being the actual economic situation of the majority of average working Americans in America today. The economy of the retired citizens isn’t even a consideration when the economy is the issue. The economy today will not be the economy of those working and those buying merchandise and services Americans once Trump’s tariffs hit the market. We are losing the “right to live within our means” which I have never seen listed as one of our civil or human rights.
As Pete said, “What it is skilled at rewarding is a particular sub-culture based on redistributing power and wealth to increasingly fewer people,…”
Sorry, Peggy, “mandatory voting” would never get past all the right-wing state AGs and SCOTUS. The oligarchy would never allow it. They count on people voting against their self-interests and not voting at all.
And Pete, you forgot about the fourth branch of government, a free press. The oligarchy and higher education have completely neutered journalism. Colleges teach story-telling through multiple mediums and public relations (propaganda).
If we are a democracy, why in the world would voters allow at-will states? Have workers been taught to hate unions and themselves? What worker would support working in a state where the oligarchs can fire you for any reason they want? Every state but Montana is now at-will. How did that happen?
The Founders (rich white male oligarchs with slaves) created an oligarchy that prohibited the majority of the people from taking action against the oligarchy. It wasn’t meant to put power in the people’s hands. It was designed to keep the power concentrated in the oligarchy.
While Vernon blames Republican greed, the truth is that the Democratic Party is also a captured entity of oligarchic greed. The DP avoids economic issues because they would harm or restrict the profits or power of the oligarchy. The DP is fully invested in social issues or identity politics, which has been a fatal mistake. This capture should make us urgently rethink our political landscape. They could attract more voters by being anti-war, but that’s not the case.
As long as Americans are stuck in the two-party duopoly, we are screwed. There is no anti-oligarchy political party except maybe the Green Party, which nobody will support because they don’t have a chance of winning against the other two parties. The media supports this thinking. As long as Americans think we have to vote for two parties, we’re screwed, and the oligarchy knows it. Do you really think they care if Trump won the top job? 😉
The proper term is Fascism, and we’re going to see a full-on press by the Fascists.
Todd. A free press is not a fourth branch of government. That’s what is meant by its being free. And the U.S. still has free press outlets. You are proof of that. If you lived in Russia and criticized that government the way you criticize ours, you would be silenced as Navalny was. As many other Putin critics have been.
The enemies of democracy and freedom want to totally destroy our belief that our government can work. Your criticisms of it, combined with your failure to offer any practical steps toward correcting our problems, supports their aims. Based on your posts here, I think you would be gratified to see the U.S. collapse just so you could say “I told you so.”