A new Wall Street Journal editorial exposes the latest plank in the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) radical agenda: abolishing the United States Senate.
Do Democratic Senate candidates—including Troy Jackson, Roy Cooper, Sherrod Brown, Josh Turek, Mary Peltola, Jon Ossoff, Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed, and Chris Pappas—support abolishing the very chamber they’re running to join?
Will they disavow the DSA’s demands to “rewrite the U.S. Constitution” as we know it?
Read more here or below.
The Democratic Socialists of America are gaining strength in the Democratic Party, so it behooves voters to know what they’d do with political power. We know they want a “future without capitalism,” as their latest policy document avers. But most Americans may not know they also want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
The left has long targeted the Electoral College because it thwarts the ability of the most populous states to dominate presidential elections. But in its latest manifesto, “Workers Deserve More,” the DSA says it wants to “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” It also wants to “abolish the Senate.” James Madison, call your office.
It’s important to understand how radical this is, essentially blowing up the Constitution’s separation of powers. Letting Congress choose the President means adopting the parliamentary system that prevails in Britain. It would essentially remove the presidential veto power that the Founders designed as a check on the legislative passions of the day.
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Article V of the Constitution says “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” This means the Senate couldn’t be abolished without the consent of every state, assuming the DSA doesn’t ignore the Constitution, as some on the left might want to do.
But the left’s first step would be breaking the filibuster rule. This would let them add Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states with two Senators each. They would also have the votes to “restructure” the Supreme Court, as Senate Democrats are already promising. Democrats have proposed adding four new Justices to the Court, as well as limiting the kind of cases the Justices can hear.
The common denominator in all of these DSA proposals is eliminating barriers to rapid, radical change. The socialists want a single-branch legislature that can sweep into power in a single election, dominate the President, and neuter the judiciary as a check on that power. With those checks gone, they can impose their agenda that will be nearly impossible to undo. . . .