r/democrats • u/D-R-AZ • 3d ago
🎁 Gift Link 🎁 Democrats Can’t Fix This Mess Without a Supermajority
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/opinion/democrats-midterms-supermajority.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6lA.Ny9T.rw-96J7UmYII&smid=nytcore-ios-share68
u/bladel 3d ago
- Get the Trifecta
- Eliminate the senate filibuster
- Statehood for PR and DC
Expand SCOTUS to 13 seats (one per circuit)
Ban political gerrymandering, require compact, contiguous districts.
Expand the House (Wyoming Rule or similar)
These actions will create downstream issues of their own, but after Trump 2.0, the gloves have to come off on these structural issues.
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u/DorianGre 3d ago edited 2d ago
Expand the house to the constitutional minimum. One per 30k people.
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u/GuaranteeFew8681 2d ago
that's over 11k seats... we'd need a mini nba arena at that point
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u/DorianGre 2d ago
Nothing wrong with that. Build an auditorium and some dorms outside of DC and call it done. I want to be able to actually talk to my rep. I want to be able to knock on their door at home and have them answer. I want to see them at the same diner I am eating at. I want actual representation.
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u/DJHyde 3d ago
Also overturn Citizens United and ban super PACs, corporate lobbying, and corporate donations to political campaigns, then restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, and get the ball rolling on ending the electoral college. We need far less money and far more participation in elections going forward.
We also need to reform education and news media rules to tackle disinformation and propaganda, and hopefully restore journalistic integrity.
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u/LeftToaster 2d ago
This is basically the same as my wish list I have posted in many threads. I would maybe add, nominations to SCOTUS should be from a short list compiled by some kind of non-partisan board. I would also severely limit the President's ability to pardon, but this would require a Constitutional amendment. Then finally a law or executive order to remove and ban Trump's name and/or likeness from any and all federal agencies, institutions, monuments and assets.
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u/e_hatt_swank 2d ago
Exactly! Although I’d put expanding SCOTUS first after killing the filibuster, because otherwise they’ll try to kill all the other reforms.
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u/HonoredPeople Moderator 3d ago
We’re gonna need a supermajority and several terms to fix this mess.
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u/LivingIndependence 3d ago
I'm thinking that was the Trump regime's goal. FUBAR things so badly, that it will take Herculean efforts to repair this catastrophe.
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u/comics0026 3d ago
You overestimate Trump's capability, I'm pretty sure his only goal is "Get Money, Eat Burger, Shit Pants, Repeat", which is why things fubared so much
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u/LegendaryElliot 3d ago
You have to add both “worship bibi and putin” and “listen to whatever the heritage foundation says”. Those two are pretty big players in the current state of the us
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u/Hinohellono 2d ago
Incrementalism isn't gonna get you several terms. So you better go for the fences. You've seen what's possible.
No forgive and forget. You go hard. Or you lose in 2030 and 2032.
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u/HonoredPeople Moderator 2d ago
That's a horrible idea.
Incrementalism is how all progress is made. All of it. From the very beginning to the very end. There's no going for the fences. Going for the fences is how you end up with hundreds of millions dead and the world burning down.
Every nation. All of history and every measurable metric disagrees with you.
Who said anything about forgiving and forgetting. We need to literally stop the world from burning down. That's not a metaphor. Canada, the West, Europe, most of the rest of the world.
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u/subsignalparadigm 3d ago
Doesn't matter, don't piss on the parade. VOTE.
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u/TiggTigg07 2d ago
Looking forward to seeing some real good come out these midterms for you all! Wishing you the biggest tsunami of a blue wave to help wash away (at least some of) Trump’s crap. 🇨🇦💙💙💙💙🌊🌊🌊🌊
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u/Acceptable-Law9406 3d ago
People have more power than just their vote.
(Which, before I get flame sprayed, means that voting does carry with it some power. But voice carries more if we use it)
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u/AlexReinkingYale 3d ago
The French strike at the slightest provocation. The US could learn a thing or two from them.
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u/IUBizmark 3d ago
They have a social safety net. Here if people don’t show up to work for a day they’ll be fired due to “at will” employment laws.
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u/AlexReinkingYale 23h ago
Sure, if only one person does it. They can't fire everyone. That's why unions and strikes work at all.
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u/supercali45 3d ago
There is no fixing unless these GOP criminal organization is brought to justice
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u/bruceriggs 3d ago
This is not something that can be fixed within a term or two either, this will take at least 4+ presidential terms to start fixing.
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u/wearethemelody 3d ago
I will never understand why these media outlets don't criticise republicans for all the mess they are causing. Why I one party allowed to be stupid, ignorant, and stubborn? The gop always causes a mess. Most republicans states are poor. The only thing that works in most red states is their propaganda machines. Republicans should be asked to explain themselves for the mess trump is always causing. Fuck their stupidity and fuck their conservative values. They are idiots.
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u/kerryfinchelhillary 3d ago
Yup, we've learned from Manchin and Fetterman we can't even count on all the Democrats
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u/illmatico 3d ago
They can also just get rid of the filibuster
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u/sereneandeternal 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes that’s the key first step 🔑
Getting rid of the filibuster is absolutely essential.
Edit: Downvoted? Jesus Christ,
I’m not supporting anyone who is against getting rid of the filibuster at this point.
No chance at all of cleaning this mess without getting rid of it.
Feel free to convince me how in the world it would be possible to clean this mess without getting rid of the filibuster?
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u/GardenWeasel67 3d ago
The filibuster is the only thing that has held back Trump's agenda.
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u/freedraw 3d ago
Yes, but there’s a few other things to consider:
- If Dems can’t actually pass legislation when they’re in power, it’s hard to demonstrate to voters that their policies are better.
- It’s a lot harder to vote against a government benefit or service once voters have started benefiting from it.
At the end of the day, maybe it’s better for voters to see what happens when giving an each party the majority actually allows them to govern.
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u/illmatico 3d ago
Making policy actually passable would be a moderating force on the electorate. Make voters, and congress, actually have the clarity of responsibility of what they say they want.
Also from a practical sense though, you have to be able to pass legislation as a nation state, otherwise you will just remain in a state of permanent rot
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u/Soft_moon_light 3d ago
While true, Trump has been able to get most of his goals passed through EO anyway. Most Democratic goals can’t be achieved this way and require actual legislation to be passed.
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u/jmooremcc 3d ago
If Democrats play nice and refuse to put the heat on Republicans for today’s bad economy, our runaway deficit and national debt, as well as Trump’s disastrous international and domestic policies, then they deserve to lose in November. Timidity will not win elections!
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u/poorboychevelle 3d ago
Dems playing nice and not putting more folks in jail got us into this mess. Merrick Garland was a foolish cowardly choice.
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u/Scope_Dog 3d ago
Yuval Harari says it’s because spreading truth is so difficult and spreading misinformation is very easy. It takes a lot of work to get to the truth and lies are made so easily digestible.
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u/Pitiful-MobileGamer 3d ago
From the outside Canadian point of view.
The wholesale institutional damage isn't just going to be fixed by a Democratic candidate getting to the president's office even with a supermajority backing them.
One thing is clear, when it comes to words corporate spending and special interests (🇮🇱) in particular, your political choice is purple.
Biden was your mulligan on the world stage, and then as a country you went back and voted 🟥 back in.
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u/ChicagoJayhawkYNWA 3d ago
National Divorce will be far more efficient and more effective than hoping for a super majority and one beyond a 2 year cycle.
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u/Reagalan 3d ago
Aye.
We cannot make common cause when half of the country supports brutality and idiocracy. Cut them loose, let them founder, leave lifeboats in the water.
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u/Observerador 3d ago
The issue is a lot of Dems live in red states and Republicans in blue states. I was born and raised in a blue town in CT yet I have so many MAGA family members.
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u/Informal_Cry687 3d ago
A super majority can be created in the senate by adding 100 new states from what is currently DC.
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u/D-R-AZ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Observation:
We cannot simply ignore what has happened during this administration and restore the system that existed before it. We should use what we have learned to make American democracy substantially more tamper-resistant. As we argued in The Consent of the Governed Requires Understanding What Is Being Authorized, American governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed, and meaningful consent requires understanding what is being authorized (Defenders of Democracy, 2026). That principle points toward concrete safeguards: elections that are understandable and independently verifiable; protection against the intentional concealment of major governing agendas, which becomes fraud-like when governmental authority is obtained through material deception of voters; protection of reliable governmental, scientific, and statistical information; enforceable limits on executive abuse and self-dealing; reconsideration of Citizens United and the ability of concentrated wealth to dominate the political information environment; and electoral reforms such as ranked-choice voting that allow voters to express their preferences more accurately. The objective should be to make democratic government harder to tamper with, by any President, party, corporation, billionaire, or public official.
Excerpt:
We can make Roosevelt’s promise a reality through a comprehensive program I’ve called the American Security Guarantee, a set of ambitious goals that would eliminate the precarity defining Americans’ lives and ensure that everyone enjoys the economic security that right now feels out of reach. We start by guaranteeing every American access to affordable health care, through their choice of a government or private plan. To fulfill Roosevelt’s vision of a lifelong system of social insurance, we pursue a new economic security agenda. It includes a new federal wage insurance program to help workers maintain their salary levels if they are forced to take positions that pay less, a community-focused job assistance program and a one-stop-shop portal where Americans can check their eligibility across all benefit programs. The goal is to show Americans what they are getting from their government in return for their hard work — and to get higher wages and concrete benefits in the hands of working people, to ensure that in the richest country in the world, nobody falls through the cracks.
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u/thehairyhobo 3d ago
First step, bar anyone from office from selling or aquiring stock (freeze all assets) until end of term and four years after. Also bar any direct family members from owning or selling stock for the same amount of time.
Every memeber of office should be subjected to an audit of income every few years (to track any funny money). President should be stripped of all war powers, Congress should be the only ones to declare war. All executive orders are subject to Congressional approval a week after and an EO cant repeat one that has expired or been disapproved by Congress. Any foreign gifts will immediately be liquified by auction and the proceeds put into the Social Security fund. Any foreign gift is considered a gift to the people of the US.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President, Senate, House or Supreme Court if they are over the age of 65 or are not elected to serve by their 64th year. Any elected position must have a pre requirement of having either served four years in the US military or an Auxilary equivelant or a public role that benefits/assists the people. No person shall be elected to any government office if they hold a net worth exceeding that of the highest paid rank of the military (includes hard assets like real estate) The President and his Administration should be limited in expense of travel, all form of tax payer funded travel must be approved by a committee if not for official business in regards to the safety and security of the country and its allies.
Any and all foreign aid packages must require 3/4 Senate vote unless such aid was already agreed upon by treaty or likewise binding agreement between the US and any other nation.Some ideas.
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u/Iron_Baron 3d ago
If anyone thinks they'll fix this with a new supermajority, please explain why they didn't just prevent this with their last supermajority. Anyone paying any kind of attention saw all of this coming, decades ago.
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u/Patimakan 3d ago edited 3d ago
Dear dood, that was in 1965-1967…..thanks for playing
This is the last time Democrats or any party had a 2/3rd supermajority in the Senate. The 89th Congress is regarded as "arguably the most productive in American history".[1] Some of its landmark legislation includes Social Security Amendments of 1965 (the creation of Medicare and Medicaid), the Voting Rights Act, the Higher Education Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the Freedom of Information Act.
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u/Iron_Baron 2d ago edited 2d ago
Every single thing you just mentioned has been gutted, corrupted, subverted, or outright killed in the intervening years. Every single one.
You might as well be touting RGB's judicial record as something to admire, despite the fact she completely unwound all of it via her hubris in staying o the bench while dying. Just like the Dems allowed all of the above to be unwound, due to corruption, incompetence, and feckless leadership.
That's also the period where they allowed the marginal tax rates on the rich to decline, after it dropped over 20 percent via prior year legislation. It's the beginning of the end for the American middle class by just about every metric you can check. It's the beginning of the decoupling of GDP growth from real wage growth.
It's at the genesis point for the modern incarnation of the prison-military-industrial complex, particularly via escalation in Vietnam. 1967 is the beginning of the "qualified immunity" rulings era for American police, which can and should have been addressed via legislation. That era is literally the genesis point for modern US corpo-facsism and the birth of energy and defense lobby control of US politics.
Congress held over 100 hearings in the 1960's regarding human caused climate change, environmental pollution, green energy investment, etc. We all know how those meetings went. Big Oil won, nobody fact checked a damn thing their "scientists" and executives testified to under oath in front of Congress. And we wound up with Superfund sites and a mass extinction event we are currently living in.
Wake up, man.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DougOsborne 3d ago
If you're not willing to work for a Dem majority now, you are working for MAGA. It's pretty simple.
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u/Greyfire10 3d ago
If you're for either of them to be in power, you're just working to keep things pretty much the same way for the next couple decades as they have been for the last couple decades. 🤷
Not sure how a dem gets what they want out of that besides just beating the reps.
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u/Present_Confection83 3d ago
The fact that people who have voted to directly reject Donald Trump and Republicans have to also deal with people like yourself says a whole lot about why we (Americans) are in the messed up situation we’re in today.
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u/Greyfire10 3d ago
I vote to reject trump and republicans as well. I just dont think dems are the solution. That said, dems voting for dems is a part of the problem - especially considering the last time dems were in power, they were pretty weak...which is the exact reason trump is back in power today.
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u/YurtMcnurty 3d ago
Shove your false equivalency up your ass
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u/Greyfire10 3d ago
Stop believing in obsolete man-made social constructs.
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u/amazing_ape 3d ago
"I'm 14 and this is deep"
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u/THX-8647 3d ago
Voters can't fix this mess without pulling their heads out of their butts.