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What Americans want

Term limits for Congress, pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, get money out of politics.

Cory Doctorow
5 min readOct 18, 2023
An American flag, its blue and red elements replaced with shimmering gold. Before it is a gilded version of the US Capitol Dome. From behind it loom a giant, zombified Uncle Sam and an impatient man in a business suit, starting at a sheaf of papers.

Tomorrow (Oct 19), I’m in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. On Friday (Oct 20), I’m at Charleston’s Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

If you aspire to be a Very Serious Person (and whomst amongst us doesn’t?) then you know why we can’t have nice things. The American people won’t stand for court packing, Congressional term limits, the abolition of the Electoral College, or campaign finance limits. Politics is the art of the possible, and these just aren’t possible.

Friends, you’ve been lied to.

The latest Pew Research mega-report investigates Americans’ attitudes towards politics, and honestly, the title says it all: “Americans’ Dismal Views of the Nation’s Politics”:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-dismal-views-of-the-nations-politics/

The American people hate Congress. They hate the parties. They hate the president. They hate the 2024 presidential candidates. They loathe the Supreme Court. Approval for America’s bedrock institutions are at historic lows. Disapprovals are at historic highs.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow

Written by Cory Doctorow

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https://pluralistic.net; Mailing list: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list; Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr

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