American Democracy's Humpty Dumpty Moment
For democracy to deliver for people, we will have to reimagine it
Rules and structures matter. They shape outcomes. Just ask kids playing Monopoly. Or think about the way the dimensions of baseball parks alter how many home runs are hit.
So it is with American democracy. As imperfect as it’s always been, it’s the way self-government happens, how we decide who gets what and what our rights are. That’s why the rules governing democracy have always been contested. Indeed the long arc of American democracy can be described as a struggle between one side that has wanted to expand democracy and one side that wants to restrict it.
The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign may be known for the support and assistance we provide to grassroots organizations building power through organizing campaigns and the electoral impact they have when they mobilize their communities to vote. That’s one “side” of our house. The other “side” is a clear-eyed focus on the rules of democracy and how they shape, for better or worse, who can vote, who can run and serve in office, and who has power. In shorthand, we were founded to bring organized people to the fights on democracy.
We’ve had incredible periods of democratic expansion—Reconstruction, the Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights movement, to name a few. And there have also been stretches of time when the anti-democratic forces have won—Jim Crow, of course, and the period we’re living through right now. For two decades, we’ve seen a strategic focus by conservative forces to prevent the emergence of the multi-racial democracy imagined by the Civil Rights movement via aggressive, partisan gerrymandering; the Roberts Court’s decisions (Citizens United, Shelby, Dobbs, and giving Trump unprecedented power); and a wave of voter suppression laws.
What’s happening now is of another magnitude. The chaos and cruelty inflicted by Trump and the MAGA forces on our families, communities, and institutions isn’t simply an effort to restrict democracy to a narrower slice of Americans. It’s a strategy to flood the zone, instill fear, and seize the opportunity for corruption. Last week the Republicans passed a trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the richest Americans while 12 million poor people will lose health care and billions more in funding is diverted into capturing and deporting people without due process. This week’s example is the news that Texas Republicans will take up a proposal to further gerrymander the state’s congressional districts during the same special session when legislators will consider flood relief funding.
The Pro-Democracy Center and the Pro-Democracy Campaign may be known for the support and assistance we provide to grassroots organizations building power through organizing campaigns and the electoral impact they have when they mobilize their communities to vote. That’s one “side” of our house. The other “side” is a clear-eyed focus on the rules of democracy and how they shape, for better or worse, who can vote, who can run and serve in office, and who has power. In shorthand, we were founded to bring organized people to the fights on democracy.
Since we started in 2022, with a few exceptions, our partners’ and others’ pro-democracy work has been primarily focused on defending voting rights and making important but incremental improvements in voter access and the mechanics of elections. Fighting new voter suppression policies. Expanding early voting both by mail and in-person locations. Ensuring votes are counted. These have been rational responses to the attacks and threats in front of us. By and large, when it comes to democracy policies and practices, we have worked to prevent things from getting worse.
Here we are. Things are now worse. But not because we didn’t succeed at siting more dropboxes, expanded early voting to Sundays and evening hours, and winning voting rights lawsuits. In fact, we won a lot of these fights by hunkering down into the role as defenders of the status quo. In doing so, we defended a political system that, if we’re honest, hasn’t delivered enough for Americans of what they want—security, prosperity, and progress. Being on defense has stunted our ability to convey a clear critique of how the structures of our democracy have failed us, or to share a compelling vision of what a functioning, unrigged political system looks and acts like.
It’s time for us all to find a way to be on offense rooted in an assessment of both how our democracy is rigged and what will make it work for all. No number of dropboxes (we need them!) or language-accessible ballots (we want them!) will create a democracy that consistently delivers for our communities. Here are some thoughts that are animating our thinking:
Let’s start with the basics: America’s political system is deeply flawed. Our structures have long favored wealthy and powerful interests and obstructed the possibility for broad democratic representation and meaningful self-governance for ordinary Americans. A vision for a truly reflective American democracy cannot only be focused on rolling back authoritarianism by defending the status quo; it must include proactive structural reforms that provide a greater voice in government for ordinary citizens.
Our democracy is literally designed to allow a minority to seize power and prevent majority rule. The structures of American democracy have always been more about who has power than what a fair process may be. To take the point above one beat further, from the composition of the Senate and the powers reserved for it, to rules banning a wide variety of electoral systems (fusion and multi-member districts), to Supreme Court decisions providing the wealthy and corporate America more say, we have a set of institutions and structures that limit the power of ordinary people to self-govern. The hurdle to amend the Constitution is set so high that few try. These anti-democratic features of our political system, coupled with a deeply cynical and dissatisfied electorate, have created the conditions for today’s authoritarianism.
There’s no going back, so let’s think beyond the short term. We’ve said this before, and we’ll say it again: if there was ever a “both/and” moment, it’s now. Electoral victories like flipping the House and/or Senate in 2026 and winning the presidency in 2028 absolutely are critical. But these can’t be the only goalposts. MAGA and Trump have exposed our political system’s many Achilles’ heels, which have been exploited to allow for minority rule and therefore the emergence of authoritarianism. Even if we can achieve historic electoral wins in the next few cycles, the current rules of our political system will leave us vulnerable to another autocrat down the road. To borrow from Mother Goose: if we accept that it’s broken, why would we ever want to put Humpty Dumpty1 back together again? We must use whatever political, people, and narrative power we can amass to make significant changes to our political system, as soon as we can create an opening.
The way the democracy field has been trying to create that opening misses the elephant in the room: we need more power. For too long, center-left democracy reform work has been led by DC-based good government groups, election lawyers, and policy experts without a role for state leaders. Recent additions of billionaire-backed, one-size-fits-all policy campaigns don’t fix this problem either, and these efforts faced historic defeats in 2024. National experts’ work is essential, but they often lack connections to grassroots power bases and organized constituencies that have the muscle to advance a bold and visionary agenda. For their part, most grassroots power-building organizations haven’t yet assumed leadership in advancing bold democracy changes. They are more focused on issues that have immediate resonance in their communities—improving schools, ensuring access to housing and childcare, and creating economic opportunity. If we are to build the necessary power to win big changes, organizing in states all across the country must weave an indictment of our current system’s failures to deliver what people need together with a proactive vision for a new political system that will actually deliver.
That’s why we need to bring power-building groups—community-based organizations, large national groups operating with an organizing model, labor unions, etc.—to the forefront of democracy work. Their power is critical to our ability to win elections, as we argued here, and structural changes. More importantly, their leadership is necessary to ensure that the changes we fight for will truly make our governments more reflective and representative of the communities that have long been excluded from our system. That involves reconceptualizing pro-democracy work as itself a power-building strategy. There is only so much power an organized base can have in a system with a tilted playing field. The vision for a new political system should be constructed around the kinds of rules that will enhance the power of organized, ordinary people.
The states are, and will continue to be, laboratories of democracy. With state partners, we (and others) are getting to work to build the power necessary to align around big and bold ideas to drive forward. This work is bespoke. Every state has different challenges and opportunities, and state leaders are beginning to dig into ideas that can dramatically restructure the rules at home and inspire people in other states.
What is obviously left out is a long list of changes that might make up a new political system that is reflective, responsive, and accountable to all Americans. Some will propose proportional representation, eliminating the Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court, or some new version of H.R. 1, the Congressional Democrats’ grab-bag of reforms. We don’t have all the answers but we are confident that deep popular education of the flaws of our federal political system coupled with state-by-state experimentation will help get us there. Indeed, state-specific solutions can help light the path, both due to their content and their inspiration that we can imagine—and win—big changes.
Over the next few years, we will need to arrive at a place where powerful, organized bases of people in every part of the country are making a clear, common demand for forging a democracy that better meets the lofty language in our founding documents. One that delivers for everyday people. This will not happen naturally—it will require going deep before we can dream big.
Interestingly, the earliest version of Humpty Dumpty was published in 1797, ten years after the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified by the states.