Happy Renoversary, friends! The Renovator is one year old this week.
Thank you to each one of the 8,000 subscribers who’ve signed up for this ride. Thank you, too, to the 410 of you who are paying subscribers. You are helping us take a bite out of the costs of this work.
We’ve been thrilled to spend the past 52 weeks bringing you news on the important democracy renovation work being done across America and perspectives on what it means to commit to renovation.
Right now, most of America’s politics gets framed as a battle between “populists”—whether of the MAGA or DSA variant—and “moderates.” In this narrative, moderation codes as protecting business-as-usual.
We’re here to tell another story: The renovation story. We agree with populists on both sides of the spectrum that American politics has gone off the rails. We don’t support business-as-usual. But we think the way forward is not to crush our institutions of constitutional democracy but to renovate them so they deliver for the people.
In 2013, the U.S. Congress had an approval rating of 9 percent. That was my red-alert moment. If only 9 percent of the people approved of our own voice, then our constitutional democracy was fundamentally broken.
Ever since, I’ve been working on democracy renovation. The aim is to reboot self-government to get us out of the dead-ends that stripped power from the people, killed economic mobility, involved us in misconceived forever wars, and got our kids addicted to social media.
Our democracy needs a renovation—and that involves rebuilding the infrastructure of civic education; passing democracy-supportive public policy, like Mal Salter’s important suggestions for rebooting democratic capitalism; and redesigning our political institutions to reconnect them to the people, the whole people.
The fundamental goal is government of the people that is for the people because it is by the people.
Our work started last August with our flagship essays about America being like a bear caught in a trap, beset by wolves, with a wildfire bearing down. This was a metaphor for this great land falling prey to two self-interested and self-involved major parties as pressing policy issues—immigration, housing, climate and AI governance, to name a few—languish unresolved.
Since that start, we’ve served up democracy-supportive policy ideas on immigration, tech, civic education, and the economy. We’ve kept you up to date on how civic learning infrastructure is being rebuilt across the country.
And, of course, we’ve offered a vision for how to renovate our democracy by fighting the twin evils of corruption and disenfranchisement through gerrymandering, closed party primaries, and other malformations of our democratic institutions.
We’ve also been tracking state-level work on democracy renovation—campaign finance reform, reform of the party primary system, the battle over gerrymandering. In our system, the states are where decisions about elections are made.
And we’ve kept you abreast of the fast-moving AI space and its implications for democracy. We’re all aware of the capacity of new technologies to manipulate and misinform us, and renovation work means solving that problem while finding ways to use new technologies to support pluralistic democracy.
Our live Headstrong Club conversations on Substack have brought us conversations with Bill Kristol, Ben Rhodes, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and others. Coming up next week: Ruth Ben-Ghiat will join me to chat about civic education.
Our Renovator Assemblies for paid subscribers on Zoom have been special, especially our visits with Juli Lucky, the democracy renovation hero who won Alaska’s ballot initiative for Top 4 elections, and Lisa Rice, the democracy renovation hero who won D.C.’s initiatives for ranked choice voting and open primaries.
Every assembly gives participants a chance to deepen and strengthen their own renovation journey. We hear from other people just like us who are making democracy renovation happen, and imagine new democratic possibilities for our own communities and states.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the year! We’d love to know what your favorite piece has been. Could you take a moment to browse our website and let us know? Post a comment on this piece to share.
And here are links to the Bear Series, the Wildfire Series, and Mal Salter’s Reimagining Democratic Capitalism series. We’ve been told they make for great book group fare.
I’ll be honest. We want to give you even more and better work. By this time next year, we hope to double our readership. To achieve that, we’d like to ask for your assistance in three ways:
Can you please recommend to your friends that they subscribe to the Renovator? Here’s the link for doing that.
If you are a free subscriber, would you consider converting to paid? At $60 a year, The Renovator is a bargain. And we need to quadruple our number of paid subscribers to hit break even on the team time being invested in it. It takes a lot of work to publish quality material five times a week so that everyone can learn about the exciting world of democracy renovation!
Last, if you are able, would you consider joining our Elm Society, with a contribution at $300 or above, up to whatever level you could sustainably contribute on an annual basis? The Elm Society is named after the tree under which George Washington set up camp when he arrived in Cambridge, Mass., to take charge of the Continental Army. Members are founders for a new generation of the American Promise.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence closed by committing their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to each other, for the cause of self-government directed toward the safety and the happiness of the people.
We at the Renovator have committed to all the above. We are so proud to have you with us. We ask now that you consider taking another step in your own commitment by recommending us to a friend, moving up to paid subscriber, or joining the Elm Society.
Thank you!
Happy birthday, Renovator, and many congratulations, Danielle. Wonderful site. Wisdom abounding.