Outside the Beltway

Readings on Reform

Looking ahead, hopefully with some purpose.

Steven L. Taylor · Tuesday, May 12, 2026 · 2 comments

It will be no surprise to regular, or even only occasional, readers that I favor a democratic reform agenda. Such topics were on my mind well before Trump’s ride down the golden escalator, and the last decade has substantially deepened my views on the subject. Indeed, early in the Biden administration, I outlined a number of reforms that, alas, were never seriously considered. I mean, after all, things were back to normal, yes?

The return of Trump to the White House should disabuse anyone of the notion that the old normal is coming back. Moreover, this term has demonstrated a host of ways (from DOGE to tariffs to brazen construction projects to open corruption and much, much more) that the old rules and norms are not as resilient as we had collectively hoped. Worse, the way in which the Supreme Court of the United States has been brazenly willing to pick partisan sides is a massive red warning light.

I cannot stress enough that if we value liberal democracy and wish to avoid a further slide into some form of illiberal authoritarianism, the Democrats are going to have to take advantage of whatever opportunities they have to hold the current administration accountable as best they can (which is all they will be able to do if they are able to win one or both chambers this fall) and to engage in serious constitutiona hardball if they manage to win a trifecta in 2028.

I think that these victories are within reach because of Trump’s terrible approval and especially because he has made choices that are directly counter to why he won a narrow election in 2024.

Note that I point to the Democrats not out of some abiding love for the party or even hope that they are up to the task. I point to the Democrats because there are only two parties, and the Republicans are currently the party of illiberalism and extreme nationalism. They are the anti-democracy party at the moment (although they would claim otherwise). I rest my feeble hopes on the Democrats because I am hopeful that their self-interests are more aligned with a healthier democracy, and because it is evident that Republican interests are aligned with an enfeebled democracy.

I will start with Lee Drutman’s piece from about two months ago: The Democratic Party is about to make the most predictable mistake in American politics.

In September 2017, I wrote an essay for Vox in which I first described what I called a “doom loop” of partisan escalation. I laid out a scenario in which Donald Trump would refuse to concede the 2020 election and encourage violence. I called it “frighteningly plausible.” Three years later, a shameful mob proved me distressingly prophetic.

The delusion that powers the doom loop, that made something like January 6 predictable, is the belief that one side must win a permanent victory in order to save the country, and if the other side wins, it is permanent devastation. This is the antithesis of democracy, which is a system in which parties can lose elections. Democracy depends on the losing side accepting the winner as legitimate. But each turn of the doom loop makes that harder. And each contested transfer of power raises the stakes of the next one.

Since that essay, I’ve been screaming that there is an exit. That staying in the doom loop is a choice to keep the default settings. The exit remains in plain sight. We can change the electoral rules to allow more parties to compete. The doom loop runs on the binary choice between just two parties. Break the binary choice, and the doom loop unravels. Mistake your turn in power for a chance at permanent rule, and the doom loop darkens.

Drutman goes on to explain the ways in which parties suffer from the cost of governing, which leads to a loss of support so that by the next election, enough voters vote the other way (or don’t vote). This leads to, for example, the typical pattern wherein the president’s party almost always loses seats at the midterm.

I have described this all many times before: when you only have two choices, and you are mad at the party in power, you only have three choices: stick with your team, defect to the other team, or stay home. Most people stick with their teams. But if, say, there is widespread frustration with gas prices or inflation, some people will defect, and others will simply not vote.

With only two choices, you get what Drutman calls a “doom loop.”

As a subhead in his piece notes, however, “You don’t fix a structural problem with better messaging. You fix a structural problem with a structural solution.” We desperately need structural reform.

Drutman argues for fusion voting and proportional representation.

Fusion voting is defined as follows:

Under fusion, multiple parties can nominate the same candidate, and voters choose which ballot line to support. You can vote for the Democratic candidate on a Working Families line, or a new Common Sense line. No wasted votes, no spoiling. The major and minor parties bargain with each other in full view, with the minor party getting more policy concessions as it produces more votes. The coalition shifts its internal balance without collapsing.

I am far less sanguine about the effects of fusion voting than are Drutman and other advocates. I don’t think it produces the incentives to build third parties that he does (although I also don’t think it causes any real harm). For more on that, see Matthew Shugart’s post on the topic at Fruits and Votes: What role for “fusion voting”? Limitations and a potential “open” improvement.

Drutman concludes correctly (in my mind):

And the moment for reform is now.

The doom loop doesn’t just repeat. It spirals. Each cycle, the maps get more aggressive, the guardrails get thinner, the electorate gets more calcified. Redesign is possible, if we start now. After 2031, eulogy may displace strategy.

To add to Drutman’s (and Jack Santucci’s and Shugart’s and mine) call for PR, yesterday Dennis Lytton published a piece at Liberal Currents: Proportional Representation Would Fix That. I would recommend it in full (and I am sure the fact that my work is cited and that Shugart and I are quoted has nothing to do with my recommendation!).

Lytton sets the stage thusly.

Republicans made constitutional hardball their mission under Obama and Biden. The new 21^st century filibuster became a norm. The Supreme Court began to erode long established civil and voting rights protections.

All the while simple statutory or rules fixes—principally filibuster elimination and Supreme Court expansion—could have been undertaken under the trifectas that each Democratic president since the end of the Cold War enjoyed during their first two years.

But we told ourselves that the norms will hold. McConnell will allow Obama to appoint Scalia’s replacement. After he didn’t, we told ourselves that if we did expand the Supreme Court or get rid of the filibuster that after our inevitable loss in the  future that the Republicans would get back at us.

Republicans are doing far worse now. They had no need to get rid of the filibuster because they have no lawful agenda that could command a majority. Russ Vought and DOGE have shown that Congress is not needed in MAGA’s authoritarian politics. Republicans still, for now, claim to require Congress to enact budget appropriations. Hence the Big Beautiful Bill, which was a staggering give away of power to the executive branch. Congress has prostrated itself before Trump’s authoritarian push. Norms haven’t saved us. It’s time we saved ourselves.

To move beyond reforms to the electoral system, I would note Paul Waldman’s piece at Public Notice: This is a crisis of democracy. What will Dems do about it?

the Democratic Party has to become something it has not been in the past. Its collection of careful legislators and cautious campaigners must be reborn as bold, aggressive, creatively ruthless warriors willing to take steps they never contemplated before.

This may be a fantasy, but I also think it’s what has to happen. To my point above about things not going back to normal, and to Drutman’s point about simply cycling through a doom loop, reform has to be on the agenda. As one of Waldman’s sub-heads notes, “Procedural aggression is required.”

He specifically focuses on Supreme Court reform, which is vital lest any legislative reform simply be, dare I say, 86’ed by the Court.

If the Trump administration, and SCOTUS for that matter, has demonstrated anything, it is that we can and should re-evaluate how things work in Washington. Moreover, fear that there will be further constitutional hardball down the line is not a good reason not to act when the chance provides itself, as it should be clear by now that the GOP will push the limits regardless of what the Democrats do.

None of this is a good and happy thing, by the way, but Drutman is right: if there isn’t some serious move towards reforms, we will be thoroughly eugolizing the old system quite soon.

I know I have beaten these drums here for a very long time, perhaps to the point of being tiresome, but I don’t plan to stop, both here and anywhere I can find a stage.