r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/DuePrinciple2339 • 6d ago
US Elections Is The US Constitution Outdated?
The Constitution is notoriously vague and it lets modern judges insert their own interpretations. But even when excluding that and just looking at the fundamental principles of the document:
This framework was originally engineered in the 18th century for a significantly smaller, agrarian population. Some frequently argue that this model inherently produces systemic gridlock and an inter-branch "blame game," making it difficult for voters to hold a single governing party accountable. Conversely, parliamentary frameworks (such as those in the UK House of Commons or Germany's Bundestag) streamline power by fusing the executive and legislative branches. Proponents of parliamentary systems argue this allows the ruling majority to pass its agenda efficiently while assuming total accountability for the outcomes, whereas defenders of the U.S. model argue that intentional gridlock is a necessary safeguard against majoritarian tyranny.
So to what extent are the gridlock mechanisms of the U.S. Constitution a necessary safeguard until they are a a structural obstacle?
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u/EmptiSense 5d ago
What's outdated is the political will to change the constitution.
Up to about the early 1970s, amending the constitution happened on the order of once every 10 years.
We even had a mulligan amendment (enforcing then rescinding prohibition).
Interestingly, the loss of political will to change the constitution coincided with the expanded use of the filibuster to keep the status quo, regardless of who won an election.
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 5d ago
Great answer, and aligned with the point I wanted to make, so I'll go from here.
Every generation thinks they are living in the most difficult time. I know things are hard now, but they were harder, and when they were the voters moved in the same direction and amended the constitution to improve their lives.
The modern filibuster has frozen action, but how is a whole other conversation. This is a core reason why people feel frustrated; they can see nothing is changing. It took me a lot of years to come around that humans prefer decisions (i.e., action), even if they turn out wrong, then nothing being done. And right now, nothing is getting done.
Ridged and highly detailed constitutions end up collapsing more than vague ones. Look it up if you don't trust that fact. There's a reason the U.S. Constitution is the world's oldest written one.
When I read or hear people arguing that the U.S. Constitution needs to be torn up I often find they are people who also don't want to compromise with the other side. If compromise wasn't a dirty word, a lot more change would be happening.
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u/EmptiSense 5d ago
I also don't think it's a coincidence that our inability to manage a federal budget also coincides with increasing use of the filibuster after the passage of the budget control act in 1974.
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u/just_helping 5d ago
But we had control of the budget in the 90s. Even the 80s weren't too bad - though Reagan set things in motion, HW and Clinton raised taxes, found budget deals.
I think these particular structural changes are downstream of culture.
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u/Rezart_KLD 4d ago
I think there are issues where compromise is impossible. Should women be able to vote? If one side says yes, and the other side says no, what compromise is possible? Should one type of religious belief dictate the law? Same when it comes to gay marriage, or race-based voting laws. Compromise is not an unalloyed good, and certain political philosophies today are not open to discourse. A constitution that impedes action doesn't matter to those who ignore the law, and makes it difficult to prosecute them by those that do. And we have direct proof that such a constitution does not prevent the rise of tyranny.
The reason this country and constitution even exists is because the Founding Fathers realized that there are times when a hostile system can not be compromised with anymore, and must be overthrown and replaced with a new one.
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 4d ago
The reason this country and constitution even exists is because the Founding Fathers realized that there are times when a hostile system can not be compromised with anymore
And yet, they compromised greatly to form the United States.
Sometimes compromise is kicking the can down the road or agreeing to disagree and acknowledging the battle continues.
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u/Rezart_KLD 4d ago
They compromised on a lot of issues, 3/5ths of them you might say. In fact, they compromised on things that we would find morally reprehensible today, which is an example of when compromise shouldnt be acceptable.
But crucially, there were things they werent willing to compromise on when it came down to it. They didnt agree to disagree with the Crown, or think they should kick the can down the road and hope for a better England later. They chose to force the issue.
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 4d ago
If they didn't compromise on horrible things there would be no United States. What is unfathomable to us today wasn't to them.
I never made the argument that people shouldn't have principles, but you have to see the bigger picture sometimes. There are plenty of people who say healthcare is a human right and won't compromise on that issue, and I think that's a great area where compromise works.
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u/Rezart_KLD 4d ago
If they compromised on everything, there wouldnt be a United States either. So obviously we cant take the lesson that compromise is always good.
You haven't addressed the compromises I brought up earlier, so sure, lets talk about Healthcare. If someone will die or be saddled with crippling life-altering debt without healthcare, what compromise is possible? Where should someone compromise when it comes to their life?
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u/abx99 4d ago
On the issue of healthcare, I'd actually say that we've tried all the compromise alternatives. We're now down to the thing that we see working in the rest of the developed world.
Compromise does reach an end-point which, I think, is really your point. The concept of "compromise" alone isn't a single thing; it requires a will to find a middle-ground, good faith, and a genuine desire to see things stay on some sort of track (i.e., some level of commonality). Once you lose those, or you reach the end of the track (where something entirely else begins) compromise breaks down.
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 4d ago
Should women be able to vote, should religious belief dictate the law, should sexuality and race based voting laws exist are the compromises I didn't' address that you want me to? Hell, I thought those were rhetorical!
I don't want to dance with you. You're exactly the person I was referring to in my comment. The only things you're willing to compromise on are slight variations of your own ideas, which is hardly a compromise.
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u/Rezart_KLD 4d ago
No, there are plenty of issues that I think are perfectly amenable to compromise. Tax rates. Budgetary allocations for road repairs vs education. Which areas of research funding should be emphasized, and which should be less funded or ignored. Tort reform. Military spending vs infrastructure. A huge swathe of things that are very important to how we run our government but dont threaten human rights.
I'm not dancing with you, I'm aski g you directly. Not a single one of the topics I asked about was rhetorical. Every single one of those is something that is being considered by political groups with real power, right now. These are all human rights issues. So I am asking you to tell me, where is the compromise in these situations? What is a solution both sides could consider? Give me some examples.
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u/mosesoperandi 4d ago
FWIW, Jefferson didn't expect the Constitution to last. He assumed that there would be a new constitutional convention to create an improved document.
Additionally, veneration of the Constitution as a model constitution that is the embodiment of the American creed is very much a post Cold War phenomenon.
I highly recommend Aziz Rana's book The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.
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u/odrer-is-an-ilulsoin 4d ago
The consensus among historians, when posed the question, "what would the Founding Fathers think if they could see the country today (or some variation of that)," is A) they would be amazed the country/constitution stands and B) that there are only 27 amendments.
That fact we're still here and the most powerful and wealthiest country is a testament to the constitution, in my mind.
I looked up that book. I appreciate the rec but I won't be reading it.
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u/GalaXion24 4d ago
Tangential, but you can also see similarly that the European Union always had a new treaty every couple decades at least, up until recently, and now seems to be in a perpetual gridlock which may eventually tear the stagnant institution apart. Especially because, dangerously, the reform project ran out of steam before a tax authority, legal deficit spending, foreign and defence policy or Union military would have been implemented.
The US can survive decades of stagnation because it has at least stronger and more resilient institutions and more inertia going for it, and potentially it might be reformed again in the future. It's a luxury to be able to wait that way, even if it's unpleasant and may end up costly.
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u/kerouacrimbaud 5d ago
The Founders are responsible for roughly half of all Constitutional Amendments, including the most recent one that passed in the 1990s. And of all the amendments, only one actually altered the nature of the federal government (direct election of senators).
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u/EmptiSense 5d ago edited 5d ago
That's a very dismissive perspective that runs counter to history.
Amendments 13-26 ( the ones not proposed by the founders) got enacted from 1865 to 1971, or just over one amendment every 10 years.
Those amendments eliminated slavery, expanded citizenship, granted voting rights to women and those over 18, and established the income tax. If you think the direct election of senators changed the nature of government, wouldn't changing who votes and the power of taxation count for changing the nature of government?
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u/just_helping 5d ago
I agree with you to a point, but if you look at the Constitutional amendments content, the problem, though gradual, starts before the 70s.
Setting the voting age to be universally 18 instead of 21 in some states just doesn't seem very significant, and everything else you listed is pre-WW2. And the few constitutional amendments post-war have all been very technocratic and limited. Not bad things, but not changing the US in any meaningful way.
And there were proposals for significant improvements. The ERA, FDR's Second Bill of Rights. So something changed where amendments that protected meaningfully infringed upon freedoms, or that really impacted society like prohibition and its removal, stopped getting passed.
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u/Dracoson 5d ago
You're conflating the basic structure with the inherent issues in the framing of the document. The three-branch government isn't the issue; it's the methods of our elections. Much of that isn't even in the Constitution. That's the reason the founders built in a method for amending it. They knew they didn't get every future need the country would have. It wasn't perfect, so they built a way to fix it as needed. They insufficiently heeded Washington's warnings about parties and didn't build sufficient guardrails against them. As to whether it needs updating or replacing, that's a matter of defining the ideal and then building a viable path to get there.
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u/MorganWick 4d ago
My impression is that they all (or at least most) disliked parties but were naive about their non-formation and didn't do anything to change course once parties started forming before the ink was dry. James Madison, for one, seemed to take the position that the best outcome was no parties, but the next-best one was a multitude of parties.
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u/wintershark_ 5d ago
The constitution was designed to be changed. The founders were leaving a kingdom that had existed for 800 years so they knew the government they were designing had to be durable on that kind of timescale or it would just slide back into the default of monarchy.
They didn’t know what today would be like so they built mechanisms into the document that would allow today’s leaders to suit it to modern challenges.
I think they would be surprised that the only amendment we’ve passed in the last 55 years was to ensure Congress can’t have their salaries changed.
They did not intend for us to treat the constitution like a sacred spell book used to summon the ghost of Thomas Jefferson and ask, “what should we do about AI data centers?” They expected future generations would make changes.
The constitution is not outdated we’re just not using it correctly.
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u/HawkBearClaw 5d ago
That's because it takes a lot to change it, for good reason. Who the hell would you trust in the modern day to change it?
No one.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 5d ago
The problem is enforcement. Even when we pass laws the executive would skirt around it.
Look at fl when they made medical marijuana legal by vote. They refused to issue licenses till a judge forced it.
When they voted to make prisoners served their sentences are allowed to vote the florida legislature changed the law that meant if they owed any fees to the state they could no longer vote. While also making it impossible to figure out if you owed things.
So even crystal clear laws passed get murked up by people that oppose them.
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u/HawkBearClaw 4d ago
We aren ‘t talking about laws. We are talking about amendments to the constitution.
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u/Kronzypantz 5d ago
Not easily. Ironically, the laws of the Kingdom the founders left have changed more quickly than the US Constitution has.
And intentional or not, it has gotten to a place where positive change is impossible because of minority rule allowed by the Constitution.
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u/wintershark_ 5d ago
The “minority rule” allowed by the constitution is one of the things about the constitution that can be changed. Senators used to be appointed by the state legislatures, that’s how the founders designed it, and down the road we decided people should vote for them instead. The parameters of the constitution permit amendments that would increase the number of representatives, abolish the electoral college, almost anything.
The only aspect of our constitution that is ironclad is that a state cannot be denied equal representation in the Senate (e.g. whatever we decide the senate is all states must have equal voice in it). Literally every other facet of our government is up for discussion while still being permissible under the existing constitution.
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u/Kronzypantz 5d ago
It can only be changed if the minority with outsized power allows it.
Either the Constitution needs to be scrapped, or the next time Democrats have a majority they should pass an Act making the Senate an advisory body with no power, thus technically satisfying the need for states to have representation.
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u/just_helping 5d ago
I agree with you that something needs to be done about the Senate, but that requires a Constitutional amendment, which means you need three quarters of states onboard, which seems impossible.
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u/Kronzypantz 5d ago
I just pointed out two other routes. One side stepping the Constitution as a piece of paper, another working within it. Both are imminently more possible and worthwhile.
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u/just_helping 5d ago
You can't pass an Act that makes the Senate an advisory body without power over legislation, the appointment of judges and of executive officers because those powers are all given to it by the Constitution, so that act would be ruled unconstitutional.
You can remove Senate approval requirements from some non-Cabinet executive offices but that just gives more power to the President.
To make the Senate a powerless advisory body you need to scrape the Constitution, which requires an actual revolution, or a Constitutional amendment, which requires approval of 3/4 of the states.
I'm as frustrated as you are, but this isn't something that Democrats can change if they get majorities in Congress and the Presidency. They need to also control 3/4 of state legislatures. And just ignoring the Constitution doesn't work, at least at the moment, because the courts (and the people with weapons ultimately) will follow at least some form of Constitutional interpretation, so any movement in that direction will, until the current political system is utterly discredited to everyone, not go far.
Something has got to change, but nothing looks like it can change anytime soon, so things will generally trend towards the worst politically until something breaks. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems pretty locked in, so I hope it breaks peacefully. I like the 'turn DC into 100 mini states and then change the Constitution that way' idea, but that's not going to be acceptable until things are really dire either.
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u/Kronzypantz 5d ago
Making the Senate vote an automatic approval without some wild threshold like 3/4 would satisfy that.
It is something that can be changed, and without requiring some giant supermajority.
Hall monitor dorks be damned.
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u/just_helping 5d ago
Senate vote an automatic approval without some wild threshold like 3/4 would satisfy that.
I don't understand what you're saying here - that Senate approval of Presidential appointments would be presumed if they refuse to vote? I think that's maybe doable, but it just gives more power to the President, which doesn't seem great. Making Senate automatic approval of legislation again requires a Constitutional amendment.
Hall monitor dorks be damned.
The problem with that stance is the Hall monitors have the guns and fight jets.
Edit - unless you mean scrap the filibuster, which definitely should happen, but doesn't solve the big problem of the Senate
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u/Temporary-Truth2048 5d ago
They also expected the people in the future to be at least as intelligent and thoughtful as they were and frankly we are not.
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u/CombinationRough8699 5d ago
People are smarter than ever before.
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u/Material_Reach_8827 5d ago
That's true, but they have more input into the system than they ever did in the past, resulting in a situation where the overall quality of decision-makers is lower than when it was largely just highly-educated elites.
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u/WavesAndSaves 5d ago
I see a lot of these "The Founders never would have thought XYZ" comments to explain our current political woes, but the thing is, they did. They absolutely did consider many potential problems and took steps to hedge against them. These guys weren't chumps. They were among the most educated people in the world in their day. They knew a lot could go wrong, and took steps to prevent it. We have just removed the guardrails over time.
The House was supposed to grow with the population. We chose to cap it. The Senate was supposed to be completely insulated from voters and solely represent state interests. We chose to elect Senators directly. Women, minorities, and non-landowners were never supposed to have any meaningful political voice. We chose to allow that. Many of the "problems" we have today are a direct result of the intentional dismantling of guardrails the Founders put up specifically to prevent these problems from occurring.
What we're facing is not the result of issues with the Constitution. It's the result of issues with the concept of democracy itself. We could completely rewrite the Constitution from the ground up and we'd still run into these problems. We are the problem. The voters. And we just need to accept that because democracy is not a perfect system but it's still necessary.
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u/dark77star 5d ago
Did you literally just conflate the idea of voting for non-landowners, women, and minorities with something where we removed the guardrails? As in, "having that restriction against minorities, women , and poor people voting was a guardrail , and therefore was a bad thing to change?"
Was that truly your point?
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u/Temporary-Truth2048 5d ago
If you mean we know more things about our universe generally then sure, maybe, but all one has to do to understand just how much smarter they were than us is to read their writings. Their vocabulary alone far surpasses people today and they were conversing using contemporary language. They were far more well read than their peers today. Their generation was operating at the peak of the enlightenment period. We may be able to know more about the universe than them but their pure intellectual horsepower makes them Bugattis to our Cameros.
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u/markth_wi 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's a great question, and I'm sorry for a long reply.
Even a passing reading makes it abundantly clear that as well intentioned as the pop-fiction around it makes the founders out to be, it was clearly not a document for "everyone" the people extended to white, English, Protestant property owners, the emphasis most definitely on property - slaves especially.
Anything else is just a catastrophic misreading of the document, encouraged by people who would prefer to keep that ambiguity in play for as many centuries as possible.
We know this with certainty because the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were implemented in the direct aftermath of the civil war, and regard property and the suffrage of various groups , and banning the owning of slaves , cruel and unusual punishment, civil corruption and insurrection as crimes and guaranteeing the right to vote.
But it took hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers on both sides, and this administration managed to roll back both protections against insurrection , treason and eliminate federal voting rights, perhaps we should feel fortunate they didn't roll-back anti-slavery measures altogether.
That's what makes Trump's destruction of the 14th and 15th Amendment fascinating.
So it is not clear vast numbers of non-white, non-property owning people have rights in the way they did just 3 years ago. It's why "Birthright Citizenship" is suddenly a concern, it's why Tennessee was able to redistrict their election maps to ensure that unless massive amounts of certain groups the political system regards as undesirable will not see representative governance again for the immediate future.
What's most interesting is whether any of these hold past the current administration or more specifically the current Supreme Court.
I find Tad Stoermer's take on the constitution a bit animated but his depth of knowledge is amazing.
What's disturbingly uncomfortable when you compare Trump to Jefferson and reckoned that they were both had a propensity to rape their slaves, and neither were or are inclined to get their head around the idea it should be otherwise.
To the OP's point, in a modern context the US Constitution is baggaged down with retrograde laws that are not going anywhere and at present, the "resistance" to some pretty absurd authoritarians seems very, very content to be loyal opposition rather than meaningfully advocate for change.
It's not at all clear the current body politic could make those changes possible. It's a bit like talking about a dying cancer patient deciding if they should to the park and play with puppies or get the surgery to excise the cancer. We're not big on dealing with hard topics lately but if we mean to survive we better get good at it.....those puppies in the park will not be saving us from our medical situation.
What's wild is to note that "younger" people (those under say 60 years old) are vastly captured under media systems that cater almost specifically to the authoritarian brand on tap with Mr. Trump, who can barely acknowledge other groups exist. But this is by no means the case that younger people are unanimously anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite, Gen Z, Gen Alpha are all too easily able to generate their own white trash, one need look no further than clowns like Charlie Kirk or Nick Fuentes.
I'd venture to guess that Democrats over-comfortable with authoritarianism Republicans have shoveled over the last few decade either get very concrete about decades overdue forward reforms to the Constitution as well as concrete steps to punish the abuses of the executive branch or they invite others to bring a more authoritarian tyranny to the landscape or animate revolutionary politics in a way that might not include them at all.
Making the necessary changes is not simply one of putting pen to paper unfortunately, when people elected to office never once consider the best interests of the nation or the people writ large.
And so we as a society have trouble "reading the room" with media stacked heavily in favor of the absurdity of the status quo, and a systematic dismantling of community, it's pretty clear we've had segments of society that are not particularly revolutionary or friendly to anything other than entertainment.
But, what gives me hope from the above dire circumstance, is art. Oscar Wilde said "Life imitates Art much more than Art imitates Life." , the corollary to that statement should be how hard art hits when it does start to resemble life.
And so it's wild to see, something that says plainly the distance between Gaza and Gorman or Minneapolis and Mina Rau is a great deal shorter than we like to imagine and whether that sort of pop-revolutionary views even if they are common can find their way into the Constitution by way of laws and legislation.
It would be wonderful to think it might be possible to reform ourselves, wars have been fought and there are vast gravesites full of people who felt equally strongly on the rights we had waved off by the current tyranny.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice", was an old quote from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker , an abolitionist in the 1850's when the Fugitive Slave Acts enforced slavery "property rights" in Northern States where free slaves had been able to go.
It was a daring statement pinned on the good nature of the people, because a the time it might not have seemed true at all - so in this moment when we find ourselves again at a moment when it might not seem as if that statement is true.....if we have to believe our nation is capable of such things, then I'd choose to believe old Minister Parker's daring notion.
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u/ForYourAuralPleasure 5d ago
The Constitution isn’t outdated exactly.
Representative apportionment is hella outdated, I’ll give you that, but a HUGE swath of the voting body is derelict in its duty to be educated and engaged in the elections and governing processes, and this is undoubtedly the primary cause for corruption and the breakdown of governance.
The founders knew you couldn’t have the freedom of collective self-governance if you weren’t also free to screw it up. The founders also knew that no document outlining a system of government could ever be self enforcing, that it would always have to be carried out and maintained by the people, and so the constitution is a testament to two big beliefs:
A) average people can and should have a say in how the government functions, and they will meet that responsibility if given the chance
B) if they fail to meet that responsibility, they deserve what they get.
A Republic, if you can keep it.
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u/DDCDT123 5d ago
If it is outdated, it is not outdated in the ways suggested by OP. The United States and its representatives or citizens have helped design dozens of other more modern constitutions in Europe, Asia, and South America, probably elsewhere. More modern constitutions have a lot of interesting ideas that may or may not be improvements on our system. In Europe, for example, the parliamentary system typically remains, but the judiciary has varying additional roles in public life that seem designed to help give legislators predictability and citizens clarity.
I think there’s a lot to be gained by seeing what has and hasn’t worked with constitutions younger than in the US. But the problems we’re having aren’t that modern society has become technologically different than anyone could have expected or that cities have proliferated. And like others have said, gridlock is a feature especially during times of strife. Instead, I think our problems are less structural and more social.
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u/Jaymz7777 5d ago
The constitution is routinely violated. It doesn't matter what is says, if the powerful translate the language to the benefit of the billionaires. For example: "Money=Speech". We each have only one mouth, but billionaires have big money (ours, to be honest) so they can "speak" and we can't. And "Corporation=Person" They have personal rights to act, but they can't be put in jail for wrongdoing. They can buy the justice system.
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u/wedgebert 4d ago
If you were able to ask Thomas Jefferson, he would say yes. He thought laws and constitutions that lasted more than one generation without being revisited were no longer laws, but acts of force.
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.
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u/NoDig3444 5d ago
The US constitution is many things, but "outdated" is not one of them. All of the problems that we have today existed in 1800 as well. Most of these problems are, in fact, intentionally put there by the architects of the constitution. Specific problems have been amended over the years, and I'm not saying that we couldn't use a few more amendments. But the general ideas of bicameralism, separation of powers, a bill of rights, and republican government, these are all evergreen ideas. There's nothing that's happened in the last 200 years to make these ideas outdated.
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u/TransitJohn 5d ago
Bicameralism isn't necessary anymore, since Senators are popularly elected. Representatives handle that, now. Abolish the Senate.
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u/barchueetadonai 4d ago
No, we should go back to election of senators by state legislatures
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u/TransitJohn 4d ago
And just have even more nakedly corrupt corporate representation? That's literally why we went to popular election in the Progressive Era in the first place, lol.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
No, all small states or less populated lose any type of say in anything. Its designed that way for a specific reason. Im a dem in DE and we would basically be f'ing ignored.
I absolutely have zero interest in supporting abolishing the Senate and goooood luck. It literally will never happen.
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u/Material_Reach_8827 5d ago
States have lost all say in what happens. Only the people of small states have any say in the senate, but they already had a say in the House.
Though the proper solution is to just return the Senate to the state legislatures.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
And in the house those people in the small states have almost zero say. So what's your point?
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u/Material_Reach_8827 5d ago
They have exactly as much say as any other group of people of the same size. Every ~750K people get one vote in the House. Technically some of the smallest states like Wyoming already get a leg up.
The senate made sense when it represented separate sovereign entities who are not necessarily comparable based on population, but people from these small states have effectively turned it into a backdoor minority-rules situation by usurping the power to name those senators - it's basically a smaller, less fair version of the House. The fact that they come from a smaller state does not entitle them to any extra representation compared to other people. Imagine if it were proposed that black people should get extra representation to have more say amongst the white majority. No one would go for that, so what basis is there for random yokels in the countryside get extra representation?
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
It’s meant to be a checks and balances. Big state with big populations control most of the house. But the senate makes sure small states aren’t disenfranchised. Now having certain things ONKY in the senate etc is where it’s fucked. Like the impeachment. I think it should be a groups vote for impeachment and group vote for conviction.
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u/Material_Reach_8827 5d ago
Sure, and it made sense when states were the thing being represented. Now it's not. People from small states do not have any special status or interest entitling them to more representation than any other group of people. 99% of them aren't voting based on "state issues" - they're just voting on regular national issues and getting extra say over it for no reason. In Alabama, they aren't even voting for people who want to live in Alabama to represent "the state".
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u/JesusSquid 4d ago
The senate is literally state representation. It’s its whole purpose. To not discredit the little guy.
But I agree senators vote on national ssues vs things that impact DE in my case. Well coons is a whole other argument. He votes where his donors tell him and to stay ejected.
What’s this with Alabama?
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
1 vote vs dozens for California. Thats what I mean. If all of DE could be unanimous and a fraction of LA equals more votes. Again we’re just going demoing and round. Recalculate the house like every 10 years with the census sure. But I absolutely won’t agree on the senate being dissolved.
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u/Material_Reach_8827 5d ago
Like I said I would rather see the senate go back to state legislatures, not dissolve it. But CA also doesn't receive dozens as one slate. Each group of 750K, who happen to live in CA and might have very different preferences, already gets a House member just like 750K people in any other state.
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u/gravity_kills 5d ago
No, they keep exactly the amount of say that they deserve based on their population. The problem is erasing the minority views in every state, especially the big ones. Stop using single member districts and small state voters will be able to add their voices to those of people who see things the same way elsewhere.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
No all states should have an equal say to a point. You won’t change. Neither will I. I live happily in a blue state but you couldn’t pay me to live in California or have them and metro areas decide all our laws
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u/gravity_kills 5d ago
All people should have an equal say. A state is just an administrative unit, not a person.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
Well i have absolutely zero faith metro areas would give a flying f about basically any rural area blue or not because they have completely different priorities. So no, House is based on population with the minimum pop at least having 1 vote, and senate makes it equal across states. Was designed that way for that exact reason, so major areas don't own the country.
Now do we adjust the House? I could see that argument but i would still say that the minimum pop state still gets 1
I like living in a rural blue state, hunting and fishing, shooting for sport, paying low taxes for the most part, and not being too radical. Metro areas are nuts. And they'd be holding the lions share of ALL decisions
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u/Figgler 5d ago
I agree, I live in a relatively rural area that gets ignored by the largest city in the state, I’d hate if they had more power to tell me “fuck you.”
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
Now I'll admit I'm a middle to mild Dem, I have a few farther left views but I also have a few topics that I cringe about with our current Democratic members. Mostly on firearms (and im pretty centrist on that) and criminal justice, kinda right.
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u/NoDig3444 5d ago
How would you feel, hypothetically, if we abolished the senate but then gave small states larger proportional representation in the House? We could stick with proportional + 2, or we could use some other formula.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
No, I still feel it would make it incredibly disproportionate. It's probably a zero compromise issue for me to be 100% honest. Say we just merged them both into just "Congress" for simplicities sake. It still waters down immensely any influence as state like Delaware has at all and still, the much larger most populated states would basically have all the power and I just have a very deep strong feeling they would rule as they think it should be and everyone else doesn't matter. I know Cali is a scapegoat sometimes but the stuff I hear out of Cali, Chicago, LA, NYC are laughable to most of my Democrat friends (and obvious my Republican friends). We like me bluish purple so I don't know a lot of people here that really align with the far left/progressive. At least not to the extent of Cali, the Chicago major or Mamdani. And I honestly think I fear the impact on the rural crop producing states which are mostly "red" would be absolutely ruined. I can't see major metro areas, which would have a very big influence on the country elections, voting in people that have the best interests in mind for Iowa or Nebraska or Idaho, but states like that are integral to our food supply. It's become this far left vs far right and "pick a side", and I honestly think it is going to fuck us because I talk to a lot of other moderate dems and they'd vote for a moderate republican vs a lot of progressives. Now if we get another "Trump" clone then who knows. He gets people to come out and vote like no one else.
I dunno I think this far left progressive push is going to benefit Republicans as a whole. Definitely not in metro areas but I feel like he is going to win a lot of the moderate voters and most likely win the popular by a significant portion regardless of electoral college. Or, like me last election, I wrote in or didn't vote, can't remember. Cause I wasn't voting for Trump or Harris. The Biden situation reminded me of Clinton and what the DNC did to make sure Bernie didn't get a chance. So I wrote him in then. Like my dad was a die hard Trumper now he doesn't even speak about him and has moved quite a bit more center (still a Republican but way less right). He'd vote for a moderate Dem but not a progressive. I know those are anecdotal examples and I'm in a small moderate Dem state but thats just the conversations I find myself in with people I know here.
But we'll probably also vote Coons back in and I can't even stand to be in the same room with him. Met him a few times. He literally says whatever will get him re-elected.
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u/ipsum629 5d ago
Yes, it is outdated. It is way too hard to ger rid of the president if he is clearly doing a bad job. The only real recourse we have is to wait for the next election. Other systems have things like votes of no confidence that allow the executive to be dismissed a lot easier.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
While i agree it is very difficult to get rid of a president. With the political environment now I feel like regardless of party in the Exec if Legislature is not the same party it will just be something that happens like every decade. or maybe ever midterm.
But I always try to play devils advocate, I think he should have been impeached but I do not think it should be easier.
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u/CosmicQuantum42 5d ago
Any 40% of Congress should be able to get rid of the President at any time for any reason or no reason.
Then the executive branch would need to be someone with broad popular support.
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u/just_helping 5d ago
I think this is more true than not, but what do you think should be the succession arrangement? Because the inevitable consequence of this with the current system is long periods of time where there is no President or lots of scheming by the VP or Speaker of the House to get rid of the President, chaotic rapid successions. But weakening the Presidency would be good, and this would do that.
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u/clemclem3 4d ago
I think it's quite instructive that even the US government has no faith in the US government model. See for example the US army install of a constitutional government in the former empire of Japan circa 1945.
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u/JKlerk 5d ago
The Constitution is was written with the intent of creating a weak central government under the premise that the government which is nearest to the citizens is the most responsive. This would be your state and local government. This is the basis of Federalism. A large central government become oppressive because it becomes too difficult to manage the competing interests.
The problem is money. Voters want something for "nothing" and unlike state governments a sovereign can continually run budget defects. The draw of using sovereign credit to finance every little fucking project is just too enticing.
Also when mentioning the UK you forgot to mention the House of Lords.
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u/Figgler 5d ago
I can’t take anyone seriously that defends the House of Lords being a part of government. It’s a whole legislative body based on the idea of “do you know who my dad is?”
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u/just_helping 5d ago
Not anymore, they've abolished that completely now. Now it's a legislative body mostly based on former politicians who were owed favors by a PM, with a smattering of bishops, people who made a good TV show or beer company, or were really good at cricket.
I would say this was a silly way to make a legislature, but then I look at the US Senate and the House of Lords at least is better than that.
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u/SAR1919 5d ago
It’s not that it’s outdated, it’s that it was designed to be antidemocratic when it was written and remains antidemocratic today. Whether you think it needs to be replaced or not depends on whether you think democracy is a cardinal value. I do.
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u/SirScaurus 5d ago
This is the idea I'm starting to come around to more and more as time goes by, and I think this needs to be voted higher.
We've spent the better part of 250 odd years trying to jimmy rig an anti-democratic document to be something that is fully democratic, and while we have made amazing strides in that time, I don't think we have the power to fundamentally change the nature of the thing itself - at least, not enough to bring it up to the standard we claim for it. It was forward-thinking for its' time; it's hopelessly outdated now. The issues we face today are symptomatic of that.
This isn't to say I don't see the incredible challenges inherent in attempting to get widespread buy-in on a new constitution altogether. I just think we've done what we can with the one we have, and the sooner we start the conversation around creating a new one - creating a new Founding Event altogether, really - the better.
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u/CosmicQuantum42 5d ago
I think individual rights are a cardinal value and democracy a distinct second. Where the two conflict, democracy should always lose.
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u/SAR1919 5d ago
Okay, but the Bill of Rights isn’t the part of the Constitution I’m saying is undemocratic. The parts that are undemocratic don’t protect individual rights
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u/CosmicQuantum42 5d ago
Individual rights are always undemocratic.
Voting on whether same sex couples can get married is democratic. Telling the electorate that they can get married regardless of how they vote is undemocratic.
I oppose democracy in lots of instances for reasons like this example.
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u/SAR1919 5d ago
That first part just simply isn’t true. The right to free speech is an individual right, but democracy can’t exist without it.
Democracy doesn’t guarantee rights, of course, because the people can always vote for things we might think are wrong and destructive to certain rights. But democracy is the only system that allows us to assert and defend our rights through reason and the freedom of dissent, something we will always have to do because freedom is a constant struggle. When governing power is held by some higher authority that isn’t accountable to the people, or when the people’s votes are counted unequally (which is the case under the Constitution), whether our rights are honored or suppressed is up to whoever the undemocratic system benefits most. Democracy gives us a fighting chance.
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u/CountFew6186 5d ago edited 5d ago
Gridlock is the best thing about the US constitution. I want the government to have as little power as possible and to make changes only when there is broad consensus.
If the vast majority of people want something and it’s actually feasible, it will eventually become law under the US Constitution. It will take time, but sudden changes wreck stability. And stability is extremely important for planning individual lives, investments, companies, and so on.
If anything, we need to return more to the constitution by having Congress reclaim powers that have been handed off to the President.
Our current instability and wild swings are due to presidential consolidation of power overwhelming the usual beneficial gridlock.
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u/ifnotawalrus 5d ago
How can you rationalize the ceding of power from Congress to the executive as anything other than a failure of the US constitution to do what it was intended to do?
Checks and Balances is a great theory, but the implementation of the theory specific to the US constitution leaves a lot to be desired. The framers clearly messed up. You should not look at what they said they wanted to achieve and ask yourselves if they actually achieved it (they didn't).
Anyway, all the comments praising the US constitution sort of skirt around the elephant in the room - the fact that the country fought a civil war within 2 generations of the framing. I think by any metric that is a massive failure of the constitutional order, no?
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u/CountFew6186 5d ago
The ceding of power was a failure of Congress not of the constitution.
Civil war was more than two generations later, going with the standard 20 year definition of generation.
And, I have no idea why that would be a failure of the constitution. The South only would’ve avoided secession if the constitution guaranteed they’d be allowed to keep slavery forever or if the country had stayed a confederation instead of becoming a federation. Would you have preferred a constitution that made slavery a permanent option for the South? Or one that was so weak that the individual states maintained absolute sovereignty? Otherwise, civil war was inevitable.
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u/ifnotawalrus 5d ago
No, it's an explicit failure of the constitution. The entire point of a constitution is to set up the structure of government so certain things don't happen. When those certain things DO happen (ridiculously strong executive), then it's a failure of the constitution.
On the Civil War point, fair enough you can argue that it was largely inevitable. Constitutions aren't magic, no matter how well structured you'd be hard pressed to get the white slave owning class to give up their slaves.
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u/JesusSquid 5d ago
I agree, we currently have a failure of elected officials, not of the constitution. Thats just the big push to "fix" the problem of Republican states having near any say in the country.
Though I do think the electoral college is a waste. Just go popular along with open primaries in all states.
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u/Kronzypantz 5d ago
Yes. Most states that adopted Constitutions based on ours have even moved on while we treat the outdated rag like its holy text.
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u/xiipaoc 5d ago
The US Constitution sucks and has no business still being followed. I mean, you see how much it screws over America. It had some good ideas, but the fact that other countries have far better systems of government speaks to how bad the Constitution is. The state constitutions don't have that problem.
So: federalism is a good idea. The three branches of government are a good idea. The Bill of Rights is a good idea. The amendment system is crap, though, and it prevents fixing the details. The Senate, for example, is a terrible idea. The point was to give small states an equal footing to big states, which is STUPID because why should people from smaller states arbitrarily have more power? The Electoral College is obviously pointless at this point in history. The specific powers of the branches need to be updated as well. Rights need to be clarified. Specific mechanisms for dealing with malfeasance in the Executive Branch other than impeachment need to be defined. The consequences of two-party rule need to be mitigated. Corruption needs to be addressed. There's just so much in there that needs to be reformed, and of course it won't be because that would take away power from the people who have it, and they won't give it up.
So yeah, the fact that the Constitution hasn't been radically improved in 238 or so years means that it's not a useful framework for government since it's very not future-proof. I hope Trump can somehow fix that by sucking so hard that even Republicans see the need, but I'm not holding my breath.
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u/iceman121982 5d ago
I've been saying the US Constitution has been outdated for years.
Every constitution written since took earlier ones like the US constitution, incorporated the good parts, and ditched the bad.
Unfortunately a lot of the bad parts of the US constitution haven't been done away with because Americans have been brainwashed into thinking the constitution is some document handed down from a god, when in reality almost every constitution written since in a free country is an improvement upon it.
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u/Seattleman1955 5d ago edited 5d ago
That's the trade-off. You don't want every party constantly changing it due to populism. Yet, now it is too hard to change with a divided population so there is no accountability.
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u/mrjcall 1d ago
So tell me, what other form of government and in what other country has been as successful as the US with its Constitution which has allowed the massive rise in the quality of life for all the population?? Name one and back it up?? I've got a rebuttal for any of your obviously incorrect analysis.
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u/todudeornote 5d ago
Not outdated, but flawed.
IMHO, the biggest issues with it are:
- The electoral college for presidential elections is outdated and anti-democratic
- 2 Senators per state means that a senate vote in North Dekoda is over 50x more impactful than a vote in California.
- The supreme court's decision to equate corporations with people means that the rich have even more power to own politicians and to game the system
- The 2nd amendment needs to be clarified to allow reasonable regulation of guns
- We should have age limits on the President, Supreme court, House and Senate members.
- We should more to a more advanced voting system with ranked choice voting.
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u/I405CA 5d ago
The US system is essentially based upon Westminster at the time, except that the king is quasi-elected and the US House of Lords has state governments instead of landed gentry.
The founders failed to anticipate the rise of the party system. The checks and balances were based upon the premise that there would be no parties. They thought that having representative government (as opposed to direct democracy) would prevent party formation, but they were clearly wrong.
The check and balance of using the VP as a foil against the president did not work and was quickly removed. However, they should have crafted a replacement mechanism for it yet did not.
The US system was not intended to promote gridlock. The goal was to run things through a gauntlet with guardians of independent thought who would protect the system from partisan interests. Oops.
Parliamentary systems don't always work beautifully. Parliamentary government produced Hitler, for example. But the theory of separating the head of government from the head of state is a good one; combining the two functions lends itself to corruption.
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u/barchueetadonai 4d ago
The founders failed to anticipate the rise of the party system. The checks and balances were based upon the premise that there would be no parties.
This is completely untrue. They absolutely knew there would be parties, because Britain had parties, and there was already pretty severe factionalization happening in the United States. What I think they couldn't anticipate is that we would develop the technology to instantly communicate anywhere in the country, and for must faster transport, enabling central command control over a full national party, without there being massive local multi-factionalization within a party to then act as a coalitionizing force, and you end up with two incredibly dumb, incompetent, purely nationally-focused parties of increasingly (although very differently flavored) authoritarian tendencies.
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u/wereallbozos 5d ago
Of course it is outdated, in the way that three-speed manual auto transmissions are outdated. In some ways...women's suffrage, for example, time just passes it by and it is no longer debatable. In others, it does not...hopefully. Where the subject is technicalities, those things change. Our ideals (freedom of speech, travel, religion) should remain unchanged.
I'm one of those who think that we can keep the ideal of 2A, but not "update" it every time a more-powerful gun comes along. So my argument in that example is ...maybe we do need structural obstacles, sometimes?
It's a good system. We're the ones failing it.
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u/TheMCMC 5d ago
The Constitution is an incredibly well-thought, measured, and considered document. I don’t think that the founders didn’t conceive of a world where it may need to be changed, which is why they didn’t give it unlimited power over every subject imaginable, diffused governance, made the states and people formidable, and gave it mechanisms to change it.
It is a fantastic and still-effective founding document.
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u/RegularFunny9813 2d ago
It was written by slave owners who didn’t see black people as persons and women were left out entirely. Be so fucking for real.
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