Reclaiming our Democracy may be more difficult than we realize.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/reclaiming-our-democracy-will-be-more.html

The beginning of 2021 seems like such a long, long time ago. Emerging from the fog of pandemic, the results of a sitting President being booted from office by voters, which included a seditious attack on Congress, prompted by this same President in order to avoid being forced to leave office, were just settling in. Personally, I thought this would be the end of Trump, but then, I thought when he insulted the disabled reporter, in front of cameras that have replayed the incident thousands of times, that would be the end.

I thought that conservative Evangelicals, who were just then coalescing around the adulterous, worldly, lying, deposed President would never put up with the kind of inhumane behavior, immoral lifestyle and complete lack of any kind of dignity or manners expected in a President, would abandon him in droves. I was sure wrong about their bottomless naivete and the greed and power-hungry lust of most of their leaders in continuing to support him.

But, as a Democrat, I was celebrating the fact that we had majorities in both houses of Congress and we had the White House. It was time to use the power we had to prevent Trump, whom party leadership correctly identified as being a danger to American democracy and a potential destroyer of the Constitution. And I thought they really believed that, and really meant that they were going to take deliberate steps to stop this demagogue from getting back into public office, and in fact, to have him indicted, tried, found guilty and arrested for his crimes.

I missed my guess on that, too.

The biggest obstacle to preventing Trump from putting himself in position to destroy the constitution and dismantle American democracy is the Supreme Court. His three appointees, the most unqualified justices ever appointed, and the most ideologically unsuited to serve on a court as a judge, were the major obstacle to stopping the dismantling of American democracy. And it seemed that most Democrats knew this, and accepted it.

So there are limited solutions to making changes here. One is to wait it out, and hope some of the older Republican appointees drop dead while Biden is in office and has a favorable senate. The other is to take advantage of the interesting constitutional provision regarding how many judges can sit on the court, and amend the Judiciary Act to create several new seats, so that Biden could appoint the most liberal judges he could find, to neutralize the incompetence and make progress toward reform necessary to keep Trump from destroying the country.

Doing so would have been a matter of making sure the justices that were appointed, along with the current Democratic appointed minority, would take several steps. One would be to overturn the Citizens United decision. Another would be to overturn the ridiculous Presidential immunity ruling pushed by John Roberts, which puts the President above the law. A third action would have been to take the pending court cases for which Trump was under indictment, namely the incitement of the attack on the Capitol and the stolen documents case, out of the hands of Eileen Cannon, and into the chambers of one of the liberal justices to strike down the motions and expidite the trials to verdict and ultimate disqualification of Trump's ability to run for public office.

And of course, they could have saved Roe.

[Delarage]

1. The Supreme Court will be the key

They have been working on that for decades, with Mitch McConnell leading the effort. Got them Bush v. Gore and most of our current mess. We really need to get back in and take care of that when we do. Restore democracy and the rule of law.

[off-the-clock]

4. So we need to make sure we get Congress votes

...so we can NOT approve new justices where we ignore obvious red flags

[raging moderate]

2. Republicans constantly point out that we are not a democracy.

Republicans state again and again that "we are a Constitutional Republic." Most of them believe that the modern Democratic Party is actually a communist conspiracy to destroy our Republic. They forget that we are actually a Constitutional Democratic Republic. There was a time when Democrats and Republicans worked together to promote a stable society and prevent both communism and fascism. They admitted that each side knew some things better than the other side, and they compromised to reach agreements. I am hoping more Democrats will be elected, and also that more reasonable Republicans will be elected.

[Frasier Balzov]

3. The SCOTUS majority says it's up to the voters.

I think the voters are ready to push back hard in the mid-terms.