What it could take.
250,000 citizens gathered on the National Mall (March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom -- 8/28/63)
“So what we are moving to (assuming we are not already there) is a basic breakdown in the possibility of genuine governance.” So writes in response to last night’s S.o.t.U. speech Prof. Sandy Levinson, of the University of Texas School of Law, on Balkinization, a blog featuring posts by many of our most prominent constitutional law scholars (including a professor or two of mine back when I was a law student). More and more often of late, I catch myself believing that a full-blown constitutional crisis (and, hopefully, catharsis) is the only possible resolution of our political impasse vis-a-vis the Senate’s anti-democracy rules (and the G.O.P.’s cynical exploitation thereof). But I’m not even sure what a c.c. would look like. Would it entail calling a convention to amend the constitution? But that requires resolutions passed by two thirds of the state legislatures — and I can’t think of 34 states that would do such a thing absent a genuine, national-scale grass-roots movement the likes of which we’ve never seen. Maybe something on the order of 10 million protesters gathered on the National Mall, which is a lot to hope for. And for that to happen, I think Prof. Levinson’s right: there needs to be an outsider to match the president as an insider, ala MLK to LBJ. Is someone out there willing and able to lead a civil protest against 18th century parliamentary procedures?