The loudest message of the resistance over the past few weeks has been the message of No Kings!
And yet many fail to understand the real implications of those words. Yesterday, Gavin Newsom announced his intentions to run for president in 2028. I also saw a meme that I haven’t verified yet that suggested Bernie Sanders endorsed AOC for president in 2028.
Brad and I are getting ready to head to Pittsburgh for three weeks. We will be home in order to vote and take care of the number of other matters.
The other day, while talking with another friend living here, she told us that she wasn’t planning on voting because there wasn’t an election that was that important where she lives. I’m not really faulting her. She lives here pretty much full-time. This is where her life is. But it got me wondering about how many people within the United States will fail to vote this November because they don’t think there is an election that is very important.
While it is easy to see the actions of ?? and the GOP as being antidemocratic, the ease at which some fail to vote except every four years is also suspect. If you are one that thinks voting only in a presidential election because that one person is “at the top,” your mindset is a bit akin to wanting a king. Your actions suggest you believe placing all the power in one person’s hands is a good thing. In my opinion, any discussion about 2028 now is hypocritical for anyone who wants to claim to be against No Kings.
If you look around and you believe that the only problem is that Donald Trump got elected, you really need to get your eyes checked. That he won the election is a topic worth discussing in and of itself; however, the real reason why democracy is at risk is because of the way the other two branches of the federal government are failing to live up to their commitments to the Constitution. Trump couldn’t be doing half of what he’s doing if the legislative branch and the judicial branch were actually acting within the Constitution. I don’t say this to excuse Trump’s horrific behavior and actions. But wake up and smell the coffee! Our democracy is at risk because our entire federal government is broken.
And it isn’t just the federal government. The problems can be seen at the state level and local levels as well. A representative democracy counts on the people being engaged in every election from the bottom to the top.
As a quick aside, how broken Washington is is part of the reason that Trump was able to be elected. The American people know that government isn’t working for them. And so Trump‘s promises to bring down prices and drain the swamp were appealing to so many. Many people who voted for Biden stayed away from the polls because the Democratic party was so supportive of the bombing of Palestine. Biden and Harris continued to send bombs to Israel even when we knew that what Netanyahu’s military was doing was a war crime.
Without a doubt, electing a Democrat in 2028 will be a big step necessary to fixing Washington and saving our democracy. But even the Democratic Party is full of people taking money from the oligarchy. If we aren’t careful, we’ll simply have a return to the broken system we had before Trump. We won’t see a new government that truly works for all of the people.
I believe that your job and my job as citizens of the United States is to fix our politics starting at the local level and up. If you think it’s OK to miss the 2025 election simply because there aren’t any big decisions being made in your area, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If you don’t recognize that the election in 2026 is even more important than the election in 2028, you are part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
If you are a person who will now begin to talk about who is the one person who can beat Trump, you are not part of the solution; you are part of the problem.
Because one person as president, regardless of their title. One person as president, regardless of how they exert power, it’s a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Washington has to be about three branches of government each having obligations and responsibilities and each holding the others accountable. Government at the federal level should never be about one person, the president.
Our democracy requires three branches of government to all do their job according to the Constitution. Our democracy requires two healthy political parties; positions are based upon policy differences, not on personalities.
And fixing all the branches of government means that the election of 2025, the election of 2026, the election of 2027, as well as the election of 2028, and the election of 2029… do you get my drift? Every election has consequences and matters. Every election either adds to the problem or helps create the solution.
Here’s my list of the things that are most important to fix: broken democracy, in my opinion:
- Ending all gerrymandering. Making sure that everyone’s voice matters in an election.
- Making sure that there are true challenges in all elections. There may be seats that have always been red or have always been blue, and therefore challengers never arise in those elections. But our willingness to simply allow that to continue is a part of the non-democratic thinking that harms our democracy.
3) Elimination of the Electoral College. For as long as I’ve been an adult able to vote, every four years, there is some discussion about whether the Electoral College should be done away with. And the bottom line is that it should. If every vote matters. Handful of electors and a few states shouldn’t be the people that are making the final decision. It should be the count of the public that actually voted for the candidates.
4) Getting Corporate Money Out of Politics. Our media, the traditional media as well as social media, is overflowing with ads meant to be persuasive. They are 100% advertising and often false advertising. This has to stop.
5) Fixing the Broken Supreme Court. Of the three branches of government, the federal judicial branch, and specifically the Supreme Court, sees itself as above critique or above checks and balances. I have to believe that the founders of the United States believed that individuals placed upon the court would have so much integrity that they would never act in ways that were detrimental. But we can go back almost to the very beginning and find Supreme Court cases that set back democracy. Court cases that stymied the progress towards a more perfect union. And this has to be fixed.
Please note, my list is not including who is running for president in 2028. Really fixing democracy and solidifying it for future generations is not reliant upon one person named to the presidency in 2028.
Indeed, every minute of 2025 that we waste talking about 2028 is a minute that could have been spent saving democracy. But we waste on speculation and the game of politics. Indeed, we must quit thinking about politics as a game— as something we are betting upon. We must start to reframe government as the infrastructure that either makes life better or harder for all persons.
Persons in the United States are not that different from persons living all around the world. We love to root for sports teams. We love to support the winner. But we have to stop treating politics as a game. We have to stop seeing a competition where there are winners and losers. We have to see it as a structure and a mechanism by which the people are the winners. We have to start to see the elected officials as servants who place the needs of the people as more important than anything else.
In other words, we have to quit wanting a king (or a queen) to be elected in a presidential election. We must begin to focus on who is representing us at every level of government. That means making a promise to knowingly vote in every election.