It feels like progressives in the United States have been playing defense for a long time, dating back (at least) to the 1980s when Reagan-era Republicans derided “big government” and began undermining historic achievements from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. During the eight years that Donald Trump’s noxious cloud of scandal-ridden malevolence darkened the U.S. political landscape, many on the left have understandably hunkered down, focused more on defending democracy against an imminent authoritarian threat than on making an affirmative case for progressive values.
It’s high time to outline a bold, long-term vision aimed at advancing equality and social justice. Although it is essential to highlight the ways in which Trump’s Republican party continues to carry out a breathtaking assault on democracy, it is also necessary to give progressive voters a positive, affirmative reason to turn out for elections. In order to find this reason, we can begin with a fundamental question: If we imagined a progressive constitution for the United States, what would it look like?
The current Constitution was enacted more than 230 years ago. It has been amended twenty-seven times (although two of those amendments—Prohibition and its repeal—cancel each other out). It’s no surprise that the national document is badly in need of an overhaul. In fact, the Constitution has failed to prevent Trump’s authoritarian threat and, more broadly, it makes the federal government unable to act as truly representative of the people.
We need a national document that supports democracy, instead of allowing for minority rule through the Electoral College, Senate, and gerrymandered House of Representatives. We need a national document that empowers the federal government to respond to national problems such as massive economic inequality, climate change, gun violence, and bigotry of various stripes. We need a national document that makes sure authoritarians are held accountable when they seek to destroy democracy.
Of course, no one person should have the authority to decide what a new constitution would look like, and drafting a new constitution doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Fundamental individual rights—including due process, equal protection, criminal procedural rights, and First Amendment guarantees—could and should be preserved and, in some ways, expanded (for example, by expressly guaranteeing equality for women and LGBTQ+ people), while simultaneously including essential new rights.
One such addition could be a workers’ bill of rights that guarantees the right to organize a union, health and safety protections, and a living minimum wage that automatically rises with inflation. Other clauses could guarantee fundamental rights to housing, health care, and education, or give citizens aged sixteen and older the right to vote. A new constitution could include a fundamental right to bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion. Lastly, a new constitution could enshrine fundamental rights to clean air and water and a healthy, sustainable environment.
An essential question is how to set the process in motion while recognizing that enshrining a new constitution is not plausible at the moment. Political scientists Todd A. Eisenstadt and Tofigh Maboudi have conducted research showing that the path to a democratic constitution depends most centrally on broad public participation and inclusion. Not surprisingly, when elites control constitutional reform (Article V of the Constitution requires amendments either receive a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in order to be proposed or be proposed by a convention requested by two-thirds of state legislatures), it is less likely that democracy is strengthened.
The first step toward drafting a progressive, more democratic constitution will require making a public case for its necessity, while emphasizing the point from Eisenstadt’s and Maboudi’s research that elites cannot control the process of constitutional change. Some prominent public intellectuals have already begun to make this case. Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s new book, Tyranny of the Minority, explains why the U.S. Constitution desperately needs fundamental reform. Although they do not argue expressly for a new constitution, their work shows that “the United States is either becoming a truly multiracial democracy or [the United States] will not be a democracy at all.”
In other words, if we stick with being governed by an outdated document that’s rarely been updated over two centuries, the promise of a nation based on a bedrock commitment to racial, gender, and other forms of equality cannot be fulfilled.
Levitsky and Ziblatt aren’t the only ones making the case for fundamental change. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie agrees that, in order to strengthen U.S. democracy, “the Constitution needs to be changed . . . . The [existing] Constitution itself is the problem.” Bouie believes that fundamental “constitutional change will be here sooner than we think” if the nation’s institutions continue to prove themselves “too sclerotic and dysfunctional to tackle [the country’s] most existential challenges.”
While Bouie’s optimism is refreshing and necessary, it is also important to acknowledge the risks inherent in proposing fundamental constitutional change. In their 2022 book The Constitution in Jeopardy, former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, now president of the American Constitution Society, and co-author Peter Prindiville warn of conservative efforts to hold a constitutional convention aimed at moving the Constitution in a radically undemocratic, profoundly regressive direction. That is a real danger, and it should not be discounted. If progressives take the first steps on the path to a new constitution, there will be enormous risk.
There is also great risk, however, in failing to act. It is difficult—perhaps impossible—to see a path forward for a multiracial, inclusive democracy based on equality and justice under our current Constitution. It’s time for bold, creative thinking that, while acknowledging the reality that progressive change is not guaranteed and will not happen overnight, makes the case for fundamental reform that can inspire voters who have grown all too accustomed to cautious leaders who constantly play defense.