Manchin, Sinema, Romney, Collins, Murkowski, etc. generally seem unwilling (to various degrees) to go along with things on grounds of scope (how big) rather than substance (the thing itself). An incrementalistic approach could plausibly get broader support and get us to where progressives think we need to go anyway, but with less social tension and more public legitimacy with the ~70% of Americans who don't pay close attention but generally trust bipartisan small steps over partisan big moves.
Plus if the alternative is getting *nothing* done, why don't progressives just go for the low hanging fruit?
Last summer the Democrats filibustered Tim Scott's police reform bill despite an open amendment process being on the table (Tim Scott and McConnell offered 20 amendments I think?) because the Democrats didn't think it was enough and thought they could get more done in a few months. Now the public energy behind police reform is gone and Republicans are being more wary of reforms to policing. I'd much rather have some kind of weak thing that the GOP was pushing then than a perpetuation of the status quo.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was preceded by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and Civil Rights Act of 1960.
Yes, if you are a 'moderate' you oppose big dramatic bills. Moderates like their change incremental. The problem is that the filibuster forces omnibus bills, because a bunch of little bills each have to get 60 votes, but a single big bill can be structured to pass with 50 votes.
Getting rid of the filibuster would allow up/down votes on a bunch of smaller bills, which the 'moderates' ostensibly prefer, but it is the 'moderates' who hang on to the filibuster.
It is frustrating. They hate the omnibus bills because they are too big, and they stand in the way of the solution.
I think you're creating a false dilemma. The reconciliation forces an omnibus bill, not a dramatic bill. You could make incremental headway on five different fronts each year with one reconciliation bill, if you were so inclined.
The force that drives the desire to quantum rather than incremental bills is some combination of:
1. The Democrats worry not-unreasonably that they won't be in the majority next year to take the next incremental step.
2. Interest groups clearly have a lot of power in the party, and they're excited and energized by big leaps forward, not incrementalism.
The problem is that 'moderates' (and Republicans) equate big and dramatic in their rhetoric. It works. People hear how big the onmibus bill is and conclude Democrats are forcing radical change.
I mean, I agree that there's some element of that dynamic, where someone just uses the topline cost of the bill as a bludgeon, but it's relatively easy to combat if you are in fact pushing incrementalist policies. Lots of ways to say, "Hey, we're doing business as usual plus this, this, and this, and that's all, and you support all of those things," *if that's actually what you're doing*.
"70% of Americans who don't pay close attention but generally trust bipartisan small steps over partisan big moves" I think this sums up the mood of the country perfectly. But 70 hardly counts cuz of deference to the 30% or disinterest in participating. Dems always want bigger and better yet seldom even demand credit for what they do pass. How anyone in their right mind can think that 'voting rights' is more important that Electoral College Reform right now in the United States is beyond explanation or relying on propaganda not facts.
Who thinks 'voting rights' is more important than Electoral College Reform? Voting rights is an ongoing battle that has to be fought and is fought with some success. Electoral College Reform is almost impossible to achieve due to defective constitutional design.
By "last summer" you must mean 2020. You're positing that Dems should have accepted the GOP's weak tea in advance of an election in which they expected to retake the White House and Senate, and burn through their party's political capital on the issue, all while conceding the pretty widely accepted red line on "qualified immunity?" That doesn't sound like a good bargain to me.
My point is that this is a 20/20 hindsight argument. At the time Scott's bill was on the table, Dems walked away because they thought they could get something better nine months later, without burning through moderates' votes on police reform. They tried and failed. It doesn't mean they were wrong to try in the first place.
This seems to be a major problem to me. Progressives are so convinced that Republicans won't do anything good, AND that they are just one election/presidential speech away from being able to accomplish everything they want.
You see this with people wanting Biden to threaten Manchin/Sinema with all kinds of things if they don't pass the legislation they want.
You saw this in the Democratic primary where candidates talked about all the stuff they would do that never had any chance of happening.
You see it with this police reform legislation where there was no reason not to take what the Republicans were offering and then if you could do more do it, but instead now they walked away with nothing. That failure means they were wrong because that failure was always going to occur.
You see it with the ECA reform where Democrats should take what they can get and if they can pass more later do that.
On police reform: again, they were faced with taking a bad deal, demoralizing the left wing and giving the moderates an excuse to walk away from the issue with a "win", OR waiting until after the general election to see what kind of margins they might have and going for something bigger. Furthermore, 1) the idea they should have taken the deal is predicated on believing Scott's bill could get Trump's signature and get through the House; and 2) Booker and Bass negotiated a new bill with Scott in 2021, and were close on most everything, including qualified immunity, until Scott backed out due to the opposition of the National Association of Sheriffs, which is basically the law enforcement arm of the militia movement.
It seems to me that you think Democrats should run on policies/priorities, but once elected they should cede control of their agenda to the GOP. Democrats have, for years, advocated for changing federal election laws to nationalize standards, strengthen the VRA, prevent GOP attempts at voter suppression, and end gerrymandering. They had a chance, albeit an outside chance, to do that this year. If they had decided, instead of pursuing their agenda, to drop everything and at the first hint of some bipartisan compromise on the ECA, that would be political malpractice. Its wrong, ethically and practically, to assume that you'll always lose and the opposition will always win. What you're describing isn't politics, it's Stockholm Syndrome.
The Democrats tried on the VRA, and it appears they failed. They continue to be open to pursue an ECA deal if they want, assuming it wasn't a disingenuously offered lure offered in bad faith in the first place.
Negotiating with the other party to pass bipartisan legislation so that you can accomplish something is Stockholm syndrome?
Again, it's not as if once you pass legislation you can't ever go back. But the assumption that you can't ends up causing you to cast each piece of legislation as do or die, instead of accepting incremental progress.
As an elderly life-long Democrat, my enthusiasm for "my" party continues to decline. It seems to me that the current dominant political thread of the party is destructive, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic, leading partisans to distrust and perhaps ultimately to reject the legitimacy of elections. I hope it can regain what I thought were its core values.
ok. One example: I strongly support equal opportunity, but strongly oppose contemporary Progressive concepts that replace this concept with "Equity," which I take to mean equality of outcome. Equity has become such a shibboleth (at least within the academic circles I dwell) that even raising questions such as whether it is wise to replace the goal of equal opportunity with that of equal outcome is dangerous, potentially leading to "cancellation" ranging from mere ostracism among a minority to real consequences ranging from doxing to getting fired. We have moved into a leftist neoMcCarthyism, in which even questioning doctrine is perceived as Evil. The disallowance of rational discussion itself leads to bizarre and pathological positions within Progressive Orthodoxy. "Equity" is one example; over the next few days I'll try to add a couple of others.
My guess is that this is a geographical thing. I'm a progressive in Kansas, and here we're just glad when people think equal opportunity is a good thing. I personally like the idea of equity, but I can't imagine myself or anyone in my area ostracizing anyone interested in debating equality vs equity.
As a recent graduate of a New England liberal arts college, I very much sympathize with this. "Equity" has become metonymy for "Some people deserve more respect than others" in academic circles, and it is extremely annoying and counterproductive and maybe even a little McCarthyist.
But I struggle to see any ways in which this (again, extremely annoying) niche cultural phenomenon is actually influencing Democrats' policymaking. On the other hand, it's extremely clear that anti-democratic and illiberal culture among conservatives is influencing Republican policymaking, which is why I have such a problem with characterizing the Democrats as the anti-democratic and illiberal ones.
I’m afraid you’re mistaken if you think this annoying silliness doesn’t impact policies, but I don’t want to argue about whether the democrats are more illiberal than the republicans. As a democrat commenting on a site dominated by progressives, my hope is to persuade some of my fellow Boring readers that the Democrats need to clean up their act.
Would you like to provide an example of a way that this has impacted Democrats' policy in a significant way (i.e., not some random city council earmarking an ultimately insignificant amount of pandemic for Black businesses or something like that)?
hmmm. I'm not enough of a policy wonk to do a proper job, but (to pick a single example) I was actually pleased by Betsy Vos's countermanding of the Obama-era Dept. of Education ruling against due process in the case of student claims of sexual assault or harassment. I had the notion that due process is a core element of liberal democracy.
1. Gender. I'm a biomedical researcher; my support comes from the National Institutes of Health (thank you, US taxpayers!). Some 25 years ago it became MANDATORY when submitting a grant proposal (even one studying the structure of a bacterial protein) to include a section in the proposal addressing "sex as a biological variable." This was a heavy-handed effort to increase our understanding of possible clinically-relevant differences between men and women. Since then, an intellectual push by progressive elites, largely unchallenged due to a combination of regrettable apathy and understandable fear, has continually pushed the gender envelope, such that now we see the replacement of the term "pregnant women" with "pregnant persons" in the biomedical literature.
2. Declining respect for democracy. (Note that I consider Republicans more culpable than Democrats, but IMHO no real catastrophe is likely unless the two partisan camps push each other further and further into illiberal madness.) In 2018, Stacey Abrams lost the gubernatorial election in Georgia by some 50,000 votes. She noted that her loss might have been related to her opponent's efforts to reduce the total number of voters, leading her to claim that the election was "illegitimate." So far as I know, no Democrat of national standing has ever publicly questioned the facts of her claim nor the tone of her rhetoric. Along with previous anti-democratic claims like the silly argument that Trump defeated Clinton because of Russian help, this helped to fuel the appalling misconduct of Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election. And now, rather than working with Republicans to fix obvious defects in the laws regulating presidential elections, the Democrats have chosen instead to fight for partisan reforms using rhetoric that inevitably further diminishes public confidence in elections.
Also interested in specific examples. The Democrats have a bad case of annoying rhetoric and poor strategy, but I have trouble seeing how they are anti-liberal or anti-democratic.
I'm an elderly Democrat too. Here are my examples:
1. The BBB, pork barrel for rich mothers;
2. Climate change hysteria, let's litter the landscape with solar panels providing unreliable electricity;
3. Vox;
4. The NY Times;
5. Voting rights hysteria (I've voted 60 years without any more inconvenience than a line); what country are these people in?
6. New York's firing Andrew Sullivan;
7. The criminalization of male/female relationships.
8. Picking dumb fights all over the world, with China and Russia most recently.
Richard's list is I'm sure different. But if you want to know why the Democratic party is sinking like a stone, take my list as that of the median voter and ex-Democrat. And remember, old people vote.
Not to be overly argumentative, but these all just sound like Fox News talking points to me combined with non-statements.
Fox News talking points: criminalizing male/female relationships (What?), BBB pork barrel (again, what?), climate change hysteria (which, given your followup, makes me assume you might just be Pro-NIMBYism).
Non-statements: Vox, NYT... what about them? You're angry at the Democrats because there's a liberal online news source in Vox?
Finally, I definitely don't know what you're talking about with China and Russia. Democrats didn't start the trade war with China. And they explicitly blocked the sanctions bill on Russia involving the Russia-German pipeline.
I've never watched Fox News, and have repeatedly criticized height restrictions on new development in my part of Brooklyn, which should be building 100-story buildings. My comment was about what the Democratic Party is getting wrong and why it's bleeding voters, and your comment is going to bleed another.
If you’ve never watched Fox News then I’m doubly curious why you think the democrats are trying to outlaw male/female relationships. I’ve never heard that sentiment expressed except by fearmongering conservatives.
And I’m sorry, but if your stance is that pushing back against what I see as false narratives will push people away from the party, then we’re in a Catch-22. Either the Dem party is awful and you should leave, or the members of the Dem party are awful for disagreeing with your assessment that the Dem party is awful, and again you should leave. That’s what I’m hearing from your reply.
I have no problem with argumentation; indeed this seems a useful place for argumentative discussion. My problems in that direction relate to silly ad-hominem attacks and empty rhetoric. I support (to quote Superman) Truth, Justice, and the American Way. uhhh well anyway, I'd like to reach a deeper understanding of truth, at least.
What I perceived as empty rhetoric was actually why I responded. I don't really have any problem with criticizing the Dem Party. Lord knows Matt does it often enough, and most times he does I agree. What frustrates me are attacks that don't appear to have any basis in reality or that are skewed through what looks to me like a conservative prism.
That was why I went through the full list of items above, because the things that actually apply to the Dem party, like criminalizing anything, don't appear to be actual things the Dem party is doing. And the other parts of the list, like hating Vox and NYT, aren't actually related to the Dem party at all. Vox doesn't control what Joe Biden or Congress does in any way, so why would Vox's existence affect your feelings toward Dems?
hmmm. For example: I support free speech and conscience. I support equal opportunity for all. I would like to see a reduced Geni with more equal incomes and wealth within our country than we now have. I support multinational organizations dedicated to greater international harmony and understanding. I am concerned about climate change. I am concerned with gross global inequities that lead to profound misery for much of the world's population. I would like to see humans reduce their ecological footprint.
I live in Kansas, so have zero familiarity with Dem stances on building height restrictions in New York. Does that issue break down into right vs left, or is it something that doesn't naturally fit in party lines?
Very reasonable question. I lack the time and energy to reply now, but will try to provide a list probably tomorrow. Indeed, as pointed out by E Blanco, much of what sets my teeth on edge is "annoying rhetoric," but yes, there are a variety of things that go far beyond that. A problem always is talking about "them," because groups are not monolithic, but I'll see what I can do.
I live in Virginia and the false belief that turnout would help the Democrats was unfortunately clearly overturned when the g o p took back the state house and the house in Richmond. The reality for Democrats is that they made it easier for people to vote and they voted for the Republicans instead of them. I don't know how long it will take for Democrats to finally understand that demographics is not destiny. But that people vote for who they identify with and based on emotional connection.
In addition, they seemed to run on fear of Trump, when Trump wasn't President and the GOP specifically didn't hold a primary so that they could keep out the "Trumpier" candidate. Democrats in VA did a lot of popular things in the the previous 2-4 years. Yet, almost every Democratic ad that I saw was about Trump. Democrats really need to stop running ads for their base.
I think Republican attitudes on voter accessibility are more complex than Matt suggests, which might make bipartisan agreement harder to reach.
GOP elites may well believe, mistakenly, that making it harder for working-class people to vote benefits their party on net. So if you provide them with evidence disproving that claim, you may be able to persuade them that voting ought to be made easier.
But rank-and-file GOP voters see any steps in that direction as facilitating "voter fraud", and I don't see how you can disabuse them of that belief without tackling the underlying delusion that voter fraud is a real problem. Republican elites have good reason *not* to challenge the delusions of their ordinary supporters, on this issue as well as others.
It's not even just rank-and-file GOP voters. People in general seem to have a concern about voter fraud that far exceeds the reality based how easy they think it would be to cast a fraudulent vote. It's only very informed liberals that seem to be aware of how rare it actually is.
TBH I think more election security theater is inevitable, and it should be an area Ds are willing to compromise on.
I never bought into claims about widespread voter fraud at any point in my life, but working as an election judge during the 2020 election had the dual effect of a) showing me just how hard it would be to enact large-scale fraud, and b) giving me the experience to explain to more conspiracy-minded folk how hard it would be at the nuts-and-bolts level.
It's not that one person couldn't cast a fraudulent vote if they were so inclined and motivated, but the ability to coordinate massive fraud on a level enough to impact an election (AND GET AWAY WITH IT, TO BOOT) boggles the mind.
Usually when I call upon my personal experience to explain to people how unlikely large-scale voter fraud is, they seem to walk away at least a little bit moved off the idea, but I don't know how you translate that to a much larger population.
They oversee polling places and ensure that the rules are being followed. I had to deal with one this year because there was a paperwork error where I had some documentation saying that I'd changed my registration to my new county in time and some that said I didn't, so he had to go over the state's voting rules to determine if there was language about my eligibility. In the end, he called the county (which had a superior court judge on a hotline for these questions) to make an official ruling
My solution would be to issue everyone with a free, mandatory passport at age 17, with free mandatory renewal every 10 years. I can see this solving some other problems besides voter ID.
Virtually every other wealthy democracy also does something similar.
It’s not as if the federal government doesn’t already know of everyone’s existence and most of the details you describe. Hell, my tax return has 100% of the information that appears on my wife’s parents’ Hukou.
What is done with the data is what matters, not the fact that it exists.
I think this is one of those things where statistics aren’t intuitive. If someone can see that it’s clearly possible to cast one fake ballot, then “clearly, it must be possible to fake the whole thing.”
If we did National ID and just made it where you get one ballot per scanned ID, I think most people would feel convinced the election was “secure.” But in the same way that Republicans tend to panic about the harm of easy voting, many on the left feel that ID is oppressive, even though nearly every other liberal democracy uses national ID.
So this is probably one of those things that has devolved into a religious schism and practical solutions won’t help.
What can be done mechanically about an illusion of voter fraud in the GOP voter base though? Even if we audited every election down to the last ballot it wouldn’t satiate that conspiracy theory.
I think it’s very important that the GOP voter base trust this process once again. But the easiest way to secure that would be for the Dems to strike a deal with whoever gets the torch from Trump to dial up a rhetoric of trusting the election process. It might come in exchange with similar rhetorical dial backs from the progressive activist wings.
"Even if we audited every election down to the last ballot it wouldn’t satiate that conspiracy theory"
Audits and voting security laws, even if they're theater, do have some impact though. I think it's a trap or a fallacy to say "nothing we do we'll change anyone's mind".
I don’t want to say “nothing”, but nothing practical would do it.
The only thing I can think of is to require all adult citizens to man the polls once a decade.
Having seen how many layers of security are involved, how many cross-checks from discrete actors on both sides of the aisle, even in a 93-6 Biden precinct in Philadelphia… I have no doubt that fraud at any scale above the individual is completely impossible.
There is one solution, but I'm not sure it's a good one. Ending the secret ballot system would probably end most of the voter conspiracies. There would obviously still be diehard holdouts, but if you could track every vote back to a named individual, it's hard to fantasize about stuffed ballots or undocumented immigrants voting. Pair that with a PKI signature system for non-repudiation while you're at it and you have a system where fraud is essentially impossible.
Of course, this increases the risk that individual voters, especially ones with voting habits dissimilar from their neighbors, receive harassment significantly. In the current social media environment, I don't think it's viable. Oh, and vote buying becomes a real concern again too. Not great.
Your idea reminds me of a thought experiment I envisioned awhile ago, where political parties are allowed to openly pay voters money to vote for them.
Once one party offers such an incentive, the other party would feel compelled to match them, and the two incentives would, more or less, cancel each other out. The combined effect essentially amounts to the government cutting every voter who votes a check, regardless of who they voted for, funded by progressive taxation on the rich (since it's the rich that make the campaign donations that would ultimately pay for this). And, unlike the existing progressive taxes, billionaires would actually pay it, to avoid having their side fall behind.
All that said, there are plenty of reasons why public voting records would be a bad idea. In particular, I am concerned about the potential for extremists to use threats of physical violence to force people into voting a certain way, and punish those that vote against them. If done at a wide enough scale, it could lead to a civil war. Given the country's rising political tensions, the mere creation of a way to reliably tell who voted for whom feels way to risky.
Yeah. But this could easily help with people being more accepting of their neighbors having different beliefs.
Weren’t the highest voter turnouts of our nation’s history when only men voted and they did it publicly at the local community center while getting bombed? Not saying go back to that but I’m saying this public “With the 400 thousandth vote of the 2024 election Earl from down the block selects ____” could have merits.
Idk. Maybe start with primaries so it’s at least a bro out fest that everyone loves.
My grand theory is that on matters of governance the Progressives (1st edition thereof) got almost everything wrong.
The boozing, corruption, backroom deals, and revelry were the grease that lets the wheels turn, not a pollutant.
On social and economic matters they were 90% right and arguably are responsible for having built the modern world, but on governance everything they wanted turns out to have been dead wrong.
And, of course, conservative state legislatures often create rules that make this kind of thing more likely. Are more dems likely to vote ahead of time? Then those votes get counted last, etc.
As a strong democrat, the more I see of their united governance this time around the less enthusiastic I am about the future of the party. I feel like its a party run by incompetent people which is incredibly frustrating to watch from the outside. I hate the term "sister soulja moment" but Biden really needs to tell the progressive wing of the party to kick rocks or else the rest of his presidency will be a miserable slog
I think that’s harsh to progressives. It’s really the centrists that have been killing the Biden agenda, no? The AOCs of the world have been surprisingly cooperative in getting Biden stuff passed. We just happen to live in a Senate without Sara Gideon or Cal Cunningham.
I do agree that the Democrats are often just incompetent and disorganized, but that’s part of being an intellectually diverse, big-tent party I suppose.
There are two different forms of obstruction going on, though:
The "centrists" are blocking programs from going forward, while the Left continues to jack up the rhetoric and the expectations (and the demands). Both of these tactics make it impossible for Biden to come across as a success, because the Centrists don't want to pass what the Left wants, and the Left won't "stoop" to agreeing to whatever the Centrists will allow.
Sure, if the Centrists would just agree to the Left's agenda, we'd be fine, but it goes both ways: if the Left would just recognize what limits exist, and take the half loaf, Biden could be seen as a hero. They're destroying Biden out of their arrogance and vanity.
It doesn't matter who is "right" or "wrong" in this case - what matters is getting a win out of everyone's position. The Democratic Party is in full meltdown mode because of the blaming and fingerpointing that your question seems to bear out.
You understand the problem with this theory is that the different groups are rewarded differently, right? Progressive legislators who live in progressive districts are rewarded by pushing as hard as they can against the Overton window. And conservative Dems who operate out of conservative districts are rewarded for seeming to fight against their "too liberal" counterparts.
Personally, I think this is mainly a result of having one party interested in governing while the opposing party is primarily interested in grievance politics. The Democrats SHOULD be acting more like the progressives, while the Republicans should be acting like the conservative Democrats, but because of various rewards systems (particularly those resulting from the filibuster), they're better off simply being the party of No as much as they can.
Bouncing on some of the comments I saw, I don't think it's just about Progressives vs. Centrists. I think it's establishment vs. Twitter.
The establishment really seems scared to be called bad names on Twitter. Am I correct here? Because, if I am, I can't quite comprehend it. Don't they know Twitter is at best a few tens of thousand of people i.e. nothing in the scope of the US population?
Just do the right fucking thing and if the Twitter mob doesn't like it and think you're just an agent of the white supremacy on par with Hitler for compromising either with the Centrists or with the Republicans on some key topics then screw them. And don't be afraid of being seen telling them to go screw themselves. Trump proved that voters aren't allergic to displays of backbone in pursuit of something your electors generally like (or will trust you on).
The problem is that the establishment is on Twitter and they are subject to the availability heuristic too. The 10,000 people on Twitter look like a vast majority when you spend your life on Twitter yourself.
So... yeah. But, like, are we meant to believe that US congresspeople are so uneducated and stupid (esp. on the D side) that they wouldn't know about the availability heuristic and so spineless/headless as to being unable to counteract it?
I mean, it's fairly easy for me. I barely use Twitter and my feed doesn't seem to have many people involved in pile-ups or controversies. And if they do get in hot water (Kevin Drum or Freddie deBoer sometimes do), I don't have the time to follow...
Still, I don't think it's that hard... Hence why I find the whole thing so surprising.
All of the journalists and hill staffers and campaign workers and advocacy groups live on Twitter though, so Twitter ends up playing a very outsized role in politics.
What gets said on Twitter gets amplified, though, so it doesn't stay there. Those 10k people are the "taste makers" for millions of people in politics and journalism.
The best counter to this was Biden and the Hyde amendment. Something he was in support of his entire political career, but had to abandon due to his staff revolting on the issue. You can try to ignore twitter views, but if your peers and staff care about the views expressed there then you will end up caring as well.
The issue is that the Twitter mob *can be* a very active force in primaries, and the left-of-center interest/issue groups all live on twitter, and the staffers and campaign workers for a lot of elected Democrats live on Twitter.
I like to say/think/remember that "Twitter is not real life", but in the context of politics Twitter is a larger part of real life than it "should" be.
It seems like a common theme in M.Y.’s posts is pragmatism grounded in data. But does Congress care about pragmatism grounded in data? In the scarce attention world it seems only ideologues run and get elected, so my expectation would be that pragmatism will only decline further.
Matthew, what if anything do you think can or should actually be done to depolarize and generally “turn down the temperature?”
I think the problem is that “implementing effective legislation” and “winning elections” are goals that sadly do not always align and are sometimes at odds- the politicians seem to only care about the latter, while MY only cares about the latter as a means to achieve the former.
I would imagine he views part of his job as a journalist to steer public opinion toward pragmatism, and hope that constituencies start pushing representatives for pragmatism as a result.
Matt did an interview on his Weeds podcast that can partly answer this. At least, I think it was Weeds. Might be mixing up with another.
Anyway, a major way to turn down the temperature is... to get rid of the filibuster. In areas where that's happened, senators have been far more likely to vote in a bipartisan way. Centrist Supreme Court picks or other presidential nominations get far more votes than almost any politically interesting legislation.
Extending that idea to legislation, we'd be far more likely to see 2-8 republicans sign on to important legislation if they were centrists and saw the legislation as benefiting their states. The minority party would also likely be more interested in participating in the writing of legislation, figuring that if only 51 votes were needed, they could get more centrist policy at the expense of the extreme left or right of the two parties.
edit: And of course, to add to that, we'd get better, smaller bills, rather than these huge trillion dollar monstrosities. Biden could have a roads bill, and a family bill, and 4 or 5 different voting bills that cover different areas of voting issues. And all of them might get a different selection of 51 votes.
Not Matt but I worry a lot about the same issue. A couple points from my view.
1) There are a few potential points of intervention that seem possible, generally to do with structural reforms that reduce incentives for partisan culture warring. Ranked choice or approval voting, elimination or restructuring of primaries, nonpartisan redistricting boards, that kind of thing. All getting some traction in at least some states and localities. Promote those!
2) But also, even if we can't *make* the culture war simmer down, it's important to present an alternative view of the appropriate goals and processes of government. Times change and eventually the public will get tired of the culture war show and develop an appetite for constructive governance again. Stand ready to meet that opportunity with clear plans and recommendations.
“The way forward here is to turn the temperature *way* down and have some people sit in a quiet room with experts and work out a list of things that everyone can agree [on]” is The Truth for pretty much everything.
Yeah “experts” was the only part of that quote that left me with a little heartburn. It would be nice to use “unbiased sources of information” instead but they don’t really exist 🤷🏻♀️
I honestly have no idea what Dem leadership has been doing lately. They seem to be delighting in making members walk the plank just to show donors/activists/extremely online people that they "care".
The debt limit process was a debacle. They knew they were never getting Republican votes for a clean increase and instead made everyone vote multiple times to increase it, seemingly just so Republicans can run ads decrying that "Bob voted 15 times to raise the debt ceiling. Vote Republican and restore fiscal sanity." Then once they got the workaround rather than extend it out past Biden's first term, they just did it to get past the midterms. So they ensured they'll do the whole song and dance again only probably from they minority.
I have no idea what they hope to accomplish by forcing a vote on the filibuster other than pissing off the only Dem who is going to win in WV for the foreseeable future. I suspect there are also other Dems that don't want to get rid of the filibuster and have been happy to let Manchin and Sinema take the heat for them and don't want to have to go on the record.
But mostly if you are going to force a vote on the filibuster it needed to be immediately after they got the majority not over halfway through the term when they are going to lose the majority in a few months. At least then there would have been some upside.
I think Dems are basically in a bad spot where all the hill staffers and campaign people and advocacy groups are getting angry and basically preparing to turn on them. The only way to deal with that is maybe to make a very public showing of trying to fulfill their requests (a big compliant that certain people like to make is that Dems don't "fight" hard enough").
So doing all this bizarre dramatic stuff is certainly going to piss off Manchin, but it might also be staving off a disastrous midterm where the right, the center, *and* the left decide they want change.
Is there really much evidence though that huge numbers of people are going to “turn” on Democrats this midterm? I mean there’s always an amount of non participation and switching to the other party which is why the President’s party does poorly. I just don’t think there are signs that it’s out of the ordinary at this time.
I also don’t see how making a big show about something you know is going to fail is helpful for keeping people fired up. It’s far more likely to make them more discouraged and resentful than letting it die in peace.
Finally, if these people really believe that it’ll be the end of democracy if Democrats don’t pass this bill, I find the logic that then they are going up sit out the next election to ensure Republicans come to power to be more than a bit of a stretch.
"I find the logic that then they are going up sit out the next election to ensure Republicans come to power to be more than a bit of a stretch"
I never said that those people were going to be logical.
And having the bill die in peace might in fact be what those groups would actually prefer, but they've all convinced themselves either that bullying Manchin will work or that they want to see the Dems go down swinging fighting for the bills.
I think an underrated aspect of the “trap” is that a bipartisan compromise on “saving democracy” would imply that not all Republicans are out to destroy it.
Based on Biden’s recent speech that seems to be the primary (only?) Democratic messaging point headed into 2022. Bad to muddy the waters.
Which is sad because it's a dumb strategy. Voters have moved on from Trump's antics and January 6th. I really don't think the median voter cares that much, and concerns over "dangers to democracy" are most salient to staunch partisans, who of course blame the other side. Turning down the temperature was a big part of Biden's pitch, and while it won't solve all of democracy problems, the ECA is a good start. I'd love the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill and anti-gerrymamdering stuff to come up, but I'd certainly take the ECA over ineffectual flailing that's doomed to fail and will only appeal to a base that's already mostly bought in to Democratic fears.
Yeah, I’m not sure how ECA reform is a “trap” when it’s not like any other voting reform is really on the table at this point. Though, I suppose if we don’t reform the ECA, VP Harris can throw out the electoral ballots in 2024 and declare Biden president again! Many reputable lawyers, such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, agree!
I think the Democrats shouldn't mind if their Voting Rights stuff does not pass. It gives them an easy sour grapes excuse for the future to explain why they lose an election and why the winner is illegitimate. See Stacy Abrams for an example.
The reason to support measures that at least Republicans THINK will increase turnout is to get to the point closer to the point) where campaign efforts to increase turnout of "your" party's ("white" or "non-white" identity" voters is useless. (Everyone turnout-able is already turned out). We ought to striving for campaigns in which Democrats are trying to persuade voters that a child tax credit, or higher immigration, or taxing the rich to reduce deficits, or investing in zero CO2 emitting energy production is a good idea and Republicans are trying to persuade people of the opposite.
We ought to want this not only because we think that's a better way to get to our preferred outcomes, but also it's harder to get mad at each other over substance than over symbolic issues like CRT, "replacement," or supposed hostility to Christianity.
Marc actually wins a lot of lawsuits. I think the main issue is that he isn't necessarily an expert on anything outside of that, so he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about re: the ECA
He actually wins lots of lawsuits, though the stats were skewed by beating the likes of Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. He's a very good lawyer. He's a terrible communicator and political strategist. Regarding his recent comments, I wish he'd understand that sometimes the best course of action is to STFU. Yeah, it's a "trap."
Marc Elias is a very fine lawyer, but he also was a leading proponent of taking control of redistricting away from elected officials and giving it to the likes of Sam Alito. So he's not infallible.
The Court could have said, yes, the Constitution does prohibit the party preferences of voters to be taken into account when drawing district lines. That would be consistent with a constitutional antigerrymandering test that is party-agnostic, such as requiring that districts be drawn to be as compact as possible and to cross as few existing local political boundaries as possible (ie, a district that could fit entirely within one city or county may not snake across 6 or 7). But that's not what Elias and the Democratic litigants wanted. They wanted the court to adopt a test that expressly allows judges to put their thumb on the scale in favor of one political party or the other - and for judicial decisions about redistricting to be constitutional decisions that can only be reversed by amending the Constitution.
This post is a bit out of date now. There are new boundaries coming in for the next election, and they will favour the Conservatives (compared to the 2019 result) as the areas with fewer seats because lower populations are disproportionately in Labour-voting areas (especially the South Wales valleys).
It's not really a live issue (maybe surprisingly, as mayoral elections (up until now, they're now changing back to FPTP) and elections to the devolved assemblies are conducted under different systems. But English voters pay essentially 0 attention to anything happening in the devolved assemblies).
Agree about the conflict of interest. But turning it over to unelected judges whose decisions are final constitutional pronouncements isn't the answer. At least a plan to have the map drawn by a committee is ultimately still under the control of the elected officials that establish it and instructs it how the proceeds.
Manchin, Sinema, Romney, Collins, Murkowski, etc. generally seem unwilling (to various degrees) to go along with things on grounds of scope (how big) rather than substance (the thing itself). An incrementalistic approach could plausibly get broader support and get us to where progressives think we need to go anyway, but with less social tension and more public legitimacy with the ~70% of Americans who don't pay close attention but generally trust bipartisan small steps over partisan big moves.
Plus if the alternative is getting *nothing* done, why don't progressives just go for the low hanging fruit?
Last summer the Democrats filibustered Tim Scott's police reform bill despite an open amendment process being on the table (Tim Scott and McConnell offered 20 amendments I think?) because the Democrats didn't think it was enough and thought they could get more done in a few months. Now the public energy behind police reform is gone and Republicans are being more wary of reforms to policing. I'd much rather have some kind of weak thing that the GOP was pushing then than a perpetuation of the status quo.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was preceded by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and Civil Rights Act of 1960.
Yes, if you are a 'moderate' you oppose big dramatic bills. Moderates like their change incremental. The problem is that the filibuster forces omnibus bills, because a bunch of little bills each have to get 60 votes, but a single big bill can be structured to pass with 50 votes.
Getting rid of the filibuster would allow up/down votes on a bunch of smaller bills, which the 'moderates' ostensibly prefer, but it is the 'moderates' who hang on to the filibuster.
It is frustrating. They hate the omnibus bills because they are too big, and they stand in the way of the solution.
I think you're creating a false dilemma. The reconciliation forces an omnibus bill, not a dramatic bill. You could make incremental headway on five different fronts each year with one reconciliation bill, if you were so inclined.
The force that drives the desire to quantum rather than incremental bills is some combination of:
1. The Democrats worry not-unreasonably that they won't be in the majority next year to take the next incremental step.
2. Interest groups clearly have a lot of power in the party, and they're excited and energized by big leaps forward, not incrementalism.
The problem is that 'moderates' (and Republicans) equate big and dramatic in their rhetoric. It works. People hear how big the onmibus bill is and conclude Democrats are forcing radical change.
I mean, I agree that there's some element of that dynamic, where someone just uses the topline cost of the bill as a bludgeon, but it's relatively easy to combat if you are in fact pushing incrementalist policies. Lots of ways to say, "Hey, we're doing business as usual plus this, this, and this, and that's all, and you support all of those things," *if that's actually what you're doing*.
"70% of Americans who don't pay close attention but generally trust bipartisan small steps over partisan big moves" I think this sums up the mood of the country perfectly. But 70 hardly counts cuz of deference to the 30% or disinterest in participating. Dems always want bigger and better yet seldom even demand credit for what they do pass. How anyone in their right mind can think that 'voting rights' is more important that Electoral College Reform right now in the United States is beyond explanation or relying on propaganda not facts.
Who thinks 'voting rights' is more important than Electoral College Reform? Voting rights is an ongoing battle that has to be fought and is fought with some success. Electoral College Reform is almost impossible to achieve due to defective constitutional design.
OOPs! I meant Electoral Count reform...you're right about College reform, in another life
Jon Chait has a good post on this at nymag: "Why Biden’s Losing Fight for Voting Rights Was Still the Best Plan"
By "last summer" you must mean 2020. You're positing that Dems should have accepted the GOP's weak tea in advance of an election in which they expected to retake the White House and Senate, and burn through their party's political capital on the issue, all while conceding the pretty widely accepted red line on "qualified immunity?" That doesn't sound like a good bargain to me.
If they had accepted what the Scott's bill, why would they have been unable to come back and add to it?
My point is that this is a 20/20 hindsight argument. At the time Scott's bill was on the table, Dems walked away because they thought they could get something better nine months later, without burning through moderates' votes on police reform. They tried and failed. It doesn't mean they were wrong to try in the first place.
This seems to be a major problem to me. Progressives are so convinced that Republicans won't do anything good, AND that they are just one election/presidential speech away from being able to accomplish everything they want.
You see this with people wanting Biden to threaten Manchin/Sinema with all kinds of things if they don't pass the legislation they want.
You saw this in the Democratic primary where candidates talked about all the stuff they would do that never had any chance of happening.
You see it with this police reform legislation where there was no reason not to take what the Republicans were offering and then if you could do more do it, but instead now they walked away with nothing. That failure means they were wrong because that failure was always going to occur.
You see it with the ECA reform where Democrats should take what they can get and if they can pass more later do that.
On police reform: again, they were faced with taking a bad deal, demoralizing the left wing and giving the moderates an excuse to walk away from the issue with a "win", OR waiting until after the general election to see what kind of margins they might have and going for something bigger. Furthermore, 1) the idea they should have taken the deal is predicated on believing Scott's bill could get Trump's signature and get through the House; and 2) Booker and Bass negotiated a new bill with Scott in 2021, and were close on most everything, including qualified immunity, until Scott backed out due to the opposition of the National Association of Sheriffs, which is basically the law enforcement arm of the militia movement.
It seems to me that you think Democrats should run on policies/priorities, but once elected they should cede control of their agenda to the GOP. Democrats have, for years, advocated for changing federal election laws to nationalize standards, strengthen the VRA, prevent GOP attempts at voter suppression, and end gerrymandering. They had a chance, albeit an outside chance, to do that this year. If they had decided, instead of pursuing their agenda, to drop everything and at the first hint of some bipartisan compromise on the ECA, that would be political malpractice. Its wrong, ethically and practically, to assume that you'll always lose and the opposition will always win. What you're describing isn't politics, it's Stockholm Syndrome.
The Democrats tried on the VRA, and it appears they failed. They continue to be open to pursue an ECA deal if they want, assuming it wasn't a disingenuously offered lure offered in bad faith in the first place.
Negotiating with the other party to pass bipartisan legislation so that you can accomplish something is Stockholm syndrome?
Again, it's not as if once you pass legislation you can't ever go back. But the assumption that you can't ends up causing you to cast each piece of legislation as do or die, instead of accepting incremental progress.
ACA is almost as bad as SSI. All those old ladies wouldn't starve. They could just be standing in line at soup kitchens. \s
As an elderly life-long Democrat, my enthusiasm for "my" party continues to decline. It seems to me that the current dominant political thread of the party is destructive, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic, leading partisans to distrust and perhaps ultimately to reject the legitimacy of elections. I hope it can regain what I thought were its core values.
ok. One example: I strongly support equal opportunity, but strongly oppose contemporary Progressive concepts that replace this concept with "Equity," which I take to mean equality of outcome. Equity has become such a shibboleth (at least within the academic circles I dwell) that even raising questions such as whether it is wise to replace the goal of equal opportunity with that of equal outcome is dangerous, potentially leading to "cancellation" ranging from mere ostracism among a minority to real consequences ranging from doxing to getting fired. We have moved into a leftist neoMcCarthyism, in which even questioning doctrine is perceived as Evil. The disallowance of rational discussion itself leads to bizarre and pathological positions within Progressive Orthodoxy. "Equity" is one example; over the next few days I'll try to add a couple of others.
My guess is that this is a geographical thing. I'm a progressive in Kansas, and here we're just glad when people think equal opportunity is a good thing. I personally like the idea of equity, but I can't imagine myself or anyone in my area ostracizing anyone interested in debating equality vs equity.
As a recent graduate of a New England liberal arts college, I very much sympathize with this. "Equity" has become metonymy for "Some people deserve more respect than others" in academic circles, and it is extremely annoying and counterproductive and maybe even a little McCarthyist.
But I struggle to see any ways in which this (again, extremely annoying) niche cultural phenomenon is actually influencing Democrats' policymaking. On the other hand, it's extremely clear that anti-democratic and illiberal culture among conservatives is influencing Republican policymaking, which is why I have such a problem with characterizing the Democrats as the anti-democratic and illiberal ones.
I’m afraid you’re mistaken if you think this annoying silliness doesn’t impact policies, but I don’t want to argue about whether the democrats are more illiberal than the republicans. As a democrat commenting on a site dominated by progressives, my hope is to persuade some of my fellow Boring readers that the Democrats need to clean up their act.
Would you like to provide an example of a way that this has impacted Democrats' policy in a significant way (i.e., not some random city council earmarking an ultimately insignificant amount of pandemic for Black businesses or something like that)?
hmmm. I'm not enough of a policy wonk to do a proper job, but (to pick a single example) I was actually pleased by Betsy Vos's countermanding of the Obama-era Dept. of Education ruling against due process in the case of student claims of sexual assault or harassment. I had the notion that due process is a core element of liberal democracy.
Here are two more examples:
1. Gender. I'm a biomedical researcher; my support comes from the National Institutes of Health (thank you, US taxpayers!). Some 25 years ago it became MANDATORY when submitting a grant proposal (even one studying the structure of a bacterial protein) to include a section in the proposal addressing "sex as a biological variable." This was a heavy-handed effort to increase our understanding of possible clinically-relevant differences between men and women. Since then, an intellectual push by progressive elites, largely unchallenged due to a combination of regrettable apathy and understandable fear, has continually pushed the gender envelope, such that now we see the replacement of the term "pregnant women" with "pregnant persons" in the biomedical literature.
2. Declining respect for democracy. (Note that I consider Republicans more culpable than Democrats, but IMHO no real catastrophe is likely unless the two partisan camps push each other further and further into illiberal madness.) In 2018, Stacey Abrams lost the gubernatorial election in Georgia by some 50,000 votes. She noted that her loss might have been related to her opponent's efforts to reduce the total number of voters, leading her to claim that the election was "illegitimate." So far as I know, no Democrat of national standing has ever publicly questioned the facts of her claim nor the tone of her rhetoric. Along with previous anti-democratic claims like the silly argument that Trump defeated Clinton because of Russian help, this helped to fuel the appalling misconduct of Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election. And now, rather than working with Republicans to fix obvious defects in the laws regulating presidential elections, the Democrats have chosen instead to fight for partisan reforms using rhetoric that inevitably further diminishes public confidence in elections.
Also interested in specific examples. The Democrats have a bad case of annoying rhetoric and poor strategy, but I have trouble seeing how they are anti-liberal or anti-democratic.
I'm an elderly Democrat too. Here are my examples:
1. The BBB, pork barrel for rich mothers;
2. Climate change hysteria, let's litter the landscape with solar panels providing unreliable electricity;
3. Vox;
4. The NY Times;
5. Voting rights hysteria (I've voted 60 years without any more inconvenience than a line); what country are these people in?
6. New York's firing Andrew Sullivan;
7. The criminalization of male/female relationships.
8. Picking dumb fights all over the world, with China and Russia most recently.
Richard's list is I'm sure different. But if you want to know why the Democratic party is sinking like a stone, take my list as that of the median voter and ex-Democrat. And remember, old people vote.
Not to be overly argumentative, but these all just sound like Fox News talking points to me combined with non-statements.
Fox News talking points: criminalizing male/female relationships (What?), BBB pork barrel (again, what?), climate change hysteria (which, given your followup, makes me assume you might just be Pro-NIMBYism).
Non-statements: Vox, NYT... what about them? You're angry at the Democrats because there's a liberal online news source in Vox?
Finally, I definitely don't know what you're talking about with China and Russia. Democrats didn't start the trade war with China. And they explicitly blocked the sanctions bill on Russia involving the Russia-German pipeline.
I've never watched Fox News, and have repeatedly criticized height restrictions on new development in my part of Brooklyn, which should be building 100-story buildings. My comment was about what the Democratic Party is getting wrong and why it's bleeding voters, and your comment is going to bleed another.
If you’ve never watched Fox News then I’m doubly curious why you think the democrats are trying to outlaw male/female relationships. I’ve never heard that sentiment expressed except by fearmongering conservatives.
And I’m sorry, but if your stance is that pushing back against what I see as false narratives will push people away from the party, then we’re in a Catch-22. Either the Dem party is awful and you should leave, or the members of the Dem party are awful for disagreeing with your assessment that the Dem party is awful, and again you should leave. That’s what I’m hearing from your reply.
I have no problem with argumentation; indeed this seems a useful place for argumentative discussion. My problems in that direction relate to silly ad-hominem attacks and empty rhetoric. I support (to quote Superman) Truth, Justice, and the American Way. uhhh well anyway, I'd like to reach a deeper understanding of truth, at least.
What I perceived as empty rhetoric was actually why I responded. I don't really have any problem with criticizing the Dem Party. Lord knows Matt does it often enough, and most times he does I agree. What frustrates me are attacks that don't appear to have any basis in reality or that are skewed through what looks to me like a conservative prism.
That was why I went through the full list of items above, because the things that actually apply to the Dem party, like criminalizing anything, don't appear to be actual things the Dem party is doing. And the other parts of the list, like hating Vox and NYT, aren't actually related to the Dem party at all. Vox doesn't control what Joe Biden or Congress does in any way, so why would Vox's existence affect your feelings toward Dems?
What exactly are the issues that make you consider yourself a Democrat?
hmmm. For example: I support free speech and conscience. I support equal opportunity for all. I would like to see a reduced Geni with more equal incomes and wealth within our country than we now have. I support multinational organizations dedicated to greater international harmony and understanding. I am concerned about climate change. I am concerned with gross global inequities that lead to profound misery for much of the world's population. I would like to see humans reduce their ecological footprint.
At this point almost nothing. I would have once said inequality and tax policy. But these don’t seem important to today’s Democrats.
I live in Kansas, so have zero familiarity with Dem stances on building height restrictions in New York. Does that issue break down into right vs left, or is it something that doesn't naturally fit in party lines?
Mine is different, but related.
Very reasonable question. I lack the time and energy to reply now, but will try to provide a list probably tomorrow. Indeed, as pointed out by E Blanco, much of what sets my teeth on edge is "annoying rhetoric," but yes, there are a variety of things that go far beyond that. A problem always is talking about "them," because groups are not monolithic, but I'll see what I can do.
I live in Virginia and the false belief that turnout would help the Democrats was unfortunately clearly overturned when the g o p took back the state house and the house in Richmond. The reality for Democrats is that they made it easier for people to vote and they voted for the Republicans instead of them. I don't know how long it will take for Democrats to finally understand that demographics is not destiny. But that people vote for who they identify with and based on emotional connection.
In addition, they seemed to run on fear of Trump, when Trump wasn't President and the GOP specifically didn't hold a primary so that they could keep out the "Trumpier" candidate. Democrats in VA did a lot of popular things in the the previous 2-4 years. Yet, almost every Democratic ad that I saw was about Trump. Democrats really need to stop running ads for their base.
I think Republican attitudes on voter accessibility are more complex than Matt suggests, which might make bipartisan agreement harder to reach.
GOP elites may well believe, mistakenly, that making it harder for working-class people to vote benefits their party on net. So if you provide them with evidence disproving that claim, you may be able to persuade them that voting ought to be made easier.
But rank-and-file GOP voters see any steps in that direction as facilitating "voter fraud", and I don't see how you can disabuse them of that belief without tackling the underlying delusion that voter fraud is a real problem. Republican elites have good reason *not* to challenge the delusions of their ordinary supporters, on this issue as well as others.
It's not even just rank-and-file GOP voters. People in general seem to have a concern about voter fraud that far exceeds the reality based how easy they think it would be to cast a fraudulent vote. It's only very informed liberals that seem to be aware of how rare it actually is.
TBH I think more election security theater is inevitable, and it should be an area Ds are willing to compromise on.
I never bought into claims about widespread voter fraud at any point in my life, but working as an election judge during the 2020 election had the dual effect of a) showing me just how hard it would be to enact large-scale fraud, and b) giving me the experience to explain to more conspiracy-minded folk how hard it would be at the nuts-and-bolts level.
It's not that one person couldn't cast a fraudulent vote if they were so inclined and motivated, but the ability to coordinate massive fraud on a level enough to impact an election (AND GET AWAY WITH IT, TO BOOT) boggles the mind.
Usually when I call upon my personal experience to explain to people how unlikely large-scale voter fraud is, they seem to walk away at least a little bit moved off the idea, but I don't know how you translate that to a much larger population.
I'm curious what an election judge is? Do you mean, a regular judge who...hears voter fraud cases?
They oversee polling places and ensure that the rules are being followed. I had to deal with one this year because there was a paperwork error where I had some documentation saying that I'd changed my registration to my new county in time and some that said I didn't, so he had to go over the state's voting rules to determine if there was language about my eligibility. In the end, he called the county (which had a superior court judge on a hotline for these questions) to make an official ruling
My solution would be to issue everyone with a free, mandatory passport at age 17, with free mandatory renewal every 10 years. I can see this solving some other problems besides voter ID.
And so?
Virtually every other wealthy democracy also does something similar.
It’s not as if the federal government doesn’t already know of everyone’s existence and most of the details you describe. Hell, my tax return has 100% of the information that appears on my wife’s parents’ Hukou.
What is done with the data is what matters, not the fact that it exists.
I didn't actually read his reply as a condemnation. It seemed basically factual.
It’s not, read his other comments.
I think this is one of those things where statistics aren’t intuitive. If someone can see that it’s clearly possible to cast one fake ballot, then “clearly, it must be possible to fake the whole thing.”
If we did National ID and just made it where you get one ballot per scanned ID, I think most people would feel convinced the election was “secure.” But in the same way that Republicans tend to panic about the harm of easy voting, many on the left feel that ID is oppressive, even though nearly every other liberal democracy uses national ID.
So this is probably one of those things that has devolved into a religious schism and practical solutions won’t help.
I think national ID is opposed in a bipartisan way, not just by the left.
What can be done mechanically about an illusion of voter fraud in the GOP voter base though? Even if we audited every election down to the last ballot it wouldn’t satiate that conspiracy theory.
I think it’s very important that the GOP voter base trust this process once again. But the easiest way to secure that would be for the Dems to strike a deal with whoever gets the torch from Trump to dial up a rhetoric of trusting the election process. It might come in exchange with similar rhetorical dial backs from the progressive activist wings.
"Even if we audited every election down to the last ballot it wouldn’t satiate that conspiracy theory"
Audits and voting security laws, even if they're theater, do have some impact though. I think it's a trap or a fallacy to say "nothing we do we'll change anyone's mind".
I don’t want to say “nothing”, but nothing practical would do it.
The only thing I can think of is to require all adult citizens to man the polls once a decade.
Having seen how many layers of security are involved, how many cross-checks from discrete actors on both sides of the aisle, even in a 93-6 Biden precinct in Philadelphia… I have no doubt that fraud at any scale above the individual is completely impossible.
EDIT: misremembered numbers.
There is one solution, but I'm not sure it's a good one. Ending the secret ballot system would probably end most of the voter conspiracies. There would obviously still be diehard holdouts, but if you could track every vote back to a named individual, it's hard to fantasize about stuffed ballots or undocumented immigrants voting. Pair that with a PKI signature system for non-repudiation while you're at it and you have a system where fraud is essentially impossible.
Of course, this increases the risk that individual voters, especially ones with voting habits dissimilar from their neighbors, receive harassment significantly. In the current social media environment, I don't think it's viable. Oh, and vote buying becomes a real concern again too. Not great.
Your idea reminds me of a thought experiment I envisioned awhile ago, where political parties are allowed to openly pay voters money to vote for them.
Once one party offers such an incentive, the other party would feel compelled to match them, and the two incentives would, more or less, cancel each other out. The combined effect essentially amounts to the government cutting every voter who votes a check, regardless of who they voted for, funded by progressive taxation on the rich (since it's the rich that make the campaign donations that would ultimately pay for this). And, unlike the existing progressive taxes, billionaires would actually pay it, to avoid having their side fall behind.
All that said, there are plenty of reasons why public voting records would be a bad idea. In particular, I am concerned about the potential for extremists to use threats of physical violence to force people into voting a certain way, and punish those that vote against them. If done at a wide enough scale, it could lead to a civil war. Given the country's rising political tensions, the mere creation of a way to reliably tell who voted for whom feels way to risky.
Yeah. But this could easily help with people being more accepting of their neighbors having different beliefs.
Weren’t the highest voter turnouts of our nation’s history when only men voted and they did it publicly at the local community center while getting bombed? Not saying go back to that but I’m saying this public “With the 400 thousandth vote of the 2024 election Earl from down the block selects ____” could have merits.
Idk. Maybe start with primaries so it’s at least a bro out fest that everyone loves.
My grand theory is that on matters of governance the Progressives (1st edition thereof) got almost everything wrong.
The boozing, corruption, backroom deals, and revelry were the grease that lets the wheels turn, not a pollutant.
On social and economic matters they were 90% right and arguably are responsible for having built the modern world, but on governance everything they wanted turns out to have been dead wrong.
Interesting theory. Can you recommend anything online that's well written and espouses this view?
And, of course, conservative state legislatures often create rules that make this kind of thing more likely. Are more dems likely to vote ahead of time? Then those votes get counted last, etc.
As a strong democrat, the more I see of their united governance this time around the less enthusiastic I am about the future of the party. I feel like its a party run by incompetent people which is incredibly frustrating to watch from the outside. I hate the term "sister soulja moment" but Biden really needs to tell the progressive wing of the party to kick rocks or else the rest of his presidency will be a miserable slog
I think that’s harsh to progressives. It’s really the centrists that have been killing the Biden agenda, no? The AOCs of the world have been surprisingly cooperative in getting Biden stuff passed. We just happen to live in a Senate without Sara Gideon or Cal Cunningham.
I do agree that the Democrats are often just incompetent and disorganized, but that’s part of being an intellectually diverse, big-tent party I suppose.
There are two different forms of obstruction going on, though:
The "centrists" are blocking programs from going forward, while the Left continues to jack up the rhetoric and the expectations (and the demands). Both of these tactics make it impossible for Biden to come across as a success, because the Centrists don't want to pass what the Left wants, and the Left won't "stoop" to agreeing to whatever the Centrists will allow.
Sure, if the Centrists would just agree to the Left's agenda, we'd be fine, but it goes both ways: if the Left would just recognize what limits exist, and take the half loaf, Biden could be seen as a hero. They're destroying Biden out of their arrogance and vanity.
So you are arguing that "rhetoric" is a bigger problem than blocking actual legislation?
It doesn't matter who is "right" or "wrong" in this case - what matters is getting a win out of everyone's position. The Democratic Party is in full meltdown mode because of the blaming and fingerpointing that your question seems to bear out.
You understand the problem with this theory is that the different groups are rewarded differently, right? Progressive legislators who live in progressive districts are rewarded by pushing as hard as they can against the Overton window. And conservative Dems who operate out of conservative districts are rewarded for seeming to fight against their "too liberal" counterparts.
Personally, I think this is mainly a result of having one party interested in governing while the opposing party is primarily interested in grievance politics. The Democrats SHOULD be acting more like the progressives, while the Republicans should be acting like the conservative Democrats, but because of various rewards systems (particularly those resulting from the filibuster), they're better off simply being the party of No as much as they can.
Bouncing on some of the comments I saw, I don't think it's just about Progressives vs. Centrists. I think it's establishment vs. Twitter.
The establishment really seems scared to be called bad names on Twitter. Am I correct here? Because, if I am, I can't quite comprehend it. Don't they know Twitter is at best a few tens of thousand of people i.e. nothing in the scope of the US population?
Just do the right fucking thing and if the Twitter mob doesn't like it and think you're just an agent of the white supremacy on par with Hitler for compromising either with the Centrists or with the Republicans on some key topics then screw them. And don't be afraid of being seen telling them to go screw themselves. Trump proved that voters aren't allergic to displays of backbone in pursuit of something your electors generally like (or will trust you on).
The problem is that the establishment is on Twitter and they are subject to the availability heuristic too. The 10,000 people on Twitter look like a vast majority when you spend your life on Twitter yourself.
And when those 10,000 people on Twitter make up most of the journalism in the country …
And no one pays attention to journalists anymore anyhow (except for R voters and Fox News). So ignore the whole lot.
So... yeah. But, like, are we meant to believe that US congresspeople are so uneducated and stupid (esp. on the D side) that they wouldn't know about the availability heuristic and so spineless/headless as to being unable to counteract it?
I mean, it's fairly easy for me. I barely use Twitter and my feed doesn't seem to have many people involved in pile-ups or controversies. And if they do get in hot water (Kevin Drum or Freddie deBoer sometimes do), I don't have the time to follow...
Still, I don't think it's that hard... Hence why I find the whole thing so surprising.
All of the journalists and hill staffers and campaign workers and advocacy groups live on Twitter though, so Twitter ends up playing a very outsized role in politics.
What gets said on Twitter gets amplified, though, so it doesn't stay there. Those 10k people are the "taste makers" for millions of people in politics and journalism.
And even those millions are barely relevant to the voting public at large. Virtually no one is as interested in politics as us guys.
Which I always found surprising in a way. Why bother voting if you never bother educating yourself about the political issues... but here we are.
The best counter to this was Biden and the Hyde amendment. Something he was in support of his entire political career, but had to abandon due to his staff revolting on the issue. You can try to ignore twitter views, but if your peers and staff care about the views expressed there then you will end up caring as well.
I think its more that hard money donations are worried about being called names on Twitter for supporting candidates Twitter dislikes.
Maybe we should turn off Twitter. As in: stop using it.
Fair point. That could be that.
The issue is that the Twitter mob *can be* a very active force in primaries, and the left-of-center interest/issue groups all live on twitter, and the staffers and campaign workers for a lot of elected Democrats live on Twitter.
I like to say/think/remember that "Twitter is not real life", but in the context of politics Twitter is a larger part of real life than it "should" be.
It seems like a common theme in M.Y.’s posts is pragmatism grounded in data. But does Congress care about pragmatism grounded in data? In the scarce attention world it seems only ideologues run and get elected, so my expectation would be that pragmatism will only decline further.
Matthew, what if anything do you think can or should actually be done to depolarize and generally “turn down the temperature?”
I think the problem is that “implementing effective legislation” and “winning elections” are goals that sadly do not always align and are sometimes at odds- the politicians seem to only care about the latter, while MY only cares about the latter as a means to achieve the former.
I would imagine he views part of his job as a journalist to steer public opinion toward pragmatism, and hope that constituencies start pushing representatives for pragmatism as a result.
Matt did an interview on his Weeds podcast that can partly answer this. At least, I think it was Weeds. Might be mixing up with another.
Anyway, a major way to turn down the temperature is... to get rid of the filibuster. In areas where that's happened, senators have been far more likely to vote in a bipartisan way. Centrist Supreme Court picks or other presidential nominations get far more votes than almost any politically interesting legislation.
Extending that idea to legislation, we'd be far more likely to see 2-8 republicans sign on to important legislation if they were centrists and saw the legislation as benefiting their states. The minority party would also likely be more interested in participating in the writing of legislation, figuring that if only 51 votes were needed, they could get more centrist policy at the expense of the extreme left or right of the two parties.
edit: And of course, to add to that, we'd get better, smaller bills, rather than these huge trillion dollar monstrosities. Biden could have a roads bill, and a family bill, and 4 or 5 different voting bills that cover different areas of voting issues. And all of them might get a different selection of 51 votes.
Not Matt but I worry a lot about the same issue. A couple points from my view.
1) There are a few potential points of intervention that seem possible, generally to do with structural reforms that reduce incentives for partisan culture warring. Ranked choice or approval voting, elimination or restructuring of primaries, nonpartisan redistricting boards, that kind of thing. All getting some traction in at least some states and localities. Promote those!
2) But also, even if we can't *make* the culture war simmer down, it's important to present an alternative view of the appropriate goals and processes of government. Times change and eventually the public will get tired of the culture war show and develop an appetite for constructive governance again. Stand ready to meet that opportunity with clear plans and recommendations.
“The way forward here is to turn the temperature *way* down and have some people sit in a quiet room with experts and work out a list of things that everyone can agree [on]” is The Truth for pretty much everything.
Yeah “experts” was the only part of that quote that left me with a little heartburn. It would be nice to use “unbiased sources of information” instead but they don’t really exist 🤷🏻♀️
I honestly have no idea what Dem leadership has been doing lately. They seem to be delighting in making members walk the plank just to show donors/activists/extremely online people that they "care".
The debt limit process was a debacle. They knew they were never getting Republican votes for a clean increase and instead made everyone vote multiple times to increase it, seemingly just so Republicans can run ads decrying that "Bob voted 15 times to raise the debt ceiling. Vote Republican and restore fiscal sanity." Then once they got the workaround rather than extend it out past Biden's first term, they just did it to get past the midterms. So they ensured they'll do the whole song and dance again only probably from they minority.
I have no idea what they hope to accomplish by forcing a vote on the filibuster other than pissing off the only Dem who is going to win in WV for the foreseeable future. I suspect there are also other Dems that don't want to get rid of the filibuster and have been happy to let Manchin and Sinema take the heat for them and don't want to have to go on the record.
But mostly if you are going to force a vote on the filibuster it needed to be immediately after they got the majority not over halfway through the term when they are going to lose the majority in a few months. At least then there would have been some upside.
I think Dems are basically in a bad spot where all the hill staffers and campaign people and advocacy groups are getting angry and basically preparing to turn on them. The only way to deal with that is maybe to make a very public showing of trying to fulfill their requests (a big compliant that certain people like to make is that Dems don't "fight" hard enough").
So doing all this bizarre dramatic stuff is certainly going to piss off Manchin, but it might also be staving off a disastrous midterm where the right, the center, *and* the left decide they want change.
Is there really much evidence though that huge numbers of people are going to “turn” on Democrats this midterm? I mean there’s always an amount of non participation and switching to the other party which is why the President’s party does poorly. I just don’t think there are signs that it’s out of the ordinary at this time.
I also don’t see how making a big show about something you know is going to fail is helpful for keeping people fired up. It’s far more likely to make them more discouraged and resentful than letting it die in peace.
Finally, if these people really believe that it’ll be the end of democracy if Democrats don’t pass this bill, I find the logic that then they are going up sit out the next election to ensure Republicans come to power to be more than a bit of a stretch.
"I find the logic that then they are going up sit out the next election to ensure Republicans come to power to be more than a bit of a stretch"
I never said that those people were going to be logical.
And having the bill die in peace might in fact be what those groups would actually prefer, but they've all convinced themselves either that bullying Manchin will work or that they want to see the Dems go down swinging fighting for the bills.
None of this is any good at all, but here we are.
Basically, everybody needs to calm down.
I think an underrated aspect of the “trap” is that a bipartisan compromise on “saving democracy” would imply that not all Republicans are out to destroy it.
Based on Biden’s recent speech that seems to be the primary (only?) Democratic messaging point headed into 2022. Bad to muddy the waters.
Which is sad because it's a dumb strategy. Voters have moved on from Trump's antics and January 6th. I really don't think the median voter cares that much, and concerns over "dangers to democracy" are most salient to staunch partisans, who of course blame the other side. Turning down the temperature was a big part of Biden's pitch, and while it won't solve all of democracy problems, the ECA is a good start. I'd love the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill and anti-gerrymamdering stuff to come up, but I'd certainly take the ECA over ineffectual flailing that's doomed to fail and will only appeal to a base that's already mostly bought in to Democratic fears.
Yeah, I’m not sure how ECA reform is a “trap” when it’s not like any other voting reform is really on the table at this point. Though, I suppose if we don’t reform the ECA, VP Harris can throw out the electoral ballots in 2024 and declare Biden president again! Many reputable lawyers, such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, agree!
I think the Democrats shouldn't mind if their Voting Rights stuff does not pass. It gives them an easy sour grapes excuse for the future to explain why they lose an election and why the winner is illegitimate. See Stacy Abrams for an example.
The reason to support measures that at least Republicans THINK will increase turnout is to get to the point closer to the point) where campaign efforts to increase turnout of "your" party's ("white" or "non-white" identity" voters is useless. (Everyone turnout-able is already turned out). We ought to striving for campaigns in which Democrats are trying to persuade voters that a child tax credit, or higher immigration, or taxing the rich to reduce deficits, or investing in zero CO2 emitting energy production is a good idea and Republicans are trying to persuade people of the opposite.
We ought to want this not only because we think that's a better way to get to our preferred outcomes, but also it's harder to get mad at each other over substance than over symbolic issues like CRT, "replacement," or supposed hostility to Christianity.
My understanding was that the Democratic Party pays Marc to lose lawsuits and set bad precedent, not to dictate their legislative strategy.
Marc actually wins a lot of lawsuits. I think the main issue is that he isn't necessarily an expert on anything outside of that, so he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about re: the ECA
He actually wins lots of lawsuits, though the stats were skewed by beating the likes of Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. He's a very good lawyer. He's a terrible communicator and political strategist. Regarding his recent comments, I wish he'd understand that sometimes the best course of action is to STFU. Yeah, it's a "trap."
Marc Elias is a very fine lawyer, but he also was a leading proponent of taking control of redistricting away from elected officials and giving it to the likes of Sam Alito. So he's not infallible.
Ending gerrymandering is clearly a worthy goal and rucho is one of the worst decisions in recent memory
The Court could have said, yes, the Constitution does prohibit the party preferences of voters to be taken into account when drawing district lines. That would be consistent with a constitutional antigerrymandering test that is party-agnostic, such as requiring that districts be drawn to be as compact as possible and to cross as few existing local political boundaries as possible (ie, a district that could fit entirely within one city or county may not snake across 6 or 7). But that's not what Elias and the Democratic litigants wanted. They wanted the court to adopt a test that expressly allows judges to put their thumb on the scale in favor of one political party or the other - and for judicial decisions about redistricting to be constitutional decisions that can only be reversed by amending the Constitution.
This post is a bit out of date now. There are new boundaries coming in for the next election, and they will favour the Conservatives (compared to the 2019 result) as the areas with fewer seats because lower populations are disproportionately in Labour-voting areas (especially the South Wales valleys).
It's not really a live issue (maybe surprisingly, as mayoral elections (up until now, they're now changing back to FPTP) and elections to the devolved assemblies are conducted under different systems. But English voters pay essentially 0 attention to anything happening in the devolved assemblies).
Agree about the conflict of interest. But turning it over to unelected judges whose decisions are final constitutional pronouncements isn't the answer. At least a plan to have the map drawn by a committee is ultimately still under the control of the elected officials that establish it and instructs it how the proceeds.