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1. I feel like @mjs_DC is one of the only ones saying something that I very much believe – and that applies far more broadly than this piece (which is about guns). It portends a very dark future for American democracy. slate.com/news-and-polit…
@mjs_DC 2. It's really a two-level argument. First, even as progressives (or at least Democrats) represent a larger and larger share of the American electorate, that won't be reflected in our elected officials.
@mjs_DC 3. There's a lot of reasons for that. Some are constitutional-structural. The Senate is a thing (Wyoming has the same number of senators as California – though the latter is 60x larger than the former). The electoral college is a thing. Etc.
@mjs_DC 4. Some are matters of longstanding practice. Gerrymandering is a thing, at the federal and state level. (Though gerrymandering is being done to degrees and with precision previously unknown.) Felon disfranchisement is a thing. Prison gerrymandering is a thing. Etc.
@mjs_DC 5. Others – creative efforts to disfranchise people – like closing polling places, requiring voter ID etc. – are returning with a vengeance and are being made easier by the gutting of the voting rights act. See Shelby County v. Holder.
@mjs_DC 6. All of these facts and many more will mean that as progressives become a larger and larger share of the electorate, their views won't be reflected in a commensurate percentage of public power. This is already the case at the legislative level in many states.
@mjs_DC 7. But that's only the first level-argument. The second-level is that even when progressives *are* able to elect majorities and pass laws – which will be rare and happen less often than progressive demographics suggest – it won't matter. Why? Because of the courts.
@mjs_DC 8. Very few people have faced up to this yet, but the federal courts, led by a Supreme Court far, far more conservative that the one that pivoted on Kennedy's (and before that O'Connor's) conservative vote, are poised to strike down all sorts of legislation.
@mjs_DC 9. And this is going to be true in areas of life and to degrees we haven't seen since the New Deal. Abortion. Guns. Health insurance. The environment. Business regulation. Worker's rights. Voting rights.
@mjs_DC 10. Admittedly we don't know the precise course or the degree, but it's going to be shocking because we've been living in an era – around forty years – where the Kennedy/O'Connor conservatism – as frustrating as it was – was much more limited than what is to come.
@mjs_DC 11. But the net effect is that even when progressives are able to overcome the odds and construct democratic majorities (despite the first-level limitations), the second-level – judicial activism – will make all of that organizing (i.e. that time, money, democratic energy) moot.
@mjs_DC 12. To put it differently, progressives are truly fucked. It won't matter how many of us there are. And it won't matter how hard we work to elect people like us. We will be a majority wanting to move one direction, as a rump minority moves the country very much in another.
@mjs_DC 13. In other words, America will remain a republic, but it will be a far less democratic republic than we have grown used to and than modern, 20th and 21st century mores would seem to demand.
@mjs_DC 14. And as far as I can see there is no solution. There is no reason to think the rump minority will give up their power, support a constitutional amendment, allow a new voting rights act/rein in gerrymandering, etc. In fact, all evidence is that they are doubling down.
@mjs_DC 15. And progressives (or at least elected Democrats) don't even *see any of this. They are utterly oblivious. And even if they weren't, other than stacking SCOTUS – which they are exceedingly unlikely to do even if they had the power – there isn't really anything they *could do.
