This weekend, an estimated 7.1 million people took to the streets across the country as part of the “No Kings” protests. From big cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, to small towns such as Guntersville, Alabama, Vergennes, Vermont, and Lander, Wyoming, protesters turned out to peacefully oppose President Donald Trump’s despotic policies and behavior. But as powerful and moving as the marches were, they are not enough to create the lasting change our political system so desperately needs.
And make no mistake: America needs major change.
You would not have known that had you listened to retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and is a leading critic of the Trump administration, on Oct. 16 when he spoke on the campus where I teach about his deep reverence for the Constitution. While admirable, his veneration also appears to have blinded him — along with others who share his deference — to the stark fact that preserving our founding document requires acknowledging the ways that it has failed to meet the moment. No amount of glorification will save the Constitution unless we address the underlying causes of what Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin calls “constitutional rot.”
Put simply, our Constitution was not designed to facilitate action to improve the lives of the American people. Instead, it was designed to make it hard for democratic majorities to work their will and use the government to engage in social reform projects that might infringe on property rights. This is hardly an original, earth-shattering insight. But it is important to remember as we seek to build broad-based opposition to the Trump administration.
More than a century ago, the historian Charles Beard told the story of a Constitutional Convention dominated by an “elite” group determined to protect its property and economic standing. The document they produced was, Beard argued, “essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.”
Despite such barriers, the country has occasionally managed to enact modest adjustments in how wealth is distributed. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s are two examples.
But in the decades since, the country reverted to form. Democrats and Republicans alike became more interested in wealth generation than in addressing an ever-widening wealth gap. While Trump has hardly dedicated himself to shifting gears, he has twice managed to convince voters that he will fulfill their desire to shake things up. The result is that, today, trying to mobilize sustained, inclusive opposition to Trump and his agenda by framing him as a threat to the Constitution and the rule of law has less traction than people like Luttig might think. Survey after survey has shown that “[u]pwards of 85% of respondents say there is a need for major changes” in our political system.
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This desire for change cuts across partisan lines. Former Vice President Kamala Harris based her 2024 presidential campaign on convincing Americans that Trump was a danger to a political order to which large numbers of Americans are no longer deeply attached.
You don’t have to be a devotee of Bernie Sanders or New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Madami to recognize that fact. And don’t be fooled: While millions of Americans turned out on No Kings Day, the number that came from the working class was less than it would have to be to force change in Washington, D.C.
Did the millions of Americans who did not show up see their concerns about the economy embraced by protesters waving Palestinian flags or protesting in inflatable animal costumes? I doubt it.
Don’t mistake what I am saying. No Kings was an important rallying point for those of us who want to stand up for democracy and the rule of law. But being anti-Trump is not enough.
Don’t mistake what I am saying. No Kings was an important rallying point for those of us who want to stand up for democracy and the rule of law. But being anti-Trump is not enough.
We cannot succeed in saving our political system by being reactive — by talking only about Trump’s abuses. Success depends on convincing people that opposing tyranny is just the first step in a program dedicated to changing the fact that some of us live too well while many others cannot live well at all. That point was driven home by a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times that opened with a scene set in a Chicago food bank line.
The 39-year-old Moreno had waited for two hours in “a line of people behind him that snaked around the corner.” He described the Pilsen Food Pantry as “‘a lifeline for me…Our food budget doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.’”
The story continued with a revealing juxtaposition: “A few miles away on Chicago’s glitzy Magnificent Mile, luxury hotels are bustling. Jewelry stores and designer boutiques do brisk business. The restaurants are packed with diners sipping $20 cocktails while they wait for tables.”
The Times invited readers to look behind surging stock prices and macroeconomic data to see the day-to-day struggles of people like Moreno set against the indulgent lifestyles of people with whom they may share a city, but who live in entirely different worlds.
Long ago, political scientists who studied democracy and the rule of law warned that neither could be built or endure in places with radically and persistently unequal distributions of wealth. Writing in the afterglow of the New Deal, they were optimistic about the future of America‘s Constitutional Republic.
Today, that optimism has faded. Though they offer different solutions, the populism of both the left and the right is responding to the erosion of the social and economic prerequisites for democracy and the rule of law in this country.
In the next No Kings protests, let’s make sure the Ulysses Morenos of America know that we hear and share their concerns — and that we are demanding action. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it may convince others to join our cause in standing up to a would-be tyrant.
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