Hip Hip Hooray?

Daniel Lazare offers four reasons to cheer despite (or because of) Trump's victory

Liberals may be wracked with sobs in the wake of Trump’s smashing victory, but revolutionary democrats are made of sterner stuff. After years in the wilderness, we’ve honed our critical optimism to a fine point. So rather than bemoaning Tuesday’s results, here are four reasons to cheer.

Reason 1: It proves us right

For decades, critics have warned that the US Constitution’s growing contradictions were resolving themselves in ways that were increasingly violent, authoritarian, and rightwing. The reason is simple. An 18^th-century constitution that is as unworkable as it is undemocratic is grossly unsuited to the needs of modern society. The more social decay, economic polarization, climate change, and other problems pile up, the more it crumbles under the weight. Gridlock intensifies as the ancient machinery breaks down and frustration mounts. Eventually, the call goes out for a strong man capable of taking matters in hand. If he can’t put the system back in working order, at least he can take vengeance on neocons, social-policy entrepreneurs, and Hollywood airheads profiting from the collapse.  

The result is Donald Trump, a man elected not despite but because he’s a bull in a china shop and can be counted on to smash stuff up. The more heads roll, the more plebes will cheer.

All of which is supremely irrational. However, as this blog has argued repeatedly, it is irrational due to a political structure that hasn’t made sense in years. A grossly unrepresentative Senate, an undemocratic Electoral College, a dictatorial Supreme Court — all are bad enough. But what’s worse is a dysfunctional amending clause outlined in Article V that is so restrictive that any and all efforts at constitutional reform die aborning. Abolish the filibuster? Fix the Senate? Rein in the Supreme Court? Forget about it because an all-powerful Constitution says that nothing can be done. The result is a pre-modern republic that is nearly as frozen as the Celestial Empire back in 1911. The choices are stark: breakdown, chaos, and authoritarianism on the one hand or revolutionary re-constitution on the other.

Reason 2: It discredits the Democrats

Kamala Harris's concession speech on Wednesday was the final nail in the Democratic coffin. Not only was it cheap, sentimental, and morally self-congratulatory, but it was also amazingly thoughtless. The closest thing to a political principle it advanced was the following:

“In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.  My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say [that] while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign — the fight ... for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best.  This is a fight I will never give up.”

But how can you fight for fairness in the name of a Constitution that gives Wyoming residents nearly four times as much clout as Californians in presidential elections and 68 times as much in the US Senate? How can you fight for freedom when a dictatorial Supreme Court is attacking democratic rights at every turn? What happens to opportunity when a growing lack of democracy sends economic inequality shooting through the roof? Where is the dignity in social breakdown?

How can you engage in serious constitutional analysis, moreover, when the so-called opposition serves up nothing by meaningless constitutional platitudes?

This is a disgrace. Everything Democrats have done to bring down Trump has only made him stronger. The criminal charges that Manhattan District Attorney Al Bragg and New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed against him were obviously so specious and political that they ended up bolstering his claim of being a victim of the Deep State. Celebrity endorsements that the Harris-Walz campaign lined up from the likes of Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, J-Lo, and George Clooney convinced no one while reminding voters of how shallow and elitist Democrats have become. Support from neocon psychos like Liz Cheney merely underscored what has been obvious for years: that a party of vaguely dovish liberals has evolved into a clique of super-hawks. The more the working class follows the Democrats’ lead, the more it will end up following them to the grave.

Reason 3: It clears a path for the working class to act on its own

As anyone who has studied the Federalist Papers will know, the purpose of the Constitution’s convoluted political structure is to fragment class identity. As Madison put it in the all-important Federalist No. 10:

“The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.  A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source.  A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.”

A multitude of firewalls in the form of states’ rights or separation of powers ensures that class consciousness withers on the vine. More precisely, it ensures that proletarian class consciousness withers while raising ruling class consciousness to a high point. By hamstringing democracy, the bourgeoisie knows that the Constitution serves as a basis for capitalist accumulation that is nonpareil. Hence, it is determined to defend it to the utmost, even if it means death and destruction for society at large. The fight against the Constitution is the fight against capitalism, and vice versa. 

Reason 4: It helps solve the problem of not being able to get there from here

Proving that a constituent assembly is the only way out is not the least bit difficult since all other methods of constitutional reform are obviously blocked off. The amending process is useless since Article V says that not only must two-thirds of each house consent before changing so much as a comma, but three-fourths of the states must agree as well. Thirteen states representing as little as 4.4 percent of the population are thus in a position to veto any constitutional reform, a barrier to change that is simply insurmountable.  

However, a constitutional convention is also useless since Article V says that whatever it comes up with will be subject to the same three-fourths rule. Any attempt at strengthening democracy by reducing the outsized privileges of small states like Wyoming, Montana, or the Dakotas is a non-starter. Indeed, an Article V-style constitutional convention might make matters worse by allowing small states to demand even greater concessions.

So we’re stuck. Thanks to a decrepit 18^th-century constitution, structural reform is simultaneously urgent and impossible. That leaves only one way out: an end-run around the Constitution in the form of a constituent assembly in which “we the people” revamp the political structure not according to the complicated rules outlined in Article V, but based on popular sovereignty, which is to say the right of the people to act on their own authority in order to improve their condition. This is a right that the Preamble seemingly recognizes when it says that “we the people” can do whatever we want to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and so forth. The bottom line is, therefore, clear: If a democratically-elected assembly votes that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is at odds with domestic tranquility, then out it goes regardless of what one-fourth-plus of the 50 states might think. The same holds if the democratic majority votes to abolish the Senate or Electoral College or radically pare back the powers of the Supreme Court. Out they go, too. The only restraint will be exercised by the people at large via democratic elections. Otherwise, a sovereign demos can do whatever it wishes to defend, extend, and deepen its rule.

The argument in favor of a constituent assembly is thus proved. As the mathematicians say: QED.

But there’s an obvious problem with syllogistic reasoning like this: it doesn’t consider the problem of inertia. Sure, a constituent assembly makes sense in the abstract. But what does that matter when you’re juggling two jobs, kids, rent, plus a brother-in-law hooked on artificial opiates? Who has time? The abstract fades in the face of concrete reality.

Except that now we’re faced with something even more concrete: Trump-style Bonapartism. The danger is massive, and threats to deport millions of immigrants, to punish political enemies, or to overturn elections must be taken with the utmost seriousness. This means that the working class will have no choice but to act not in defense of the Constitution but in defense of democracy. “Be practical, demand the impossible.”  Or so Parisian soixante-huitards used to quip: But now we’re deadly serious. Socialists must bridge the unbridgeable divide to reach a constituent assembly on the other side. They must act because they have no choice. As dear old Margaret Thatcher used to say, there is no alternative.

So, two cheers to Trump for (inadvertently) pointing the way forward. Now that we have discarded our illusions and regained our senses (to quote Marx), we can roll our sleeves up and go to work.