What matters is not legal formalism but democratic legitimacy and broad buy in. If you had a new constitution that passed in a national referendum buy like 70%, and elected officials comport with the new rules, that would be that
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The constitution took effect 6 years after the end of the American Revolution. So yes, it was out of a revolution. Times are much different. We absolutely do not have 70% in our favor and we certainly don't have elected officials in our favor. The constitution has rules about its replacement.
jul 16, 2025, 4:28 pm • 0 0 • view
Pragmatically, replacing it through the courts or congress is functionally impossible. So is your plan of just saying well let's make a new one. Any such change will take decades, through peaceful means.
jul 16, 2025, 4:28 pm • 0 0 • view
Countries create new constitutions and pass them semi-regularly. These things can and do happen without wars beforehand. I refuse to just accept being locked into a broken system where no change is possible. This could be done if people campaign for it. But you seem to think the system is magic
jul 16, 2025, 4:55 pm • 1 0 • view
And that there is some mystical force that will prevent a national referendum from having any effect. And that's simply not the case. At any rate we no longer have a working constitution at all. SCOTUS and the GOP have nullified it. We now exist in a free floating state of pure power politics
jul 16, 2025, 4:57 pm • 0 0 • view
On the contrary I think you are engaged in magical thinking. I’m extremely aware of how things get done. 40% of the voting population supports Trump near conditionally so far. We all wish it weren’t that way, but it is. It is going to be grueling, decades long work to do this.
jul 16, 2025, 5:00 pm • 0 0 • view
There is no 70% of the American population coming to save us. There just isn’t. Most of them don’t even care today. Reality is important. I’m not being defeatist and giving in, I’m arguing for pragmatic approaches that have real probabilities of good outcomes.
jul 16, 2025, 5:00 pm • 0 0 • view
But you just said above that congress and the courts wont save us. So what is your practical plan to deal with a SCOTUS that will allow a GOP president to be a dictator but won't allow a dem president to govern? Because that is where we are, and 'we have to wait decades to fix it' is defeatist
jul 16, 2025, 5:06 pm • 0 0 • view
Say a national referendum on a new constitution passes narrowly, 53 -47 with 60% turnout. What effect so you suppose that would have? I think at minimum it would force a new political settlement with some rule changes
jul 16, 2025, 5:07 pm • 0 0 • view
I don’t think there is a practical plan as of yet. You’re describing the same turnout and results that voted in Biden in 2020, the greatest turnout in history. And let’s say from some quick napkin math, 47% of his supporters identify as centrists. Do you think that’s a coalition that does this?
jul 16, 2025, 5:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Pragmatically, it’s either going to take an unprecedented unbroken political movement that will last decades, pack the court, hammer home laws, and never lose any supporters, nothing that happens in any near term. Or some form of revolution. I don’t think there’s a smooth middle road.
jul 16, 2025, 5:14 pm • 0 0 • view