Ask Us Anything
Constitutional conventions, Trump's health, and the 3.5% rule
The questions we received this week were wide-ranging. Here are a few we thought you would find interesting:
Do you think that the recent uptick in support for Democrats will carry over into the gubernatorial elections this year?
(Matt) Yes. The dynamics driving this year’s election are clear and consistent across the board. Democratic performance in special elections is way up compared to last year. Donald Trump’s job performance is at historically low levels for this point in a new administration. And the party out of power tends to get a boost in the year following a presidential election.
Polling in marquee races in Virginia and New Jersey bears this out. These are the only states with gubernatorial contests, and the Democratic nominees are out in front in both. Mikie Sherrill is up by about ten points in polling averages of the New Jersey race, and Abigail Spanberger leads by the same amount in an average of the two most recent polls in Virginia.
Holding the New Jersey governorship without an incumbent on the ballot and flipping the Virginia governorship would be high-profile accomplishments for Democrats. But there is also value in trying to run up the score. New Jersey and Virginia are the springboards to the midterms, coming at a time when incumbent representatives and senators will be making final decisions about whether to seek re-election next year. Strong performances by Sherrill and especially Spanberger (in purplish Virginia) might make Republicans who are already skittish about the prospect of serving in the minority decide to sit this one out. Democratic over-performance in these states would also feed a beneficial narrative about 2026 looking like a Democratic year—and you know how self-fulfilling those narratives can be. So it’s definitely worth the effort to help Democrats win big in New Jersey and Virginia.
Common Cause calls efforts to trigger an Article V Constitutional Convention, “an extremist plot to rewrite our Constitution and take away our fundamental rights and freedoms.” I don't think I've seen other non-partisan, pro-democracy groups talk about this. What is your take?
(Chris) While I don't want to make a regular practice of debunking what other organizations in the Democratic/progressive space are doing, in this case I do want to assure you that we are nowhere close to having an Article V Convention, and likely never will be.
Initiating an Article V Convention (also known as an amendatory convention, as it would only be about adding amendments to the existing Constitution) would require the approval of two-thirds of state legislatures. This means Republicans would have to have unified control of 34 state legislatures. Right now, they only have unified control of 29, so they would somehow have to take control of 5 more. The most likely targets would be Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Given the way elections are going in 2025 and the way elections usually go in midterms, there is virtually no chance of this happening.
Further, even if they somehow had control of 34 states, there is no guarantee they could actually get all 34 of those state governments to agree to hold an amendatory convention.
Finally, even if Republicans somehow managed to call a convention, then any amendments the convention approved would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states, or at least 38. So, Republicans would have to take control of an additional four states. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, the 38th reddest state in America is—Illinois.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
What do you make of people who say “Authoritarianism is already here, people just won’t start noticing until it’s too late?” Surely we’re at an early enough place in the authoritarianism timeline where there’s plenty that we still can and should do. I feel like others lack perspective if they think otherwise.
(Chris) I agree with you! A number of people have castigated me over email for not declaring that we are living in an authoritarian police state right now. My simple response to them is usually something like, “people like me, who make our living by criticizing the current regime and attempting to remove it from power, do not exist in authoritarian police states. We are thrown out of windows, pushed down stairs, and tossed into prisons. For that matter, people like you, who criticize people like me for not being harsh enough, suffer the same fate.”
In fact, there is a booming industry of people who make their living criticizing the current regime, and another booming industry of people who criticize those critics for not being harsh enough.
Other things that don't happen in authoritarian police states are multiple multi-million person demonstrations against the government, as happened here in April and June, and elections handing stinging defeats to the party in power, as has happened this year in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Our country is full of happy, satisfied people who, for whatever reason, really like bad news about things happening just over their horizons. The ones who like bad news the most really want you to say that we are already living in an authoritarian police state, even though that really isn't true. In fact, being able to say that out loud is kind of an oxymoron. I do not want to trivialize the fact that some people’s rights are being violated right now—but that is not the same thing as, for example, living under the Chinese Communist Party.
Can you explain Erica Chenoweth’s 3.5% rule? That’s roughly 11 million Americans who have to do something to break this regime. But what exactly do we have to do?
(Matt) Erica Chenoweth’s “rule” is an academic finding that, with very few exceptions over the course of the twentieth century, nonviolent protests involving at least 3.5% of the population successfully toppled authoritarian regimes. Chenoweth is the rare academic whose work has found its way into popular awareness, with groups like Indivisible making reference to it as part of their larger organizing strategy.
What would that mean in an American context and—to your point—what would have to be done to generate the kind of pressure that would break the Trump regime? I suspect it would look something like a general strike that engages double the number of people who participated in the No Kings rallies. For an indefinite period of time, people involved in the strike would stop working and consuming goods, and engage in peaceful protests. It would have to be well organized, involve workers from across the economy, and have clearly articulated goals.
But what are those goals? It seems to me that in order for a protest of this nature to be legitimate in the eyes of the public, the administration would first have to be widely viewed as illegitimate. This means more than doing things that are illegitimate. It means imposing the kind of repression that Chris referenced in his answer to the question about authoritarianism—the kind of repression we have not yet seen here, where the regime becomes entirely extra-constitutional. Or it could mean Trump refusing to leave at the end of his term, which is also clearly illegitimate and extra-constitutional. At such a point, with the Constitution nullified and expectations of the regular transfer of power gone, the legitimate demand of the protesters would be for Trump and his whole regime to leave immediately.
Short of that point, the demand for Trump to leave would itself be an extra-Constitutional act, because—like it or not—Trump was legitimately elected and we continue to operate under the expectation that he will vacate his office when his term ends. Without question, Trump has violated the conditions of his office over and over, but the corrective here is impeachment and conviction, which—frustratingly—is a political process that cannot be realized under present political conditions.
However, peaceful protest is an incredibly valuable tool of the resistance. It raises the visibility of Trump’s actions and pressures Democrats to take an increasingly assertive posture toward the administration, while working to preserve the Constitution so we can repair and strengthen it later.
I came away from reading Chris’s September 9th post, “One Insider’s Story of How Bad News Gets Delivered to Your Inbox,” feeling a bit uneasy. Am I Being Played? Am I paying to only get bad news? How am I to know that I have not misplaced my trust? I am trusting you to tell me the truth.
(Chris) First, thanks for reading my article! I do actually think that many Americans have developed a distorted view of reality that skews heavily negative. And I think this is just as true of Democrats and progressives as it is of Republicans and conservatives. The reason for this, as I argued in the article, is that the Internet has unleashed tools, including A/B testing, that can quantitatively track individual behavior to a degree that allows publishers and platforms to serve up content to people that those distributors know—with a very high degree of statistical certainty—their audience will consume, like, and share.
When it comes to politics, it turns out that the content Americans like the most is bad news, crisis and horror. They absolutely love it—and I know this from personally looking at large amounts of this data for over ten years. Now, at long last, the Internet is finally giving them the absolutely terrible news they always wanted!
That isn't to say that I think everything is great. I don’t think it is. I just think that it probably isn't as bad as you think it is.
There has been a lot of speculation about Trump's health. If he were incapacitated, will the same machine keep running without the charismatic leader, or do you see potential cracks in the authoritarian wall?
(Matt) It is hard to have an authoritarian regime without the authoritarian. If we regard MAGA as a personality cult centered around Trump rather than as a simple political movement, it would stand to reason that the role Trump plays relative to his supporters is nontransferable. It is certainly not transferable to J.D. Vance, who has neither the personality nor the deep history with MAGA to be able to step into Trump’s shoes and command the loyalty and adulation of his followers. Vance in the Oval Office might want to advance the objectives of the Project 2025 group (the “machine” that you mention), but he would have to do it without the slavish support of the base. I am only speculating here, but I have long felt that Trumpism is a much weaker entity without Trump. MAGA grievances will remain, but the ability to channel them into political power would be diminished.