Amending the Constitution Is Impossible Until Suddenly It’s Not

The American experiment with constitutional democracy is in grave peril. If Donald Trump becomes president again, fighting to preserve U.S. constitutional democracy through his second term will require the courage, commitment, and creativity of a broad prodemocracy coalition. But the problem is not merely Trump. The U.S. Constitution itself contributes to the country’s crisis. As David Frum observed in a recent issue of The Atlantic, “If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote” but rather because our system for selecting the president…

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Authoritarian? Conservatives Want to Restore the Constitution. The Left Can’t Handle It.

The Constitution created three branches in the federal government: the Legislature to make the laws, the Executive branch to enforce the laws, and the Judiciary to settle disputes about the laws. Yet the federal government we know and very much do not love doesn’t operate the way the Constitution says it should. Instead, unelected bureaucrats write more rules than Congress does, the president cannot fire bureaucrats who oppose his efforts to keep his promises to the people, and the Supreme Court has unilaterally rewritten the Constitution on issues like abortion,…

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