Democrats Are Done With Rules—They’re Fighting for Permanent Power Now

Once upon a time, Democrats preached about protecting “norms” and upholding the sacred rules of “our democracy.” Now, facing mounting obstacles to their agenda, the party’s loudest voices openly toss principle aside and demand political warfare—scorched earth, if necessary—to entrench their power for generations. The mask, as they say, is off.

Look at the debacle in Texas. Local Democrats, intent on torpedoing a Republican redistricting plan designed to reflect the state’s actual political composition, simply fled the state—literally breaking quorum and grinding the legislative process to a halt. This was no small, symbolic protest. It was a calculated power play to stop the government from doing its job. And former congressman and many-times failed Senate and gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke didn’t just cheer them on—he stood before a rally in Fort Worth and urged his party to embrace permanent resistance.

There was no subtlety in O’Rourke’s words. He branded Republican lawmakers as “fascists,” warning Democrats not to “await the punch thrown by these would-be fascists to land.” His solution: “We punch first and we punch harder.” It’s the language of vendetta, not debate—a call to arms rather than a plea for compromise. (RELATED: Democrats Aren’t Hiding It Anymore: They Plan to Rig the System)

O’Rourke, never one for half-measures, called for blue states to get in on the action. He called for Democrats in places like California, New Jersey, Illinois, and Maryland to redraw districts by whatever means necessary, maximizing party advantage and, by extension, marginalizing opposition. “There are no refs in this game,” he boasted at the rally, making it abundantly clear he sees politics as an anything-goes brawl, a zero-sum bloodsport where only one side deserves to hold sway.

He didn’t mince words about rules, either: “Fuck the rules. We are gonna win, whatever it takes.”

And that’s just the beginning. O’Rourke promised that “the next time we win power, we’re gonna drive that car like we stole it.” Talk about telegraphing intent. He vowed to legalize every “dreamer,” their parents, and, in sweeping terms, “every hardworking American doing back-breaking work.” It’s not subtle: he intends to marry radical shifts in immigration policy with an expanding voter base that would all but guarantee Democratic dominance.

In O’Rourke’s eyes, illegal immigrants aren’t just part of the fabric of America—they’re “what makes this country so goddamned great in the first place.” Let that sink in for a moment. The goal isn’t just compassion or reform; it’s broad-scale political engineering.

And O’Rourke isn’t alone. James Carville, the hard-nosed Democratic strategist who guided Bill Clinton’s rise, previously laid out the roadmap for one-party rule should Democrats take back the presidency, Senate, and House in 2028.

Carville called on Democrats to be drunk with power the next time they win. He wants them to grant statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., to secure four new Senate seats and cement a permanent Democratic edge in the Electoral College.

Then there’s the pièce de résistance: Carville also said they should expand the Supreme Court from nine to thirteen justices. Carville himself admits this is “opening Pandora’s Box.” Yet he argues such drastic measures are necessary to “save democracy,” as if upending the balance of power and bulldozing constitutional norms constitutes rescue, rather than the exact opposite.

In the view of Democrats like O’Rourke and Carville, it isn’t enough to win elections; the system itself must be rigged to ensure Republicans never win again. Forget about persuasion or governing by consent. Power, once seized, must be fortified; rules and traditions be damned. The implications here should chill any observer invested in fair play and constitutional order.

These are prominent voices inside the Democratic Party spelling out, for all to hear, a blueprint for permanent dominance—one that openly discards the conventions that define legitimate self-government.

And this isn’t limited to a few activists or consultants; the media is increasingly amplifying the same message.

During the latest episode of Interesting Times, a weekly podcast and column for The New York Times hosted by Ross Douthat, it became clear that the left’s response to electoral disappointment will never be self-reflection or moderating their radical views. Instead, the left will relentlessly strive to dismantle or outright abolish the fundamental institutions that have sustained this republic for over two centuries.

From the start, Nouthat’s guest, Osita Nwanevu, a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at the Guardian, dismisses the traditional democratic ideals of our country, characterizing them as “a set of abstract ideals that their civics teacher might have told them was important in high school or grade school.”

Nwanevu doesn’t mince words. His proposals show how far the left is willing to go when the system doesn’t favor them. On the presidency, he touted “a proposal on the table now, actually something that’s being acted upon in states across the country, to move to a national popular vote by interstate compact, without needing a constitutional amendment,” which would “functionally work around the electoral college.”

He asserted that the United States Senate is “one of the most malapportioned upper houses in the world,” insisting, “I think, as I write, in very, very basic ways, our system flouts all three of these things.” Democracy, as he defines it, doesn’t merely require fair elections; it demands remaking the very structure of government to produce preferred outcomes. “It’s fair to say that a system is not really democratic, as much as it might purport to be one.”

So, what is his proposed solution? Add more blue states.

“I’ve advocated in the past for adding new states to the Senate,” he said. “Most likely Puerto Rico, D.C., the territories.”

On the filibuster, he said, “If we’re talking about the Senate filibuster, and it’s purely a matter of, ‘Well, this is how counter-majoritarian the system is by design,’ … if you connect it to economic concerns, material concerns, I think there’s real potential there.” And he admitted that Trump’s challenge to the system exposed just how flexible they think the Constitution can be: “At the level of abstraction, most Americans have been told that this system works all their lives…up until Donald Trump who said, no, maybe we should…revoke parts of the Constitution, and then dialed it back.”

For Nwanevu, the courts, the Senate, the filibuster, the Electoral College—all the checks, balances, and mechanisms that safeguard liberty—are suddenly illegitimate as soon as the left loses, and thus, if it mean effectively tearing up the Constitution and starting again, why not?

“This was not some kind of sacred compromise that came down a mountain on tablets. This was a particular contingent agreement, and we should consider ourselves empowered—with all we know now about governance, with the values we have now—to make dramatic changes to the political system, with just as much right as the founders did.” This isn’t the language of loyal opposition; this is the logic of permanent revolution, where the only legitimate government is one perpetually remade to ensure only one side has power.

This is no isolated uproar or the rambling of a party fringe. The left’s intention to manipulate the system to consolidate power is no secret—and it’s becoming increasingly brazen. The threat is real, the intent is open, and the time to act is now. If Democrats regain power, they will push to implement exactly what O’Rourke, Carville, Douthat, and Nwanevu outlined, because we’ve already seen them try during Biden’s presidency. There’s no guessing—it’s coming, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.