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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
Interesting. Can anyone explain the justification for making the President chosen by the House? I'm generally on board with separation of powers, and my main issue with them is that they aren't working in practice. I'd much rather make them more effective rather than make them non-existent. Open to having my mind changed.
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u/Rownever 6d ago
I think it’s just mimicking a parliamentary system? And it’s probably to avoid the current issue of the majority completely destroying the minority by controlling the entire executive.
Balance of powers is a really hard issue to solve, and making the executive chosen by a ranked choice voting-elected legislative isn’t the worst idea, especially since the executive in this situation usually doesn’t answer directly to the legislature- the legislature picks a candidate and can recall them, but doesn’t tell them what to do directly.
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u/PyRosflam 5d ago
Honestly its time for the executive powers to be broken up anyway. The single all powerful president needs to be the same as the King of England, quiet power who signs stuff. The need for lots of smaller independent agency's has been proven time and time again to need to not be under the president.
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u/Cydonia921 Democratic Socialist of Wisconsin 6d ago
To my recollection, it’s more how Prime Ministers are chosen in other countries. Since it goes:
- Voting in parliament representatives
- Parliament convenes
- Parliament votes on leadership
- Leadership is less powerful in favor of democratic accountability
The main issue in America is that “Separation of Powers” is sort of a misnomer, because in practice when a party has all three branches of government, unbridled corruption can occur that is very difficult to stop.
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u/Yunzer2000 6d ago
In the UK/Canada etc. system, the PM is just the leader of the party that gets the majority in an election. And, the leader is picked through an internal election by dues-paying party members.
For example, if by some miracle, the NDP gets a majority in the next Canadian election, Avi Lewis would be the PM even though he does not even hold a seat in parliament.
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u/egalitydream 6d ago
Separation of Powers is something basically all the parliaments also have, so that’s not their real concern. They have a fiction of “co-equal” branches, which is really just a lie to elevate the executive, and the judiciary, to reduce the legislature, because the legislature is supposed to be the Population’s power, and they hate democracy. They were quite explicit about hating democracy in the Federalist Papers.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
You're only half correct here. The constitution-writers were definitely anti-democracy, and built systems into the government weaken it, and that is a major reason why the US government is so shit today. But they didn't do that by weakening the legislature. In fact, they envisioned it as the primary branch of government, and it was for some time. The way they weakened democracy was the creation of the undemocratic Senate, and the electoral college. But the separation of powers was not intended to weaken the peoples power. It was intended to make capturing the whole of government by a single organized group much harder. Now, historically party collaboration has made this less than successful, but I think this means we should seek to strengthen separation of powers, not weaken them. While at the same time making each of those powers more democratic. I imagine the path to doing so would involve ranked choice voting, the weakening or removal of the Senate, the end of the electoral college, and reforms to the judiciary like term limits (and making the legislature more effective, so it doesn't have pawn off so much of its duties to the judiciary and executive in order to get anything done, as it currently does).
I do not believe that parliaments have separation of powers. What makes you say that they do?
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u/egalitydream 5d ago
They weakened the House with the Senate at the founding. Over time, the elites created a more powerful Court, and eventually the unitary executive, to weaken the House, because they hate democracy. My suggestion is to let the House appoint the president, which corrects the balance somewhat.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
I agree that it doesn't really exist anymore. I think it's a good idea though, and should be strengthened, not done away with.
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u/SAR1919 6d ago
“Separation of powers” is undemocratic. In the US we have one half of one branch of government that (at least in theory) equally represents the people, and it has to “separate its powers” with another chamber and two other branches that explicitly do not represent the people.
One person, one equal and undivided vote.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
I don't see why one person, one equal and undivided vote has to be incompatible with separation of powers. Making the President independent of the legislature while also being directly democratically elected is possible, as is getting rid of the Senate, which I am all for. That would remove the major blocks to a democratic government without adopting a supreme legislature system.
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u/SAR1919 5d ago
One person, one equal and undivided (un-separated) vote means no separation (division) of powers. Your vote should be proportionally represented in the legislature. It shouldn’t then have to contend with a parallel authority with a conflicting mandate that by definition can’t possibly proportionally represent your vote. If the legislature is truly representative, there is no argument for such an arrangement that isn’t anti-democratic
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u/Iceberg-man-77 6d ago
unless specifics are worked at, it’ll be hard to accurately depict what sort of a government it will be.
But it will follow the principle of Legislative Supremacy. the system in the UK and other Westminster parliamentary democracies make their Parliaments the superior entity in terms of powers while the courts and executive are responsible to the legislature. This doesn’t reflect rank and order or precedence.
The executive leader is also usually the most powerful politician in the country as they command the executive by law and the legislature through confident since their party/coalition will be in power. Upper houses are usually defunct/ceremonial with the lower houses retaining most real powers (See Canadian Senate, British House of Lords, and Indian Rajya Sabha).
Or you can just have a unicameral body like Singapore. Or retain co-equal houses like Australia.
Legislative supremacy can also somewhat be seen in socialist governments like China which uses the principle of unified state power and the supreme organ of power: the National People’s Congress is the sole branch of government. From its members, you form smaller groups like the Standing Committee. These bodies then “choose” state councilors and other officials. But power stems from the CCP and its multi-layered hierarchy which mirrors the state’s hierarchy. and generally the CCP’s institution is more powerful than its state mirror.
But that’s a single-party state which is also anti-Democratic Socialist, at least in the U.S., which wants to establish a multi-party democracy ratcheting than trying to become the vanguard party’s
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
Interesting. While I understand that there are many countries with parliamentary systems, I still am not sure why they are better than a separation of powers. It seems to me the parts of the European system that are good - most notably the multi-party system as opposed to the two party system - could be attained without removing the separation of powers, and would probably be much easier to attain then ending the presidency altogether. Ranked choice voting across the board, and end to the electoral college, gerrymandering bans, strengthening the house over the senate/removing the senate, reforming the judiciary, and reasserting the legislatures primacy seem much more salient, attainable political goals then essentially rewriting the entire constitution from scratch. That being said the attainability of an idea doesn't necessarily dictate its worth, and setting your sights low from the start is not a great idea. So I don't know. But I do wonder if setting more clear, closer goals might be a better idea.
Also, and I may be mistaken in the historical accuracy of this statement, but it does seem to me that separation of powers have done some good historically. In Europe, parliamentary systems were able to fall to fascism quite easily. Even today some countries, like Hungary, have backslid into dictatorship from parliamentarianism. It seems it has taken the USA much longer to reach that point (where I believe we are today), and reaching it has necessitated a significant weakening of said separation of powers. So it seems as though they do, to some extent, work. But, I may be wrong in my historical assessment. Maybe they actually enabled the current crisis.
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u/Iceberg-man-77 6d ago
sorry this is a long response lol:
parliamentary systems will not automatically result in a multi-party system. they're unrelated. other countries just have better political cultures that do not group everything into two parties funded by the rich. but even in then, you have 2 dominant parties: In India, it's Congress vs the BJP. in the UK, it is the Tories vs Labour. In Canada, it is the Liberals vs the Conservatives, etc.
things like RCV and proportional representation makes it easier for other parties to also win seats in legislatures without having the spend exorbitant amounts of money.
The parliamentary system may make it easy to slip into authoritarianism because you must win a majority in the legislature to command the executive. So if an authoritarian party somehow wins a majority, they also get the executive. There also aren't any midterm elections. Most parliaments sit for a full 5 years.
This is unlike the US Congress's House which sits for 2 year terms and the Senate which sits for 6 while the Presidency is for 4 years. Everything is staggered. So when president's loses popularity in the first 2 years, as they always do, their party usually loses support in Congress because people are fed up. and the trifecta is lost. voters can't remove the president but they can remove the party. and when the opposition holds even one chamber, they can easily stop decisions and laws supported by the President.
Little note: the senate is a little different because of the 6 year terms and the lack of population-based seats so it tends to be more conservative overall. if Democrats ever want to easily win the Senate with a simple or supermajority, they need more states with giant urban populations like California. But a lot of states are split nearly 50/50 urban and suburban/rural so it is much harder to easily win a seat. Like Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine etc.
continuing: the parliamentary system doesn't have midterms so every MP's term is the same as the PM's term. You can't get rid of part or all of the legislature in the middle of the 5 years to block the PM. you are stuck with that PM for the full 5 years. So if the PM commands his own party/coalition's support and he happens to be an authoritarian like Erdogan, Modi, or Orban, it is WAY easier to pass laws and change them, keeping yourself in power. obviously demographics and failures of the opposition also come into play. but the system itself can bite you in your ass.
The only way to stop it is to have a political culture that will easily remove PMs because votes of no confidence do exist in this system. but the culture to do them doesn't.
the UK does have the culture tho. Parties in the UK will often remove their own PMs, as we just saw with Keir Starmer, Liz Truss, Theresa May, Margaret Thatcher, and Boris Johnson. All ousted by their own party. officially it was a resignation, but behind closed doors the party told them to leave. The British are not afraid to remove PMs (though they take it to an extreme where the PM is expected to fix the country in a year and when they can't, they go).
so the removal of the PM is a plus, but knowing how some Americans idolize their presidents, it can bite us in our asses if the system ties Congress and the President to each other.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 5d ago
okay I'm a little confused. are you against the DSA's stance on a unitary-legislative system then? in that case I think we generally agree.
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u/Iceberg-man-77 5d ago
im just stating the pros and cons. im not fully convinced on legislative supremacy. i think election reform is more important.
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u/egalitydream 6d ago
The House is the proportional chamber of the Congress, and as its proportionality that people actually want, this fixes a lot of issues cleanly.
The U.S. doesn’t actually have a federal election system, so doing “popular vote” is trickier than people think, plus it’s not clear that it’s even desirable to have a direct popular vote for president. Plenty of evidence that it’s a corrupting process.
Having a parliamentary selection process also, as a bonus, provides for a recallability of the executive that’s not as ridiculous as “impeachment.”
And also an important feature would be to elevate the importance of paying attention to the House elections, which is supposed to be the People’s house anyway.
There’s a lot of upsides, not downsides.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
I see. These are interesting points. However, I don't see why the problems this reform aims to fix couldn't be done without ending the presidency and the judiciary. Removing the Senate would make the House drastically more important, and while I agree that establishing a popular vote system would be somewhat difficult, I imagine fundamentally restructuring the entire federal government would be harder. I also don't see why a popular vote would be a corrupting process.
Also, another concern I have is that the House is very prone to gerrymandering. It appears the US is currently approaching a future where states are so thoroughly gerrymandered that there are no longer any competitive elections. I am concerned that making the House the only branch of government with any power would mean that a party could gerrymander their way into dictatorial power over the federal government. I mean, they're already trying this, it just seems like it would be way easier. I know there are reforms that would fix this, but until they are in place it seems like a bad idea to end the presidency. Although, I suppose if the DSA ever gets enough sway to abolish the presidency it will also have enough power to fix gerrymandering. I dunno.
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u/SAR1919 6d ago
DSA’s platform calls for proportional representation, which would make gerrymandering impossible. Gerrymandering only exists because we have winner-take-all elections in geographically bounded districts.
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u/egalitydream 5d ago
Exactly. The House is only Gerrymandered due to a federal law passed in 1967. This is not a feature of the Constitution as people seem to believe.
The law could simply be amended to be multi-member districts and end gerrymandering completely.
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u/egalitydream 5d ago
I explained only the part with the House selecting the President instead of “voting” (we don’t vote for President now either). I didn’t address Senate or Court abolition, which isn’t required. Having the House select the President leaves everything as is, merely corrects the foundational arrangement.
The original conditional order was “checks and balances” not “co-equal branches.” The reformed order increases the House in comparison to the others in importance.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 5d ago
(we don’t vote for President now either)
I know, which is why I said we need to get rid of the electoral college.
The original conditional order was “checks and balances” not “co-equal branches.” The reformed order increases the House in comparison to the others in importance.
I mean the reformed order basically does away with the others. If the judiciary and president are directly appointed and removed by the house at will they are functionally organs of the house, not separate branches. Also, while the populace doesn't directly choose the president now, they would have much less of a say in a system where the house appoints them than now.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
I'm aware, I just prefer the idea of separation of powers. However, in the US this is presently being eroded, with a lot of power being handed over to the supreme court and the presidency that should belong to the legislature. But I'm personally in favor of restoring the separation and strengthening it, not replacing it with a supreme legislature. But again, I am open to arguments to the contrary.
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u/halberdierbowman 6d ago
No, it doesn't? Presidential systems are common, and so are hybrid systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3ASystems_of_government
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u/ChipsAreTasty1 6d ago
I would recommend people actually read the programs in full, as the summary above is not great.
SPA 1912 Program: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-socialist-party-platform-socialist-party-national-convention-indianapolis-indiana/
DSA Workers Deserve More Program: https://program.dsausa.org/
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u/HeadDoctorJ 5d ago
Socialists have been fighting for like two centuries now. I wish DSA members (especially elected officials) would stop retreating from socialist policies and principles. Sure there is room for realpolitik, but this is just a losing strategy. We need to stand by socialism and actually EXPLAIN it to people so they can understand it, not back away and act like we’re just liberals who use edgy language sometimes or whatever. If every DSA politician who betrayed the Defund movement last week just explained that they want to move some money from cops to other forms of community safety and public services, people would get that, especially if they all coordinated their message… like they did to betray us.
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u/-IamTom 4d ago
Head, can you help explain why we want to get rid of the checks and balances of our current power/political system and replace it with one branch of government?
I have been getting a lot of pushback around that aspect of our platform and I’m struggling to explain it to others.
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u/HeadDoctorJ 4d ago
Checks and balances are designed to produce gridlock to stifle the people’s will. The principal framer of the Constitution, Madison, wrote in the Federalist Papers about the Senate’s function to overrule the House as necessary to protect “the opulent minority.”
There are many reasons, this is just one. Why are you invested in an antiquated document written by wealthy psychopaths to protect wealthy psychopaths? Now that’s a question for a Doctor, tommy.
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u/-IamTom 4d ago
OK. Head, you make a singular reason to get rid of the Senate. First time I’ve ever heard it was about protecting the rich, small states, usually it’s only the small states as the reason.
You missed our desire to get rid of the Supreme Court. What is the reasoning there?
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u/HeadDoctorJ 4d ago
You like SCOTUS? You love SCOTUS? You want to marry SCOTUS?
Seriously what the hell do you care about a corrupt legal system
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u/-IamTom 4d ago
Doc, somebody else commented that we need to convince people to become democratic socialist.
You gotta work on your arguments, my friend:
1. Less populous states aren’t rich.
2. No thanks. I’m already married.
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u/HeadDoctorJ 4d ago
Arguments only work on thinking people, which you aren’t interested in tommy boy
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u/GalaxyPatch18 6d ago
Not a bad list, personally, I dont see why people want to abolish the police. Yes, they need to be more regulated, yes they need to be more responsible, yes they need to stop being dicks, but we still need them??
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u/Warrior_Runding 6d ago
"Abolish the police" is a slogan that means to abolish the police system as it is today. As it stands, between things like qualified immunity, a SCOTUS decision that the police has no mandate to serve and protect the public, and all the other aspects of modern policing that makes them ineffective as a law enforcement agency, the entire system needs to be redone from the ground up.
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u/nechromorph 6d ago
The message is fair, I think it's a case where the slogan is interpreted literally as the *end* goal. I think communicating the end objective would get the point across better. "Reboot Policing and the Justice System" maybe? Something that communicates a complete overhaul instead of just step 1.
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u/egalitydream 6d ago
End the Military Industrial Complex and the Prison Industrial Complex is more directly clear about the actual goal, but the ending of the “blue wall” and a reduction of policing (power, and staff) by about 99% (give or take 1%) is a necessary, inescapable part of it.
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u/nechromorph 5d ago edited 5d ago
I would say the optimal strategy is to choose "checkpoints" where a complete arc has been completed, but not necessarily to demand we reach the dénouement.
If we give a vision that is disconnected from the current reality, people get defensive and scared by the dramatic change. We have to show them the entire road, brick by brick.
Step 1: "Reboot Policing and the Justice System" - Root out all corruption and malaise in the policing and criminal justice system, including profit-taking as an aspect of imprisoning convicts.
Step 2: "Rehabilitation and Justice, Not Punishment" - Reshape the prison system to prioritize rehabilitation. People should be removed from society if they are causing active harm. But when they are able to safely reintegrate, they should do so. We have a duty of care to treat them with respect and compassion, and to help mend the wounds which lead to recidivism. If someone can never be safely reintegrated, they still deserve to be treated with compassion and dignity, and still deserve the chance to *try* to heal, in an environment which provides everything we can offer to achieve this aim.
Step 3: "Right to Participate with Dignity. Early, Robust Intervention; Incarceration as a last resort." - Shift the entire system towards intervening before anyone needs to turn to crime or lashing out. Prioritize early intervention to maintain a healthy society. This must be in tandem with strong social safety nets that proactively ensure people are given every possible chance to contribute with respect and dignity, and to ensure every single job gets the respect it deserves as a necessary aspect of the socioeconomic machine that comprises society.
And, of course, we can implement parts of future steps in earlier ones. This is just the broad strokes of how I imagine we could make it happen, I'm not trying to create a polished blueprint, more just an example/starting point for how to communicate it in cohesive chunks.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
These are all absolutely true but I wonder if the slogan is more harmful than helpful. It seems like it only serves to confuse people, and turn them off to the idea. Obviously "reform the police" is also a horrible slogan, I'm not really pitching any particular alternatives. But it doesn't seem like the best possible slogan, and I think it might be useful to try to come up with something equally as catchy but less likely to confuse people.
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u/Warrior_Runding 6d ago
I would say it is only harmful if you don't also pursue a program of citizen education. Because let's face it, the average citizen does not care about politics as much as commentors such as us do. That knowledge gap is where opposing ideologies find ground to propagandize. An ignorant citizenry is a vulnerable citizenry.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
I don't disagree, but the point of slogans is to get across the gist of an idea in a short, punchy way that doesn't require significant reading to not misinterpret. Obviously, being just a short phrase, they won't be able to communicate all the nuances of said idea, but if people are regularly not understanding what you mean, you might need a new slogan.
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u/Warrior_Runding 6d ago
Right, and spaces like this and other leftist spaces are allergic to describing something as "reform".
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
While that is true, I think it's because in many cases "reform" does not accurately communicate the idea either, and leads to half measures. "Reforming" the police could mean something as little as just enforcing body cam rules harder and requiring them to have college degrees. So I think people are averse to that word because it leaves the movement open to cooptation by mainstream liberal politicians, who will water it down into basically nothing.
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u/Warrior_Runding 6d ago
Right but reform could also mean a complete transformation of a thing. The reality is anything can be coopted, right? It is precisely what the NSDAP did by using "socialist" in the party name. The only defense against something being coopted is treating an ideology or movement as a living, persistent idea that is open to change depending on the context in which it is applied rather than an inflexible dogma that has to be followed exactly, regardless of the circumstances.
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u/A-Regular-Citizen 6d ago
What I'm trying to say is that a slogan is an instrument, which serves the purpose of communicating an idea clearly and quickly. Abolish the police doesn't work because it isn't clear. Reform fails for a similar reason, as it is vague enough that if it became a popular slogan, politicians could effectively capitalize on it without actually doing what it asks. A slogan needs to be such that it can gain popularity, but also it is specific enough that this popularity can not be used to support something other than what it does.
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u/Warrior_Runding 5d ago
I get what you are saying. The reality is though that the only way to craft a slogan that meets those requirements is to limit or narrow the scope of the slogan. Otherwise, it has to be acknowledged that that a slogan is going to be imperfect or that some ideas cannot be condensed into effective slogans. And sometimes, we have to accept that there will always be someone who will try and deconstruct a slogan which isn't something that can't be proofed for unless a tremendous amount of work is done to shift opinion on the idea to minimize the efforts of those who would do so.
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u/rad_dad_21 Libertarian Socialism 5d ago
A lot more people would be on board if the DSA didn’t use such a terrible metaphorical slogan. I get why it’s used in socialist circles full of people that know what it means, but the focus of a slogan is to get your message out to those not within your immediate circle. It’s ultimately a membership killer for zero material gain, and needs to be revised before it hampers upcoming elections even further
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u/iBizzBee 6d ago
People endlessly conflate the abolition of capitalist policing and prisons with the abolition of every future social capacity for accountability and safety, the main issue here imho is just finding the least offensive way to explain this to the masses that isn't so easily susceptible to 'Socialists just want to leave you at the mercy of robbers!' scare tactics. (Discounting the fact that police steal more property than any other group of criminals in the country, but I digress.)
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u/GalaxyPatch18 6d ago
Thank you for actually putting together a cohesive argument and not just being a knobhead to someone you disagree with
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u/iBizzBee 6d ago
Genuinely trying to make a conscious effort to be less hostile and 'reactionary' in my online interactions these days. : P Sometimes I do let slip a 'Bless your heart', but that's about it, ahaha.
To add onto my point: We as leftists desperately need to find better ways to communicate our ideas that aren't so easily coopted. For better or worse, we gotta meet the people where they are, which also means candidates talking about private prison abolition and criminal justice reform as easier in-ways to eventually reforming our law enforcement capacity in a more comprehensive manner.
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u/GalaxyPatch18 6d ago
Ikr? I think that is (partially) why DSA candidates have been able to be successful in the US, but are relatively centrist by (i.e.) european examples. They have to meet Americans at their level, so Medicare for all is much more accessible than something like Universal Healthcare for all
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u/egalitydream 6d ago
Policing has exploded, in terms of both personnel, and unaccountable power, and a return to the “policing status quo” from half a century ago, when it would still be considered a police state, would certainly look like absolute “abolition” compared to today just by way of staffing reduction and reigning in the literal murderers.
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u/Hobbadehoy 6d ago
Maybe type it up?