A Loyalty to Truth: The DSA’s Constitutional Vision
This summer, as Democratic Socialists have been seeking to win Democratic primaries for local, state, and Congressional offices — with varying degrees of success — voters and commentators have been paying increased attention to various platform positions that those candidates and the national Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have advocated.
Some of those positions, like “[L]et’s prove that we make better possible” or “People . . . want to hear what government can do”, are so anodyne that almost any politician in any camp could advance them without causing voters any concern. Others, like “Enact aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to spend on public goods and infrastructure”, have become not only a key plank in the DSA’s platform, but a refrain in multiple Democratic Socialists’ campaign promises that appeals to a number of voters and policy analysts.
One specific plank in the DSA’s platform that immediately attracted intense opposition from some Republican politicians and commentators is its proposal to “draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” Among other revisions, the platform calls for abolition of the United States Senate and the Electoral College, expansion of the House of Representatives, and “[r]eplac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
Some commentators quickly rejected the DSA’s constitutional reform proposal with only short bursts of invective — one prominent columnist briefly dismissing it as “earnest and unserious.” But it is important for proponents of the rule of law to analyze key elements of the proposal more closely in light of America’s experience with its current Constitution, not least because the DSA platform includes no explanation of the proposal.
Take first the proposal for abolition of the Senate. The genesis of this recommendation is unclear, other than a nebulous assertion by the DSA’s co-chair that the Senate is “undemocratic.” That charge is presumably animated by concerns about Senate malapportionment (i.e., widening disparities in the populations of larger and smaller states) as well as Senate rules such as the filibuster. But, as Yuval Levin notes in his masterly defense of the Constitution, American Covenant, the Senate, the Electoral College, the courts, and even the Bill of Rights “are now regularly under assault for being insufficiently responsive to democratic pressures.”
In the face of claims that various parts of American government are “undemocratic”, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the United States has elements of both a democracy and a republic, in part because the Framers of the Constitution shied away from a pure democracy. As historian Barbara Clarkmith observed, the Constitution reflects both “a commitment to democracy” and restraints on pure democracy such as the Supremacy Clause and the Bill of Rights.
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Moreover, the abolition of the Senate, by definition, would convert Congress into a unicameral legislature that, in the DSA proposal, would be expanded, almost certainly well beyond its current membership of 435 voting Members. The current roster of countries with unicameral legislatures does not inspire confidence that a larger unicameral legislature would necessarily provide appropriate protection for minority interests and minority rights.
That list of largest unicameral legislatures includes the largest totalitarian or highly authoritarian countries in the world, such as China (2,977), North Korea (687), Turkey (592), and Cuba (470). (In fairness, it should be noted that a number of democratic nations, such as the Scandinavian countries, and the state of Nebraska also have unicameral legislatures.)
What the DSA proposal appears not to take into account is the distinct possibility that a unicameral House of Representatives, even if not expanded, will give rise to greater distortion and volatility in legislative decisionmaking. Without what James Madison recognized (in Federalist № 62) as the stabilizing influence of the Senate, which reflects equal representation for each state and six- rather than two-year terms of service, Congressional delegations from states with larger populations can more easily override the objections or concerns of small-state delegations. Further expansion of the House’s size is likely to enhance that imbalance, as larger states acquire more Congressional seats than smaller states.
Most troubling is the DSA proposal to replace two of the three branches of government — the President and the Supreme Court — “with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” Even those who view President Trump and his Administration as bearing hallmarks of authoritarianism, and who decry the abuses of prosecutive power that the Justice Department has been committing to pursue the President’s perceived political enemies, should quail at the prospect of a unicameral Congress choosing and directing the actions of a President, his law enforcement and regulatory agencies, and the Supreme Court.
Though nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances operate together to keep, as Madison put it in Federalist № 49, “the several departments of power within their constitutional limits.” While Madison was concerned about the encroachment by any one department of government on the others, a system of government that, by design, subordinates executive and judicial powers to a popularly elected unicameral legislature would pose an even graver danger than the current Administration of continuing abuses of political power and surrender the rule of law to the rule of whatever faction happens to be in the majority.
One commentator opined that the DSA proposal “would, in some ways, be a return to the Articles of Confederation”, in which there was also a unicameral legislature but neither a President nor a federal judiciary. But what the DSA constitutional proposal envisions would more closely resemble the governmental organization of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in which the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee have “the ultimate authority to interpret law and to enforce the Constitution” and the PRC Constitution prohibits “any organization or individual to damage the socialist system.”
That resemblance may not be coincidental. Recent media reporting has disclosed that DSA delegations have made several trips to China by invitation, and that more than a dozen DSA members pledged to “support the People’s Republic of China and to promote understanding of Chinese socialism.”
Some people may find superficial appeal in a proposal that appears consistent with the DSA’s general program of greater democracy for workers and the end of capitalism. But at a time when American voters overwhelmingly support the current system of checks and balances and are concerned about concentration of powers in the U.S. political system, the DSA’s constitutional vision shows a profound disrespect for their concerns and a deliberate ignorance of the strengths that our constitutional system has maintained — even under the stresses of a civil war, international conflicts, and recurring risks of systematic corruption — over more than two centuries.
