NO DEMOCRACY LASTS FOREVER

A legal scholar presents his solution to today’s crippling political polarization.

Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law and author of Worse Than Nothing and We the People, points out that the word democracy never appears in the Constitution, and only one of the four institutions, the House of Representatives, “was elected by the people.” Like many other observers, the author considers the Electoral College its most egregious flaw. Because smaller states opposed popular election of the president, the members of the Constitutional Convention compromised by giving each state a number of “electors” equal to its senators and representatives. Since every state has two senators, this gives small states an advantage because presidents are elected by a majority of electors, rather than votes. Twice this century, the candidate who lost the popular vote won in the Electoral College, and this will happen more often as demographic changes continue to concentrate Democratic voters in populous Northern states while Republicans dominate more numerous rural Southern and Midwestern states. Three quarters of the states must approve an amendment to choose a president by popular vote; this is unlikely. Everyone agrees that gerrymandering—drawing electoral boundaries that concentrate the opposing party in the fewest districts—is cheating, but it’s irresistible to the governing party. Some of the author’s suggested reforms, such as eliminating the filibuster or establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices, have modest popular support. Other topics—e.g., the malignant influence of social media or racial justice—are not strictly constitutional issues, but Chemerinsky addresses them nonetheless. His outstanding analysis, however, is not matched by his remedies. He admits that little support exists for replacing the Constitution, and if the political climate continues to degrade, he suggests that secession—hopefully peaceful—between red and blue states is more likely.

Depressing yet important insights on the state of the union.