I mean, has either side just thought about taking reasonable stances that are amenable to 60% of people so they can get that 60-40 majority senate? I think Democrats would and could have had that tomorrow if part of their base wasn’t “yeah we really do need to take care of all these white kids dressing like native Americans in collage”. Hell if the Democrats of today even remotely resembled Clinton Democrats on the 90s they’d have that. So I’m not going to sit here shedding crocodile tears for a party that literally can’t get out of its own way and only seems to be publicly immune from the criticism because they happen to be standing next to even stupider people in republicans.
They could have easily also not run little
Miss electoral poison Hilary Clinton. The only candidate my parents who were born blue would vote against at 68. But the dnc, instead of having its ear to the ground had its head up its ass. When your parties whole platform is “hey, we’re not republicans”.
Maybe Congress could also stop trying to pass bills they know have no chance of being passed. At 8000000 pages someone is going to vote against something.
Which is my final point. The real problem is. The emperors have no clothes. Politicians, by and large, are morons. Arrogant morons. But morons nonetheless. But that’s because so are voters. But that’s not a very popular thing to say. That voters suck. But they do. I’d say the body politic is actually very representative of a whole nation of voters completely ignorant of not just how politics works but how the world works in general (the support for tariffs by kind of both sides is escarole number 1). We then coerce them into voting as some sort of religious ritual where they get a sticker at the end for “participating”. Never mind that most of them couldn’t even name the three branches of government. 59% of the 56% that bother to vote does not give me the “majority will” feel.
Now. The thing is there are enough of the middle out there that both parties would get. If they stopped trying to out extreme each other. That’s the problem. It’s like being in a classroom with not one but two class clowns. One class clown can be funny for the occasional gag. Two just annoy most of the class as they get into an arms race to try and out”. “Extreme” each other and no one learns anything.
Also speaking of term limits for judges. Fair. But can we get an age cap on Congress and president? Please. Pretty please? The only thing these people should be in charge of adjudicating after 70 is which golf course your going to gamble not breaking your hip at in Florida that weekend.
I'm normally completely on board with your point about partisan flip-flopping. It's been breathtaking to watch the shameless reversals on seemingly every issue these last few years, based only on who benefits.
But this isn't an example. Nobody's reversed sides on judicial activism for the simple reason that Dobbs *ain't that.* It isn't activism to go back and *undo* your own past activism!
I agree on the courts being a terrible place to settle disputes, but getting rid of the filibuster is just going to lead to an even bigger legitimacy crisis. The US isn’t a democracy- it is a democratically elected republic, and without strong rules and norms in that system we die.
Probably not a popular idea among this crowd, but I think we should go back to having state governors & legislatures decide how they select their US Senators rather than having it be a direct election. This would put a lot more emphasis on local government and take a gigantic pile of money out of the federal election game.
I have been convinced for awhile that the real problem is the primary system. We are the only democracy of which I am aware where the parties have ceded the power to decide who the parties' representatives are to the public at large. Remember, the first time a US major party presidential candidate was picked by the voters was McGovern in 1972. Before that, the parties controlled it. Because the hard core base is overrepresented in the primaries, we get nutcases for candidates whose only incentive (now) is to perform like dancing monkeys to raise small dollar contributions. Yes, there still are those who suck up to billionaire donors who aren't impacted by their antics but the small dollars are where the money is now. How about something simple like requiring that someone actually, you know, join your party and pay a membership fee before being able to vote in your primary or, sweet Jesus, be your party's candidate? The parties are private organizations after all. It was lowering the cost of membership that got Jeremy Corbyn made the head of the Labour Party in Great Britain and see how well that turned out?
How did junking the 60 vote threshold on judicial nominees work out for liberals? What it has created (and thank Harry Reid for that) is just the kind of Court you are railing against. The same would hold true if you eliminated the filibuster. You might get some stuff passed (but ironically NOT BBB, as the Dems couldn’t even get to 50 on that), but just as quickly lose it when parties inevitably shift. How about we set term limits for ALL elected officials, start educating the great unwashed populace (can we finally embrace charters as a better way to go?), and work to get reasonable people, with real ideas, to actually run for office? Your suggestions will do little to correct what you see as flaws. I see gridlock as a safe place to be when the crazies are shouting.
If I may give a piece of unsollicitated feedback that you should totally ignore if you disagree: I really like your writing and arguments, and halfway through the column I thought I'd share it to a few friends. But then I got to the non-quote about pornography and the bowl thing, and it was clear that the people I hope to convince wouldn't take the column seriously once they got to that part. It goes beyond 'light-hearted'.
Old dudes throughout history have already explained to everyone this form of government can’t work. My man George Washington warned that strong political parties leads to factionalism and then to despotism. Go back further to Socrates who said giving every ignorant yahoo a vote opens the door to charismatic authoritarians which then leads to… again, despotism. So you can change the rules however you’d like, but the 2 parties will always find a way to tilt the system in their favor. The core problem is voters are stupid lazy sheep. Fix that and everything works.
Weirdly, almost nobody ever talks about enlarging the House. I don't think I've ever seen it in a mainstream outlet. It hasn't been done since the 1920's and can be done with legislation. It would increase representation and rebalance the Electoral College. The politics of that change could be offset by how it doesn't do anything to the Senate but it's not like you can do anything to the Senate anyway.
I assume it's not seen as all encompassing enough as something like "abolish the Electoral College" or "overthrow the Supreme Court and drown them in a well" is to get any traction with people who hope there's just one easy fix for everything.
Historically, I think your one severe inaccuracy was your "Liberals did it first" line about use of the courts when you don't get your way in the legislature. That tactic really got going during the progressive era with Lochner v. New York. I mean, FDR didn't threaten to pack the court just because he was superstitious about the number nine.
The current Senate composition virtually guarantees the proverbial "tyranny of the minority". That will be highlighted even more as time goes on especially if, as expected, the Republicans regain control of the Senate this coming November.
DC statehood makes as much sense as South Dakota statehood. Don't repeat mistakes like that.
Here's how to fix the senate, without defining or splitting states. Have every state elect its two senators in the same election, with transferable ranked-choice voting guaranteeing that all but the most extreme states end up with a candidate from each major party. Half the states vote one time, half the states the next time, and then two years after that we vote on the 6-year presidential term.
The absolute horde of elitist douchebags in DC should not be granted statehood; they should be forced to expatriate en masse, or worse, be made a part of Maryland. I'll sign on for Puerto Rico, however.
My suggested reform: Every 10 years we should instead redraw *state boundaries* rather than Congressional districts.
I see an overarching problem of an 18th century theory of politics incapable of processing 21st century political, economic and social challenges.
Federalism is a great idea, and other democracies have come around to the view. Formerly centralized national governments have devolved power to subnational states/provinces or in some cases city-states (usually the national capitals).
The problem here is our political system gives inordinate power to rural areas. Senate and Electoral College, I'm looking at you. However, there's even a problem at the House level. Each state is guaranteed one House seat. Plus, there are vastly different state populations, leading to disparities in representation per congressmember.
What we call "states" would not look like the map today. Instead, they should be more like the units known as metropolitan statistical areas (or an even larger level of consolidated metropolitan statistical areas, which is where two MSAs have a border region with common commute ties).
If we limited ourselves to 50 states, each MSA would be limited to a population of about 6 million. This means New York City would be partitioned somehow; Los Angeles County's 10 million would have to be cut in half, too, and separated out of California altogether.
Now, if we said that it's in our national interest to keep the New York City consolidated statistical area (which extends into New Jersey, Connecticut and northeast Pennsylvania) and make it a single state (removing NYC from the rest of the state and chopping up the other states), each state would have about 24 million people.
That would return us closer to our nation's founding. We would have about 14 states of equal population.
There's only a half-dozen states with that many people, and it would come as a shock to about half the country to be organized into a much larger state. However, one upside of larger states as opposed to 50 of about 6 million each is that when it comes down to redrawing state boundaries, the borders can run through wilderness or sparsely populated agricultural areas. (Dividing up a New York or Los Angeles County would be much harder because the partition necessarily divides up built-up urban areas).
“If the Senate one day summons 59 votes for the Throw Jeff Maurer Into a Grain Thresher Act, my position will be that 59 votes is a clear majority, absolutely scrap the filibuster and let me know if I need to remove my shoes before I go into the thresher.”
Luckily, per your earlier point, some judge would likely rule that Act to be an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder.
Thanks for being consistent about the filibuster. Part of the reason I'm so annoyed by efforts to get rid of it is that I remember all the paeans used about Jimmy Stewart playing "Mr. Smith" until the instant it became inconvenient. If I can't trust people to be principled I just oppose them on general principle.
Getting normally drawn districts would be a pure win.
And agree that all this shouldn't be happening in our courts at all but Congress is totally willing to make someone else do the hard work and voters reward them for being cowards.
I mean, has either side just thought about taking reasonable stances that are amenable to 60% of people so they can get that 60-40 majority senate? I think Democrats would and could have had that tomorrow if part of their base wasn’t “yeah we really do need to take care of all these white kids dressing like native Americans in collage”. Hell if the Democrats of today even remotely resembled Clinton Democrats on the 90s they’d have that. So I’m not going to sit here shedding crocodile tears for a party that literally can’t get out of its own way and only seems to be publicly immune from the criticism because they happen to be standing next to even stupider people in republicans.
They could have easily also not run little
Miss electoral poison Hilary Clinton. The only candidate my parents who were born blue would vote against at 68. But the dnc, instead of having its ear to the ground had its head up its ass. When your parties whole platform is “hey, we’re not republicans”.
Maybe Congress could also stop trying to pass bills they know have no chance of being passed. At 8000000 pages someone is going to vote against something.
Which is my final point. The real problem is. The emperors have no clothes. Politicians, by and large, are morons. Arrogant morons. But morons nonetheless. But that’s because so are voters. But that’s not a very popular thing to say. That voters suck. But they do. I’d say the body politic is actually very representative of a whole nation of voters completely ignorant of not just how politics works but how the world works in general (the support for tariffs by kind of both sides is escarole number 1). We then coerce them into voting as some sort of religious ritual where they get a sticker at the end for “participating”. Never mind that most of them couldn’t even name the three branches of government. 59% of the 56% that bother to vote does not give me the “majority will” feel.
Now. The thing is there are enough of the middle out there that both parties would get. If they stopped trying to out extreme each other. That’s the problem. It’s like being in a classroom with not one but two class clowns. One class clown can be funny for the occasional gag. Two just annoy most of the class as they get into an arms race to try and out”. “Extreme” each other and no one learns anything.
Also speaking of term limits for judges. Fair. But can we get an age cap on Congress and president? Please. Pretty please? The only thing these people should be in charge of adjudicating after 70 is which golf course your going to gamble not breaking your hip at in Florida that weekend.
I'm normally completely on board with your point about partisan flip-flopping. It's been breathtaking to watch the shameless reversals on seemingly every issue these last few years, based only on who benefits.
But this isn't an example. Nobody's reversed sides on judicial activism for the simple reason that Dobbs *ain't that.* It isn't activism to go back and *undo* your own past activism!
Was this a guest post from Jonah Goldberg?
I agree on the courts being a terrible place to settle disputes, but getting rid of the filibuster is just going to lead to an even bigger legitimacy crisis. The US isn’t a democracy- it is a democratically elected republic, and without strong rules and norms in that system we die.
Probably not a popular idea among this crowd, but I think we should go back to having state governors & legislatures decide how they select their US Senators rather than having it be a direct election. This would put a lot more emphasis on local government and take a gigantic pile of money out of the federal election game.
I have been convinced for awhile that the real problem is the primary system. We are the only democracy of which I am aware where the parties have ceded the power to decide who the parties' representatives are to the public at large. Remember, the first time a US major party presidential candidate was picked by the voters was McGovern in 1972. Before that, the parties controlled it. Because the hard core base is overrepresented in the primaries, we get nutcases for candidates whose only incentive (now) is to perform like dancing monkeys to raise small dollar contributions. Yes, there still are those who suck up to billionaire donors who aren't impacted by their antics but the small dollars are where the money is now. How about something simple like requiring that someone actually, you know, join your party and pay a membership fee before being able to vote in your primary or, sweet Jesus, be your party's candidate? The parties are private organizations after all. It was lowering the cost of membership that got Jeremy Corbyn made the head of the Labour Party in Great Britain and see how well that turned out?
"social conservatives sacrificed everything in pursuit of their goal"
I really don't think the polling supports the idea that social conservatives held their noses when voting for Trump, or saw it as a sacrifice.
How did junking the 60 vote threshold on judicial nominees work out for liberals? What it has created (and thank Harry Reid for that) is just the kind of Court you are railing against. The same would hold true if you eliminated the filibuster. You might get some stuff passed (but ironically NOT BBB, as the Dems couldn’t even get to 50 on that), but just as quickly lose it when parties inevitably shift. How about we set term limits for ALL elected officials, start educating the great unwashed populace (can we finally embrace charters as a better way to go?), and work to get reasonable people, with real ideas, to actually run for office? Your suggestions will do little to correct what you see as flaws. I see gridlock as a safe place to be when the crazies are shouting.
If I may give a piece of unsollicitated feedback that you should totally ignore if you disagree: I really like your writing and arguments, and halfway through the column I thought I'd share it to a few friends. But then I got to the non-quote about pornography and the bowl thing, and it was clear that the people I hope to convince wouldn't take the column seriously once they got to that part. It goes beyond 'light-hearted'.
Old dudes throughout history have already explained to everyone this form of government can’t work. My man George Washington warned that strong political parties leads to factionalism and then to despotism. Go back further to Socrates who said giving every ignorant yahoo a vote opens the door to charismatic authoritarians which then leads to… again, despotism. So you can change the rules however you’d like, but the 2 parties will always find a way to tilt the system in their favor. The core problem is voters are stupid lazy sheep. Fix that and everything works.
Weirdly, almost nobody ever talks about enlarging the House. I don't think I've ever seen it in a mainstream outlet. It hasn't been done since the 1920's and can be done with legislation. It would increase representation and rebalance the Electoral College. The politics of that change could be offset by how it doesn't do anything to the Senate but it's not like you can do anything to the Senate anyway.
I assume it's not seen as all encompassing enough as something like "abolish the Electoral College" or "overthrow the Supreme Court and drown them in a well" is to get any traction with people who hope there's just one easy fix for everything.
Historically, I think your one severe inaccuracy was your "Liberals did it first" line about use of the courts when you don't get your way in the legislature. That tactic really got going during the progressive era with Lochner v. New York. I mean, FDR didn't threaten to pack the court just because he was superstitious about the number nine.
The current Senate composition virtually guarantees the proverbial "tyranny of the minority". That will be highlighted even more as time goes on especially if, as expected, the Republicans regain control of the Senate this coming November.
DC statehood makes as much sense as South Dakota statehood. Don't repeat mistakes like that.
Here's how to fix the senate, without defining or splitting states. Have every state elect its two senators in the same election, with transferable ranked-choice voting guaranteeing that all but the most extreme states end up with a candidate from each major party. Half the states vote one time, half the states the next time, and then two years after that we vote on the 6-year presidential term.
The absolute horde of elitist douchebags in DC should not be granted statehood; they should be forced to expatriate en masse, or worse, be made a part of Maryland. I'll sign on for Puerto Rico, however.
My suggested reform: Every 10 years we should instead redraw *state boundaries* rather than Congressional districts.
I see an overarching problem of an 18th century theory of politics incapable of processing 21st century political, economic and social challenges.
Federalism is a great idea, and other democracies have come around to the view. Formerly centralized national governments have devolved power to subnational states/provinces or in some cases city-states (usually the national capitals).
The problem here is our political system gives inordinate power to rural areas. Senate and Electoral College, I'm looking at you. However, there's even a problem at the House level. Each state is guaranteed one House seat. Plus, there are vastly different state populations, leading to disparities in representation per congressmember.
What we call "states" would not look like the map today. Instead, they should be more like the units known as metropolitan statistical areas (or an even larger level of consolidated metropolitan statistical areas, which is where two MSAs have a border region with common commute ties).
If we limited ourselves to 50 states, each MSA would be limited to a population of about 6 million. This means New York City would be partitioned somehow; Los Angeles County's 10 million would have to be cut in half, too, and separated out of California altogether.
Now, if we said that it's in our national interest to keep the New York City consolidated statistical area (which extends into New Jersey, Connecticut and northeast Pennsylvania) and make it a single state (removing NYC from the rest of the state and chopping up the other states), each state would have about 24 million people.
That would return us closer to our nation's founding. We would have about 14 states of equal population.
There's only a half-dozen states with that many people, and it would come as a shock to about half the country to be organized into a much larger state. However, one upside of larger states as opposed to 50 of about 6 million each is that when it comes down to redrawing state boundaries, the borders can run through wilderness or sparsely populated agricultural areas. (Dividing up a New York or Los Angeles County would be much harder because the partition necessarily divides up built-up urban areas).
“If the Senate one day summons 59 votes for the Throw Jeff Maurer Into a Grain Thresher Act, my position will be that 59 votes is a clear majority, absolutely scrap the filibuster and let me know if I need to remove my shoes before I go into the thresher.”
Luckily, per your earlier point, some judge would likely rule that Act to be an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder.
Thanks for being consistent about the filibuster. Part of the reason I'm so annoyed by efforts to get rid of it is that I remember all the paeans used about Jimmy Stewart playing "Mr. Smith" until the instant it became inconvenient. If I can't trust people to be principled I just oppose them on general principle.
Getting normally drawn districts would be a pure win.
And agree that all this shouldn't be happening in our courts at all but Congress is totally willing to make someone else do the hard work and voters reward them for being cowards.