What do the Senate and the Supreme Court have in common? Yes, quite obviously, they are both parts of the American government, the Senate constituting half of the legislative branch, the Supreme Court the judicial branch. Something else the two have in common is that they are currently controlled (to the extent that the high court can be said to “controlled”) by the Republicans.
Which brings up yet a third thing they have in common. Democrats, who now control the other half of the legislative branch, want to abolish both, along with the Electoral College and the Constitution.
The Supreme Court
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No doubt the Left’s disaffection with the Supreme Court began during the emotionally charged confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and has since festered with talk of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health and likely departure in the months ahead, which would open the door to a third Trump appointee.
Dems’ ideological concerns were enough to prompt Vox to publish an article titled “The case for abolishing the Supreme Court,” which grimly observed:
[T]he Court is now a blunt political instrument, used repeatedly to undermine outcomes of democratic governance — often on behalf of corporate interests. And the recent disaster that was the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation has further delegitimized the Court in the public’s mind.
There was no such talk of Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan’s confirmation “delegitimizing” the court, but that is because they represent the “correct” political party, which Vox itself subscribes to.
The Senate
Former Democratic Rep. John Dingell wrote an op-ed column in December calling for the Senate to be abolished and for elections to be publicly funded. “There is a solution … that could gain immediate popular support: Abolish the Senate,” he wrote. “At a minimum, combine the two chambers into one, and the problem will be solved.”
The Washington Post had advocated for the same solution in 2016 in a piece titled “Abolish the Senate. It’s the only way to rein in modern presidents.” While the article expressed concern about either “a President Donald Trump or a President Hillary Clinton” nurturing “the growing trend toward the executive acting without the consent of Congress,” other articles published the paper around the same time made it clear that Trump represented the greater of two evils.
The Electoral College
The desire to deep-six the Electoral College stems almost exclusively from the left’s inability to accept the results of the 2016 election and the inability to appreciate that the Electoral College was put in place to prevent large pockets of the population – New York and California for example – from deciding elections for the entire country.
House Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced a pair of constitutional amendments on his party’s first day in power, one of which would abolish the Electoral College.
America, it's time to abolish the Electoral College | Cohen https://t.co/bGKH5Wn5Ej via @memphisnews
— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) January 13, 2019
The Constitution
The Left has long viewed the Constitution as at best an outdated document that, if it was to work at all, needed to be treated as a “living document,” open to free interpretation. The idea of abandoning the Constitution altogether became a topic of discussion recently after Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke wondered aloud whether the Constitution “still works.”
“I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work?” O’Rourke said of the Constitution. “Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships … and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”
Cross posted at the Mental Recession
