Democrats Scare Me

I am really worried about what will happen when the Democrats eventually get control of the White House and both houses of Congress. American politics being what they are, this will happen eventually, probably in 2024. What they are currently proposing makes me very nervous. The Left in general and Democrats in particular have proposed a number of changes to be sure that they remain in control for a generation of more.

The first thing they are likely to do is the nuclear option: abolish the filibuster in the Senate. That only takes a majority vote and it allows them to proceed with their agenda with a 50-49 majority. They can even manage on a 50-50 majority and a Democrat Vice President to break ties.

Once they eliminate the filibuster they will start changing the rules to give themselves an advantage across all of the branches of government. Here are the things they have suggested:

Eliminating the Electoral College. The proper way to do this is to amend the Constitution but they will not do that. Instead they will make an end run around it by passing an law authorizing the Interstate Popular Vote Compact. This grants a state's electors to the winner of the popular vote rather than to the winner of the state. It will be a long fight to get enough states to pass this for it to take effect but Congress can smooth over the biggest obstacle - the Constitution forbids states from making compacts between themselves without Congressional approval.

Packing the Supreme Court. Currently the number of seats on the court is fixed by law at nine and the court leans conservative 5-4. There have been numerous suggestions for adding seats to the court with 15 being the most common suggestion. That would give the liberals a 10-5 advantage.

Packing the Senate. This is fairly simple. They will admit Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states. Both of these lean heavily to the left so they will get four more Democrats in the Senate. This will also give them a couple of seats in the House.

Packing the House. This one is a stretch but it's been proposed in the Washington Post. The 14th amendment has a clause that allows for a state to be punished for disenfranchising by reducing their representation in Congress. The theory here is that voter ID and purges of inactive voters only exist to keep minorities from voting so any state that has done this will lose representatives. The legal justification for this is very shaky and they would have to finish their court-packing before this hit the Supreme Court. I don't really think they will try this one but I included it since it has been brought up.

All of these are possibilities. I fully expect one or more of them to be attempted in the foreseeable future. The Interstate Popular Vote Compact has already passed a few states.

None of these are ends to themselves. They are just ways of changing the rules so that they will have a permanent majority. Once that happens then the changes will really start. More on that later.