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.
Congress can and does get supermajority support for the basic stuff that nearly everyone supports, which is why the US and its government haven't collapsed into anarchy. What it can't do is major reforms.
Also, as near as I can tell, the extreme wing of the Democratic party is a fairly small minority and doesn't control the party. I think one thing that makes people drawn to extremes and fuels negative campaigns is thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is a moron. I also oppose tariffs, but there are a few economists who know much more about the issue than I do who support tariffs. I think they're wrong, but I don't think they're morons.
It's easy to find out what the 60% wants, but there are huge disinformation campaigns[1] within parties about what the majority *really* wants. You can watch this as the Democrats scream about insane things that even *their own partisan voters* don't like.
[1] I mean this in the literal sense, not the "someone says something I don't like on the Internet" sense.
> 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?
Yes they have, it's just that that playbook doesn't really work.
> 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.
Nah, doesn't make sense. If the middle were something "that both parties would get" then getting it wouldn't meaningfully change the vote margin between parties. The two parties would split the middle roughly in half, pumping up each party's total about the same, without shifting the margin much.
Playbook doesn’t work? Or maybe it’s just that they don’t want it to work because it would shrink their power base? Why speak to moderates when you can simply ostracize them and rely on, what, 10% of the population to play kingmaker every 4 years? The bully another 20% of the population to “rock the vote, dude!” Then throw your hands up and say “I just don’t know why we never get a majority! It must be the other sides fault!”
Which part of the playbook am I missing? I mean the parties could start by having actual platforms rather than just taking the extreme negative position to whatever the party they don’t like takes.
I disagree with Splainer. I think the playbook COULD work, but not in the present context because of one thing in particular: primaries. Primaries are what has pushed both parties so far away from the median voter by making sure each party puts forward candidates that satisfy the most active (and typically extreme) portions of their base.
It's not a matter of wanting the playbook to work. The playbook doesn't work in itself. 3 obvious reasons.
1. Stances that are "reasonable" aren't necessarily the same as "stances that are amenable to 60% of people".
2. Ideological positioning isn't the main factor in how people vote in Senate elections. The main factors are partisanship and contrarian voting against the president's party. So if a party starts at 50% of the votes, it's really unlikely that it can grow that to 60% just by rebuilding its whole platform out of policies "amenable to 60% of people" — blanding up your platform doesn't have enough juice to get you another 10 percentage points.
3. Getting 60% of the votes wouldn't get the Democratic Party 60 Senators under a realistic geographical distribution of votes.
And we have evidence from the major parties playing to moderates in federal elections. For instance, after Romney went down in the 2012 presidential election the RNC concluded that the Republican Party ought to moderate on race and immigration; Trump then won after doing the opposite. In Kentucky the Democrats ran ex-independent Amy McGrath in '18 and '20. She didn't run as a leftist firebrand but talked about being a fiscally conservative fighter pilot; she lost twice, by 20 points in her '20 Senate race.
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.
This would be just throwing out one bad system and baking in problems with another.
1. Is there a better reason for stripping direct election of senators than "That's the way we used to do it"? We have universal education and literacy, so voters are largely capable of deciding who they want in leadership. In every democracy around the world, higher political participation is correlated with higher incomes and higher education and vice versa. So poors do a good job of removing themselves from the political process and the threat of the poors voting the riches out of existence is effectively infinitesimal.
2. Americans vote more in national elections, less in state-level elections and least in local elections. Because of this, paradoxically the federal appropriations process (while corrupt) is marginally more honest than keeping money at the state and local levels because there are more "eyes on the prize." State and local appropriations have more corruption and more insulation from reform.
3. Ed Burmila wrote perhaps the most savage defenestration of the "republic, not democracy" trope in the Baffler. :)
The argument is that states have become seen as political backwaters (evidenced by the fact that basically nobody cares to vote in them, unless they do politics for fun/work or are super angry). So putting the chance to influence federal policies back into local elections in some way might just invigorate/rejuvenate them. That is a good thing since most of what affects citizens is local, and everyone in the US is totally unhealthily obsessed with federal politics right now. I have no data on this proposal, but we have a nation of pissed off polarized people who are either sun tanning their balls to man up or alternatively crying about their male privilege is so unfair, so why not give it a shot?
I’ll read the article you suggest, but I don’t think that it is a trope that the US is not a democracy. We have significant democratic elements in our governance structure (which I am all for), but the founders made damn sure to give minorities and land owners huge rights lest they be trampled by angry mobs.
Voter participation has very little to do with perceptions of local politics as being backwaters. I'm not making that call. It's also really hard to divine voter intent, whether its disapproval of local politics or perceptions of federal offices as more prestigious.
Federal coverage does tend to attract disproportionate print, online and broadcast media coverage. The decline of print journalism outside of just four media markets, as well as the homogenization of broadcast media nationwide, is drawing attention away from political and investigative journalism. So there's less information getting out about local politics and policy.
But, the federal > state > local interest holds true throughout the U.S. across all states and localities, and realistically won't change people's political calculus much.
As for devolving federal government responsibilities, it's not as easy as National=bad, Local=good. It's not just who pays and how much, and the fiscal fixation of so many Americans is in large part why government services are lousy. Like, how can you really get people excited and curious about public administration? For instance, if there's a problem of general concern, should there be a national-level agency handling it or local ones? Ask this question for each function the government does: scientific agencies like NASA, USGS, USDA; law enforcement (do we need the alphabet soup of task-specific bodies at the federal level, while at the county and city levels one police agency will take on all duties); transportation like DOT, NHTSA, FRA; etc.
It's hard to say, because these agencies and their employees provide subject matter expertise and in many cases the private sector needs them to function. And like the military, the bureaucracy's scope and jurisdiction is ultimately determined by our elected officials.
Whatever level we decide to put the government, federal or local, anyone seeking to influence policy or gain money or market power is going to insinuate itself to the nearest corridors of power. In short, corruption just moves next door.
But if the United States is really just a nation of ball tanners and privilege floggers, and nothing else, no government could -- or should -- help such a wretched populace.
The Burmila article is a persuasive argument for not saying "America is a republic, not a democracy" because it's saying something that looks and sounds smart but is rankly stupid on closer examination. A republic is a form of rule, to distinguish it from monarchy or empire. From the Latin res publica, a republic is the idea that a government reflects the will of a people to organize and create it. Rulership is a matter of public participation.
Democracy is a mechanism of rule. You're not the subject of a monarch or a possession of a great military power. But participation under a republic doesn't necessarily mean actual power. Rulerships may be limited to landholders, warriors, or ensconced institutions (like churches/monasteries or lordships). So republics are not necessarily democratic.
Democracy gives the population an ability to select their leaders. Yet tyrannical governments find democracy mechanisms as window dressing, giving the populace the right to vote but not the right to win.
The U.S. is both a democracy and a republic, not either/or.
A democracy that goes beyond letting citizens choose their leaders and gives citizens some power to set policy is a plebiscite. This remains divisive even among democracy advocates. This is where something like a constitutional modification, or sometimes a law or a budget proposal, gets put to a public vote.
California probably has the most democratic democracy in the U.S. -- for good but largely for ill. It has three distinct forms of plebiscite, called direct democracy in California: initiative, which bypasses the law-making monopoly from legislators and city/county boards to allow laws to be written by and voted on by the public; referendum, which allows the public to challenge an elected official's law and repeal it; and recall, which allows the public to remove a public official between elections.
California has also initiated a process that other states are trying out, largely with positive results: citizens have the power to redraw legislative districts. It's balanced among Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, there are several hearings to weigh interest groupings, and they are given the relevant geographic and demographic data from the state that legislators also have access to. As it turns out, the commissioners get along very well and there's a consensus around making districts competitive. Although, this is California after all, and it's really hard to create a viable Republican district in major population centers. Californians also passed a top-two primary system, so in several districts the general election comes down to two Democrats.
Surely the bigger legitimacy crisis is the US not being a democracy?!
And wouldn't returning Senate selections to the states just redirect the gigantic pile of money from federal elections to state elections? If the root problem is money in politics, I'd target that, rather than just swishing the money around different levels of government.
Direct rule by the majority- where has that ever gone wrong in world history?!? Although I’m sure the Greeks had a great orgy/food fight party after they killed Aristotle... I personally prefer the strong minority rights we enjoy so we don’t burn the person who finally invents fusion for being a witch.
RE money in politics- how would you propose to eliminate it? This is not a simple question to answer unfortunately.
Tyranny of the majority is a risk, but so is tyranny of the minority, and (at least for now) I'd call the latter the greater risk.
I agree that eliminating money in politics isn't simple. The root cause is, bluntly, capitalism; if a country runs on an economic system that basically translates wealth into power, then wealth is going to seep its way into the mechanisms of power, and adjusting anything else is liable to be mere tinkering.
Of course, overthrowing capitalism is easier said than done. And you'll notice that I just wrote about targeting money in politics, not outright eliminating it — I am aware of how big an ask the latter is. So, short of revolutionizing our economic system, one could target a key factor the next level up: economic inequality. Use taxes to reduce wealth and income inequalities, and bar corporations from donating to political candidates, and that might go some way to solving the problem.
If barring corporate donations in general and levying stiffer taxes are too scary for you, then I'd say that frankly you're just not serious about addressing the problem of money in politics. But, even then, there are some ideas that would help on a tertiary level: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders still have their presidential-primary platforms online, and present some ideas (https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/campaign-finance-reform and https://berniesanders.com/issues/money-out-of-politics/).
The left hates the undemocratic cronyist corporate money influencing politics. The right hates the undemocratic tax dodge NGO industrial complex money influencing politics. I don’t like either of those.
Is it possible that one can think that both Hayek and Marx had some useful social critiques?
Regarding Bernie and Lizzy- I’m a hard no on that left wing populist bullshit. Just like I am against the right wing populist bullshit of Hawley/Vance/He who shall not be named.
I heart capitalism. It has raised more people out of abject poverty than any other in history. I would suggest you read about the differences between relative and absolute income inequality. At this point I’m just tired of the richest 2% of the world arguing amongst themselves about how bad they have it.
You raise a bunch of different points that span much more ground than the stuff upthread, so I'll treat this like a lightning round:
• if you don't like corporate money or NGO-industrial complex money in politics, ending capitalism would at least allow you to solve the former issue;
• I know of only one useful social critique from Hayek ("Use of Knowledge in Society") and it amounts to a decent argument for organizing the economy with markets, which is hardly a killer argument for capitalism since markets don't require capitalism;
• populism is a morally neutral quality, so if you're phobic about "left wing populist bullshit" that doesn't move me ("right wing populist bullshit" is of course basically a hoax, behind the façade it degenerates into reaction, usually backed by elites despite its anti-elites posture);
• capitalism has "raised more people out of abject poverty than any other" what?;
• suggest specific texts to read on "the differences between relative and absolute income inequality", don't just emptily condescend;
• why are you now pretending not to care about inequality within "the richest 2% of the world" when you brought up the "gigantic pile of money" in American federal elections?
No condescension was intended. I would suggest the episode “Would you maroon Jeff Bezos in space” on The Political Orphanage podcast for some nice relative/absolute growth/inequality analysis. If you like Maurer, you might enjoy Heaton despite the fact that it is clear your political bent is likely quite different than his.
I honestly don’t understand what people mean when they say “end capitalism”. Do you intend to take people’s property by some kind of democratic mechanism? Would you imagine that they would give it up freely without fighting back? If then a monopoly on violence is given to a democratic majority (like a state of some kind) then you will create tyranny quite quickly. This experiment has already been run and the death toll last time I checked was well in excess of 50 million.
Capitalism has all sorts of problems- but we haven’t ever seen a better system for getting people out of subsistence poverty. For example, take a look at what allowing capitalism to flourish did to poverty in China over the last 30 years (as long as people didn’t compete with the CCP). If it is to be replaced, it better be with something more substantive than AOC with a “tax the rich” dress.
It’s such an American-centric view isn’t it? We all live in an ivory tower built on the back of finance and investment. Free market investment at that. Of course since the narrative is always about whole numbers and is framed as “look at all the billionaires with their money bins of gold that they never use!” This is the lie. That billionaire are somehow “hoarding”.
Once people actually understand how investment works a cloud is lifted. The biggest problems are the way the media reports on “earning” and “worth”. It’s so crazy subjective. They report on “worth” as if it’s the amount of money they have in the bank. “John smith is worth 100-billion dollars” people hear. Then they think. “Boy. If we just had that 100-billion dollars we sure could do a lot.” Ignoring the fact that in order to get that cash in hand you’d have to basically decimate dozens of innovative investment type companies that need start up capital and get it by basically milking rich people.
That’s the lie. That all this money is being “kept from us”. It’s not. It’s constantly surrounding us. It’s in everything. The arguments from these people interested in “wealth redistribution” (who do not understand the price mechanism) would not really solve poverty. Poverty is not caused by income inequality in the USA. It’s not even a minor cause. If we had a king that was literally sitting on a hoard of treasure then yes, you can point at income inequality as a reason for his countries poverty.
Most poverty in this country is usually cause by an unholy three-way of government, voter ignorance, and corporate regulatory capture.
Getting money out of politics is trading one hell for another.
You could get the money and influence-peddling out of Washington and the statehouses, but at the cost of vastly more powerful political parties. Unfortunately, Americans hate political parties and 90% of voting today is negative partisanship (voting against a candidate than for a preferred candidate)..
The relative power of political parties would certainly go up a lot, but I'm not sure their absolute power would go up so much (they already have a lot). I'd take my chances!
If Americans would allow stronger, membership-based parties in the European mold, primaries like ours wouldn't exist. The nomination process would be closed and largely set by the parties themselves. Right now, the process is set by the states and there's some redress by voters if parties do candidates dirty.
Also, you'd have to be open to professional politicians. This is where parties will mold the candidate in their ideology and program, and designate the constituency they'll serve. In the U.S., it's customary for the politician to have to maintain a residence within their district. Instead, your congress member would be like a young regional bank or rental car office manager, starting out as a backbencher in the sticks and then promoted or relegated depending on election results.
Americans prefer anti-politics politics, so there would have to be more of a positive view of politics before this could change.
Oh. So you just don’t like capitalism. Wow. Just. Ok that actually explains a whole lot.
So you think the issue is a secret cabal of billionaire playing kingmaker and getting their way through secret clandestine loopholes and backdoor dealings is the major problem of American politics? You know who else thinks that? The far right. Except in their version of that particular conspiracy theory they assign blame outright to the Jews. I assume your version just involves secular billionaires? I guess in a weird way that’s far more inclusive.
Well, I don't like big money in politics either. But I also don't like capitalism.
> Ok that actually explains a whole lot.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd made a secret of disliking capitalism!
> So you think the issue is [...]
No, I think you'll find it's more complicated than that. Which is why I gave Rationalista a systemic critique ("The root cause is, bluntly, capitalism") instead of focusing on "a secret cabal of billionaire" (or dickering with how Senators are selected, as Rationalista suggested).
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?
Yeah, primaries might well be an issue. I'm in the UK, so apart from registering at the State level, I don't see any great barrier to entry for a specific voter - such as party membership - that would defeat sabotage. Open primaries are worse for that.
I suspect though, that the real problem is not enough politicians - Dunbar numbers and Allen curves - making it too easy for coherent cliques to form.
The UK has 650 MPs for about 50m voters, that roughly gets split (at election time) by the two major parties. Each of the parties may have at least two ideological wings, depending on the subject. So, divide 650 by 4, giving 162 (and a bit). Which is kind of handy, as the Dunbar number may be between 80 and 140. So, the cliques may be somewhat loose.
At Federal level, the number of legislators is smaller - for a much higher population - so I suspect it's easier for cliques to form, and they'll be tighter.
Seems to be worse at State level (I only looked at California). There you have a population about half of the UK's, but only just over a fifth of the legislators, split between two houses.
The thing is - how easy is it for members of a clique to defect? If the number of legislators is too small, they've nowhere to go.
The parties don't have to give up complete control or just seize it entirely, but they could put in rules that stop unaffiliated jokers from showing up to run under their party banner.
> 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.
And are the candidates with a real shot at winning nowadays really "nutcases" any more than yesteryear's? LBJ literally used "IN YOUR GUTS YOU KNOW HE'S NUTS" as an anti-Goldwater slogan!
> 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?
Under Corbyn the Labour Party won more of the electorate than it did under Miliband and under Brown. Twice.
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.
"The core problem is voters are stupid lazy sheep."
I have a recollection about someone writing something akin to "Well, give me a miracle and I can solve *any* problem, right?" IOW, that problem isn't going to be solved.
High voter turnout (70%). A poorer European nation but highly educated and high living standards. It has Fidesz (Orban's people) and two other far-right parties that when added together win more than 60% of the vote. The key dividing point seems to be whether to keep despotism in the family (Fidesz), or get a do-over on the Treaty of Trianon and take back territory from their neighbors.
Is there a young, socially liberal, pro-European Hungarian electorate? Yes, but they emigrated to Germany, France, UK or North America and assimilated.
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.
If I were a professional comedy writer, that last sentence would have been "FDR didn't threaten to pack the court just because ... something, something ... pig dicks." Alas, I just don't have the comedy chops.
Apart from Dred Scott v. Sanford striking down the Missouri Compromise (when that wasn't even a question at issue in the case!), I don't know that there were any cases where the Taney court struck down acts of Congress or state legislatures. There was Ex Parte Merryman, of course, but that was an executive act that was deemed unconstitutional.
Ironically, the Lochner decision was another case of a supposed implied right in the 14th Amendment, the alleged Freedom of Contract used to strike down labor laws. Then when the Left gained control of the Supreme Court, Freedom of Contract disappeared, and an implied Right to Privacy was discovered in the 14th Amendment. These implied rights always seem to line up nicely with the personal views of the justices who write the decisions.
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.
> DC statehood makes as much sense as South Dakota statehood. Don't repeat mistakes like that.
Since South Dakota did in fact end up as a state, one could equally infer that DC should too! If you want a Samson option, how about granting statehood to each WARD of DC? (Need a rubbing-palms-together emoji.)
South Dakota did end up a state, but should not have, so I can't accept the inference. But if you want to go that way, make every city or county with 578,803 (Wyoming population 2020) or more people a state, I can live with that. My vote would suddenly start counting. I'm not looking to make DC, which already has more presidential election oomph than my very large red-state blue-city, even more disproportionately powerful.
Making every half-millionish city/county into a state is an interesting idea too. And it's thinking bigger than me; being lazy and just looking at the first list of populous counties I find on Google (https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties), making bigger-than-Wyoming counties into their own states would roughly triple the number of US states. The catch (or at least the catch that's most salient to me) is that I believe it's harder to split existing states than to add non-state territory as states; the latter can be done with a simple legislative majority (https://statehood.dc.gov/page/faq).
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).
The United States would still be a bicameral system, with a Senate and House. Bicameralism is also good. Legislation should be a long, hard slog. (Today, in practice, Congress passes about 1 substantive piece of legislation per term. Much of what passes is resolutions or routine spending bills that are a normal part of governance).
With redrawn state boundaries, you wouldn't see the disparities in today's Senate. You could have 14 (1 Senator per state under the Keep NYC Whole regime) to 100 (2 per 50 states like today). I'd offer another reform for the upper chamber here.
The people we call senator would wear two hats. They would be the national upper house members, but at the state level they would be the executives we call governors.
(Furthermore, bicameralism at the state level is pointless. States might be the right level to try parliamentary democracy and either representation by party, or adopt Canada's system of harmonized federal and provincial ridings).
“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.
Congress can and does get supermajority support for the basic stuff that nearly everyone supports, which is why the US and its government haven't collapsed into anarchy. What it can't do is major reforms.
Also, as near as I can tell, the extreme wing of the Democratic party is a fairly small minority and doesn't control the party. I think one thing that makes people drawn to extremes and fuels negative campaigns is thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is a moron. I also oppose tariffs, but there are a few economists who know much more about the issue than I do who support tariffs. I think they're wrong, but I don't think they're morons.
It's easy to find out what the 60% wants, but there are huge disinformation campaigns[1] within parties about what the majority *really* wants. You can watch this as the Democrats scream about insane things that even *their own partisan voters* don't like.
[1] I mean this in the literal sense, not the "someone says something I don't like on the Internet" sense.
> 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?
Yes they have, it's just that that playbook doesn't really work.
> 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.
Nah, doesn't make sense. If the middle were something "that both parties would get" then getting it wouldn't meaningfully change the vote margin between parties. The two parties would split the middle roughly in half, pumping up each party's total about the same, without shifting the margin much.
Playbook doesn’t work? Or maybe it’s just that they don’t want it to work because it would shrink their power base? Why speak to moderates when you can simply ostracize them and rely on, what, 10% of the population to play kingmaker every 4 years? The bully another 20% of the population to “rock the vote, dude!” Then throw your hands up and say “I just don’t know why we never get a majority! It must be the other sides fault!”
Which part of the playbook am I missing? I mean the parties could start by having actual platforms rather than just taking the extreme negative position to whatever the party they don’t like takes.
I disagree with Splainer. I think the playbook COULD work, but not in the present context because of one thing in particular: primaries. Primaries are what has pushed both parties so far away from the median voter by making sure each party puts forward candidates that satisfy the most active (and typically extreme) portions of their base.
It's not a matter of wanting the playbook to work. The playbook doesn't work in itself. 3 obvious reasons.
1. Stances that are "reasonable" aren't necessarily the same as "stances that are amenable to 60% of people".
2. Ideological positioning isn't the main factor in how people vote in Senate elections. The main factors are partisanship and contrarian voting against the president's party. So if a party starts at 50% of the votes, it's really unlikely that it can grow that to 60% just by rebuilding its whole platform out of policies "amenable to 60% of people" — blanding up your platform doesn't have enough juice to get you another 10 percentage points.
3. Getting 60% of the votes wouldn't get the Democratic Party 60 Senators under a realistic geographical distribution of votes.
And we have evidence from the major parties playing to moderates in federal elections. For instance, after Romney went down in the 2012 presidential election the RNC concluded that the Republican Party ought to moderate on race and immigration; Trump then won after doing the opposite. In Kentucky the Democrats ran ex-independent Amy McGrath in '18 and '20. She didn't run as a leftist firebrand but talked about being a fiscally conservative fighter pilot; she lost twice, by 20 points in her '20 Senate race.
And at least one parties has an "actual platform" — go look at https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-Democratic-Party-Platform.pdf, it's not just "Rethuglicans bad" copy-pasted over and over!
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 have been 100% consistent with supporting whatever standard advances my policy preferences.
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.
This would be just throwing out one bad system and baking in problems with another.
1. Is there a better reason for stripping direct election of senators than "That's the way we used to do it"? We have universal education and literacy, so voters are largely capable of deciding who they want in leadership. In every democracy around the world, higher political participation is correlated with higher incomes and higher education and vice versa. So poors do a good job of removing themselves from the political process and the threat of the poors voting the riches out of existence is effectively infinitesimal.
2. Americans vote more in national elections, less in state-level elections and least in local elections. Because of this, paradoxically the federal appropriations process (while corrupt) is marginally more honest than keeping money at the state and local levels because there are more "eyes on the prize." State and local appropriations have more corruption and more insulation from reform.
3. Ed Burmila wrote perhaps the most savage defenestration of the "republic, not democracy" trope in the Baffler. :)
https://thebaffler.com/latest/were-a-republic-not-a-democracy-burmila
The argument is that states have become seen as political backwaters (evidenced by the fact that basically nobody cares to vote in them, unless they do politics for fun/work or are super angry). So putting the chance to influence federal policies back into local elections in some way might just invigorate/rejuvenate them. That is a good thing since most of what affects citizens is local, and everyone in the US is totally unhealthily obsessed with federal politics right now. I have no data on this proposal, but we have a nation of pissed off polarized people who are either sun tanning their balls to man up or alternatively crying about their male privilege is so unfair, so why not give it a shot?
I’ll read the article you suggest, but I don’t think that it is a trope that the US is not a democracy. We have significant democratic elements in our governance structure (which I am all for), but the founders made damn sure to give minorities and land owners huge rights lest they be trampled by angry mobs.
Voter participation has very little to do with perceptions of local politics as being backwaters. I'm not making that call. It's also really hard to divine voter intent, whether its disapproval of local politics or perceptions of federal offices as more prestigious.
Federal coverage does tend to attract disproportionate print, online and broadcast media coverage. The decline of print journalism outside of just four media markets, as well as the homogenization of broadcast media nationwide, is drawing attention away from political and investigative journalism. So there's less information getting out about local politics and policy.
But, the federal > state > local interest holds true throughout the U.S. across all states and localities, and realistically won't change people's political calculus much.
As for devolving federal government responsibilities, it's not as easy as National=bad, Local=good. It's not just who pays and how much, and the fiscal fixation of so many Americans is in large part why government services are lousy. Like, how can you really get people excited and curious about public administration? For instance, if there's a problem of general concern, should there be a national-level agency handling it or local ones? Ask this question for each function the government does: scientific agencies like NASA, USGS, USDA; law enforcement (do we need the alphabet soup of task-specific bodies at the federal level, while at the county and city levels one police agency will take on all duties); transportation like DOT, NHTSA, FRA; etc.
It's hard to say, because these agencies and their employees provide subject matter expertise and in many cases the private sector needs them to function. And like the military, the bureaucracy's scope and jurisdiction is ultimately determined by our elected officials.
Whatever level we decide to put the government, federal or local, anyone seeking to influence policy or gain money or market power is going to insinuate itself to the nearest corridors of power. In short, corruption just moves next door.
But if the United States is really just a nation of ball tanners and privilege floggers, and nothing else, no government could -- or should -- help such a wretched populace.
The Burmila article is a persuasive argument for not saying "America is a republic, not a democracy" because it's saying something that looks and sounds smart but is rankly stupid on closer examination. A republic is a form of rule, to distinguish it from monarchy or empire. From the Latin res publica, a republic is the idea that a government reflects the will of a people to organize and create it. Rulership is a matter of public participation.
Democracy is a mechanism of rule. You're not the subject of a monarch or a possession of a great military power. But participation under a republic doesn't necessarily mean actual power. Rulerships may be limited to landholders, warriors, or ensconced institutions (like churches/monasteries or lordships). So republics are not necessarily democratic.
Democracy gives the population an ability to select their leaders. Yet tyrannical governments find democracy mechanisms as window dressing, giving the populace the right to vote but not the right to win.
The U.S. is both a democracy and a republic, not either/or.
A democracy that goes beyond letting citizens choose their leaders and gives citizens some power to set policy is a plebiscite. This remains divisive even among democracy advocates. This is where something like a constitutional modification, or sometimes a law or a budget proposal, gets put to a public vote.
California probably has the most democratic democracy in the U.S. -- for good but largely for ill. It has three distinct forms of plebiscite, called direct democracy in California: initiative, which bypasses the law-making monopoly from legislators and city/county boards to allow laws to be written by and voted on by the public; referendum, which allows the public to challenge an elected official's law and repeal it; and recall, which allows the public to remove a public official between elections.
California has also initiated a process that other states are trying out, largely with positive results: citizens have the power to redraw legislative districts. It's balanced among Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, there are several hearings to weigh interest groupings, and they are given the relevant geographic and demographic data from the state that legislators also have access to. As it turns out, the commissioners get along very well and there's a consensus around making districts competitive. Although, this is California after all, and it's really hard to create a viable Republican district in major population centers. Californians also passed a top-two primary system, so in several districts the general election comes down to two Democrats.
Surely the bigger legitimacy crisis is the US not being a democracy?!
And wouldn't returning Senate selections to the states just redirect the gigantic pile of money from federal elections to state elections? If the root problem is money in politics, I'd target that, rather than just swishing the money around different levels of government.
Direct rule by the majority- where has that ever gone wrong in world history?!? Although I’m sure the Greeks had a great orgy/food fight party after they killed Aristotle... I personally prefer the strong minority rights we enjoy so we don’t burn the person who finally invents fusion for being a witch.
RE money in politics- how would you propose to eliminate it? This is not a simple question to answer unfortunately.
Tyranny of the majority is a risk, but so is tyranny of the minority, and (at least for now) I'd call the latter the greater risk.
I agree that eliminating money in politics isn't simple. The root cause is, bluntly, capitalism; if a country runs on an economic system that basically translates wealth into power, then wealth is going to seep its way into the mechanisms of power, and adjusting anything else is liable to be mere tinkering.
Of course, overthrowing capitalism is easier said than done. And you'll notice that I just wrote about targeting money in politics, not outright eliminating it — I am aware of how big an ask the latter is. So, short of revolutionizing our economic system, one could target a key factor the next level up: economic inequality. Use taxes to reduce wealth and income inequalities, and bar corporations from donating to political candidates, and that might go some way to solving the problem.
If barring corporate donations in general and levying stiffer taxes are too scary for you, then I'd say that frankly you're just not serious about addressing the problem of money in politics. But, even then, there are some ideas that would help on a tertiary level: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders still have their presidential-primary platforms online, and present some ideas (https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/campaign-finance-reform and https://berniesanders.com/issues/money-out-of-politics/).
The left hates the undemocratic cronyist corporate money influencing politics. The right hates the undemocratic tax dodge NGO industrial complex money influencing politics. I don’t like either of those.
Is it possible that one can think that both Hayek and Marx had some useful social critiques?
Regarding Bernie and Lizzy- I’m a hard no on that left wing populist bullshit. Just like I am against the right wing populist bullshit of Hawley/Vance/He who shall not be named.
I heart capitalism. It has raised more people out of abject poverty than any other in history. I would suggest you read about the differences between relative and absolute income inequality. At this point I’m just tired of the richest 2% of the world arguing amongst themselves about how bad they have it.
You raise a bunch of different points that span much more ground than the stuff upthread, so I'll treat this like a lightning round:
• if you don't like corporate money or NGO-industrial complex money in politics, ending capitalism would at least allow you to solve the former issue;
• I know of only one useful social critique from Hayek ("Use of Knowledge in Society") and it amounts to a decent argument for organizing the economy with markets, which is hardly a killer argument for capitalism since markets don't require capitalism;
• populism is a morally neutral quality, so if you're phobic about "left wing populist bullshit" that doesn't move me ("right wing populist bullshit" is of course basically a hoax, behind the façade it degenerates into reaction, usually backed by elites despite its anti-elites posture);
• capitalism has "raised more people out of abject poverty than any other" what?;
• suggest specific texts to read on "the differences between relative and absolute income inequality", don't just emptily condescend;
• why are you now pretending not to care about inequality within "the richest 2% of the world" when you brought up the "gigantic pile of money" in American federal elections?
No condescension was intended. I would suggest the episode “Would you maroon Jeff Bezos in space” on The Political Orphanage podcast for some nice relative/absolute growth/inequality analysis. If you like Maurer, you might enjoy Heaton despite the fact that it is clear your political bent is likely quite different than his.
I honestly don’t understand what people mean when they say “end capitalism”. Do you intend to take people’s property by some kind of democratic mechanism? Would you imagine that they would give it up freely without fighting back? If then a monopoly on violence is given to a democratic majority (like a state of some kind) then you will create tyranny quite quickly. This experiment has already been run and the death toll last time I checked was well in excess of 50 million.
Capitalism has all sorts of problems- but we haven’t ever seen a better system for getting people out of subsistence poverty. For example, take a look at what allowing capitalism to flourish did to poverty in China over the last 30 years (as long as people didn’t compete with the CCP). If it is to be replaced, it better be with something more substantive than AOC with a “tax the rich” dress.
It’s such an American-centric view isn’t it? We all live in an ivory tower built on the back of finance and investment. Free market investment at that. Of course since the narrative is always about whole numbers and is framed as “look at all the billionaires with their money bins of gold that they never use!” This is the lie. That billionaire are somehow “hoarding”.
Once people actually understand how investment works a cloud is lifted. The biggest problems are the way the media reports on “earning” and “worth”. It’s so crazy subjective. They report on “worth” as if it’s the amount of money they have in the bank. “John smith is worth 100-billion dollars” people hear. Then they think. “Boy. If we just had that 100-billion dollars we sure could do a lot.” Ignoring the fact that in order to get that cash in hand you’d have to basically decimate dozens of innovative investment type companies that need start up capital and get it by basically milking rich people.
That’s the lie. That all this money is being “kept from us”. It’s not. It’s constantly surrounding us. It’s in everything. The arguments from these people interested in “wealth redistribution” (who do not understand the price mechanism) would not really solve poverty. Poverty is not caused by income inequality in the USA. It’s not even a minor cause. If we had a king that was literally sitting on a hoard of treasure then yes, you can point at income inequality as a reason for his countries poverty.
Most poverty in this country is usually cause by an unholy three-way of government, voter ignorance, and corporate regulatory capture.
Getting money out of politics is trading one hell for another.
You could get the money and influence-peddling out of Washington and the statehouses, but at the cost of vastly more powerful political parties. Unfortunately, Americans hate political parties and 90% of voting today is negative partisanship (voting against a candidate than for a preferred candidate)..
The relative power of political parties would certainly go up a lot, but I'm not sure their absolute power would go up so much (they already have a lot). I'd take my chances!
If Americans would allow stronger, membership-based parties in the European mold, primaries like ours wouldn't exist. The nomination process would be closed and largely set by the parties themselves. Right now, the process is set by the states and there's some redress by voters if parties do candidates dirty.
Also, you'd have to be open to professional politicians. This is where parties will mold the candidate in their ideology and program, and designate the constituency they'll serve. In the U.S., it's customary for the politician to have to maintain a residence within their district. Instead, your congress member would be like a young regional bank or rental car office manager, starting out as a backbencher in the sticks and then promoted or relegated depending on election results.
Americans prefer anti-politics politics, so there would have to be more of a positive view of politics before this could change.
Oh. So you just don’t like capitalism. Wow. Just. Ok that actually explains a whole lot.
So you think the issue is a secret cabal of billionaire playing kingmaker and getting their way through secret clandestine loopholes and backdoor dealings is the major problem of American politics? You know who else thinks that? The far right. Except in their version of that particular conspiracy theory they assign blame outright to the Jews. I assume your version just involves secular billionaires? I guess in a weird way that’s far more inclusive.
> Oh. So you just don’t like capitalism.
Well, I don't like big money in politics either. But I also don't like capitalism.
> Ok that actually explains a whole lot.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd made a secret of disliking capitalism!
> So you think the issue is [...]
No, I think you'll find it's more complicated than that. Which is why I gave Rationalista a systemic critique ("The root cause is, bluntly, capitalism") instead of focusing on "a secret cabal of billionaire" (or dickering with how Senators are selected, as Rationalista suggested).
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?
Yeah, primaries might well be an issue. I'm in the UK, so apart from registering at the State level, I don't see any great barrier to entry for a specific voter - such as party membership - that would defeat sabotage. Open primaries are worse for that.
I suspect though, that the real problem is not enough politicians - Dunbar numbers and Allen curves - making it too easy for coherent cliques to form.
The UK has 650 MPs for about 50m voters, that roughly gets split (at election time) by the two major parties. Each of the parties may have at least two ideological wings, depending on the subject. So, divide 650 by 4, giving 162 (and a bit). Which is kind of handy, as the Dunbar number may be between 80 and 140. So, the cliques may be somewhat loose.
At Federal level, the number of legislators is smaller - for a much higher population - so I suspect it's easier for cliques to form, and they'll be tighter.
Seems to be worse at State level (I only looked at California). There you have a population about half of the UK's, but only just over a fifth of the legislators, split between two houses.
The thing is - how easy is it for members of a clique to defect? If the number of legislators is too small, they've nowhere to go.
The parties don't have to give up complete control or just seize it entirely, but they could put in rules that stop unaffiliated jokers from showing up to run under their party banner.
> 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.
But as far as I can tell most primary money DOESN'T come from small-dollar contributions; indeed in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries more money came from LARGE-dollar contributions (https://www.npr.org/2019/04/16/711812314/tracking-the-money-race-behind-the-presidential-campaign), and most money didn't come from individual contributions at all.
And are the candidates with a real shot at winning nowadays really "nutcases" any more than yesteryear's? LBJ literally used "IN YOUR GUTS YOU KNOW HE'S NUTS" as an anti-Goldwater slogan!
> 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?
Under Corbyn the Labour Party won more of the electorate than it did under Miliband and under Brown. Twice.
"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.
"social conservatives sacrificed everything in pursuit of their goal"
Machiavelli would then proclaim you a Jedi.
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.
> I see gridlock as a safe place to be when the crazies are shouting.
That's just status quo bias smushed together with civility policing.
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'.
Duly noted. It's like standup: Some people think "I wish I could have it without that part." For other people, that part is the thing that they like.
FWIW: I’m mostly here for the dick jokes.
"Bowl of pig dicks" was my favorite bit.
I could never finish a whole bowl myself. :)
I believe Jeff Maurer is the one who came up with the "Last Week Tonight" bit representing Mitch McConnell with a picture of an old man's junk.
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.
"The core problem is voters are stupid lazy sheep."
I have a recollection about someone writing something akin to "Well, give me a miracle and I can solve *any* problem, right?" IOW, that problem isn't going to be solved.
Take a look at Hungary for the past 12 years.
High voter turnout (70%). A poorer European nation but highly educated and high living standards. It has Fidesz (Orban's people) and two other far-right parties that when added together win more than 60% of the vote. The key dividing point seems to be whether to keep despotism in the family (Fidesz), or get a do-over on the Treaty of Trianon and take back territory from their neighbors.
Is there a young, socially liberal, pro-European Hungarian electorate? Yes, but they emigrated to Germany, France, UK or North America and assimilated.
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.
If I were a professional comedy writer, that last sentence would have been "FDR didn't threaten to pack the court just because ... something, something ... pig dicks." Alas, I just don't have the comedy chops.
What about the Taney court?
Apart from Dred Scott v. Sanford striking down the Missouri Compromise (when that wasn't even a question at issue in the case!), I don't know that there were any cases where the Taney court struck down acts of Congress or state legislatures. There was Ex Parte Merryman, of course, but that was an executive act that was deemed unconstitutional.
This is a list of acts of Congress struck down, but unfortunately it's ordered by date of the act, not by the date of the decision striking it down. https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/acts-of-congress-held-unconstitutional.html
You're right, I was thinking in more general terms of judicial overreach.
Ironically, the Lochner decision was another case of a supposed implied right in the 14th Amendment, the alleged Freedom of Contract used to strike down labor laws. Then when the Left gained control of the Supreme Court, Freedom of Contract disappeared, and an implied Right to Privacy was discovered in the 14th Amendment. These implied rights always seem to line up nicely with the personal views of the justices who write the decisions.
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.
> DC statehood makes as much sense as South Dakota statehood. Don't repeat mistakes like that.
Since South Dakota did in fact end up as a state, one could equally infer that DC should too! If you want a Samson option, how about granting statehood to each WARD of DC? (Need a rubbing-palms-together emoji.)
South Dakota did end up a state, but should not have, so I can't accept the inference. But if you want to go that way, make every city or county with 578,803 (Wyoming population 2020) or more people a state, I can live with that. My vote would suddenly start counting. I'm not looking to make DC, which already has more presidential election oomph than my very large red-state blue-city, even more disproportionately powerful.
Making every half-millionish city/county into a state is an interesting idea too. And it's thinking bigger than me; being lazy and just looking at the first list of populous counties I find on Google (https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties), making bigger-than-Wyoming counties into their own states would roughly triple the number of US states. The catch (or at least the catch that's most salient to me) is that I believe it's harder to split existing states than to add non-state territory as states; the latter can be done with a simple legislative majority (https://statehood.dc.gov/page/faq).
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).
The United States would still be a bicameral system, with a Senate and House. Bicameralism is also good. Legislation should be a long, hard slog. (Today, in practice, Congress passes about 1 substantive piece of legislation per term. Much of what passes is resolutions or routine spending bills that are a normal part of governance).
With redrawn state boundaries, you wouldn't see the disparities in today's Senate. You could have 14 (1 Senator per state under the Keep NYC Whole regime) to 100 (2 per 50 states like today). I'd offer another reform for the upper chamber here.
The people we call senator would wear two hats. They would be the national upper house members, but at the state level they would be the executives we call governors.
(Furthermore, bicameralism at the state level is pointless. States might be the right level to try parliamentary democracy and either representation by party, or adopt Canada's system of harmonized federal and provincial ridings).
“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.