Summary
House Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, introduced the We the People Amendment to overturn Citizens United, aiming to curb corporate influence in elections.
The constitutional amendment asserts that constitutional rights apply only to individuals, not corporations, and mandates full disclosure of political contributions.
Jayapal cited Elon Musk’s massive campaign spending and subsequent financial gains as proof of the ruling’s harm.
Advocacy groups praised the move, calling it necessary to combat corporate power and dark money in politics, but Republicans have not backed the proposal.
Instead of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, immediately get rid of the gerontocracy (Schumer, Pelosi), regroup, find a leader with some balls and declare open warfare on Republicans. It’s not like there isn’t any ammunition.
Exactly, the conservatives have spent the last 40 years gradually doing exactly this and the Democrats have spent the last 40 years denying that reality and laughing off the right wing, talk show type populists while they slowly took control of the GOP and the court system.
immediately get rid of the gerontocracy (Schumer, Pelosi), regroup, find a leader with some balls and declare open warfare on Republicans.
to be fair, this is probably exactly what republicans want to be able to pull the entire curtain down.
This is one of the single biggest changes we can make to our current electoral system.
Should’ve done this in 2021. This could’ve changed the 2024 election entirely.
What did they do in 2021 instead?
Probably nothing else going on really. They’re just lazy and fat off corporate cash piles, obviously.
Nothing. That’s the problem. Democrats are so afraid to play an opposition party cause it will negatively affect party leadership and top donors. They want the status quo and are more than likely benefiting from the Trump regime in many ways.
Make no bones about it: top Democrats have been complacent with a hostile takeover of the US government because it is benefiting them.
Progressive Democrats and party newcomers are seeing this reality. They tried to play the game for a bit but got burned like Bernie did. Some democrats are finally growing a backbone to stand up against geriatric party leadership.
Make no bones about it: top Democrats have been complacent with a hostile takeover of the US government because it is benefiting them.
I mean, I’d make a few bones about it. The best time to be an excellent Progressive party is 50 years ago. The next best time is now, though.
Democrats make an opposition move
This is because Dems won’t make an opposition move
I’m surprised how quickly people forgot the very first bill the Democrats introduced in 2021 addressed this very topic. The Republicans in the senate killed it.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1
Passed House (03/03/2021) For the People Act of 2021
"This bill addresses voter access, election integrity and security, campaign finance, and ethics for the three branches of government.
Specifically, the bill expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting). It also limits removing voters from voter rolls.
The bill requires states to establish independent redistricting commissions to carry out congressional redistricting.
Additionally, the bill sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence information with state election officials, supporting states in securing their election systems, developing a national strategy to protect U.S. democratic institutions, establishing in the legislative branch the National Commission to Protect United States Democratic Institutions, and other provisions to improve the cybersecurity of election systems.
Further, the bill addresses campaign finance, including by expanding the prohibition on campaign spending by foreign nationals, requiring additional disclosure of campaign-related fundraising and spending, requiring additional disclaimers regarding certain political advertising, and establishing an alternative campaign funding system for certain federal offices.
The bill addresses ethics in all three branches of government, including by requiring a code of conduct for Supreme Court Justices, prohibiting Members of the House from serving on the board of a for-profit entity, and establishing additional conflict-of-interest and ethics provisions for federal employees and the White House.
The bill requires the President, the Vice President, and certain candidates for those offices to disclose 10 years of tax returns."
Biden could have arrested Trump on January 21st, and that would have been that
How do I upvote this harder?
It should have been done immediately, when the ruling came down in 2010, when the Democrats had a majority in the House and Senate, and Obama was the President.
I was one year away from graduating college at the time, getting simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in Econ and Poli Sci, trying to explain to people how bad the situation was, and how this may be our only shot at fixing it.
But uh, nope, Obama had already won, the Dems had already swept the House and Senate to near, but not quite super majorities, and most Dem voters were too busy gloating over these victories and pretending that they meant Republicans would never have power over the Federal government again, and actually? you’re an asshole for implying Obama and the Dems aren’t perfect, in fact you sound racist, get away from me.
Instead, that was indeed the highwater mark for Dem control in the Federal government (in the last 20 years), and they squandered it, then lost some House and Senate seats, then doomed us all by ratfucking Bernie to run the perfect encapsulation of their sanctimonious and haughty elitism, Hillary, who lost to a rapist, racist, fraudlent fascist.
cue curb your enthusiasm theme
There was less than a 0٪ chance that they could have passed a constitutional ammendment in 2021.
I guess we’ll never know because they didn’t even try.
But I’m sure they’ll have a chance now that they’re making a good faith effort! lol.
Love your downvotes. “Nuh uh!! They just didn’t want to!”
They didn’t try. So yes. They didn’t want to.
When you don’t do something, you don’t wanna do the task. When I delay doing the dishes, I’m not wanting to do them despite how much it’s useful for the home.
If they didn’t push for this in 2021, they didn’t want it.
I’d argue rank choice is more important.
If you give people actual elections, it shouldn’t matter how much money is spent on campaigns
All someone needs is $1,000 for a good website. Lower the barrier to let them on the ballot and let people rank them, and you’ll solve the problem.
The fact that both parties have been so active in opposing ranked choice voting is proof that it would break their monopolies on power.
I would love ranked choice. It completely flopped on the state ballot in Colorado this past election because both parties are completely against it
We have it in nyc, but it tyrna out a lot of people found it confusing and just rankes their first choice anyways.
Way too little, way too late.
Yeah, the sole reason they’re suggesting it now is because they know it’s too little too late. It will go nowhere and we all know this, them Dems will be like ‘oh but we tried!’ Fucking useless.
Read the article.
Do this and keep doing it until it works. This isn’t a moonshot. It’s normal, sensible change. Everybody shut your fucking mouths with all this secondary “it isn’t going to work now” bitch energy. Get behind the shit you want, loudly.
would have been more useful when you had any kind of power to get a bill passed, but thanks anyway i guess
Stow that shit. This is exactly what they need to be doing. They need to make the argument to the American people that they have better ideas and a better plan for America, and then create a voting record for Congress so they can beat them in the next election. Of course it won’t pass, but if they give up without even trying, then the Nazis can act like they are the only option.
I agree, but i aint gonna stow it. Why didnt they introduce it when they were able to maybe pass it? Im not going to refrain from criticizing them just because worse people are in power.
when they were able to maybe pass it?
Lmfao when was this? A constitutional amendment of any kind has zero chance of getting passed by anyone and hasn’t in the entire time the Citizens United ruling has existed.
Democrats around that time could barely muster enough votes from the Republicans to pass the milquetoast, conservative ACA via simple majority. You’re deluded if you think Democrats ever could’ve plausibly reversed Citizens United via amendment.
you’re right, i didnt read closely enough, a constitutional amendment is and would have been hot air at any time since the descision.
A law would be something that they might be able to get passed if they actually wanted to pass it, which they dont, because thats how they all got into power.
A law would be something that they might be able to get passed
This means you don’t understand the Citizens United ruling.
You are correct.
A law would be something that they might be able to get passed if they actually wanted to pass it
I can understand someone continually misunderstanding how this works; what I can’t understand at all is why people keep upvoting it so heavily with so little pushback. When the Supreme Court makes a ruling on something, they’re making a ruling on whether something is permitted under the Constitution. In order to reverse Citizens United, you have to either a) amend that Constitution so it no longer says the words that the SCOTUS ruled on or b) wait for a new SCOTUS which will overturn that prior ruling.
Yes
A law would be something that they might be able to get passed if they actually wanted to pass it
Again, no. Not how this works. “Actually wanting to pass” a bill is certainly a part of it. Then there’s the 99% of the rest of it that has to be done. It’s not like opening a bag of chips.
ok?
Why didnt they introduce it when they were able to maybe pass it?
And when the fuck do you daydream that was?
How long have you been in national politics? Because it sounds like, y’know, not long.
Why didnt they introduce it when they were able to maybe pass it?
And when the fuck do you daydream that was?
How long have you been in national politics? Because it sounds like, y’know, not long.
This behavior sucks, you can do better.
Democrats are lazy fakes and liberals waahhh they could have fixed everything in two seconds but they didn’t because they like corruption and genociding people waaahhh
We have enough people parroting this bullshit. Do better indeed.
Be best!
They should have been submitting this every session since the citizens united decision. Even with no hope of success, they could be forcing every member of Congress to openly declare their loyalty to the oligarchs.
But, if they did that, then the oligarchs would think they were disloyal.
Agreed, just frustrating that they wait until their corpo donors are done signing checks for a big election year. Would’ve been a huge game changer years ago when Dems were in control and perhaps would’ve proven everyday Americans support progressive policies
Their argument to the American people doesn’t matter. Millions of Americans are still happy with what’s happening and we have a government that will use violence to get what it wants. We need a coalition of countries to step on America’s dick and grind it into the ground. We deserve it for the shit we’ve done around the world.
Millions of Americans are wrong. What’s your plan for that? Violence? Reeducation camps for shitbags? Conservatives are everywhere, and they’re all salivating to take advantage of the chaos created by the fall of Rome. If you think getting our collective dick stepped on is going to result in a better tomorrow, you need to pick up a history book.
If you think it hasn’t been collective chaos for black people for 400 years pick up a history book and think about the people exploited so you can live in Rome in comfort.
For about 50 years it was consistently getting better until just now. And you act like that counts for nothing.
Yeah, better from the slavery days of my great great grandfather. There aren’t running jokes about the frequent imprisonment and abuse and death of white people by authorities because it’s not something you all had to fear. You treated us worse than dogs, then, slowly, we got more rights than animals only to be released into a modified cage. So fuck better. We said equality.
The people that elected Trump won’t care. Trump or someone like him will lie to all of them about anything they attempt to do.
I’m not saying it’s not worth doing this, I’m just saying it won’t matter by itself.
Bullshit. They should not be focusing on zero chance gestures while real people are struggling. They choose this BECAUSE it wont pass so they don’t have to fight to help people, it’s a distraction that not only wont stop fascism, but give it time to deepen its roots while they waste energy on an impossible task.
Wow. Not a fan, eh?
A bill can’t overturn a SCOTUS ruling on the constitutionality of something. That’s why they are proposing an ammendment.
Read the Constitution. Congress can regulate what is subject to judicial review by the Supreme Court. It can also regulate the operation of the Supreme Court.
That would have been useful and a great idea over a decade ago.
Now it’s just “let’s do this” and nothing will happen. Its too late.
Yeah even if they did actually repeal it, which they won’t, it’s really closing the stable door after the horse has bolted at this point IMO.
Because with the current administration, you can say it’s illegal to accept money from so-and-so, and they’ll just go “fuck you” and do it anyway and nobody will will stop them or bring consequences, so … yeah. This is kind of doing time, not talking time.
I mean… that was literally one of the things that Hillary ran on. So… your timeline checks out.
As we’ve seen though, a woman cannot win against a racist sexist nazi shitbag in the united states.
Don’t at me (as the young people say), I voted for the woman.
Pretty much. I just always like to point these things out as there’s a nice bit of revisionism amongst the left on “We want this, why didn’t the dems give it to us” while people don’t show up and vote for them, then cry they didn’t show up because “Dems are as bad as republicans.” Which frankly is as bad as the right on their revisionism.
The 16 election was an attempt to take down Citizens United as well as bring up the Trans Pacific Partnership. The TPP was specifically trying to get the other Asian countries to lock out China in trade to reduce its power. But the right wingers thought “No we want to be hard on China” pulled out of it, and basically left China to look at all the other Asian countries who didn’t have a partnership with the US and bring them to heel.
Citizens United came about in 2010, during the Obama administration, and specifically that same year Republicans had gained majority in the House, creating a divided congress that meant no laws could get through, especially an anti-Citizens United bill. An executive order isn’t going to fix this one.
The Left falls into the same fallacy as the Right, they want a strong leader who can “solve all the problems.” Problem is the Right is really good at it because it’s really their authoritarian style. The part that pisses me off is the Right is also really good at showing up at the polls when they matter even if they hate the candidate, as long as it moves the needle one step over to their side while the Left keeps having a lot of voters be all or nothing.
Only at the end to try and court Bernie supporters. Before that she was mostly silent and won the primary with corporate money.
Y’know what, I’ll bite. It’s been long enough I can’t definitively say whether it came up before or not.
But that’s a point though, she did move her policy to that of the ones that the Bernie supporters and they still snubbed her and we got Trump.
So in that we made sure the Left didn’t have a seat at the table because they didn’t bother to show up right after showing they had the numbers and ability to do so, and we got a billionaire man-baby who sucks up to other billionaires and fascist regimes. Good trade.
I say this as a Bernie voter, but my national vote was still for Hillary. Citizens United and the Supreme Court were on the line, I told other leftists it was on the line, I was told I was overreacting… so call me fucking Cassandra.
I was a Bernie and Hillary voter as well. I also failed to convince a number of other Bernie voters that they had to support Hillary.
She held too far center for too long and a lot of Bernie voters didn’t trust her or the party. Hell, even when she announced a push for an amendment in her first 30 days I didn’t buy it would happen but I also knew we needed to keep Trump out.
Really I still didn’t trust the party. I still don’t think we have enough progressives and will still do what we need to keep corporate donors happy above the voting public.
Money is speech and it has the loudest platform.
Good, but why the hell didn’t they do this when they had control of Congress?
Because they don’t want it to pass obviously. When was the last time you went into your bosses office and demanded a pay cut??
This is just pandering. Maybe one or two of them actually want it but the rest will just pretend to care because they know the genie is never going back in the bottle
No party has been anywhere near that level of “control” for a very long time.
OK, but trying would have let them know where the weak links are, where to put pressure in the future. Same goes for Dobbs. Even if they failed to secure a federal right to abortion in the legislature, having the voting record would have been a powerful tool to use against DINOs – “Shape up, or loose your funding”
That they never even tried means Democrats are just not interested in strategically working towards success.
So they throw this impossible task out there, something they can put all their energy and rhetoric into which will ultimately not bear results in my lifetime, and they can say see I was fighting against this tyranny.
This is such a bald-face transparent PR move I hope everyone sees it for what it is.
They’ve had multiple chances to fix this when they had real power. They’re idiots.
They’re idiots
They’re idiots, or… they are insincere.
The reality that people who vote Democrat loyally, especially white, middle income, NPR listening, card carrying liberals, need to come to terms with is this:
The Democratic party doesn’t work for you.
The leadership of the Democratic party, it’s party managers, the ones who hold real power: they do not share your same interests. It’s always been performative. The vast majority of Democrats never meant any of it. The few that do are refused any real leadership or power. Every time they’ve had the votes to do something, anything, there is always a technical or procedural excuse. And when they now the thing can’t pass, they use the opportunity to show their bonafide: precisely when it has no cost. The current political situation were in would be impossible without the weakness and persistent cuckoldry coming from the Democratic party.
It’s a waste of time to invest further in the Democratic party. They were never going to come to your rescue, now less than ever when they are most needed. American leftist already knows this, it’s time for the American liberal to develop a sense of shame at their unwillingness to oppose the baseless, performative bullshit they’ve come to accept as politics from the DNC.
We need a new political project. The DNC is cooked.
American democracy has been dead for decades. Congress hasn’t GAF what the people want for decades. Trump and his minions are acting the way they do only because the plutocracy no longer needs to hide this fact. https://www.good.is/Politics/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress-doesnt-care-what-you-think
“But they didn’t have a 90 seat advantage in the Senate and 400 house seats and the presidency!!! How do you expect them to get anything done without that?!?” - centrists
Well, yes. This. Just reduce the numbers appropriately so it’s not a strawman.
The American people have voted against democracy. If they don’t have a solid majority of the vote, they can’t do much.
2024 is far from the only example of this.
I literally see these every week here. Like somehow when they have a majority they are unable to pass any laws, and when in a minority, they can’t stop anything Republicans do.
Like every time there is a majority, every democrat just is unable to do focus on anything but one bill. That one bill is all can be voted on, all anyone can vote on, and all that can be focused on. Any other legislation by legislators can’t exist.
The excuse I always see is “we’re a big tent party so Joe Lieberman/Joe Manchin tells us what to do.”
Which is not the response of an effective political party.
when in a minority, they can’t stop anything Republicans do.
Like when the Republicans tried to repeal the ACA?
Not to defend the spineless Dems or this performative stunt, but it would be pretty difficult to pass at any point. They would need a lot of Republicans to join.
But I am picking nits. There’s no good reason not to push for this while they’re in power. If they had thrown their weight behind it in 2023, and forced Republicans to go on the record for CU, we’d probably have President Harris now.
We just have to admit that the representative democracy system, in its current form, suffers from the same flaws as other systems. It’s done a great job at elevating people a bit, but we hit a new ceiling of how prosperous the average person is.
I really want the conversations to be more around iterating on representative democracy. In this day and age we should be able to have our voices/votes heard more on each topic.
I don’t think we’ll ever move on to the next step of human societal development until we stop concentrating power. Us picking a representative in the hopes that they will proxy vote for what we actually want them to vote for does not work.
I hate to say it but proposing a constitutional amendment is just virtue signaling at this point. There isn’t a snowballs chance in hell this passes even with 100% democrat support.
I appreciate the thought and effort but put forth legislation that actually has a chance at passing.
Virtue signaling is an important act for a minority party. It lets the base know what you stand for and what your opponents stand against. This is something with broad public appeal yet low congressional support (because politicians like monies). It’s something you can hit your opponents with and, with a snowball’s chance, you might actually make progress in passing.
“I want to take money out of politics, my opponent is captured by rich billionaires. They don’t serve you, they serve the billionaires” It’s an ad that writes itself.
This is something dems should be doing, especially since the last election was them running away from policy and instead doubling down on how much their policy isn’t different from the average republican’s. We saw how that turned out.
But its a lie… they had the chance to make this a reality, but they honestly don’t care. They can try to appeal to progressives but it’s too late.
No, they didn’t. When did they have a chance to pass a constitutional amendment?
Can you link any speeches of Biden using the bully pulpit to try to get something like that passed? He didn’t. Liberals look for any excuse they can think of to weasel out of helping us. The way they cried that couldn’t even try to forgive student loans because their own parliamentarian supposedly said they couldn’t was such bs.
I hate Trump with a passion, but Trump is showing the whole world how much power Biden and Obama had but refused to use. Trump is showing everyone that liberals cared more about “norms” than actually helping us
There are a LOT of things Trump & co are doing right now that are beyond presidential power or even downright illegal. Biden and Obama didn’t act like this because they couldn’t. Trump’s acting fast because the people that wrote project 2025 planned it like that. They took a bet that the rest of the country would just watch them, mouth open and do nothing. Seems they were right.
Virtue signaling is different than signaling virtues. Here it’s referring to halfassing it when they can’t actually do anything about it.
I will never understand what is wrong with virtue signalling. We should all be happy when people feel pressured to publicly state that they stand with good things and against bad things. Plus, it’s not like they’re lying: if it gets called to vote then they’ll all show their colors, and if it doesn’t get called to vote then it forces the opponents to show theirs.
As much as I like to imagine a world where everyone understands politics enough to know Republicans are against removing money from politics, we clearly do not.
I hate to say it but proposing a constitutional amendment is just virtue signaling at this point
You mean political theater. “Virtue signaling” is a nonsense term that fascists use.
To late, but DO IT!!
Jfc. They and both houses of Congress multiple times since Citizens United and didn’t do shit. Bringing it up now, when it won’t even get through Congress, let alone the states, is a fucking distraction
Even then they never had the support to pass this or any constitutional ammendment.
It would have been a great political move though. Make Republicans go on the record as wanting more money in politics. CU is horribly unpopular and they could go on the offense for once…if they wanted to.
They probably couldn’t pass it, but this is the precise sort of fight they could wage to excite their base…if they wanted to.
Politically this might be more effective play when Dems are the minority party. Not forgiving inaction though. I seriously believe this type of gamesmanship was why dems drag their feet on prosecuting trump for J6.
I’m pretty sure I remember them doing just that more than once. I agree it should be done but we shouldn’t pretend it’s just a box to check to keep the base awake. It’s quickly forgotten.
They’ve been in record for this since the 1980s, one vote in Congress doesn’t show anything that the actions of Republicans haven’t shown in the last 20 years.
Trump is just full mask off. Reagan had humor to deflect his issues. Trump is a drooling moron who does what Republicans always have wanted.
Wow so brave. \s \s \s
Seriously tho. These people are phony AF. They had 4 years to actually do this. This is just political theater.
I mean, they had 14 years didn’t they?
Have they ever tried to pass an ammendment for this?
Can’t expect much from them when they owe thier position to corporations to. It’s been a dog and pony show for a long time.
Absolutely disingenuous to report this as “house Dems”, as though the liberal (i.e. conservative) Dems are in on it. They are not. These are progressive Dems who propose this basically every year, and who are actually fighting for us, not corporations and profits. Liberal Dems then work with their Republican friends to shut it down. This is why liberal Dems are as much the enemy as the Republicans.
Do not waste time talking about a non-starter.
You need 290 votes in the House, you have (at most) 215. You need 75 Republicans to flip.
If, miracle of miracle, that happens, it goes to the Senate where you need 60 votes to end a filibuster, you have (at best) 47. You need 13 Republicans breaking rank to end cloture + 7 more to pass it.
Then it goes to the states for ratification, you need 38. In 2024 19 states went to Harris which means you need all of them +19 Trump states.
Yeahhh…
The thing is, at the very least this forces the Republicans (and for that matter Democrats) to pick a side on the issue.
Citizens United is extremely unpopular with the Republican base, as it is with the Democrat base. If a Republican voter sees that their Congress person voted to maintain citizens United, they might be upset.
The GOP will just lie and blame everything on “radical leftists”. Which don’t really exist in the US.
Some will. But if 1% of the right see this and either become demotivated or change sides, that is enough to swing entire elections.
Ron Paul used to introduce doomed bills like this all the time. It’s not expected to pass. It’s to reveal the owners of other legislators.
Even some Democrats will vote against this bill. Every one of those legislators work for the corporations - not for us - and need to be replaced.
Which, ultimately, does nothing as voters have the memory of a goldfish.
We do, but that still does something. I only look up their voting records once I’ve got the sample ballot in my hands.
Check the comments, 75% of the people here don’t believe the simple fact that the Democrats have not had a supermajority to pass such an amendment since 1979, 30 years before the infamous Citizens United win at the Supreme Court became the current interpretation of law.
They don’t know that the legislation discussed in this post has been brought to vote multiple times by Democrats over the years under different names, and that this is just the latest instance.
They just want to complain that Democrats ‘don’t do anything good when they have power, and wont even try when they know they cant win’ - handwaving away reality.
They just want to complain that Democrats ‘don’t do anything good when they have power, and wont even try when they know they cant win’ - handwaving away reality.
it’s literally the meme of
lemmy: “you’re not doing anything”
GOV: “i am literally doing everything”
lemmy: “you’re not doing good enough”
GOV: “i’m literally the best in my field trying the best i can with good results”
lemmy: “well it’s still not good enough”
GOV: “find me a better solution then.”
So this will pass and we’re all wrong?
The biggest issue is that Dems get rich from this shit too. Even if they had a massive majority it wouldn’t pass.
this might actually work if this goes through the states in the midterms, might be a little bit too early for that to happen, but i guess we’ll have to see. I would entirely expect this to be 100% possible to get passed, it just needs support.
