New York Times guest essay calls for liberals to bypass ‘broken’ Constitution, make it more ‘amendable’

A New York Times guest essay argued that liberals need to stop caring about the "broken" Constitution and instead find others roads to enact policy, or perhaps make the world’s longest surviving charter more "amendable."

According to Dr. Ryan D. Doerfler and Dr. Samuel Moyn, the solution is not to "reclaim" the Constitution from Republicans, but rather reclaim America from constitutionalism. Constitutions, the authors argued, reorient our country to the past and "misdirect in the present," causing disputes over interpretations of what people believed centuries ago, and not on what the "present and future demand." The authors asserted the Constitution is "inadequate," serving only to benefit "reactionaries." 

"Starting with a text that is famously undemocratic, progressives are forced to navigate hard-wired features, like the Electoral College and the Senate, designed as impediments to redistributive change while drawing on much vaguer and more malleable resources like commitments to due process and equal protection," Doerfler and Moyn wrote.