Great piece, Brie. I started reading your blog after you became a referrer of mine, and I figured I’d take a moment to respond to this one.
The obvious question is—if all these policies are so wildly popular, why don’t we even discuss them seriously?
Well… welcome to the Illusion of Democracy.
Gerrymandering, how bills move through Congress, and the structural nature of the Senate all favor elites over populist policies. These systems give disproportionate power to smaller, highly organized interest groups—like AIPAC, the Heritage Foundation, corporate donors, and entrenched industries. So even when 80% of Americans support something—like legal weed—Congress isn’t incentivized to act unless a powerful, well-funded lobby pushes for it.
Take weed as a case study. It took 100 years of public whining before states started legalizing it. And even then, it wasn’t the whining that did it—it was budget shortfalls. States needed money, and taxing weed was an easy fix. At the federal level? There’s no "doob lobby" with the cash or political muscle to force Congress’s hand. Now, if weed delivery got an app and went viral—which I’d call Duber—and it was backed by China? Maybe then we’d see some movement.
The second big issue is this: Politics isn’t about solving problems—it’s about winning elections.
There’s an incentive never to fix things. No politician gets elected by saying, "Hey, I totally fixed this! Everything’s great now!" Have you ever heard that in a campaign speech? Of course not. The game is always about the next problem, the next crisis, and the next stock to buy in on. It’s Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wall Street. If one party solved healthcare, or prescription drug prices, or universal basic income, they’d lose that as a wedge issue. Instead, we get incremental half-measures, because there always has to be another hill to climb.
Then we get to the structural and procedural hurdles.
Polarization: One side is normal; the other side is completely bonkers-ass Nazi. Flip it the other way, the Nazis think they're restoring America to some 1950s idyllic condition, Democrats are Commies. As long as that's the case - compromise is impossible. No compromise, no bills get passed.
Industry capture: DOGE is off the rails. Elon Musk should have zero access to government while he’s running multiple companies with government contracts. Full stop.
Filibusters and cloture: Most people don’t realize that in the Senate, no cloture = no vote. That’s how bills die before they even get debated.
So even if MAGA wasn’t actively trying to burn the place down, it probably wouldn’t matter much. The only way anything changes is if enough people who don’t want the world to burn break away from MAGA and apply relentless, unified pressure on Congress.
That’s the real battle. It’s not about getting a specific policy passed—it’s about creating a political environment where both parties fear the public more than they fear their donors.
And that starts with making them genuinely afraid of losing power.
We don’t need a policy debate. We need 60% of America to wake up and say: "This madness needs to end. Now." If enough voters reach that conclusion, Congress will suddenly find its spine. Because if politicians believe that failing to stand up to Trump and his cronies means getting bounced out of office in 21 months, they’ll cut the "Orange Clown" and his "South African Stooge" loose overnight.
Threaten their jobs, and the system corrects itself real fast.
Populism is a gateway drug to authoritarianism.
Great piece, Brie. I started reading your blog after you became a referrer of mine, and I figured I’d take a moment to respond to this one.
The obvious question is—if all these policies are so wildly popular, why don’t we even discuss them seriously?
Well… welcome to the Illusion of Democracy.
Gerrymandering, how bills move through Congress, and the structural nature of the Senate all favor elites over populist policies. These systems give disproportionate power to smaller, highly organized interest groups—like AIPAC, the Heritage Foundation, corporate donors, and entrenched industries. So even when 80% of Americans support something—like legal weed—Congress isn’t incentivized to act unless a powerful, well-funded lobby pushes for it.
Take weed as a case study. It took 100 years of public whining before states started legalizing it. And even then, it wasn’t the whining that did it—it was budget shortfalls. States needed money, and taxing weed was an easy fix. At the federal level? There’s no "doob lobby" with the cash or political muscle to force Congress’s hand. Now, if weed delivery got an app and went viral—which I’d call Duber—and it was backed by China? Maybe then we’d see some movement.
The second big issue is this: Politics isn’t about solving problems—it’s about winning elections.
There’s an incentive never to fix things. No politician gets elected by saying, "Hey, I totally fixed this! Everything’s great now!" Have you ever heard that in a campaign speech? Of course not. The game is always about the next problem, the next crisis, and the next stock to buy in on. It’s Matthew McConaughey in Wolf of Wall Street. If one party solved healthcare, or prescription drug prices, or universal basic income, they’d lose that as a wedge issue. Instead, we get incremental half-measures, because there always has to be another hill to climb.
Then we get to the structural and procedural hurdles.
Polarization: One side is normal; the other side is completely bonkers-ass Nazi. Flip it the other way, the Nazis think they're restoring America to some 1950s idyllic condition, Democrats are Commies. As long as that's the case - compromise is impossible. No compromise, no bills get passed.
Industry capture: DOGE is off the rails. Elon Musk should have zero access to government while he’s running multiple companies with government contracts. Full stop.
Filibusters and cloture: Most people don’t realize that in the Senate, no cloture = no vote. That’s how bills die before they even get debated.
So even if MAGA wasn’t actively trying to burn the place down, it probably wouldn’t matter much. The only way anything changes is if enough people who don’t want the world to burn break away from MAGA and apply relentless, unified pressure on Congress.
That’s the real battle. It’s not about getting a specific policy passed—it’s about creating a political environment where both parties fear the public more than they fear their donors.
And that starts with making them genuinely afraid of losing power.
We don’t need a policy debate. We need 60% of America to wake up and say: "This madness needs to end. Now." If enough voters reach that conclusion, Congress will suddenly find its spine. Because if politicians believe that failing to stand up to Trump and his cronies means getting bounced out of office in 21 months, they’ll cut the "Orange Clown" and his "South African Stooge" loose overnight.
Threaten their jobs, and the system corrects itself real fast.