I'm a sceptic that the 4th Turning started in 2008

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-23-2020, 09:30 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-23-2020, 12:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Our constitution has given the Republicans the ability to block legislation in spite of what the people want, and put the two worst presidents in our history into the white house. But this advantage can be rectified in a new progressive era, in several ways. As states become more blue, which may be inevitable, they could require that their electoral votes go to the popular vote winner. This process has already started. And they could give DC and Puerto Rico 2 senators each, and make PR a state adding their votes to the electoral college. Reversing Trump's war on immigration and passing DACA and immigration reform could add to Republican nightmares by turning Texas, Arizona, Florida and other states permanently blue, which is being cemented now by Trump's attacks on immigrants. Biden and Trump are now already tied in Texas in the polls, and Biden leads in Florida by 6 points.

I agree that the real fix involves Constitutional change.  How is that possible?  The last real substantive change happened after the  ACW, because the opposition was outside the Union.  We don't have that happening now, and, short of another mass exodus from the Union, it won't happen in the future.

It's nearly impossible for people to willingly give away their advantage, when they know it will impact them in ways they abhor.  The Big Square States will never concede, and forget about more states in the Union, unless it's done by balance (see Alaska-Hawaii as the only model in the last 100 years). PR and DC are both Democrat, though PR has only shifted left in the recent past. At that, two would be inadequate to trigger real change, so short of a Constitutional Convention change isn't happening.

Let's wait until the crisis ends, when the instinct for never again is at it's strongest.  Crisis end is generally the time that constitutions are written, that amendments are made, when an attempt is made to carve the lessons learned into stone.  The elitism and racism or the Republicans can be laid directly on the old slave compromises.  The letting of the rural population to have absurd amounts of political power led directly to the two failures that have show up so far in the crisis.  It is possible that enough never again will result in a call for change.  We will see how many people that Trump manages to kill with his bad virus response, how much corruption is exposed, how much the violent racist police are aimed at the American people.

Who knows?