Assume the best. Assume that at the first time of asking, in 2029, we will swear in a Congress with 220 loyal Democrats in the House and 50 loyal Democrats in the Senate, accompanied by a Democratic President and Vice President. What needs to pass on day one, before the balls and the parties, what needs to be ready for the new President’s signature at 12:01 PM before he walks off the stage?
Pace Josh Marshall, I was there already:
1) End the filibuster for good in the Senate and establish rules that except as specified in the Constitution, no vote in Congress shall require a supermajority.
2) Expand the Supreme Court. Minimum of 19, but maybe as much as 27 – a chief justice and two for each circuit. Then randomize the selection of jurisdictions, outlaw venue shopping, do whatever can be done to limit the ability to leverage the courts for partisan advantage.
3) Lift the debt ceiling and establish automatic current-baseline budgeting so that government shutdowns are no longer possible.
4) Expand the House, ideally by around an order of magnitude, ensuring that no member has more than 100,000 constituents. This also diminishes the power of any one individual member, brings them closer to the voters, and makes it more difficult for lobbyists who now have ten times as many people to snow. It incidentally puts a boot in the ass of the Electoral College, effectively reducing the Senate advantage to .2 EV per state – if you really want to solve things, mandate independently-drawn districts for any and all state elections to federal office.
5) Term-limit committee chairs, to disincentivize clinging to office endlessly.
Not one of these proposals of these require a Constitutional amendment. None of them requires a 2/3 majority, and none of them are subject to Supreme Court review as they are all based around internal organization of Congress or matters that are decided by Congress. If they had all been implemented in 2010, as they should have been, we would probably have been spared the last decade of nightmares and gotten a real public-option health care solution.
The only issue going forward is the agenda above: to restore separation of powers, abolish the unitary executive and defang a Supreme Court that provides air cover to a lawless dictator. Nothing else – not the rights of our trans siblings, not saving the planet from the ravages of humankind, not breaking the billionaire oligarchy – not one a damn thing is possible until points one, two and three are accomplished. It has to be done if we are going to continue to have democratic government in this country.
And there is a thirst for it. The Democratic Party ran the table in every race of interest a week ago. All the way down, Republican offices for decades were turned over to Democrats by an electorate that had simply had enough. And not in Democratic strongholds, either – after all, there would be no Republican to upset if these were permanently safe seats. The fact that the Senate leadership was unwilling and unable to follow the election returns does not obviate the fact that if Democrats were to win every state in 2028 where Trump’s approval rating is a net negative-6 or worse, they would walk away with over 450 electoral votes and the kind of decisive victory that is required to break the back of MAGAism.
That is the big issue. That is the only issue. Everything that is going wrong – the economy battered with tariffs, our international standing in tatters everywhere but in public in Saudi Arabia (they’re laughing up their burnooses in private, bet), uniformed and unmarked thugs alike snatching citizens off the street for their skin color – every bit of it is happening because Republicans are in charge, and none of it would be happening with Democrats in charge. Because it didn’t. The only issue remaining in American politics is whether you want the dictatorship of the stupid, the senile, the racist and the rich, or whether you want to repair American democracy.
And the campaign has already begun.