NYT suggests abolishing US Constitution for democracy
Mainstream media are targeting the US Constitution as the newest threat to democracy.
On Saturday, the New York Times ran a piece titled: “The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?” In the article, Times nonfiction book critic Jennifer Szalai presented an argument that President Donald Trump’s rise is proof that America’s founding document is “one of the biggest threats to America’s politics.”
“Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional,” wrote Szalai.
“Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it,” the critic added.
She cited liberal legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky who, in his new book “No Democracy Lasts Forever,” rages about Trump’s electoral college victory from 2016.
“It is important for Americans to see that these failures stem from the Constitution itself,” Chemerinsky wrote, and went on to claim that the document places the country in “grave danger.”
Szalai also offered the argument that the Supreme Court, which now has a conservative majority and has dealt major blows to the liberal agenda over recent years, is undemocratic.
“National politics gets increasingly funneled through the judiciary, with control of the courts — especially the Supreme Court — becoming a way to consolidate power regardless of what the majority of people want,” Szalai wrote.
Elections threaten democracy
The US Constitution is not the only American bedrock to be targeted by journalists. Earlier this year, media operatives worried that elections are threatening democracy.
“2024 Is the Year of Elections and That’s a Threat to Democracy,” wrote Bloomberg Senior Editor Tobin Harshaw. The former New York Times op-ed deputy editor expressed concern that this year’s presidential election will be a repeat of the one in 2016, which he claimed was conspired by Donald Trump and the Kremlin.
However, Harshaw is not just concerned about US elections. The columnist is troubled that people around the world can vote.
“41% of the world’s population is having major elections this year. Yay democracy! Right? Not really, what with extremist populist parties — mostly right-wing — on the rise everywhere from the European Union to the Pacific rim,” Harshaw wrote.
Harshaw is only one of several media operatives who take issue with elections.
On Thursday, TIME Senior Correspondent Justin Worland warned that elections are a “challenge” to “climate change” because voters are more concerned with other issues.
“[E]lections speak to the core of climate change’s democracy challenge,” Worland wrote. “Climate change, as urgent as the scientific reality may be, feels less urgent to voters than their economic challenges. And elected officials respond to that to win elections.”
In an article for The Atlantic titled “Lots of People Will Vote This Year. That Doesn’t Mean Democracy Will Survive,” Brian Klaas said, “[T]here are more elections than ever before in human history, and yet the world is becoming less democratic.”
Warning that “populists are growing in popularity and power,” Klaas went on to fret that voters may “make the wrong choice” this year and thus imperil democracy.
Free speech: Another menace to democracy
Other mainstream news publications have gone even further and warned that free speech threatens election integrity and, therefore, democracy.
“[T]he First Amendment has become, for better or worse, a barrier to virtually any government efforts to stifle a problem that, in the case of a pandemic, threatens public health and, in the case of the integrity of elections, even democracy itself,” wrote reporter Steven Lee Myers for the New York Times last year.
The paper also lamented that “billions of people will vote in major elections around the world in 2024” without enough censorship from social media companies.
