Some Democratic officials in Washington are struggling to cope with their loss of power in the 2024 election, a struggle that manifests in hypocritical flip-flops on fundamental building blocks of American government. The problem is not unique to the Democratic Party, but their recent examples serve to illustrate the wisdom of America’s founders in constructing a system of checks and balances.

The most recent example is the outrage congressional Democrats have expressed over the Trump administration’s sparring with federal judges. When federal courts prevented the Biden administration from implementing unconstitutional executive actions, congressional Democrats proposed a plan to pack the Supreme Court and spread rumors about alleged corruption among the court’s conservative justices. But when federal courts blocked executive actions from the Trump administration, the same Democrats sided with the court.

In one instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized President Trump for suggesting one judge deserved impeachment for blocking the deportation of illegal immigrant criminals. “Democracy is at risk,” said Schumer. “Look, Donald Trump is a lawless, angry man. He thinks he should be king. He thinks he should do whatever he wants, regardless of the law, and he thinks judges should just listen to him.”

It turns out that Schumer also believes “judges should just listen to him.” Back in 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs decision, Schumer uttered this threat, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Many Democrats have also changed their position on government shutdowns. Earlier this month, rank-and-file Democrats excoriated Schumer after he decided to vote for a Republican-crafted funding bill, rather than trigger a government shutdown. “There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) complained. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board — the entire party.”

Twelve years ago, Democratic messaging was quite different when House Republicans shut down the government in 2013. “This is about Congress doing its job,” then-U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. She added that Republicans only shut the government down because “they’re anti-government ideologues.” Then-Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) added, “It’s outrageous that we would play these types of games with the American people. It’s about the health and safety of our country, and the Republican caucus is letting this country down.”

Ocasio-Cortez later defeated Crowley in a primary battle, attacking him for being insufficiently progressive; now rumors are swirling that she may challenge Schumer for his Senate seat. In 12 years, shutting down the government has gone from a fringe option employed by “anti-government ideologues” to the cause of the moment for progressive media darlings — and only because the party in power has changed.

Of course, no record of Democratic hypocrisy is complete without mentioning their filibuster rhetoric. Former President Barack Obama disparaged the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” in 2021 when Democrats had united control. Democrats sought to eliminate the filibuster to push through a far-reaching agenda, but two members of their own caucus refused to go along with the scheme. After forcing those two senators out, Democrats ran in 2024 on eliminating it once for all. “We came close last time. As you remember, we couldn’t change the rules,” Schumer said days before the election, “but I think there would be a consensus in my caucus to try and do that.”

But, now that Democrats find themselves in the minority, the filibuster has become their best friend. In the first weeks of 2025, Senate Democrats have used the filibuster to block a vote on the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” and a vote to sanction the International Criminal Court over its targeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Somehow, the Left now hates electric vehicles for their association with the Trump administration, yet Senate Democrats feel no compunction about using a “Jim Crow relic.”

Of course, Democrats don’t have a hypocrisy monopoly. For instance, plenty of Republicans who criticized the Biden administration for its unilateral executive action now support unilateral executive action by President Trump. Many who rightly criticized the Biden administration for its national security failures are less eager to criticize the Signal leak.

For, underneath the rhetorical reversals, we find the same common principle at work: partisan interest. That is, what motivates many partisans is loyalty or allegiance to a party, or at least a willingness to go along with it. This often involves promoting or defending fellow partisans or shared policy objectives with whatever talking points happen to be at hand. In most cases, when a politician flips their script on a particular issue, what has changed is not the politician’s mind but that issue’s relationship to the politician’s partisan interest.

“A number of citizens … united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest” is what James Madison (writing as Publius) called a “faction” in Federalist No. 10. Madison saw no way to eliminate factions, except by eliminating liberty or imposing uniformity — both bad ideas. But he did propose “controlling its effects” by means of the Constitution, which is a system of checks and balances.

Indeed, America’s system of government is designed in such a way that it limits the damage of such factional thinking. Three co-equal branches of government put checks on the power of unilateral executive action, while also proscribing the power of courts as well. The power of the purse is entrusted to the branch most directly accountable to the people, reducing the possibility of poor spending decisions. The upper chamber’s more deliberative character acts as a restraint on rash thinking of a small majority.

America’s system of checks and balances is often derided as duplicative, inefficient, or counterproductive. But these checks and balances have helped the country to weather waves of popular passion and fickle partisan interests for more than 200 years. The recent examples of hypocrisy, motivated by partisan interests, serve as yet another reminder of the wisdom of the system the Founders created and the importance of preserving it.