Gfyuki

I was talking to a friend some time ago about American politics, political parties, etc. During this conversation, I thought of something:

• If a single party controlled both the house and senate, they could always pass a joint resolution


• If the president also belonged to said party, the bills would never get vetoed


• The president couldn't be impeached, since the house and senate are under control of the party


• Because of this, the party could make the supreme court judges "disappear" and appoint new ones. Despite suspicions, he/she couldn't be impeached


• The party can then pass any laws they like, pardon anyone they want (meaning they can do anything illegal and get away with it), and even pass constitutional amendments to extend their reign without the supreme court stopping them.

I'm absolutely certain I've overlooked something that would make this impossible, and people have said so, yet never been able to find a reason. Is this possible, and if not, what stops it from happening?

A couple things are worth considering in this scenario.

First of all, this scenario assumes that some party can manage to convince an overwhelming majority of the populace, and the states, to vote for it. That's quite a tall order already. Granted, extremely one-sided senatorial elections have happened. For example, in the 1936 elections, Democrats controlled 74 seats, and Republicans controlled 17. The House of Representative elections was similarly one-sided. That's more than the needed 2/3 majority to approve a constitutional amendment. That being said, those were very different times. The election was at the same time as the presidential elections, and essentially became an election about the New Deal. In the context of the Great Depression, it's not too surprising that the vote was this lopsided. Some pretty cataclysmic events would have to occur to get such one-sided elections again. For context, in the 2016 Senate elections, Democrats won 46 seats, and Republicans won 52. In the House elections, Republicans won 241 seats, and Democrats won 194. The point is, the votes are extremely close right now. We are no where near the 2/3 mark.

Second, 3/4 of the states need to approve Constitutional amendments (such as one needed to change the size of the Supreme Court). That's a lot of states. For either party, there's a dedicated core of states that will never "fall" to the opposing party. Here's a map of "Red" and "Blue" states:

You'll notice that while Republicans control many rural states, it's still fairly evenly matched. As I mentioned previously, it would take some pretty cataclysmic events to cause a change drastic enough to give one side a 3/4 majority. A sufficiently serious natural disaster or terrorist attack might do it, but I'm fairly doubtful that even in that case you'd see large enough changes.

Third, you have to consider what population you're talking about. Because of a combination of factors, Americans have had a somewhat unique fixation on freedom, and a particularly potent loathing towards surrendering rights to the government for any reason. There are many who claim that even current government policies are tyrannical, and that's without any party attempting to become tyrants. While it's certainly true that private citizens aren't a great army, there's a lot of them. America has a very high amount of weapons per capita, and a large portion of the population own weapons. Granted, many would not have the initiative to rise up against a government. I suspect, however, that enough would to cause serious damage. After all, the war in Vietnam should be a lesson in how effective untrained civilians can be.

To sum things up, I think that it's essentially impossible for this to happen politically. If it indeed does occur, I expect that this regime would be an extremely unstable one. They would have to deal with incessant civilian insurgencies, and would have to find a way to govern a population which is armed and ideologically opposed to its rulers. On the other hand, "it couldn't happen here" were the last words of very many people throughout history. It's certainly an interesting topic to think about.

Institutions and constitutional arrangements are important as they provide a buffer against temporary excesses, but the ultimate check is civil society, really. Otherwise look at Hungary, Turkey, etc. No amount of paper institutions is going to prevent a slide into something like that. Unless enough people say no.

There have been a lot of papers on instability in democracies and (temporary) reverts to authoritarianism. In general, a long democratic history is good predictor of non-reversals. Here's one such paper:

I present a new empirical approach to the study of democratic consolidation. I distinguish between democracies that survive because
they are consolidated and those democracies that are not consolidated but survive because of
some favorable circumstances. As a result, I can identify the determinants of two related yet
distinct processes: the likelihood that a democracy consolidates, and the timing of
authoritarian reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. I find that the level of
economic development, type of democratic executive, and type of authoritarian past determine
whether a democracy consolidates, but have no effect on the timing of reversals in democracies
that are not consolidated. That risk is only associated with economic recessions.

As an aside: I think the US Supreme Court can still be padded, no need to kill anyone.