In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.Have you noticed that virtually every left-wing proposal to save “democracy” entails destroying the existing constitutional order?The ascendant Democratic Socialists of America types, of course, want to fundamentally reimagine the entire system by abolishing the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. Or, in other words, they want to eliminate all checks and balances and turn to mob rule.
And although the DSA’s platform is indeed “chock-full of maniacal proposals,” writes the Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait, “the teardown of the upper chamber would be good for American democracy.”That’s the problem. Millions of people are under the impression that direct proportional national democratic representation is akin to fascism. Indeed, any time 50.01% of the country isn’t lording over everyone else, we hear complaints from left-wingers about “minority rule.”But American democracy was never meant to empower New Yorkers to dictate Idaho’s abortion laws or for Texans to compel Massachusetts to adopt its gun laws.“The Senate is a vestigial deformity upon the Constitution whose elimination,” Chait goes on, “unlikely though it might be, would rank among the great democratic advances in American history.”The Senate has anchored what turns out to be the longest continuous and, by far, the most stable liberal democracy the world has ever seen. The ability of the Senate to ensure that national laws represent the entire nation’s concerns has been a big part of that success. Surely there’s an abundance of historical evidence that the Founding Fathers, while imperfect, had more wisdom than the socialists who wanted to import Third World banana-republicanism.Yet, Chait’s piece is grounded in the amusing notion that contemporary anti-Senate leftists are merely adopting the positions of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom initially objected to a malapportioned Senate.In Federalist No. 62, Madison grapples with the undemocratic nature of the Senate before coming to the conclusion that it is an advantage that “no law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States.”It’s true Madison, who hailed from the nation’s most populous state, acquiesced to the demands of smaller states to reach an agreement. It’s also true that Madison saw a disproportional Senate as a redundancy because he envisioned a federal government with highly limited power. The notion that the father of the Constitution would have supported senators passing federalist-busting trillion-dollar reforms run by a highly centralized, powerful federal government is utterly preposterous.If Washington operated within its enumerated powers, which would entail shuttering most agencies, a proportional Senate would hardly matter.A “No Kings” march in New York denouncing President Donald Trump and his administration on March 28, 2026. (Gina M. Randazzo/ZUMA Press Wire via Newscom)
