THE HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY IS YET TO BE WRITTEN

A labor lawyer and one-time political candidate exhorts readers to take a more active role in their democracy.

Geoghegan opens with the thought that our government has become willfully bad at governing, and certainly in representing working people, nonvoters (more than 100 million), and the young, “who face environmental Armageddon and for whom we should get out of the way.” He found his energies sorely tested when he ran for a House seat vacated when Rahm Emanuel became Barack Obama’s chief of staff, which roughly coincided with the financial collapse of 2008 and “our first little brush with the end of the world.” He wound up square in the middle of a field of candidates in a vote settled by the mere 50,000 people who turned out. To broaden representation and citizen involvement, Geoghegan proposes measures that will seem beyond radical to many readers, perhaps the most controversial of which is his demand that the Senate be abolished. As he puts it, if North Dakota has the same senatorial power as New York, then something has gone awry. Instead, he urges, the House—the institution the founders privileged as the place where all revenue bills must originate—must be made gerrymander-free and truly representative. Beyond that, Geoghegan argues, every citizen must participate in governance, particularly the young, who are more likely than not to be nonvoters. Nonvoters, he adds, tend to be moderate, so if they participate, “an ever-shriller GOP will pay the price,” and the country will drift leftward of its own accord. However, Geoghegan is no fan of the Democratic machine, either. He writes dismissively that “both Sanders and Biden owe their years in power to the systematic denial of the principle of one person, one vote.” For all the rhetorical overreach, however, there are plenty of useful provocations here to do a Zinn or Chomsky proud.

A rousing call to rally around popular rule and battle its enemies.