(The Nation) -- It has become clear that the only way to deal with the most serious economic issues facing our country—inequality, underemployment, wage stagnation—is not just to elect a Democrat as president in the November elections but to completely destroy the Republican Party. To do so, we will have to think beyond particular candidates and specific elections. We will have to think more radically, to propose more fundamental reforms. The Constitution of 1787 offers far too many nooks and crannies in the cobwebbed architecture of our political system in which Republicans can hide out and bide their time before attempting another hostile takeover of our democracy. Because the Founders-approved option of amending the Constitution is, for the time being, unavailable to us, we will have to figure out ways of amending it without formally amending it, in order to end the artificially-enhanced prominence of a party that has been so malignant in its current form.
First, we need a plan to immediately end the gerrymandering of congressional districts. Without taking this step, there could be no hope of returning the people’s chamber to the people’s hands. If we wait until after the next census, in 2020, it will be too late. By then, even if the Democrats win by a landslide in 2016, the GOP will have returned.