A New Birth of Freedom or Bust

George Michael reinvented freedom, so we can too!

As expected, the Senate did not convict Donald Trump despite the votes to convict from members of his own party. The Republican Party has become an anti-democratic, extremist movement with Trump as its demagogic head and there was no way that his peons would turn on him. In any case, they mostly agree with him anyway. 

What might get lost in all of this is that a majority of Americans wanted conviction, and the Senators who voted to acquit represent over 70 million people less than those who voted to convict. Our Byzantine Senate and the Constitution's inadequate limits on executive power tell the tale. As in so many things, the will of the people is thwarted by an arrangement that gives an entrenched minority outsized power.

We see this in states that nullified Medicaid extension and in the Supreme Court's decisions on voting rights. We see it most acutely in the Senate, where Wyoming and California get the same representation and the filibuster prevents any legislation that Mitch McConnell doesn't like. 

Furthermore, the Republican Party in its current iteration is explicitly anti-democratic. That includes refusing to honor long standing norms. In the most egregious case, Mitch McConnell refused Merrick Garland's nomination to proceed, but rammed Amy Coney Barrett's through a week before the election. 

Meanwhile inequality worsens, the climate crises worsens, and discontent rises with a system where police can murder with impunity and a president can try to overthrow the government without consequence. Solutions to any of these problems are impossible with all of the democratic choke points being held so savagely by McConnell and other Republicans.

What this country needs, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, is a "new birth of freedom." Just as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments radically broadened the bounds of American democracy after the Civil War, we need to redefine freedom. This should include not only negative freedom from things, but positive freedom to achieve things. Education, health care, housing, and other essentials ought to be guaranteed to all Americans in order to allow them a true pursuit of happiness. 

None of that is possible in the current system, and as long as the Republican Party maintains its choke points, never will be, no matter how many people want change.

The most basic, most elementary thing that could be done to enable the necessary change that the majority thirsts for is the death of the filibuster. That only takes a single vote. After that can come a new Voting Rights Act, statehood for DC and territories that want it, and court packing. The only solution is more democracy, and if Democrats like Sinema and Manchin don't see that, then we can expect absolutely nothing to change. It is flabbergasting to me that devotion to bad, arcane Senate rules will likely end up trumping the drastic need to repair this rapidly dying society.