politics
March 15, 2026
Popular reforms keep dying in Congress
People are frustrated by Congress’s inability or unwillingness to pass legislation supported by the vast majority of people. Polls show overwhelming bipartisan support for banning congressional stock trading — around 76% of voters favor it. Similarly, the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, enjoys broad support from voters of both parties. Yet both measures have stalled in Congress, blocked not by lack of popular support, but by entrenched political interests resistant to change.
TL;DR
- Legislation like banning congressional stock trading and requiring proof of citizenship to vote has broad bipartisan support but is stalled in Congress.
- Members of Congress often outperform Wall Street, as exemplified by Nancy Pelosi's husband's well-timed Visa stock sale.
- The Democratic Party is undergoing a reckoning with its past, with figures like Pelosi and the Clintons facing scrutiny, unlike the Republican Party's earlier transformation under Trump.
- Past policies of Democratic figures like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, such as the Defense of Marriage Act and the 1994 crime bill, would be disqualifying under today's Democratic Party.
- The Democratic Party's strategy of consolidating behind familiar centrist figures like Biden has collapsed, leading to a demand for generational turnover and new candidates.