James Carville, the well-known Democrat political strategist famous for his “it’s the economy, stupid” mantra, recently made a striking prediction about the future of American governance. He argued that once a new administration takes office in 2028, it will likely attempt significant institutional reforms, including expanding, or “packing,” the United States Supreme Court.
“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court,” Carville said in a recent interview.
According to Carville, the proposal would be to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to thirteen in the hope of restoring “trust” in the institution. Supporters of such changes often frame them as necessary to “save our democracy.”
This raises a fundamental question: What kind of political system did the Founders actually design? And what does it mean to “save” it?
For many Americans, democracy is understood simply as majority rule where everyone gets a vote, the side with more votes wins, and government follows. But the United States was never intended to function as a pure democracy. Instead, the Constitution created a republic: a system that incorporates democratic participation while also embedding structural safeguards that even a majority cannot override.
These safeguards, including federalism (the Constitution’s division of authority between our national and state governments), an independent judiciary, the Electoral College, and equal representation of states in the Senate, were deliberately created to prevent the decisions made in the heat of the moment or the will of a temporary majority from reshaping the fundamental rules of the system.
Some officials and advocates today are calling for broad institutional changes like expanding the Supreme Court, eliminating the Electoral College, restructuring the Senate, or reducing state authority in favor of more centralized governance. While these ideas may stem from genuine concerns about political polarization or institutional gridlock, they also reflect a belief that majority preference should be able to reshape nearly every aspect of American government.
But that view conflicts with the constitutional structure the Founders put in place.
In Governing magazine, law professor Stephen Legomsky has argued that many of the nation’s political challenges arise from federalism itself and that the states are part of the problem. While his diagnosis differs from others, the underlying idea is clear: some believe the constitutional framework places too many limits on national majorities.
Yet those limits are the point.
As political theorist Claes G. Ryn has observed, the Constitution’s system of divided power, checks and balances, and federalism was intentionally crafted to restrain centralized authority, not empower it. These designs were essential to preserving individual liberty and preventing the rise of an all-powerful national government.
This tension between majority will and constitutional guardrails is not new. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued for dramatic institutional changes, including adding justices to the Supreme Court, on the grounds that the government needed to act boldly: “We must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself,” he said.
Today, similar arguments arise in new forms. But as America considers proposals to reshape long-standing constitutional structures, it is worth returning to basic principles.
Senator Arthur Vandenberg once explained, “The government of the United States is a representative republic and not a pure democracy.” He emphasized that the Founders “made a very marked distinction between a ‘republic’ and a ‘democracy,’ gave very clear definitions of each term, and emphatically said they had founded a republic.”
In a pure democracy, a simple majority can change the rules at will. In a republic, certain rights, institutions, and limits stand above majority preference, ensuring stability and protecting liberty across generations.
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government the delegates had created. His famous reply: “A republic, if we can keep it.” It was more than a clever line—it was a warning.
The direction of future policy debates will turn on a central question: Will America maintain the republican framework the Founders established, or will it drift toward a system where the majority can reshape foundational structures whenever political winds shift? In moments of tension or political frustration, the safeguards of a republic can feel constraining. But they are the very features designed to preserve liberty, prevent the concentration of power, and ensure that governing institutions serve not just the present majority, but future generations as well.
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