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I think you might be putting emphasis on the text too much here. Much of my view point expressed here is based on a perspective that all law, even the US Constitution, holds weight to the degree it (or its invocation) is seen as legitimate. Under this view point, even methods allowed in the text of the Constitution may be non-starters simply from its disuse over the years. Just as I would caution against rampant impeachment since it would be seen as a political coup, I would caution against attempts at using Congress to re-build the court system. SCOTUS in my opinion already performed its coup in Marbury, much to Jefferson's distaste, it is the system we have and give legitimacy to. Your method would achieve results in a world where you somehow beat the Republican party at its main strength, Public Relations. Anything else than cultural dominance would result in fractured nation which tends to be harder to rebuild (putting more bricks on a crumbling foundation) than it would be to simply reform with long term goals in mind. If you have an argument on how you can thread that needle can convince enough people that the problem requires dissolution and complete restructuring of an entire branch of government, then I would be more enthusiastic towards your view.
You will notice that we are already living through a crisis of legitimacy and a fractured nation. Put simply, success confers legitimacy. Precisely why, for example, we should not treat it as normal that millions of voters may be disenfranchised at will through bureaucratic hat tricks.
You have to realize that your priority is nuts here. It's like chastising a person trying to flee a collapsing building because that would be somehow disrespectful to its edifice. You're telling me that nothing can be changed, and we more or less must accept any change that radicals impose upon us because challenging them would be illegitimate. Every transformational reform, no matter what the process, the exertion of popular will, or the outcome. It reminds me of the libertarians who detract the legitimacy of every constitutional amendment or major federal legislation in the past 200 years. You're imagining a Kafka-esque world here.
Concretely, making a straightforward reform of the SCOTUS on the order of added justices would gladden Democrats at least as much as it would infuriate Republicans, who already make a plank out of seeking to dominate the courts. Remember that swing voting is at an all-time low of ~5%. That is, IIRC 5% of voters in the 2016 election who voted a major party candidate in the 2012 elections switched parties.
Convincing people takes time, of course. Reforms doesn't happen overnight. Republicans have the advantage in public relations because they have a steely commitment to a narrow agenda, and billions of dollars. The Democrats, especially if they throw off the weight of their financial industry donors, will be forced to adopt their own digestible radical program for the country, relying on grassroots activists and the Internet to transmit it - because the mass media won't. What you should realize is that if Dems don't accomplish this, they won't be able to implement
any reforms, let alone whatever piddling aimless increments you could suggest. The policy and the politics are distinct, and they are co-requisite. Don't ever think it's not an uphill struggle.
The picture you should have in your head of what an effective "legitimate" Democratic Congress run by the left looks like is the New Deal and Reconstruction: 70% of both chambers. That's revolution. Until then, eliminate the filibuster and pass laws. (Pro-tip: You can't gain more power without a track record of success, so abolishing the filibuster is just another prerequisite.)
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We wouldn't even be having this conversation if liberals showed up to vote in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Can't call the current system broken simply because you are losing, any structure you can think of devolving the authority from 9 men and women means nothing if liberals never bother to vote for the men and women who will be picking federal judges when spots open up.
This is a little misguided. Low turnout is itself a testament to a broken system. When you have successful structural attacks on the franchise on top of that, you're seeing the mallet in action. E.g. 2000, 2016. E.g. Democrats, if the current system were frozen, would always need something like 1.1 votes for every Republican vote just to break even in federal representation.
Obviously that should be remedied as soon as possible, there is simply no reason to tolerate it. Bad ideas don't need our obsequiousness, they need obsequies. Logically, massive turnout will then be necessary merely to
begin turn things around, numbers too great to manipulate or suppress; in that sense I agree with you. It's much more difficult than you let on, however, and this is by design.
Apparently the majority of millenials are self-reporting a definite commitment to vote in midterms. We'll see. If 70% of Millenial women are Democratic voters, maybe the future
is female.
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And when by accident, SCOTUS members picked for their conservative nature turned leftward during the Warren Years, we got the Right to Privacy (not mentioned in the Constitution), New York Times v Sullivan, Baker v Carr, Brown v Board of Ed, Miranda, etc.
So no, you are factually wrong when you say never a friend of the Left. The Court has been 95% of the time an enemy (or at least an obstacle) because the left's internal distaste for concentration of power among a select few undermined its resolve to capture said body form the conservatives and left it blind to attacks from the activist Right.
Listen, if you just emptied the court and sat a few dozen Marxist academics on it, I don't doubt that would... lead to changes. The mistake you're making is in how you're setting the goalposts. The Warren Court was a friend of the Left in the way that Mike Gorbachev was a friend of the United States. The Warren Court approved the general Keynesian liberal consensus on civil rights and government intervention. That this was an improvement over previous eras that constricted the humanity of the poor, the disabled, blacks, women, etc. can't be denied. But the way you refer to it makes it sound like they took a hard-left wishlist and went down the items, rather than putting imprimatur on positions that moderate Democrats and Republicans tended to agree on at the time. I'm uninformed on the issue, but I further recall something about (Dem-controlled) state courts paving the way for many of the landmark rulings; given that SCOTUS often takes trends in lower federal and state jurisprudence into account when rendering its decisions...
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There is no reason to believe any of your radical proposals would bring anything except civil strife. At the end of the day, we are all just throwing ideas at the wall to make the inevitable occur sooner rather than later. What I mean by that is that even the Republican agenda, as successful as it has been at keeping the party politically relevant for the near past and future has a demographic wall they will continue to climb until only less than an absolute oligarchical government for the white and wealthy will keep the minorities out. Radical reform is not necessary, when simply holding the line for the next 20-30 years in sufficient.
As an aside, this is same reasoning for why I disagree with those who claim that the 21st is 'China's Century'. Even if they manage to achieve complete parity with the US economically, militarily and politically by mid century they have their own demographic timebomb (and potential economic mismanagement) which is only growing while America's historical proclivity for immigration has suppressed the average age of US citizens.
There are no proposals from any party or movement that will not bring strife my dude, there's no way getting through this (if at all possible) without strife. No pain, no gain. Your problem is that you're too caught up in the carnival of post-historical performative politics, where it's easy to pretend that nothing really matters and no one really gets hurt.
Holding the line is not possible - you haven't been living under a rock the past decade - both because of the Republican efforts and because of political, economic, and ecological changes worldwide. Holding the line is unjustifiable in itself because you are sacrificing the millions who need and could use relief, and could only be swallowed in the absence of alternatives. But begging the Republicans "please don't dissolve Social Security" is not going to save Social Security, universal income is going to save Social Security. Your conservative orientation is equivalent to abandoning the Sudetenland to Hitler because you're scared of "strife" when you're not even Czechoslovakia but
America, and we have power yet to do more. Mobilizing for world war caused a lot of strife...
TLDR: Not only is radical reform good on its own merits, it is necessary in order to maintain what we have.
China doesn't really have a demographic timebomb except in the current international framework of expectations; as a totalitarian society they will adapt to it (the two-child policy being one early example). Indeed, the gross age distribution in China is pretty similar to that in the US right now. If you're making a general reference to absolute population size and popular unrest, sure, that will hamper their hegemony. They'll still control the West Pacific though, and have the economic clout to determine international economic relations and dismantle our alliances and partnerships. The 21st century is no one's century, doesn't mean power will cease to exist on the world stage.
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I think in this day and age, the 'Image' is Reality. I am not sure you want to admit to yourself that the American public as a generalized whole thinks of the world through a center right image, the lasting legacy of using a Hollywood actor to undermine faith in our institutions. Although, the younger generations have increasingly deviated from this as shown in recent events in the Democratic party.
No. American foreign policy is one of the few consensus areas, so describing it as "center-right" is a misnomer. Only the extremes of Left and Right really see America as something other than imperial guardian/bully, see any limitations on American foreign policy ambitions and expectations, force projection, etc. The average Democrat really does only differ on the details with the average Republican when it comes to this. (Though given typical Republican voter pluralities or even majorities in favor of Dem or progressive policy proposals, the likely underlying factor is shared trans-partisan approval of fiscal activism. Everyone loves big government, and what's bigger than the military-security-industrial complex?)
But do harp on one subject: Left foreign policy. Foreign policy and its alternatives remains one of the most underdeveloped planks of the radical Left's platform. As of now (besides various clever quasi-scholarly thinkers and writers), it kind of boils down to an understanding that "Imperialism le bad, mmkay?"This underdevelopment has to change. In sketch, a coherent strategic orientation for a Left-run America ought to involve both the rationing of violent coercion and a fundamental change in understanding of what American hegemony is supposed to be for/accomplishing (possibly repurposed to mobilize and collectivize the world against humanitarian and climate ordeals). And this has to be intelligibly, accurately, and convincingly presented to the American people, to the 1%, to the intelligentsia... something corporate mass media is utterly incapable of in any respect. Foreign policy is really the endgame for any sociopolitical revolution, because 'united we stand, divided we fall', and without a new global comity the best we can do is get universal healthcare fully operational just in time for mass resettlement of millions of displaced Americans, while millions more Latin American refugees crowd the south bank of the Rio Grande. A topic for another time.
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Are you suggesting that there was no strategy behind the Missouri Compromise? Thinking of politics as nothing more than a clash of convictions until exhaustion seems silly to me. Maybe that's why Stellaris is frustrating me...
No and no? You were suggesting that these compromises formed a worthy and effective conscious strategy of "containment" of slavery until it could be dealt with comprehensively. That wasn't the design, and effectiveness is a matter of your selected reference point. Antebellum compromises were effective only in a very narrow sense of hotfixing the union together. Could something different have been done? Avoiding the question of metaphysics, only if you believe in great men who can pop in and clean shit up somehow independent of the mass of humanity. Maybe we thought this way fantasizing about how we would have led the empires of the ancient world relying on modern knowledge. But this doesn't make a historical event good or optimal, just extant. It certainly doesn't invite complacency in the present. All the years of the distant past don't count even as a second in our experience. In the present work is ongoing, the difference between physically building a house and clicking LMB a few times to build house.
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The climate of the South hasn't changed since 1860, are we determined to have another Civil War between the egalitarians and elitists?
If there's a genuine civil war it will look like the Thirty Years War, and all of us will have already lost. However, it is unavoidable that Republican electorate, the Republican political class, and the brownshirt militias have to be overcome somehow. Here's my vision of 'bounded coercion'.
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I am just not convinced of this sentiment. If the population always supported New Deal Liberalism, then why did Ronald "Government is the Problem" win the biggest landsides since FDR? Why has enrollment in Labor Unions continued to decline? Why do 40-49% of Americans consistently vote for a party whose main tenant is "small government"? The Left thinks they have won the culture wars, when they have only really won a handful of battles on shaky ground.
Why uncritically accept the establishment Republican concept of American history and society? Below are some significant, though not exhaustive, factors:
1. Because the Democratic Party embraced civil rights, the black vote, (Johnson) and austerity fiscal policy (Carter), whereas the Republicans embraced making white people and business elites feel good about themselves and America. Republican voters were never for "small government", and neither were Republican politicians if you look at their policies and statements. What the new Republicans resented was the inclusion of women and minorities in the social welfare scheme. You don't understand American politics if you don't understand that almost everyone but a few ideologues and academics wants muscular government on "their" behalf.
2. Why did the strongest labor unions, in heavy manufacturing, crumble first, beginning in the 1970s? Big business saw their angle as women and blacks began to unionize en masse, and systematically degraded the power and prestige of unions through propaganda and lobbying.
3. See above. See your comment about public relations. See my comments about Republican vanguardization and the cultivation of reactionary social mores among the Southern and Evangelical Christian populations.
As the Democratic electorate has disengaged from the party, lost turnout has translated into lost votes. It's not far-fetched to believe that the Democrats need a cultural stimulus, partly in the form of sound transformative policy and appropriate messaging around it, to increase their votes.
The plain fact of the matter is that most people in lower-income brackets consistently vote Democratic when they do vote. Economically anxious voters tended to vote Clinton, while economically-secure but racially/culturally-anxious voters tended to vote Trump.
Even if most lower-income Republicans supported Medicare for All in principle, even if they came to do so in numbers similar to their Democratic peers , you simply could not "win over" many of them because of their prior assumptions and cultural commitments. Because to get this Medicare guff they would need to abandon the
cohesive and comprehensive platform and worldview offered by the Republicans.
A radical agenda and more participatory politics are exactly how the Left can win the culture wars, and - to hammer home my thesis - likely the only way.
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No, that dude is literally batshit crazy and all he has done so far is perpetuate mental illness among the youth and destabilize systems he does not have the clout to control or replace.
If it wasn't for his brief stint in the White House, he would be no different than any of the Yellow Journalists of the late 19th.
ACIN, didn't you read or listen to that stuff? Don't miss the Republican forest for the Bannon tree. This is
in practice the Republican theory of political power. Bannon and the average Senate Republican are about as far apart ideologically as Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.
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This is not going to be the panacea the left is deluding itself into believing. Once the liberals shit the bed and let the next Republican replace Kagan/RBG/Sotomayor with some shill because it's "fair" we will all be crying about it like it wasn't our own fault.
Voting consistently is a more effective method towards shifting SCOTUS into something that liberals want.
You need both. If you don't do the latter, the former is weakened and its impact subject to a higher threshold.
If you think the costs of slightly accelerated Republican escalation are greater than the costs of current and ongoing Republican escalation and greater still than the benefits for the Democrats, I'm afraid you just haven't done a proper cost-benefit analysis. The Republicans maintain the filibuster only because it stays in their favor, just like with the SCOTUS nomination filibuster (until it didn't).
The tax overhaul succeeded irrespective of the filibuster. The filibuster is not what stopped the ACA repeal. The potential good the Democrats can do unfettered far outweighs the pre-licensed bad of the Republicans, and moreover the voters will have the proof in the pudding.
All mainstream Democrats like you AFAIK support maintaining the filibuster. If this keeps up, the Republicans will just do away with it on their own as soon as they see an advantage, and those Democrats won't even have the good grace to spin their heads in chagrin.
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We can't have an entire government run on feels. Congress is already where human consequences are discussed and emotions run hot, let the legal profession keep its rituals and detached nature.
See, that's just my point that you've avoided. They're not detached but they
feel detached, so you prioritize maintaining the feeling. Rituals have to serve some
purpose and function. If you're defending rituals for the sake of rituals, you're defending a useless performativity because you're impressed by the show. But on the other hand, you can't devote yourself to some abstract function either, or you become like Jordan Peterson advocating a quasi-Christian resacralization of the social order because even fake religion will allegedly motivate the kind of social relations he prefers to see.
Remember that political philosophy is ultimately another extension of thinking about the Good. If the fruits aren't good, don't fret over the feel of this or that branch, plant another tree. Or grow the fruits hydroponically in vertically-stacked layers, idk.
