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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

Why are you surprised by this? You say "opposite end of the spectrum" but then the opinions you cite from the left which are so extreme that very few elected Democrats would be caught standing next to somebody espousing them. Contrast that to an ex-president who literally spent months trying to end-run the constitution and stay in power -- and the few Republicans who spoke out against that are deemed "Republican in name only."

Is it news that some extremists on either end want to tear everything down? No. Is it news that one of two political parties has rallied around a plan to tear it all down? We haven't seen that since the, perhaps first, civil war.

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You write that elected Democrats wouldn't be caught standing next to people on the extreme left. At the same time Democrats rely on that extreme, too, for votes in tight elections and can't risk alienating it. That could mean that even mainstream Democrats might no longer be so willing to perpetuate the American national mythology -- the Constitution as a sacred document and the Founders as great men -- that both parties could broadly agree on for a long time. And as other poster here mentions, when the left, too, loses interest in those founding values, it is less capable of standing up to alarming behavior from the right.

Obama famously snubbed Cornell West, but he still got re-elected and then his milquetoast veep got elected. Dr. West is now running for president, which sounds like it should test your theory that Democrats cannot offend the extreme left. Do you actually think he'll draw enough votes for (R) to win? I don't.

I daresay Cornell West is more extreme left than a broader “extreme left” that simply feels that the Constitution is a deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed document. Moreover, the Obama reelection was over a decade ago, and with the events of this last decade and changing American demographics, the Democrat youth vote at this moment is probably even more cynical about the American national mythology. A mainstream Democrat certainly wouldn’t outright disparage the Constitution, but praising the Constitution as a sacred and well-designed document, as used to be done by both parties and perpetuated in American civics classes, could only turn those voters off.

Do you have evidence to support your feelings about what mainstream Democrats feel? Or can you name right-of-West-but-still-extreme-left politician who exemplifies your position? Because I'm pretty far out there but I love the constitution -- and while I think it's got its flaws, I'm no different from Ben Franklin in that regard and I see it as a living document: it can and must be amended as those flaws become apparent.

Post George Floyd, I know mainstream moderate Democrats now that call the constitution a “racist document.” For longer than that, mainstream democrats have dismissed federalism as merely a pretext for segregation. People will regularly argue against adhering to the original meaning or intent of the document “because the founders were slave holders.”

Ideologically, the fact that the constitution represents a compromise with slave holders has become increasingly intolerable for democrats. Anti-racism as a principle has become more important than rule of law or cultivating a shared respect for the fundamental law.

Democrats of these days call everything "tainted". That movement has only interest in defining flaws as inherent.

None want to burn it all down. This is for genuine fear of those who want fascism to encourage mob violence, discrimination and deny law and order to minorities.

Puritans are not the anarchists in this story. Little Nazis are trying to normalize revolution and idol worship as somehow universal.

Lying to kill the constitution is their main tactic.

I am not from the US, but if I was and I had to vote purely on who is less likely to tear democracy down, I would vote the Democrats and it is not even a close contest.

Your left leaning democrats are like our center-left government parties in terms of ideology. The Dems as a whole are slightly center right. Your Republicans are like our far right fringe parties.

Especially after how they handled their presidents insurection, the Republicans in my eyes should be unvotable for anybody who cares about democracy. And they should remain unvotable until they do some soul-searching. But this also includes things the GOP does outside of Trumps sphere of influence. E.g. look at the list of the worst gerrymandered states or at how the right tries to stop people from voting. If not enough people vote your party the democratic way would be to adjust which positions you offer to them, but the GOP seems like it would rather adjust their electorate.

Even if I liked the positions the GOP holds I would hate the idea to let them rule me, because this smells of "ignore what the voter wants". To theie credit, they managed to divide the electorate so much with culture-war bs that a big part of them actively want to become peasants under absolutist rule if it just meant the other side will lose.

But in the Constitution, state legislatures select the electors that pick the President. The GOP scheme has a better textual basis, and is better rooted in the Constitutional design, than any things that Democrats consider well established constitutional law.

Denying voters any rights of voting is "in the constitution"?

Welcome to your role as either a Nazi or a Mao-style communist. Lying is not a creative writing class.

There is no “right to vote for every government official.” Judges aren’t elected. Until 1913, Senators weren’t either. And the President still isn’t elected by the public. The constitution empowers state legislatures to select presidential electors.

Currently, those electors are selected based on a popular vote as a matter of state law. But that could be changed by the state legislatures at any time, because ultimately the power rests with them to select the federal president.

As you say, the power to pick electors is a matter delegated to state legislatures. Trump's efforts, as president, to replace those legally-selected electors with electors of his own choosing is, ipso facto, unconstitutional.

If he had perhaps sought to convince those state legislatures to change their electoral process to favor him, that could have been constitutional. But the actions he undertook in his role as the head of the federal executive branch is clearly and egregiously in violation of the constitutional delegation of authority to state legislatures. Just because state law could be changed doesn't mean that the law was changed.

And that is why he stands indicted for election interference in Georgia, it's why I hope he'll be indicted in other states, and why I hope he'll be in state penitentiary before January 2025. Because he's a criminal who has zero respect for the constitution. He even said it:

> Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

He literally called for the termination of the constitution, and you're here saying that we really need to be focused on how an inscrutable segment of "far left voters" might possibly dislike the constitution even though you have no evidence to show on that?

That is the most spit-in-your-face “well akshually” I’ve ever heard. Fuck your votes, because technically we’re allowed to ignore them and substitute our own…?!

It’s a shame that “have you no decency, sir?” would fall on deaf ears in Congress in this day and age.

The “rule of law” is all about who “technically” makes the decisions, and how power is “technically” allocated.

>would fall on deaf ears in Congress

Looks like you missed the part where the US Congress has no control over how the 50 states select electors.

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