Sweeping Democratic victories in off-year elections seem to be foreshadowing a very good midterms for the party, and one expert believes it’s even bigger than that.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform legislative power,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on electing Democrats to statehouses, told Mother Jones.
The last time the Democrats won control of Congress, they tried to pass a very large electoral reform law.
This bill bans partisan gerrymandering, requires Congressional constituency lines to be drawn by independent boundary commissions, introduces new limits on campaign finance, requires polls to be open for at least two weeks, introduces an automatic voter registration scheme, makes the final day of voting a federal holiday, expands postal voting, makes obstructing voter registration a federal crime, restores voting rights to felons when they leave prison, bans lying to voters about when or where to vote, introduces public financing of elections, limits the amount of money that political parties can spend on an election, requires candidates for president or vice-president to disclose their tax returns, imposes a code of ethics on the Supreme Court, and bans companies from making big donations to inaugural committees.
This bill did not pass because the Senate was evenly divided and the Democrats suffered a backbench rebellion from two “centrist” senators.
As is tradition.
There’s a reasonable suspicion the Democrats only advance these bills proposing real change when they already know they have those two “rebels” lined up to block it. That way they keep the voters coming back for another try, while looking after the interests of those who pay them.
I’m pretty sure if that were the case then someone would have blown the whistle on this several years ago. These people employ staffers, many of whom are very ideologically dedicated to the progressive cause, and would not hesitate to become a person familiar with the manner who agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity. In fact, this is probably where 90% of Congress leaks come from.
Democrats are an uncertainty while Republicans are a certainty to vote against this kind of reform. To me the solution is clear, remove the certainty, get so many DNC in there that expulsion becomes viable without handing the reigns over to Rs.
The Democrats could mobilize their base (not just the voters, but the unions and civil society orgs and universities and the like) and actually implement some party discipline by going after rogue party members that stand in the way of the agenda.
Senators have homes. They have investments. They have donors. They have families. All are points of leverage.
But they won’t, because that’s their job. The whole reason those “”“centrists”“” are in the party is to discipline the left flank and stop them from hurting the money’s feelings, disciplining their right flank would defeat the purpose.