Minority Rule Isn't Cool
The US Democracy Isn’t Working For The Majority
Democracy is supposed to generally serve and represent the large majority of voters.
US voters have gotten cynical, frustrated, angry, and disengaged, partly because the majority of Americans aren’t getting what they want out of our government.
People worked hard to elect a majority in 2020; that majority hasn’t gotten much done. Voters don’t see where they have power when what the majority wants gets blocked over and over… for years.
Americans aren’t getting what they want because of how much power the minority Republican party has; even when Republicans don’t win the popular vote.
This is covered more in the 5 Risks We Face post under “Risk 1: The US Democracy Is At Risk;” and “Risk 4: Faith In Democracy & The Social Contract Is Diminishing.”
Unfortunately, some of that minority power is by constitutional design. This democracy was structured to give extra power to wealthy rural men; to supposedly guard against the “whims” of a more urban majority. The Electoral College and the US Senate are both structures that heavily favor rural areas.
The minority party lost the popular vote but won the presidency due to the Electoral College twice since 2000; leading to George W. Bush and Donald Trump becoming president.
Those two presidents have installed enough far-right Supreme Court justices to erase legal precedent and remove rights most Americans want and have had for decades.
The current Supreme Court composition solidifies for decades the power of minority-party presidents who lost the popular vote.
The US Senate gives huge power equally to every state, thus giving low-population states incredible power versus highly populated urban areas. An outdated Senate rule (i.e., not in the Constitution) called the “filibuster” was also designed to help protect rural, wealthy landowners. It doesn’t allow much to pass the Senate without a supermajority of 60 votes; instead of a simple majority of 51. Even though the Democratic Party now technically has the Senate majority (50 votes + the VP tie-breaker); the filibuster plus two tricky Senators mean that Senate Democrats can’t get much passed.
The Republican party has trouble winning the popular vote overall because they’re in a shrinking demographic, and because they keep blocking the things most Americans want. The Democratic Party that represents the full, diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-racial make-up of this country keeps trying to get things done to help most Americans.
Our elected government has been ignoring what the majority of its people want for years:
The majority of Americans don’t want women to lose the right to control their own bodies.
The majority of Americans want people to be able to have relationships and marriages with whoever they love.
The majority of Americans don’t want to risk massive debt every time they get sick.
The majority of Americans want separation of church and state.
The majority of Americans want the wealthy and corporations to pay more in taxes.
The majority of Americans want a reality- and risk-based immigration system transformation.
The majority of Americans don’t want children to pay the price of super easy firearms access by having to hide under tables to stay alive when a gunman shows up at school.
The majority of Americans want to be able to get groceries, to go to church, to go to a concert, or even go to a protest and not need to be on the lookout for a mass shooter.
The majority of Americans shouldn’t need to know how to stop hemorrhaging in the case of a mass shooter because the minority party blocks gun safety/responsibility progress.
The majority of Americans want safety and health regulations and laws – and public health.
The majority of Americans want government to help make the climate crisis less bad.
The majority of Americans want the government to help us all have cleaner water and air.
The majority of Americans want real, significant investment in communities, economic development, infrastructure, and education.
The majority of Americans want kids to learn about diversity, history, and science so that we can learn from it, so that we can evolve, and so that we can be competitive in the world.
The majority of Americans want the right to vote, voter protections, and functional elections.
The majority of Americans want freedom and civil rights protections.
The US Democracy Is At Risk
If Republicans win the US Congress plus state legislatures in 2022; they have made it clear they will change election laws to give their party more power to administer elections, suppress votes from more diverse “urban” areas especially in swing states, throw out votes from certain voters, and certify elections in ways that undermine the institutions and that help their party “win” future elections. Elections and voting are at the critical core of democracy – if the institutions fall or are corrupted; democracy dies, and corruption keeps people in power.
Explaining what could happen if the US democracy fails and how it could fail are keys to helping voters understand what’s at stake in the 2022 election.
Voters need to understand what they could lose.
This post is also on the Shift the Country website page Dysfunctional Democracy: What Happens If It Fails? The second half of that page was covered in yesterday’s Substack post on What Happens If US Democracy Fails?
Another website page covers 5 The Risks We Face in the US.
What Can We Do About It?
Shift the Country is a new nonprofit to help us shift this country toward a more true democracy, where the majority has the power to govern more effectively to serve the majority of Americans. That’s what democracy is supposed to do, after all.
We can get to that if we can energize an overwhelming majority of voters to vote in 2022 to help give the majority party a larger majority in Congress to help overturn old-school status-quo-protecting minoritarian provisions like the Senate filibuster.
That majority party can also put other measures in place that protect the democracy - like election protections and voter protections.
A majority party that could effectively govern instead of being blocked by minoritarian power could also pass things that the majority of Americans demand - like protections for women’s health; women’s rights to life; protections for people to marry the people they love; protections against violence, hate, intolerance, and discrimination; or even gun safety and responsibility provisions.
To turn out a huge majority of voters, we need to do all the things.
Shift the Country is kicking off a whole lot of virtual events happening August 1 through election day to help us collectively energize a majority of voters in all the ways, with all the things, and to generally go all out.
We’re going to need to get uncomfortable to shake people out of their apathy, disengagement, overwhelm, cynicism, and lack of faith that voting is worth it.
Voting is worth it.
The stakes are incredible.
We’re worth it.
Events will be announced in this newsletter, on the website, and on Facebook.
Pass it along.
And see you online next week.