What the US Constitution says about democracy and the flow of power: Hardly anything

Starting last January after djt was sworn into office, a queasy feeling about American democracy started setting in. Within a few weeks, it was clear that Project 2025 was the real deal. It pointed at exactly where the US was likely going. I posted about it on Feb. 12: Legal analysis: Can the US Constitution accommodate authoritarianism or kleptocracy? Long story short, it can.

Regarding democracy

The constitution never mentions the word democracy. The Elections Clause at Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, implies some form of democracy:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Article IV, Section 4 says The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government. According to legal scholars, that at least implicitly means the US is a representative democracy. In theory this ensures that power flows from the people through their elected representatives rather than from a monarch or elite class. However, the constitution is silent about what the Republic is, leaving the concept bitterly contested to this day. 

Does the constitution explicitly require power to flow from the people to their representatives? No, it does not. The original constitution does not say anything about the flow of power, other than the preamble: 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Once the original constitution was ratified, it was silent about who has the power and how it flows. There, the people exerted their power by voting to ratify the constitution, which formally established it as the basis of our rule of law.  

After ratification, the constitution was amended to mention the people's power and elections in the 10th Amendment. Over the years, activist authoritarian judges have the people's power by ignoring the last 4 words of that Amendment, which which reads in full:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Authoritarian legal scholarship reads the last four words out of the 10thA, or to the people. The Constitution provides no other explicit or implicit protection against elections that are technically legal but substantively meaningless. It accommodates sham elections. Ignoring those last four words helps authoritarians kill free and fair elections. 

In essence, MAGA elites have figured out that they really can establish a kleptocratic dictatorship, heavily tinged with corrupt Christian nationalist theocracy and corrupt billionaire and corporate oligarchy while staying mostly within the scope of what is constitutional. Of course, where the endless bickering arises is how one reads the constitution. What corrupt authoritarian MAGA elites tell us the constitution says is quite different from what people who still believe that major power still flows from the people say. Some of us do not read out of the constitution the phrase or to the people. 

We truly are in a vicious war characterized mostly by several key traits (1) authoritarianism and sham elections vs democracy and free and fair elections, (2) deeply corrupt government vs significantly less corrupt government, (3) the rule of powerful elites or the leader vs democratic rule of law, (4) arbitrary liberties and oppression vs established civil liberties and freedom, (5) wealth and power concentrated with ruling elites and special interests vs wealth and power much more distributed between the elites and the public and the public interest, and (6) divisive anti-democracy and public interest demagoguery and mostly dishonest speech vs pro-democracy and public interest mostly honest speech.

Our constitution can accommodate either outcome. The Guarantee Clause provides no explicit textual basis for prohibiting sham elections, and neither does the Authoritarian reading of the 10th Amendment. We are in a war for hearts and minds, corrupt authoritarian elites and their interests, wealth and power against the people and their interests, wealth and power.

MAGA demagoguery, deceit and lies

Trump And MAGA elites are never clear and honest about their reading of the constitution or their kleptocratic-authoritarian intentions. That is because despite the constitution's silence and ambiguity about democracy and the flow of power, most average Americans believe in democracy and their power to vote the bums out of office. Trump and MAGA elites never call their election suppression efforts, election suppression. They cynically lie and tells us it is just innocent "election integrity" to get rid of massive alleged but nonexistent voter and election fraud.

What about he MAGA rank and file? Most of them are shockingly deceived, emotionally manipulated and sold out by Trump, MAGA elites and allied special interests.