President Biden has called on voters to defend democracy by repudiating Donald Trump and his anti-democratic agenda. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. We can’t just defend democracy; we have to advance it.
Let’s face facts: Defending Democracy in America today is like defending a house that has no roof. Yes, we have to stop the guy who wants to smash the walls, but the job can’t end there. Our politics is dominated by paralysis, polemics and polarization, much of it self-manufactured and self-inflicted. Legislatures irrespective of party engage in political gerrymandering. The electoral system functions for the benefit of incumbents, candidates, parties—everyone but voters. Dark money dominates campaigns. You would be hard pressed to find an adult in this country who does not believe that there is a set of rules for the privileged, and a set for everybody else. Worst of all, too many political insiders across the board accept all this as normal.
In 2016, a political outsider ran for president, promising to drain the swamp. He ended up winning, defeating along the way first the entire Republican establishment and then the personification of the Democratic establishment. The fact that Donald Trump then only deepened the swamp shouldn’t obscure the fact that a large portion of the electorate wanted that outcome. Nor should his myriad faults blind us to the disdain with which many voters hold politics as usual.
Trump offered to Make America Great Again. In 2024, we have to promise to Make America a Democracy Again, a vision less grandiose but fundamentally more important to our national sense of self. Our Constitution may have been the work of geniuses, but it’s 236 years old. It’s the product of a world that has been superseded, the fruit of compromises between interests that no longer exist. Far too often the Constitution has come to offer not rules that allow self-government, but to obstruct it.
To change this, Democrats need to take a page from the GOP’s playbook.
In 1994, nearly every Republican candidate for Congress pledged to support a set of eight reforms called the Contract for America. The reforms affected the internal function of the House, not policy, but the specifics were less important than the approach. The Contract gave the Republicans an identity and a cause that carried them to majorities in both houses of Congress.
This year, the Democrats should offer the voters an identity and a cause. They should propose a Contract with Democracy, an agenda designed to bring our democracy up to date. Among the promises:
- Amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College. We say that voters choose the president, but that’s not true. Candidates may get more votes, but if they get them in the wrong places, someone with fewer votes wins. It’s absurd, and in the 2020 election, it offered an invitation to mischief. Get rid of it.
- Eliminate dark money in politics. Nothing distorts the political process more than wealthy people spending unlimited amounts of money to push their personal agendas—and what’s more, to make those donations in secret. But still be tax-deductible! Great wealth conveys great advantages. Distorting the political system shouldn’t be one of them.
- Amend the Constitution to prohibit political gerrymandering. Conventional wisdom says we are a divided country. That’s not really true. Studies have shown there is substantial agreement on issues and approaches. It’s Congress that is polarized, the result of politically drawn districts that reward extremism and disincentivize bipartisanship. Voters win when candidates and parties compete for their votes; voters lose when the fix is in.
- Establish term limits for Supreme Court justices. Today Supreme Court appointments are a winner-take-all bingo game. Barack Obama made two appointments, while Ronald Reagan made four. Jimmy Carter made no appointments, while Donald Trump made three. The power to arbitrate our fundamental rights shouldn’t depend on when in the election cycle an octogenarian justice gives up the ghost. Judicial terms of a lengthy but predictable duration (say, 18 years) should preserve the Court’s independence while maintaining a connection to the will of the people.
- Pass an Equal Rights Amendment. If we believe we are all equal, let’s say so directly, and pass an amendment prohibiting discrimination based on a person’s ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.
- Pass the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act. A commitment to democracy entails a commitment to free and fair elections. Suppressing participation and nullifying outcomes cannot be tolerated.
Some of these reforms may take years to enact. It doesn’t matter. Lincoln faced his crisis calling for a New Birth of Freedom. FDR confronted his with a New Deal. To end the crisis posed by Trump, Biden has to offer America a New Democracy.