It just keeps getting better
Not that you could tell from the news or anything, but the fantastic news that I wrote about three days ago is just getting better.
In that piece, I mentioned the wonderful Steny Hoyer, and his almost pitch-perfect package of reforms that I said was even better than my Citizens Equality Act. I was encouraged then that both Hillary Clinton and a Democratic leader in the House were pushing not just “campaign finance reform,” but a broader package of democracy reform.
Because this was the real lesson that I had learned when I was forced to think practically about what was wrong with this democracy last year:
It’s the Congress, stupid. It is the broken Congress at the core of our so-called representative democracy.
It is the fact that this “representative” body is in no sense representative. And it is the mix reasons why it fails to be representative that we must find a way to address.
The corrupting role of money is just one reason we are not represented equally. The insane game of gerrymandering is another (see my new favorite book about that by Dave Daley’s Ratf**cked; or my old favorite by Michael Golden’s Unlock Congress). The stupid way we allow states to suppress the vote is a third. All of these are facets of the same corrupted stone: The loss of the core principle of a representative democracy — the equal representation of citizens.
But yesterday, the Democrats have make good one step better. House Democrats have now released the “By the People” Legislative Package, a series of individual laws that together address each of these core problems — repairing the equal freedom to vote, addressing the problem of dark money, and changing the way elections are funded.
This package approach is key, and too few are recognizing just how critical this is. Finally, we see a recognition by our leaders of the need to address all the important ways in which our democracy does not represent us—together. And it is so powerfully inspiring to see leaders of parts of this package put aside their ego to support the whole (kudos to Sarbanes especially).
I have long said that we won’t get fundamental reform unless it is cross-partisan. I may well be wrong about that. Because this bill would be the most important reform of our democracy since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And if people could begin to understand just how dramatically this would change things, it might — just might—pierce the cynicism that infects every effort at fundamental reform.
What Clinton should do now is make a simple promise:
If you give me a Democratic Congress, then I promise, we will pass the “By the People” Package in the first 100 days.
That, indeed, would be something to be excited about.
