Atlantic magazine's Jonathan Chait recently experienced a brief flirtation with political sanity when he expressed panic over the possibility of communists (who now call themselves socialists) taking over his beloved Democrat Party.
However, alas, poor Chait relapsed and embraced one of the most fervent Mad Hatter delusions of the extreme left, as you can see in the very title of his Wednesday descent down the Socialist (Communist) rabbit hole: "Abolishing the Senate Might Be the DSA’s Best Idea."
The subtitle assures no return trip for Chait, who just flushed away the concept of American federalism: "A teardown of the upper chamber would be good for American democracy."
Fasten your seatbelts as Chait took leave of his senses. Please note that, in his diatribe against the U.S. Senate, never once did the words "federal" or "federalism" appear [emphasis mine]:
The Republican Party and its allied media organs have been blasting out messaging highlighting the radical views of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose views conservatives wish to associate with the Democratic Party. The particular extreme DSA stance they have chosen to highlight over the past week is the abolition of the U.S. Senate. The right-wing media is aflame with headlines such as “DSA Co-Chairman Defends Plan to Abolish Senate: ‘We Don’t Think That’s Extreme’” and “‘It’s Not Extreme’: Guess What the DSA Wants to Abolish Now.” (Answer: the Senate.)
The odd thing about this choice is that, although the DSA’s platform is indeed chock-full of maniacal proposals, on this particular idea, the maniacs have a point. The Senate is a vestigial deformity upon the Constitution whose elimination, unlikely though it might be, would rank among the great democratic advances in American history.
Sorry, Jonathan, but the idea of abolishing the Senate -- a pillar of the Constitution -- also ranks among the most maniacal proposals of the moonbat left.
A few paragraphs later, Chait revealed the true source of his animus towards the Senate: "Studies have found that the Senate has a persistent tilt in favor of Republican candidates and conservative-policy outcomes. The tilt may be worse than it appears, given that Republicans have often squandered their structural advantage by nominating extreme candidates who have lost winnable races."
Only at the very end of his piece did Chait let slip the likelihood of this happening without a full-on DSA coup:
The DSA’s platform sets out an ambition to reduce the Senate to a symbolic institution like the House of Lords, which once exerted counter-majoritarian influence over the United Kingdom but now simply affirms policies enacted by the democratically elected Parliament. That is obviously an ambitious goal with no prospect of fulfillment anytime soon.
More like a ridiculous goal with no prospect of fulfillment because it would require three-quarters of the states to agree to the end of the Senate.
In fact, it is doubtful that even a quarter of the states would agree since it would mean that the smaller population states (a majority) would agree to the demise of their source of federal power, but anybody who does should not be deemed a defender of the Constitution by elite media and their friends in the so-called expert class.
