As President Biden fights to stay in the race for a second term, his message needs to change. He should not just run to keep Donald Trump out of the White House — he should run to purge Trumpism from Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Biden should push all his chips to the center of the table and prove his mettle by leading a counterrevolution against the MAGA horde.
As we all know by now, most voters are unhappy with the federal government and democracy. But the government won’t be fixed and democracy won’t be saved while extreme conservatives hold a supermajority in the Supreme Court or control either house of Congress. Trumpism has contaminated all three.
Over the last decade, the GOP has ceased to act like a valid political party; instead they have become a spineless cabal of Trump sycophants. It was Trump who cajoled Republicans in the House to launch a bogus impeachment investigation of Biden. It was Trump who scuttled the long-awaited bipartisan bill to address the border crisis. And it’s Trump whose proverbial ring Mike Johnson )R-La.) must kiss to remain Speaker of the House.
These conditions would hamstring Biden’s plans for a second term. If he tries to stretch the limits of executive authority, conservatives on the Supreme Court will rein him in.
It is not enough for Biden and Democrats to say they’ll save democracy. They must tell the American people what they would do if voters gave them a trifecta — control of the House, Senate and White House — for at least the next two years. They must promise to do what’s necessary to defend democracy from the far right’s attacks and stop Trump from weaponizing Congress for his personal political and financial benefit.
They need to have specific ideas to revive the people’s faith — and then they must follow through.
To start, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will rule for many years to come without an intervention. Congress could authorize Biden to restore the court’s ideological balance by appointing four new justices. Biden has resisted this, but the need has never been more apparent.
The court has opened the door wider to bribery and corruption by allowing corporations to give unlimited money to election campaigns. To make matters worse, despite scandals in which two justices accepted gifts from billionaires, the court has just ruled that corporations and wealthy individuals can give public officials “gratuities” after the officials have done them favors. Congress could fix that ridiculous decision by imposing a strict ethics code on the court, preserving the limits in existing federal ethics rules, and using its “jurisdiction stripping” power again to put campaign finance limits outside the court’s reach. It can use the same power to restore women’s reproductive rights — and make those rights off-limits to the court.
Congress could also codify the Chevron doctrine that the court just decimated and limit the application of the “major questions doctrine” so federal agencies can continue using their expertise and discretion to administer environmental protection and other laws with appropriate rules and regulations. And Congress could repair the court’s damage to the Voting Rights Act, and voting rights in general, so that every eligible voter finds voting easier — for instance, by making Election Day a national holiday. Congress could also approve a constitutional amendment that eliminates the Electoral College and elects presidents by a majority of the popular vote.
Democrats can continue to protect the Affordable Care Act from Republican attacks and defend the Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in clean energy, Biden’s gun safety improvements, his expansion of health care for veterans, the CHIPS Act, U.S. support for Ukraine, criminal justice reform and other accomplishments over the last four years. They can defend Social Security and Medicare from Republican plans to lower taxes for the top 1 percent of earners.
Biden and Congress could inoculate government from white Christian Nationalism and its aim to erase the lines between their religion and state. The right to choose one’s beliefs is fundamental to freedom. People must answer for their choices to conscience or God, not government.
Finally, Biden could appoint a presidential commission to identify the issues behind the American people’s lack of confidence in the federal government, the Supreme Court, and Congress and make recommendations on how to address them.
The problems in our flawed democracy and gridlocked government are systemic. The MAGA virus has infected all three branches of the federal government. The cures must be systemic, too, beyond who occupies the White House. They require a government-wide — and hopefully a politics-wide — total purge of Trumpism.
William S. Becker is a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy and author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet,” and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods.”