thoughts on constitutional hardball and democracy reform

This week, a large number of prominent progressive politicians and commentators have called for high-level institutional change. Here's Representative Khanna proposing an expanded Supreme Court and term limits for Justices. Here's Michael Cohen agreeing that Court packing should be a top priority for Democrats. Here's Lee Drutman, Mark Copelovitch, and Perry Bacon talking about systemic reform. And here's Kamala Harris agreeing, and also proposing statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Jonathan Bernstein has a concise distillation of what I take to be the modal progressive view, which he calls "a democracy agenda" for a 2029. If Democrats control Congress and the presidency, they should: partially abolish the filibuster; pack the Supreme Court; pass a new VRA; pass national gerrymandering reform; grant statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and make a variety of executive branch reforms to reel in the excesses of the Trump administration. I'm decidedly mixed on all of this. Some are are…