Democracy reform advocates have gone public with a concern they've been harboring privately for months: Joe Biden and the Democrats are not making fix-the-system proposals a big enough part of their campaign.
A coalition of 29 groups pressed the party's platform committee on Monday "to adopt a sweeping pro-democracy set of reforms, and make their passage and implementation a top priority in 2021."
Although Biden is viewed as a reliable supporter of items on the group's agenda — expanding voting rights, curbing money's sway over campaigns, bolstering government ethics and calibrating the balance of power — the former vice president is seen by advocacy groups as giving such desires insufficient notice. With the campaign now galvanized by the coronavirus pandemic and its crippling of the economy, the ability of other issues to break through could prove extremely difficult.
The plea comes as the pandemic has forced Democrats to scale back plans for their convention in Milwaukee in four weeks, which would normally be a moment to showcase not only Biden but also the Democrats' plans for the country if empowered for the next four years
The letter from the so-called Declaration for American Democracy coalition was sent to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, chairwoman of the platform drafting committee and an apparent potential running mate.
Last week's highly touted agreement on platform issues hammered out between representatives of Biden and his main rival for the nomination, the much more progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, made almost no mention of democracy reform. It was focused instead on the economy, health care, criminal justice reform, climate change, education and immigration — all topics where there's already high-profile contrasts between Biden and President Trump.
Common Cause, one of the signatories on this week's letter, posted an online petition calling on Biden to create a Democracy Reform Task Force.
It listed the issues that Biden-Sanders task forces will cover in search of common ground between the party's liberal and more moderate wings.
"Notably absent from the list? Democracy reform," the petition said. "If democracy reform is really a priority for Biden and his campaign — they must invest time, manpower and resources into it."
This week's letter, signed by other notable groups such as Public Citizen and the League of Conservation Voters, reminds Biden that he was a supporter of HR 1, the comprehensive election law, campaign finance and government ethics overhaul that got significant press attention when the Democrats pushed it to passage as one of their first acts upon taking over the House last year. Senate Republicans immediately tossed it to the disregard pile.
The letter outlines four general areas that need to be addressed in the platform:
- Protecting voting rights to make sure every eligible voter is able to cast ballots safely and securely, free from discrimination and voter suppression.
- Ending the corrupting power of big money in politics by advancing a constitutional amendment effectively overturning the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court a decade ago, and by requiring disclosure of the sources of so-called dark money contributions.
- Restoring ethics and accountability in Washington by reducing the power of lobbyists and strengthening oversight and enforcement of federal conflict-of-interest laws.
- Protecting the rule of law by restoring the system of checks-and-balances to ensure the president and his advisers are not above the law.
"By including a bold, comprehensive plan to end corruption, restore ethics and accountability in government, and protect the right to vote, you will show voters across the country that, like them, you believe our democracy works best when it represents everyone," the letter concludes.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.