DSA: Working-Class Democracy

In addition to changing both domestic and foreign policy, the DSA has idea on reforming how the government governs.  Let's go back to the DSA website.

Working-Class Democracy

Democracy for All: Extend full voting rights to all permanent U.S. residents and restore the right to vote for incarcerated people and people with criminal convictions. Establish statehood for Washington D.C. and recognize the right to self-determination for all U.S. territories and colonies. Expand and protect voting rights and end voter suppression.

Death row inmates get to vote.  Criminals are a reliable voting block for Democrats because Democrats are the soft-on-crime party.  Of course, the DSA would seek to benefit its voters.  Beyond criminals, what sort of expansion of voting rights are being considered?  Recognizing a right to self-determination is just an invitation for secession and disintegration of the country.  When combined with the instant amnesty proposed in the abolition of ICE, a lot of newly-minted permanent residents will join the voter rolls and they will mostly vote for the party offering the most freebies (psst, that would be the DSA).

A Real Democracy: For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Repeal the Constitution.  This requires a constitutional convention or several new amendments to the Constitution.  By eliminating the president, the Congress would become more like the British Parliament where the Prime Minister is just one of the members of parliament who happens to exercise the executive.  If we have eliminated the presidency, the Electoral College is irrelevant.  However, if the Electoral College was eliminated before the presidency was folded into the Congress, it would greatly diminish the representation of smaller states.  This is a call for the destruction of the US Republic.

A Democratic Congress: Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.

By abolishing the Senate, the DSA would abolish the states.  Wyoming would have one representative in the new unicameral legislature and would be pillaged by neighboring states with more say.  Proportional representation means that parties have slates of candidates who are elected based on the proportion of the vote that the party gets.  You aren't voting for your congressman but merely a party who will get so many seats in government.  Furthermore, a multiparty system can lead to empowering minority parties, such as the DSA.  A coalition party is likely to be both less stable and more extreme, allowing for wide swings in governing.  Again, this is a repeal of the Constitution and a destruction of the Republic.

Economic Democracy: Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people. Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure.

Communism.  Yeah, we finally got there.  There is public ownership of the means of production.  There is from each according to his means (i.e., the rich) to each according to his needs (i.e., the public).  The DSA has adopted communist policies, but made them sound like democracy and fairness.  How long will the rich remain rich under such a system?  This will lead to an equality of poverty though the governing elites will be a bit more equal than everyone else.  Sounds familiar.

Democracy at Work: Empower workers to come together and fight the boss. Protect, expand, and enforce the rights of all workers to form, join, and strike with their unions, regardless of industry. Support union members who organize reform caucuses, democratize their unions, and take political action.

For those industries that have not been nationalized, the workers are to view the boss as an adversary.  Rather than being unified in providing a good or service to the public, the boss-employee dynamic should be one of constant contention where the workers chip away at the boss and inevitably make the business less productive and profitable.  This is sure to encourage more entrepreneurship and expand the economy, right?  No, quite the opposite.  There is a reason that Detroit has fallen so far as car manufacturing fled to less hostile locations.

It should be noted that the DSA does not need to achieve all of its policies to crash the US.  Just defunding the military could end the US.  Opening the borders like the Biden Administration for a more extended period with the amnesty policy could destroy the US.  The only reason Europe has been able to enact so many of these policies is because the US has footed the bill for defense.  The US has no one to cover that bill.

Vote against the communists in November!

Incoherent

From this video of Senator Fetterman, it is clear that he is not up to governing.  Similar videos of President "collapsed bridge" are also plentiful.  Those who have been elected to govern are clearly incapable of governing.  Who is pulling the strings?  Are their wives doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes and only allowing their husbands to be figureheads?  Or might someone else be in charge?  In any case, those elected are not the same as those governing.

Judging without Law

The Supreme Court has decided that President Obama's executive order that implemented DACA despite the Congress refusing to legislate an actual law cannot be invalided by a countering executive order by President Trump.  That presents some serious problems.  The purely executive action of one president has been enforced against a later president.  Ergo, DACA is being treated as law.  President Obama has successfully legislated his policy preference without the participation of the legislative branch!  If Biden is elected, will the Supreme Court uphold Trump's executive orders when Biden seeks to revoke them?  If yes, then presidents are legislators.  If no, the Supreme Court is picking sides rather than ruling on law.  Both of those options are disastrous for the Rule of Law.

This was not the only troubling ruling from the court.  Much as the authors of the 14th Amendment would be amazed that they had codified birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, the authors of the 1964 Civil Rights law would be dumbfounded to learn they had provided legal protections for homosexuals and transgenders.  If the legislature can't get these policies implemented then it is up to the court to bypass the democratic process and just make it happen.  That's how we got gay marriage and now this.  Why do we have Congress?

In a democratic society, big issues must be decided through the elective bodies.  When courts mandate a solution, that is just a majority vote of 9 unelected judges rather than an extended debate that involves hundreds of legislators who must answer to voters.  Look at the abortion debate.  Rather than solve the problem, Roe v. Wade has created an irreconcilable division that has roiled the country for nearly 50 years.  It is why judicial fights are so brutal now because everyone knows that courts - not legislators - will have the final say.  That's not democratic.  That is not the rule of law, but the rule of judges.

Hitler was NOT Elected

Then there's the notion that winning an election automatically makes a candidate the right/correct choice. If that were true, everyone today owes Hitler an apology.

Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune

 

Adolf Hitler was Austrian and never won an election to a German political office.  He had renounced his Austrian citizenship in 1925 but did not gain German citizenship until 1932.  He could not legally run for office in Germany throughout the 1920s and instead became a party boss.  In 1932, he ran for president and lost.  However, the lead vote winner, Paul von Hindenburg, only received 49% of the vote, leading to a run off.  In the runoff, Hitler lost again but his strong showing led President Hindenburg to reluctantly appoint him as chancellor.  Hindenburg was in his 80s and died in August, 1934.  During his time as Chancellor, Hitler had already set about intimidating and crushing opposition parties.  With Hindenburg's death, there was nothing to stop Hitler from declaring himself Fuhrer of Germany.  Later elections offered only Nazi members as candidates for the Reichstag.  Hitler was not elected, and not re-elected.  At best, prior to his seizing power, his party held 43% of the seats in the Reichstag and made common cause with other parties to get legislation to further empower Hitler.  The other parties were abolished once Hitler had the powers he needed.

 

Enough with the Hitler nonsense.  There are plenty of American Presidents that took actions that Trump is taking.  How about comparing him to them?  Obama banned travel from Iraq, Carter banned travel from Iran.  It was okay then but wrong now.  Truman and Eisenhower deported lots of illegal immigrants.  FDR had Russian agents throughout his administration!  President Tyler had a wife who was 30 years his junior.  No need to make a Hitler analogy when past president's fit the bill.

Democracy Ain't What It Used to Be

A court has ruled that Brexit must first go through the Parliament, a ruling which many Remainers hope will derail the Brexit and thus the will of the people.  You see, the electorate is too stupid to know what is good for it.  Undermining the vote of the people is pretty common these days.

In California in 2000, the voters approved Prop 22 (61% in favor, 38% opposed), a law that banned same sex marriage.  The Mayor of San Francisco openly ignored the ban and various state courts eventually ruled that the law was unconstitutional.  So in 2008 the voters approved Prop 8 (52% in favor, 48% opposed) a constitutional amendment that banned same sex marriage.  As an amendment, this was automatically constitutional on the grounds of state law, so opponents went to a US District Court which found it unconstitutional as regards federal law.  The State of California refused to appeal the decision and citizens didn't have 'standing' to appeal the case.  Therefore, Prop 8 was overturned.

 

In 2010, there was a special election to fill the Senate seat of Edward 'Ted' Kennedy.  A big part of the campaign was the Republican claiming that Scott Brown would be the 41st vote against Obamacare.  The hyper-blue state of Massachusetts elected its first Republican Senator in more than 30 years to stop the Affordable Care Act.  Getting the message, the Congress used parliamentary legerdemain to pass it anyway.  How has that worked out?

 

Throughout the Western Democracies, the governments are ignoring the voters.  Angela Merkel in Germany has seen her party walloped in elections and yet is still in favor of mass immigration.  Nativist parties are rising because the supposedly moderate parties are marching their nations to bankruptcy and cultural suicide.

 

Kemalist Turkey has died and Sultan Erdogan is sowing the seeds of a new Ottoman Empire.  Erdogan saw democracy as a tram that you take to your exit and then get off.  The voters gave him enough power that he no longer needs their consent.

 

Rulers resent that they require voter consent.  They have had years to devise means of bypassing that requirement and yet they are astonished by the rise of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, UKIP, et al.  If you ignore the voters for long enough, you will likely spark a revolution.  Currently, the revolutions are still being fought at the ballot box but continued bypassing will lead to less civilized means of revolution.

 

Ignore the voter at your peril.