ARTICLE V IS COMING FOR US

it's what you don't know is a threat that gets you.

This morning’s e-mail included a fundraiser from the DLCC that brought up an argument for financial support they hadn’t used before: there are currently 34 state legislatures that have over the past 20 years or so signed on to a call for a new Constitutional Convention under Article V. The DLCC pointed out that only four more state legislatures need to sign on for this to happen. And they ended by pointing out this would be a disaster.

Yes, they were trying to scare the Democrats who received the e-mail into becoming monthly supporters, but they weren’t wrong about the threat of Article V. Sometimes, even paranoids have enemies.

And this is one of those times.

For those without a thorough grounding in the Constitution, Article V covers how to modify and change the original document. One way is by amendment, a process we are familiar with. The other is for 38 states - a three-quarters majority - to call for a Constitutional Convention to make changes when the process of putting amendments through Congress and then out to the states for approval is preventing a proposed amendment from being considered; the usual call that the 34 legislatures signed on for is to call the convention to write a “balanced budget amendment,” the worst idea in American politics. This is a traditional favorite of “small government conservatives,” which is why every time Republicans take control of a state legislature, they put forward a bill to sign on to this call. Unfortunately, on the few occasions when a state legislature that has signed on to this changes ownership to the Democrats, they pay no attention to this call, so it stays on the books; nobody asks them about it since nobody knows about it usually, and if they did, they’d write it off like one of those other right wing fever dreams that will “never happen” - like Donald Trump becoming president. So the legislature remains signed on - and there is no time limit for how long it takes to gather the call from the necessary 38 legislatures.

Over the years, as this has flown under the political radar of Democrats, it has remained a ticking time bomb.

Why is it a time bomb? Well. Article V doesn’t detail exactly what can happen in that convention. There is, however, a precedent we should pay attention to. That precedent is the only constitutional convention that’s ever been held, the one that gave us the Constitution under which we have been governed since 1789.

The reason to pay attention, and for your blood pressure to go up, is that the original constitutional convention wasn’t called for the purpose of writing a brand-new governing document; it was called to amend the Articles of Confederation, which had proven themselves lacking in providing the basis for an effective government since their adoption. Instead of coming up with amendments in accordance with the original call, the “Founding Fathers” decided that the Articles of Confederation were so deficient that it was necessary to write a new document and create a new system of national government. The call for that convention had not contained any limitation on what could be considered once the convention was called to order, so there was no limitation on what could be done. Most of us, when we have studied our government in the centuries since in those “civics” classes that the public schools no longer have, have learned that this was a good and fortunate thing. Which, mostly, it was.

But when Madison wrote the Constitution, he put in Article V, giving the citizens of the new republic the power to repeat what had been done in 1787: call a convention for the purpose of doing one thing, with no limitation on that convention doing something completely different.

Like write a Constitution with a Bill of No Rights: no right of labor to organize; no right of citizens of various ethnic groups or genders to receive equal treatment under the law; no right to practice a religion not approved by the government - perhaps even a declaration that Fundamentalist Christianism is the official state religion; no right of the national government to regulate trade and commerce; no right of the population to directly elect members of the Senate and House of Representatives - perhaps even no Senate and no House of Representatives. Feel free to add the thing you most like about the current system of government as something this new system would kick to the curb.

And it would all be legal.

Who would write this new constitution? The representatives to the new convention would be chosen by the 50 state legislatures - a majority of which would likely be controlled by Republicans, since Republicans now control 27 of the 50 state legislatures.

Don’t write this off as impossible. Remember, it was “impossible” for Trump to win the election of 2016.

Unfortunately, among the long-term “ills” of our system is the fact that Republicans are far more reliable as regular voters are than are Democrats; too many Democrats seem to think elections are held every four years and the only office that really counts is president. Democratic fall-off in participation on local elections and off-year state elections is really awful. Republicans reliably vote at around 65-70%, while Democrats only reliably participate at around 45%, and that number can drop significantly for local elections. This is why Republicans always like to put anything they have to put out for public approval on the ballot during an off-year election, since they’re more likely to be successful. This is how we have arrived at the point of Republicans having majority control of state legislatures, which they were then able to “bake in” with the reapportionment following the 2010 electoral disaster for Democrats, and will be able to solidify now that the Democrats have lost a second consecutive “decennial election.”

The possibility of Republicans taking control of four more state legislatures in 2022 is not some pipe dream. It’s damn close to likely.

A Constitutional Convention with a majority of delegates appointed by today’s Republican Party? With unlimited power and authority to create whatever they want? Which would then be sent out for state ratification to those same Republican-majority state legislatures?

The DLCC is right to push this. It’s not fear-mongering to say this would be the greatest political disaster that could befall us.

Another reason for Democrats to learn that Every. Election. Matters!!!

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