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The US has a large number of fairly undemocratic institutions such as Congress (supremely gerrymandered in many states), the electoral college (frequently favor
by codyb 3y ago
The US has a large number of fairly undemocratic institutions such as Congress (supremely gerrymandered in many states), the electoral college (frequently favors the person who lost the popular vote) and the Senate (which rewards the same number of reps to 39,000,000 people as it does to 500,000 people).
These institutions offer routes for extremist positions to take power which they could then entrench with a more malleable constitution.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoThese "undemocratic" institutions only exist precisely because the constitution is hard to change. The electoral college, the gerrymandering, the shape of the Senate, they are all things that the constitution already allows. The takeover of power has already happened, the US is trapped in a 2-party system that basically everybody hates, but it's so entrenched into the culture that it's unthinkable to change it.
- codyb 3y agoThe 2 party system’s okay. It’s not the worst when it’s working alright. Right now it’s not great lol. But this system has survived 227 years or so for a reason. At the end of the day the Senate was actually a bulwark against extremism in these last elections in many ways. I’m not sure what you mean by takeover of power as if there’s some sort of cabal out there. There’s a lot of different vying interests out there and some have more power than they should, and this isn’t our shiningest moment in general, but I don’t necessarily agree that there’s been some sort of “takeover”.