Secret document predicted Jan. 6 — and provided startling warnings to save democracy
Democrats have already missed their best opportunity to fix the structural flaws in democracy that allowed Donald Trump to become president, and then nearly overthrow the government, according to a secret report that eerily predicted the insurrection.
The 87-page document, which was produced weeks before the 2020 election by an advocacy group known as the Hub, warned that Trump would surely refuse to concede his defeat to Joe Biden and cautioned that militia and white supremacist groups would react violently to his loss, and outlined a series of fundamental changes Democrats should enact to preserve constitutional democracy, reported Politico.
“A Biden win will not prove that our democracy is healthy,” the document warned. “Win, lose, or draw, we should perceive ourselves not in a singular moment of crisis but rather in what may be an era of existential challenge for American democracy.”
Arkadi Gerney, a founding leader of the Hub who previously worked for the Center for American Progress and Michael Bloomberg’s City Hall, agreed to talk about the paper, which urged Democrats to reshape the rightward tilt of American political institutions -- including a Senate biased toward rural conservative states, a Supreme Court packed by GOP appointees and an Electoral College that overturned the popular vote twice in a generation.
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“In this country, we had a history of fixing flawed elements of our democracy, generation by generation, from slavery in the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution, to women’s suffrage, to changing the age to vote to 18,” Gerney said. “And that process, in the last 50 years, has gotten stuck.”
The document, called Plan D, urged Democrats to treat electoral wins in 2020 as a “fleeting-once-in-a-generation (or perhaps lifetime) opportunity” to "rewrite the rules of democracy.""
"That’s doing much more than just the voting, corruption, and money-in-politics reforms in HR1 or the VRA renewal,” the document stated. “We must commit to structural reforms that, at a minimum, include DC and Puerto Rico statehood and expanding the federal courts.”
Democrats should also commit to "ending the Electoral College and establishing a constitutional right to vote,” the document said, along with eliminating the Senate filibuster, and it proposed punitive measures for states that consistently reject Democratic measures and candidates, such as denying federal assistance.
"Today, these calls for invasive constitutional surgery seem nearly fantastical," wrote Politico's Alexander Burns. "Democrats captured the White House and Congress, but with legislative majorities so small that they could not even restore the Voting Rights Act, let alone add new Supreme Court justices, new states and new stars to the American flag."