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A candidate for governor of your state promises universal healthcare but also wants to rewrite your state constitution, abolish the state senate, and make the executive and judiciary subordinate to one legislature. Would you vote for or against them?
For starters, no state can afford this currently with the way health care works in the USA. It would have to be done with Federal help, and you'd have to re-vamp the entire system to look more like single-payer Medicare.
That said, it makes the state hypothetical a moot point; it can't be done. If you suggested that on the Federal level, I'd say NO WAY. As it is, the checks, balances and guard rails are about to collapse under the weight of the current corrupt administration already. It's become a de facto dictatorship and fascist regime right now, with armed gestapo in the streets violating the Constitution every day, having zero to do with the stated purpose of immigration enforcement.
The government needs to be LESS involved with health care, not more, and less involved in health insurance. It's government rules (which are so full of loopholes that they might as well be Swiss cheese) that is responsible for the insane costs of health care.
Hell NO I wouldn't vote for a clown like that. We already have one like that running the country at the moment and he should be eliminated in any manor necessary, Maybe strapped to the fuselage of a drone we are sending to Iran with a 10 megaton bomb.
@katiesmuff I agree with your “Hell NO” to the hypothetical candidate. Where we disagree is your comparison to Trump.
You can believe Trump pushes executive power too far or strains checks and balances, but that is still different from what my hypothetical describes. Congress and the judiciary still exist as independent constitutional branches and still resist the president.
My hypothetical is about formally rewriting the system itself: abolishing the Senate and making the executive and judiciary subordinate to one legislature. That is much closer to the kind of structural transformation the DSA is actually proposing than anything Trump has implemented.
So despite our disagreement over Trump, we apparently agree on the principle I was testing: universal healthcare would not be worth surrendering the constitutional separation of powers.
Also, saying Trump should be “eliminated by any means necessary” and strapped to a bomb goes far beyond political disagreement. I strongly reject that kind of rhetoric regardless of who the target is.
Well you can reject that rhetoric all you want, but my hope is that lousy pile of vile dog shit dies soon of something so painful he would beg for it to be over. He is 100% traitor to the US and it's constitution and a House and Senate just full of yellow belly cowards. If you ever saw the Netflix series "Designated Survivor" this would be the perfect time for that to happen.
@katiesmuff And this is exactly where I draw the line.
You are free to despise Trump. You are free to call him a terrible president, argue that he has violated the Constitution, campaign against him, protest him, vote against his allies, and demand every lawful political remedy available.
But hoping that he dies in agony—or fantasizing about a scenario in which political leaders are violently eliminated—is not a defense of constitutional government. It is the opposite.
My original poll was about whether people would surrender checks and balances in exchange for policies they like. You said no. On that principle, we actually agreed.
But constitutional government also means accepting that political opponents are removed through elections, impeachment, courts, term limits, and other lawful processes—not death wishes or political violence.
I would say exactly the same thing if someone on the right talked this way about a Democratic president.
Hate Trump all you want. I strongly support him, so obviously we disagree about him. But I will not normalize wishing a painful death on a political opponent.
Generally that is correct, however at this time we have no courts, we have no congress as we allowed dumpty to weasel in his own people and nobody with authority stands up to him. Not sure what they are afraid of as he is nothing more than 350 lbs of blubber and fat who happens to have billions of dollars he's ripped off of us.
@katiesmuff But we do have courts and we do have Congress. You may believe they are not resisting Trump strongly enough, but that is a very different claim from saying they no longer exist or have ceased functioning.
The House and Senate remain independent constitutional branches. Congress continues legislating, holding votes, conducting hearings, confirming nominees, and exercising its statutory powers. The federal judiciary remains in place as well, including the Supreme Court and lower federal courts.
And this actually gets back to the distinction I was making earlier. A president appointing people who generally share his political philosophy is not the same thing as formally abolishing independent branches of government or rewriting the constitutional system so that they become subordinate to one institution.
You can argue that Republicans in Congress defer to Trump too much. You can argue that particular judges or justices make bad decisions. You can vote against those politicians and criticize those rulings. But disagreement with how an institution exercises its authority does not mean the institution has disappeared.
More importantly, none of that justifies wishing for Trump to die or imagining violent ways of removing him. Even when you believe constitutional institutions are failing, the answer is to use elections, litigation, congressional action, peaceful political organizing, and every other lawful constitutional mechanism available.
I support Trump; you clearly despise him. Fine. But neither of us gets to replace constitutional government with political violence simply because we dislike what the institutions are doing.
Guess we will just have to wait until after November and see what happens.
@katiesmuff Elections are precisely how political disagreements should be resolved, so yes, we will see what voters decide in November. But regardless of the result, nothing justifies wishing a painful death on political opponents or fantasizing about the violent elimination of the president and Congress. I have made my position clear, and I am ending this exchange.
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Fuck no. I don’t want government controlled healthcare. I want choices. Once you get your “free” healthcare you won’t have any choices about your care. It’ll be streamlined so everyone will get the same treatments regardless of body individuality. You really think Americans will pay the taxes the Scandinavian countries do? Guess again
Their tax dollars are actually put to good uses, unlike American tax dollars
precisely the intentions. but we need various vetoes.
@strateguy632 Exactly — and this is where my concern becomes much more serious than simply wanting “various vetoes.”
The DSA’s own program calls for a new democratic constitution, a single federal legislature, abolition of the Senate, and replacing the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
Under our present Constitution, there are multiple independent institutions capable of saying no to one another. The House, Senate, president, courts, states, governors, and other officials all operate within a constitutional order that no president can legally replace simply by announcing a different constitution.
My fear is what happens if a political movement committed to replacing that constitutional order accumulates enough institutional power that people begin treating its proposed system as legitimate before the existing Constitution has actually been lawfully replaced.
Imagine an extreme hypothetical: a DSA-aligned president declares that the old Constitution is illegitimate and tells federal officials to follow a newly proclaimed socialist constitution instead. Legally, that order would have no authority. But politically, it could create an extraordinary constitutional crisis if governors, judges, federal employees, police officers, or military personnel began choosing individually which claimed constitutional order they recognized.
That is the nightmare scenario for me. Not that one president possesses some magic legal power to erase the Constitution — he does not — but that institutional loyalty itself fractures.
Which Constitution do officials obey? Which government do they regard as legitimate? Does the military obey the lawful constitutional chain of command or people claiming authority under a rival system? Do governors and judges recognize federal orders issued under the existing Constitution or reject them in favor of the proposed one?
A president attempting to overthrow the existing constitutional order rather than using the lawful amendment process would be an extraordinarily grave attack on constitutional government. The danger would become even greater if enough people occupying institutions of power chose to cooperate with it.
That is exactly why I am so hostile to eliminating institutional veto points in the first place. Once you abolish the Senate, eliminate an independent Supreme Court, and subordinate the executive and judiciary to one legislature, you have removed many of the institutions that could resist a movement that captures that legislature.
NO SENATE. NO SCOTUS. NO THANK YOU.
I would rather preserve a system in which rival institutions can frustrate one another than gamble the entire constitutional order on the hope that the faction controlling one dominant legislature will always restrain itself.
F no. That would be stupid. And you won’t get what you were promised, you never do.
nope, state sponsored healthcare would be a disaster.
Since when has anything that the government ran or put in place ever worked out? Just look at how well prohibition and Obamacare worked
Trade the very measured that is SUPPOSED to prevent corruption with something that will definitely be corrupt? No thanks.
Yep, and it's a bogus question in any event.
u Actually, with a somewhat capable and willing administration that would not be a choice to make.
@DryGermanGuy But that sidesteps the hypothetical. I’m not asking whether a competent government could create universal healthcare while preserving checks and balances. Of course someone could advocate that combination.
I’m asking what you would do if the actual candidate in front of you explicitly supported both: universal healthcare and rewriting the state constitution to abolish the state senate and subordinate the executive and judiciary to one legislature.
You don’t get to replace the candidate’s platform with a different one you would prefer.
So under the hypothetical as written: would you vote for that candidate or against them?
As German, I already have both and can't even imagine such a scenario.
@DryGermanGuy I understand that you’re German, and that actually explains part of the disconnect. You’re answering from the perspective of Germany, where universal healthcare already exists alongside Germany’s own constitutional institutions.
My question is specifically about the United States and the American constitutional system. The hypothetical mirrors a real concern I have about proposals to abolish the Senate and fundamentally restructure the relationship between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
I’m not claiming universal healthcare requires any of that. Obviously it doesn’t—Germany itself demonstrates that. I’m asking an American voter to imagine a candidate who supports both as a package and decide whether the healthcare policy is worth accepting the constitutional changes.
So if you want to answer the American hypothetical, imagine you were a U. S. voter and those were the candidate’s actual positions: would you vote for them or against them?
If you don’t feel comfortable answering because you don’t live under the American system, that’s completely fair. But then we’re probably talking past each other by continuing to debate the hypothetical through Germany’s political circumstances.
There are no checks and balances. Trump fixed that.
@msc545 I strongly disagree. You can argue that Trump has pushed the limits of executive authority, and we can debate particular actions, but saying “there are no checks and balances” is simply false.
Congress still legislates and controls powers constitutionally assigned to it. Federal courts still review executive actions. The Supreme Court remains institutionally independent of the president. Courts have repeatedly blocked Trump administration policies—including a federal appeals court ruling just days ago blocking portions of his voting executive order.
In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled against Trump on major issues during his current term, including his sweeping unilateral tariffs and his attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
That actually illustrates the distinction my poll is getting at. Trump has not abolished Congress, abolished the Senate, abolished the Supreme Court, or rewritten the Constitution to make the judiciary and executive formally subordinate to a single legislative chamber.
Criticizing Trump for allegedly testing or stretching checks and balances is one argument. Claiming checks and balances literally no longer exist is a very different—and inaccurate—claim.
Neither supreme. Neither the supreme Court nor Congress is completely obtuse. Neither one wants to look like they are simply doing whatever it is that Trump wants them to do. The supreme Court is made disastrous decisions in favor of trump repeatedly. Yes, they don't always decide in favor of him. But as I said before, they're not going to do that because they don't like the way it looks. The fact of the matter is that six justices on the supreme Court have a history of taking bribes and are solidly on Trump's side in almost every decision. As far as Trump's powers being attenuated in any fashion that is simply not the case. The man just started a war without Congressional approval which he is legally required to get. He simply ignored that and the war continues and not a single thing has been done about it by the Congress. If any other president had done this, it would be grounds for impeachment. There's a long list of things that have occurred, but the bottom line is that Trump has indeed pushed back against restrictions on his power and the supreme Court in the Congress have for the most part gone. Along with this. Certainly they've gone along with it. To the extent that it's reasonable to say that if checks and balances are not absent there, they are severely impaired.
@msc545 This is exactly the distinction I was talking about. Your original statement was “There are no checks and balances.” Now you’re saying they still exist but are “severely impaired.” Those are not the same claim.
You can argue that Trump has pushed presidential power too far or that Congress has sometimes failed to restrain him strongly enough. That is a legitimate argument. But it does not establish that checks and balances have disappeared.
Congress is actively disputing Trump’s Iran war powers, and the Supreme Court has also ruled against him on major issues. And saying six justices have a history of “taking bribes” goes well beyond the evidence; ethics controversies involving gifts and disclosures are not the same thing as proving bribery.
But more importantly, none of this answers my original poll, which never mentioned Trump. You brought Trump into it as a rebuttal.
Even if I granted your revised claim that Trump has strained or impaired checks and balances, that is still fundamentally different from deliberately rewriting a constitution to abolish one legislative chamber and structurally subordinate the executive and judiciary to the remaining legislature.
And this also goes back to something you yourself told me before: you said you would not support the DSA because of its Feminism for All agenda. That illustrates my broader point. You cannot treat one part of a political movement’s program as completely disconnected from the rest of the agenda you are helping empower.
So Trump is beside the point. Would you vote for the hypothetical candidate I actually described: universal healthcare combined with abolishing the state senate and fundamentally restructuring the separation of powers? Yes or no?
@msc545 Every president pushes the limits of what he believes he can accomplish within his constitutional authority. That is not unique to Trump. Biden pushed his agenda through executive actions and tested the boundaries of executive authority; Obama did the same; presidents before them did as well. Courts and Congress then push back when they believe a president has gone too far. That friction is part of the checks-and-balances system, and President Trump, like past presidents, is still operating within a constitutional system in which those other branches retain independent powers.
Biden provides a good example. After the Supreme Court struck down his original broad student-loan cancellation plan in Biden v. Nebraska, his administration pursued alternative routes to provide student-debt relief under different legal authorities. Those later efforts were themselves challenged in court. That is not the judiciary disappearing; it is the executive pushing its agenda while the courts continue exercising an independent checking function.
You’ve already moved from “there are no checks and balances” to saying they are “severely impaired.” Fine—we disagree about how impaired they are. But that still does not answer the question I asked.
My hypothetical is about formally changing the system itself: abolishing the state senate and restructuring government so the executive and judiciary are subordinate to a single legislature. That is fundamentally different from a president aggressively pursuing his agenda within an existing constitutional system whose courts and legislature still retain independent powers.
So I’ll ask again: would you vote for that hypothetical candidate—yes or no?
against.
Nope
Nope!
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