By the People: Blame the Constitution

Explain It to Me

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, Society & Culture, Education, News

4.4 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Host Ian Millhiser talks with political scientist Norm Ornstein and Vox’s Matt Yglesias about the structural factors — many of them written into the Constitution itself — that impede a democratic majority from electing their preferred leaders and several ideas about how these hurdles can be overcome. Relevant resources: Confirm you are registered to vote Featuring: Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute Matthew Yglesias, Senior Correspondent at Vox Host: Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser), Senior Correspondent, Vox Credits: Producer/Editor: Jackson Bierfeldt Editor: Elbert Ventura Executive Producer: Liz Nelson About Vox: Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think not only would you have a popular uprising, but I do think that Congress and the
0:08.5	presidency would find ways to block the judiciary.
0:16.4	I've seen this described as like Democrats need to learn to fight dirty, but it's not
0:22.1	dirty.
0:23.1	I mean, I live in T.C. I don't have Senate representation.
0:29.5	Hello, welcome to another episode of the Weeds on the Vux Media Podcast Network.
0:33.0	I'm Matthew Glacias.
0:34.3	We are back with Ian Millheiser, for what's going to be another episode in his podcast
0:40.0	mini-series on our democracy and our boat.
0:43.8	This is the episode that I'm on, right?
0:45.4	That's right.
0:46.4	Yeah, this is, you're going to be talking about some potential solutions to a really big
0:52.0	problem.
0:53.0	I mean, the theme of this episode is how our democracy is broken.
0:57.3	So just to throw a few facts out there, if you are 30 years old, you have only been
1:03.5	alive for one election where a Republican won the popular vote in the presidential election.
1:11.0	And yet, Republicans have dominated many of these years.
1:14.5	They're about to gain a super majority on the Supreme Court.
1:18.0	So this is an episode about how our democracy is really no longer producing democratic results
1:24.2	and then hopefully some things that can be done to fix that problem.
1:27.8	And so at the top, we've got Norm Ornstein, who's a long time pillar of watching establishment
1:34.7	has become fiery in his old age.
	...

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