Discussion on Constitutional Reform and Legitimacy

So the long story short is that currently I'm teamed up

with the leaders of the Democracy Renewal Group.

That's 300 people who used to be USAID

people from, you know, doing democracy work and authoritarian

pushback all over the globe.

I'm also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the

Marxist Unity Group caucus within DSA.

MUGS, the only caucus in DSA that talks

about the need for a democratic constitution, uh,

and fought to get language into DSA's program that says

our ultimate goal is a democratic constitution based on

universal and equal suffrage, and a unicameral legislature.

And I, I do think it's urgent. I'm, uh, foreseeing a crisis of

legitimacy around the November election.

Um, already 20, 25% of Americans still believe the

2020 election was stolen. Um, now more and more people

on the left are concerned about the legitimacy of

elections because of, you know, shenanigans that are happening, and

last-minute changes that are not fully supported by the

broad, you know, electorate. So, um, I, I think we have

an opportunity. I think the midterms, especially if there's a meltdown around

the

in- in midterms, and a crisis of legitimacy

could be a real window of opportunity for us to, to

say, "Okay, some red lines have been crossed."

And we can say, "But you know, what we really need to do is

transform our system. Let's start a conversation about that."

But

in order to do that in November, and take advantage of the meltdown

scenario, we have to get super, super organized in the next

seven months. So I think this is a plan that needs to be on

steroids.

The organizations behind No Kings Protest are very clear that they support

the Constitution. They want to protect the Constitution.

So we cannot see just millions of people out there

in the streets as actually some

alternative. Uh, we have to be the ones who are creating an

organization that is explicitly anti-constitutional, and I don't

know if these other organizations are. If, if we are, great.

Is, is that fair to say, Danielle?

Yeah, definitely. We're talking about, um...

I mean, the conversation broadly that we've started is what happens if we

need to go extraconstitutional to create the kind of

transformation that we'd all like to see.

Yeah.

Um, and so, you know, we've talked about a sequence of,

like, a, an important convening, maybe like a third continental

Congress that actually, you know, comes up with a declaration that

says, "Here are the red lines. Like, if these red lines in our

democracy are crossed, we will move into an

extraconstitutional process, and here's what it looks like." Um,

you know,

and then maybe you go right into a constitutional convention, or

maybe there's a national dialogue in between-

Mm-hmm

... that gives some time and space for people to come together,

build

the coalition, figure out what are our shared values, how are we

gonna do a constitutional convention?

I fear that jumping straight into a constitutional convention too

soon before the situation is ripe could actually be dangerous, but I

do think we can start a path, start to get us on a path

that lands us, when the timing and ripeness are there, to a

democratic constitutional convention. But that's the conversation we're having.

What's the pathway? What's the pathway that we need to take-

Right

... to get from here to a constitutional

reform process with

broad support and legitimacy-

Yeah

... so that it's not just sidelined as

partisan or,

um, you know, something that can be easily dismissed or, or

sabotaged?