I believe the third sentence in the second paragraph contains a typo and should read "than the roughly $1 trillion Affordable Care Act." Currently it says "billion" and not "trillion."
I think you could critique this article, though, using your own style of "realistic politics" arguments.
Joe Manchin isn't getting rid of the filibuster because he knows you're right and doesn't *want* power. With great power comes great responsibility. More to the point, with great power comes "getting things done," and with getting things done comes... losing in West Virginia.
I think Democrats underestimate the practical, real-world, intractable problem that comes with the 50th Democrat in the Senate serving in a state where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 39%. Democrats have literally no leverage over Joe Manchin, and it's in Joe Manchin's rational political interest to ensure that nothing gets done. It's still better than majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Matt did a podcast several months back about the filibuster, and the point was made that functionally, the filibuster protects the moderate wing of the majority party from the extreme wing by allowing them (the moderate senators) to avoid voting on controversial bills that are no-wins for them. As long as the filibuster exists, they can pretend to have it both ways by declaring lukewarm support for the bill but never having to actually vote yes and blaming the minority party for preventing its passage.
This is true for both Democrats and Republicans which both have crazy extreme wings and both have a good number of moderates that wish the crazy ones would shut up.
Manchin's going to lose in 2024, he should just use these last three and a half years to help people and build a legacy for himself in his state and nationally. If he's pathologically addicted to holding office Biden can give him DHS or something if he wins reelection.
"Realist Joe Manchin", who was not obsessed with nostalgic fantasies about the bipartisan comity of the past, would recognize that he is not going to win his next Senate race. (Even if he tried to switch parties he'd lose the GOP primary to a Trumpist.) Given that, he would care about having an actual legacy, and reforming the Senate to actually bring back bipartisan legislation would be a pretty great legacy.
Allegedly, Manchin didn't want to run in 2018 anyway; Schumer all but held a gun to his head. And he's 74. I don't think reelection is a primary concern.
It seems to me that the direct connection you make between 'abolish the filibuster' and 'add 2-8 Democratic Senators on a party line vote' is pretty much the reason that moderates don't support it. That would be an incredibly toxic thing to do and I don't see how people don't realize that.
Separately, maybe Manchin just doesn't think it makes sense to pass the top 20 Democratic priorities all at once. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with picking one (maybe Climate Change) and passing a bill dedicated to that priority, then next year picking another one (maybe Medicare age/dental for the seniors).
Congress would certainly work better without the filibuster, but since abolishing it appears to mean immediately creating a massive political crisis by adding as many as 4 states I can see how people support the status quo.
Why is adding states a political crisis? We've done it throughout American history. Why is DC residents not being full citizens not a crisis? Why is the current filibuster (which has changed throughout history) sacrosanct? You do realize that the filibuster has largely shrunk over time as it has been abused?
If you don't think eliminating the filibuster and then immediately passing legislation to add states that are likely to increase a Democratic majority would cause a major crisis I don't know what to tell you.
I am truly not debating the individual merits of either DC Statehood or abolishing the filibuster in the abstract here. I'm just saying that linking the two makes the entire premise appear to be a naked power grab.
Stiffing Merrick Garland and forcing Kavanagh and Amy Barrett through was a naked power grab, and yet the Republicans seem to have suffered no real ill effects. I think eliminating the filibuster and adding DC statehood is defendable on the merits, and so why should we care if Republicans complain? They don't care when we complain.
I looked through some of your other comments so I'm not going to engage with your argument because I suspect it is unfalsifiable. I would just propose that you're not going to win many converts to your cause responding to minor disagreement with an ad hominem attacks and broad generalizations.
There's no need to call anyone an idiot here, especially for just making an argument you disagree with. The question of whether the Senate bias is something that is working as intended or not is one that reasonable people can disagree about. I believe it's pretty bad but I understand the opposing argument.
Either way, adding states is a big deal and is likely to be a big deal for a very large % of Americans (if you have polls that show this is false I'll gladly change my mind) because it hasn't been done in a long time and is very visible and feels major in a way that the Republican escalations are not (those may be more impactful but they are generally boring and not visible). Maybe that's worth doing but if you can't see how that's a huge deal to a lot of people including likely a lot of moderate democrats then you are probably in a bubble...
The Democratic party has won equally for the last 20 years and has expectations that they will continue to make gains due to demographic and generational changes. Maintaining a system that gives them at least equal power is not unilateral disarmament!
"Also, most previous states were adding during times of political tension, mainly in ways to block slave-holder states from gaining more seats in the Senate"
That really doesn't seem like an accurate description of the main reason 37 additional states were added to the union, following the original 13.
Without wasting the rest of my night looking into it, my understanding is that slavery became a salient factor accelerating statehood for territories as the tensions mounted before boiling over into the civil war, but outside of that period raw partisan calculations weren't really the driving force in state creation.
If I'm a DC resident, why aren't I represented in Congress? Taxation without Representation was a justification for the American Revolution. DC residents aren't full citizens in this democracy and have no effective vote-taking representation in Congress.
DC statehood is a pipe dream. A much simpler and less contentious solution, which would give you all the rights other Americans have, would be to split the District in half (draw the line wherever you want) and give half to Virginia and half to Maryland. The District has outlived any purpose it ever had.
Simpler yet, give it all to Maryland, since Virginia got its part back in 1847. If you want a rump DC, it could encompass the Capitol, the White House and the Mall. No one lives there except the Bidens, who vote in Delaware and maybe some homeless encampments whose residents can hardly plead 'no taxation without representation'.
The only thing I've learned from this comment thread is that you really don't like Ken M and seem to enjoy calling him names. For someone like me, who prefers retrocession over statehood but doesn't have a super-strong view on the matter, name-calling is not very convincing.
'I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with picking one (maybe Climate Change) and passing a bill dedicated to that priority, then next year picking another one (maybe Medicare age/dental for the seniors).'
Why is doing a maximum of one thing per year the ideal pace for legislating?
Don't assume Puerto Rico Senators would be Democratic.
I support giving them a binding referendum for statehood because it's the right thing to do, but their pro-statehood party seems fairly aligned (other than the statehood issue) with stateside Republican politics.
"If the GOP had any brains" it would go whole hog on a mild right-populism similar to what Trump campaigned on in 2016, or what the British Tories have been gutting Labour with.
Most of the GOP base would happily be all-in on federal investment in the American people if it were couched in something other than identity politics pseudo-leftist-speak.
Alternatively, Democrats could work in a bipartisan fashion to create bills that are supported by more than 60 Senators. Though that wouldn't add up to $3.5T, restructure the welfare state, lay the groundwork for adding new states, revamp voting in all 50 states, increase taxes on "the rich" and attempt to eliminate the oil & gas industry.
In other words, try to pass moderate, incremental changes that reflect the views of most of the electorate rather than the slightly-modified wish list that originated from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
Is this a joke? The only things that pass with 60 votes are infrastructure bills and anything that says “screw China.” Republicans are too politically interested in disfunction.
What do you think Republicans are interested in passing? Specifically, what will they actually vote for, as opposed to saying they will vote for it, then pulling out at the last minute and forcing a party line vote that fails due to the filibuster? I want to see evidence from you that there are actually bipartisan bills available to pass. Name them.
You have your own blind partisans, who are probably a larger part of the GOP electorate than they are of the Democratic electorate, but yes, fundamentally, you're right.
There's plenty that can be done on a bipartisan basis... and has been, and will continue to be. The infrastructure bill is fairly noncontroversial unless you're an OANN-chugging nutjob. So is the R&D bill, and some of the criminal justice reforms, and there will be plenty more things of a similar nature.
But at the end of the day, the United States is a democratic republic, and as such it also has the mechanisms in place for partisan majority rule. These are confined to certain certain issues, and heavily circumscribed by law and the Constitution, but they're there.
Within that framework... "you lost, deal with it."
No one, and I mean no one, asked the Democratic minority in the Senate and House if that clusterfuck of a 2017 tax "reform" bill that handed another trillion dollars to rich people was acceptable to the half of the country they represented. If a bill that's likely to spend $2-3 trillion, most of it on middle-class folk, ends up as unpopular as you say, you'll have your chance to undo it in due course.
If you're being honest with yourself, the reason you don't want it to happen in the first place is that you know that much of it will be quite popular, and that it will never be undone.
1. tax receipts actually went up from the tax reform bill.
2. Margin tax rate reductions were also coupled with elimination of a lot of special interest deductions, so the effective tax rate most people pay stayed about the same.
Tax receipts went up because the Fed finally decided it would let the economy "overheat," then discovered that there was a huge amount of productive slack due to premature tightening of monetary policy in 2015-16.
As for the second point, sure, for most people, but not for the richest. You've seen the same analyses I have; even the Heritage Foundation admits that the direct tax benefits accrued disproportionately to the top less-than-a-percent of households. They just bullshit their way into saying indirect benefits were high, lol. Trickle-down still works, dontcha know?
Moreover, you should understand better than most that after the temporary provisions sunset, the net impact to post-tax income for all but the top 10% of so of households is negative.
If control of the Senate weren't balanced on a knife's edge, that *might* happen. But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins that would help them retain control next year.
It's hard to pursue good governing for the sake of good governing when the tiniest movement can cause enormous changes in the balance of power.
Ah, but this is the exception that . . . um . . . doesn't prove the rule. It certainly seems out of character for the Republicans, outside of the Secret Congress stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is that they decided it wouldn't be that politically valuable enough of a win for Biden, and it would make Manchin (et al?) even more adamant that no bill can pass that is not bipartisan, meaning other, more important things won't pass.
Your theory sounds highly plausible. A small ball infrastructure bill that increases spending very little on net (and won't do much to fuel MAGA primary challenges) is a small price to pay for preventing permanent, large scale increases in the size of the welfare state.
I am fairly certain that for at least _some_ of the Republicans that voted for the bipartisan infrastructure package, the primary goal was keeping Manchin and Sinema on-side to prevent the larger package from passing. (And they may be hoping that in the end if the larger package doesn't pass, the progs in the House will tank the bipartisan package too, as they have threatened.)
I'd be interested in your answer to this too. Some of my wishlist items would be cutting bad regulation and spending more on innovation and I could see Republicans going for those but likely few Dems.
The devil is in the details, as we've found out in the past forty years. Tell me what's bad regulation and what's good regulation and I'll let you know if I agree. Whenever I see a poll asking people if they're for cutting regulation without being specific I want to gag. Are we talking about the regulation of homicide, or zoning restrictions?
I agree, though I would argue that if you asked people on the left like to have more regulation and people on the right less, so there some general assessment based on political orientation.
I think all regulation creates some small cost because of added complexity and the more of it there is the higher complexity (probably in some non-linear fashion). This by itself should mean that we should (all other things being equal) keep regulation somewhat in check and not add to it "needlessly" (yes, devil is in the details on all of this, just making general points).
In terms of the content it's obviously a mix and people's judgment of it will vary, but there's probably a bunch of regulations that many people agree are very good, some that many people can agree are bad (though most don't think about them), and then a bunch that are hotly debated though likely only by those who pay attention to them.
Let me rephrase to make my initial statement slightly more useful: "Eliminate or change regulation that has failed to have its intended effect or that has had perverse outcomes." The devil is still in the details and many of these choices would be controversial, but again this is my wishlist. Some random choices: Reduce/improve zoning, get rid of or rework many aspects of state licensing, streamline environmental reviews, figure out how to streamline FDA approval and make it faster/cheaper.
I'm all for faster/cheaper so long as it weeds out drugs with no particular benefit other than ever-greening incumbent pharmas' patents at higher prices and what turn out to be dangerous drugs like thalidomide. The FDA today seems to have become subject to a lot of regulatory capture and 'faster/cheaper' is a mantra that exacerbates, rather than solves, the problem, like 'cutting bad regulation'.
That used to work when the minority party cared about policy. But under McConnell, it’s become clear that the minority party gets better electoral strength through unanimous opposition.
Addendum: I don’t know why Matt’s advice to Kamala Harris (take positions that appeal to the median, swing voter) differs so much with his advice to Senate Democrats. Seems like a broad and popular bill would be better than whatever can scrape by with 51 votes.
His advice to Harris would help her become more popular (and so stand a better chance of winning a presidential election some day). His advice to Senate Democrats would help them enact legislation. Different goals for different methods.
Governing requires doing things that are unpopular. Regardless of political affiliation, virtually no one thinks our immigration system is anything better than broken. Should it just be ignored because any legislation will be unpopular?
Except for the fact the (establishment) GOP economic ideas are actually unpopular. The rise of Trump with his unabashed 'soak the rich' approach proves it. GOP base would love to have a generous safety net just and they don't mind taxing Wall Street for it. People who DO mind about taxing Wall Street (to fund Medicare) are the Limousine Liberals & Norquist Conservatives. Interestingly enough, they both agree on Culture War that it doesn't matter.
The problem is that when you go to 60 votes, you start vastly reducing the amount of overlap there is. Going by 538’s ranking of how often senators vote along with the Democrats’ position, the 10th most cooperative R Senator is *Mitch McConnell*. Which means to get a bipartisan bill through the filibuster, you need something that every Democrat plus Mitch McConnell and everyone at least as willing to play ball as him to agree to.
I'm curious if you think increasing the number of Senators would do something here. Keep the 60% requirement, but increase the number to 200. All of a sudden you will have more people to find trade offs. Would that help or make no difference?
Talking about "the median Senate seat [being] something like R+2 rather than R+6" is really quite disingenuous. The median Senate seat is R+6 for a Democratic Party that's indulges affluent white progressives' social liberalism. Is R+6 for "celebrate your abortion" and decriminalizing border crossings.
But it's not R+6 for Barak Obama, who opposed same sex marriage, railed against exporting jobs to Mexico, and cracked down on illegal immigration. It was less than a decade ago, when Obama's blue wall still held, that Democrats were preening about a permanent electoral college advantage: https://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/do_democrats_have_a_permanent_electoral_college_advantage/
Obama was *exactly* a Democratic Party that indulges affluent white progressives’ social liberalism and “celebrate your abortion” and decriminalizing border crossings. Biden is the one who is reinforcing Trump’s border and tariff policies.
The difference in the electoral issues has nothing to do with the candidates or their messaging. It’s entirely based on how many young college educated people from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have moved to Virginia or Colorado or Texas or Georgia or Arizona. There’s also an effect of greater educational polarization during that time, but that isn’t being driven by the presidential candidates (except maybe Trump).
Go back and listen to Obama’s pre-2008 speeches. That’s where the party went, but that’s not how he campaigned.
The 2004 DNC speech that made him famous was all about unity (identifying commonality between his white native and Black immigrant family), hard work, the Declaration of Independence, shipping Union Maytag jobs to Mexico, etc. He sounded more like Nikki Haley’s 2020 RNC speech than Kamala “they never saw as as fully human” Harris.
Obama came out strongly against illegal immigration in 2005, and implemented eVerify in office. He deported more people than Trump. He opposed same-sex marriage. He talked about Black people needing to take personal responsibility.
I attended 2019 DNC events in Iowa. The contrast with how Obama campaigned just a decade before was incredible.
And no, there was no mass exodus of young college educated people from these states from 2012 to 2016. Demographics is shifting, but much more slowly than Party attitudes are changing.
TBH I agree with both of you here and I think you both make important points. Sadly I don't have time to really flesh this out more but just a few quick thoughts. I think it's a mix of the effects you described Kenny (people moving + increasing partisanship) but also a shift on trade & border policies (rightward on the latter, protectionist on the former) + a shift leftward on social spending and some other things + a big shift on narrative/framing (as e.g. described here https://www.slowboring.com/p/obama-pander/comments). I don't have any strong sense of how big each of these factors are and if there's a winning strategy without giving up huge parts of the platform (or even just period) but I do think Ray brings up an inconvenient fact that's often ignored by us liberals.
Some truth to this, but the real problem isn't "democrats are X", it's "the cultural elite that dominates the media and much of the public faces of major corporations are X".
It literally doesn't matter what the Democratic Party claims it stands for or what the majority of the Party supports, when it spans an entire ordinary nation's political axis from left to right and has no truly partisan media organizations to spearhead its messaging.
The Republican Party can exert message discipline because it has media, corporate, and political arms that are closely coordinated and can exert some limited "bubble" effect around core voters.
The Democratic Party cannot and likely never will be able to stop its nutjob activists and the obscenely cosmopolitan-biased media elites from screwing its message up.
Things will only go back to normal (as compared to the rest of the globe) if the Republicans overreach so far that, in the immediate aftermath, the Democrats enjoy the unity necessary to pack the Supreme Court, overturn Citizens' United, and destroy Fox, OANN, and Newsmax (also MSNBC and maybe CNN) by reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine.
Then they'll go back to squabbling as usual, but the boil will have been lanced and the "conservative" movement will stop being so goddamned poisonous, so it won't matter.
The US is never going to be a left-liberal country, but nothing in 1960 foreordained that the right was going to be batshit insane by global standards.
You want to talk global standards? How is voting done in France or Germany? How often do their courts override voters on key social issues? How are less religious countries like Germany allowed to have religious education in schools, and the most religious country in the developed world isn’t? How is second trimester abortion unusual in Europe, but constitutionally required in the US? Why is there a right to gay marriage in the US constitution, but not the European Convention on Human Rights?
In terms of how much elites override the people on cultural issues, the US left is batshit insane by global standards.
We've been over this. I couldn't give less of a damn about most of that, and certainly don't regard any of it as "leftist" or "rightist".
You and I both know that on economic, regulatory, and environmental matters, the Republicans are batshit insane.
A few examples:
1. Before US federal research funding and manufacturing prowess in the States, Europe, and China pushed down the cost of solar cells and windmills to the point where they can outcompete natural gas on their own, we were staring down the barrel of an existential crisis that carried serious risks of ending industrial civilization worldwide.
The GOP's response was to try to directly subsidize coal, oil, and natural gas use at home and increase the security subsidies we provide to the Middle East to keep that market "stable." Had they been in charge since 2008, the investments in R&D that led to the current market environment in which fossil fuel investments are unprofitable would never have happened, and we'd be completely and utterly fucked.
2. Since 1980, the Republicans have been the party of wild, radical experimentation with the national economy. Republican-led financialization of the economy has GUTTED the real standard of living of the American middle class in favor of the wealthy, while dramatically destabilizing working class employment structures. The result? Relative to incomes, the prices of several of the basics of life (none of which are included in the CPI basket) have absolutely skyrocketed, most egregiously those of housing, healthcare, education, and childcare. Between the four of them, they now account for well over half a median-income households *lifetime expenditures*.
Because of those high prices, it is effectively impossible for a working-class family to subsist on a single income without state aid, and very difficult for a second-wage earner to enter the workforce without a grandparent or other relation stepping into handle child care affordably. It is very nearly impossible for a middle-class family to "scrimp and save" their way to ownership of a decent capital portfolio to cover retirement. Only by rapidly pushing into the ranks of the professional classes while still quite young can one be assured of a decent future, and even that's at risk of a momentary, ill-timed disruption in employer-provided healthcare coverage during a serious illness.
3. At the same time, the GOP has presided over hollowing out state capacity at every level, allowing regulatory capture, monopolistic business practices, and outright corruption to dictate the pricing structures in industries as diverse as public infrastructure construction, higher education, and healthcare. In all three, we spend vastly more and achieve vastly less than any number of countries that didn't go through the same ill-considered processes of deregulation and weakened state government oversight in the 1980's and 90's.
4. Finally, and relevant to your question regarding voting, for some Godforsaken reason, even intelligent "conservatives" such as yourself have been taken in by this insane delusion that you lost in 2020 because of mass fraud, rather than because Donald Trump is singularly unpopular and because my generation finally decided to turn up at the pools. Your response has been to try to smash the entire system of our democratic republic rather than risking losing again.
In both Germany and France the national/federal government issues an ID, free of charge, to every citizen. They are incredibly easy to access and are mandatory. They're required to present it when either voting in person or applying for a mail-in ballot, which can be requested for any or no reason. I'd be completely fine with the ID requirement, so long as they were free and easy to get; the problem is that every time the GOP strengthens an ID requirement, DMVs in Democratic-leaning areas mysteriously adjust operating hours or are "consolidated". So no, the point you were trying to make about voting is not true at all. It is consistently easier to vote everywhere else in the developed, democratic world.
I'll be frank. I find it completely nonsensical for a "conservative" to give a good goddamn about something like gay marriage; why would it be "conservative" for someone to want to deny the opportunity to create stable family structures to any segment of society? It's as profoundly stupid as anti-miscegenation laws were, and is justified with the same set of stupid arguments. As for religious education, in case you're not aware, the US is Constitutionally-bound to observe separation of church and state, and public education is clearly, obviously, indisputably a function of the state. Germany is not so bound, nor is Sweden. France is far more extreme on the topic.
But I do not care about these things. I don't have the luxury of caring, because the very underpinnings of American prosperity, security, and democracy are under serious threat from our so-called "conservatives" while you whine about how American elites are "culturally leftist."
Maybe, maybe not. Other countries have established religions and enforce cultural and religious ideas on populations. There's never been a Catholic PM in the UK, for example. We've had at least two Catholic Presidents here in the US. The amount of elite enforcement of laicite in France (ostensibly leftist from the French Revolution) would make your head spin here in the US.
No... it's simple math which points out sparsely populated states are over represented in the senate by design. Pretending otherwise is quite disingenuous.
Divide the states into four tranches by population:
Smallest 15 states: equally split between D and R Senators
Next group of 15: dominated by Republicans (primarily southern states)
Next group of 15: dominated by Democrats
Top 5 states: equally split between D and R Senators
State population is really very weakly correlated with partisan bias. It's time for Democrats to stop whining about how the Senate is skewed against us and get good candidates, run great campaigns, and win more seats. You know, like we did so well in 2006 and 2008 (peaking at 60 Senators!) when we had exactly the same fifty states.
Agree. In 2010, 5 of 6 statewide elected positions in Montana were held by Democrats. Today, its the opposite. I don't think the party got that much more liberal, although the ACA was very unpopular here ten years ago. Instead the Democrats just stopped trying to appeal to rural voters and went all-in on cities. They don't have any rural-directed messaging, except for some hand-waving about broadband, and it'll cost them the Senate and maybe the White House.
I'm afraid Montana may be negative evidence for my recommendations. Can you explain why Steve Daines thumped Steve Bullock by a pretty dominating 10 point margin? I thought Bullock was pretty popular in the state.
Two reasons: one, Bulock's presidential run, followed by promising not to run for Senate, and then running for Senate, was a bad look. He didn't take any unpopular positions, necessarily, but he had to focus on the national Democratic conversation, instead of regional concerns, which damaged his credibility/authenticity. Also, the pandemic: turnout was up, due to an all-mail election, which, in a conservative state, helped GOP candidates more than Dem candidates.
Sure, you've got to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but why pretend the playing field isn't skewed significantly to the right of the median voter? Pointing that out is just stating the obvious, and I'd contend working to make things somewhat less skewed (say by making DC a state) is a perfectly reasonable response... not whining for the sake of whining.
"Obviously, political coalitions can change over time. Maybe you’re reading this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana, Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows. But for the time being, the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. "
I'm fine with making DC a state. High time we did it. Unfortunately, I just found out my name is not Joe Manchin and my friends tell me I'm not the Senator from West Virginia. He's not going to do it, so it's simply not going to happen . . .
Unless we get really good at this election thing and win net 3 or 4 more Senate seats and then we may have more flexibility to get things done like ending the filibuster and adding new states.
There is no one weird trick for getting what you want done in such a narrowly-divided country. There is only one strategy that can work:
Run the country competently. Do everything we can to have a booming economy with no COVID. Get rid of the incendiary woke stuff and run on popular issues with attractive candidates. In 2022, 20 Republican seats are up versus 14 Democratic seats. Let's go get them, for heaven's sake.
Agreed. We're in an unusually narrowly divided party environment, more like the 1867-1895 period than anything that came after it.
Consider how long each party controlled the House of Representatives at a stretch. Starting in 1867, it went 4 Republican terms, then 3 Democratic, then 1 Republican, 3 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 2 Democratic. That was a chaotic environment! (And not much got done).
But for the next 100 years (!) things moved glacially: 8 Republican terms in control of the House, then 3 Democratic, then 8 Republican, 8 Democratic, 1 Republican (1947-49), then the monster 22 terms controlled by the Dems.
Starting in 1995 it went 6 Republican terms, 2 Dem, 4 Republican and 2 Democratic (so far -- we'll see if they hang on for #3 next year).
With such fragile and often narrow majorities like we've seen in recent history, it just makes it a lot harder to get things done.
Bad timing, given climate change bearing down on us, but we'll probably get through it.
Even as polarized as things are, the median voter in each party does not care enough about politics or the other side's "wrong opinions" to start shooting over it. Without that willingness, neither side has the mechanisms necessary to really enforce some sort of authoritarian or autocratic system.
So "US slides into fascism" and "US slides into civil war" are both edge cases at best; the most likely outcome is that we muddle through while life gets harder for ordinary people, and maybe a few states get their shit together to govern well enough to fill in the gaps the Federal government has left unattended. Then the Party System recoalesces in some new paradigm that is completely impossible to predict today.
The most likely "bad" outcome is that we slide into a period of illiberal, herrenvolk democracy that ends when the side that spearheads it fucks up so badly that the other side smashes it at the ballot box despite all its extra-legal bullshit.
After that, it's much harder to predict. Does that get us a period of other party dominance and major reforms, a new Constitutional Convention with one side sidelined, a second "Reconstruction", a managed partition... who knows?
We should make DC a state because DC citizens should have representation in Congress. That's how democracies work. I would support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans.
I would support making DC a state if its no longer the center of the federal bureaucracy. Remove 90% of the federal jobs and spread them around the country so that DC has about the same % as Vermont or Maine - which would take it from about 350k to about 10k.
The question is would DC be willing to make that trade?
Why? Do you think DC residents get some special benefit over and above Northern VA, southern MD, New Mexico, or Nevada in terms of government largesse? Median income in DC is larger than MD's, but pretty close.
I wouldn’t support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans. The seat of federal power shouldn’t be treated as a normal place. It’s right out of Hunger Games.
You do realize how weird it is that citizens who live in the capital city can't vote in legislative elections? People in the Federal Region in Brazil elect people to seats in the legislature. Same for Berlin, Paris, London. I'm struggling to find an example overseas where this is not true. Evoking a novel seems neither here nor there.
The Senate can't be abolished without convening a constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution. A new constitutional convention happens to be a popular idea in some corners of the far right - so is the Sunrise Movement in agreement with that? Seems like a really bad idea to open that Pandora's box.
It might be constructive, though, to propose and work for an amendment that gives the House power to override the Senate - that wouldn't deprive any State of equal representation in the Senate so would be allowable.
If that was paired with an amendment to modify the Electoral College so each State's EVs are based solely on its representation in the House, not the Senate, that would address most of the major structural complaints with the federal government, with modest tweaks.
If you’re amending the Constitution, why bother making the presidency better when you can turn it into a ceremonial figurehead and create an office of chancellor responsible to the House who would de facto exercise the executive power?
Because amendments are hard and get a lot of resistance. A slight change to the Electoral College to align it more with the population would be an uphill struggle. A more far-reaching one would have even less chance of success.
What's the current status of the constitutional convention push? I heard about it periodically during the tea party days, but I haven't heard anything in the last few years. (Altho that may simply because other stuff has been happening.)
A new Constitutional Convention that wasn't conducted at the end of a civil conflict with one side or the other held at complete bayonet point and prevented from having a significant voice would result in partition, pure and simple.
It would most certainly not be fine. Outside of the coasts and black belt, we're basically talking about ripping the economic hubs of the country out of their supporting hinterlands and conducting massive population movements/ethnic cleansing to put people on the right side of those lines.
Not gonna work.
What *might* work would be a genuinely confederal system with two federal governments overseeing rural and urban areas separately, cooperating on foreign policy and infrastructure links but free to pursue economic policy.
And even that makes no sense because it's a permanent "fix" for a transitory political arrangement that's viewed as a "problem".
I think there would be problems with partition (even a peaceful one) but loss of "economic hinterlands" isn't a real thing. Kansas and California engage in a lot of trade under the status quo. There's no reason that couldn't, wouldn't continue if they were to become parts of different countries.
A confederal system partitioned on rural/urban lines doesn't work without slicing states into smaller pieces, which is a non-starter for all the existing states that are clearly dominated by their metropoles or hinterlands, respectively. While that would probably be a better outcome, how would one actually get from here to there?
I get the argument that the top line number isn't arbitrary, in the sense that it got negotiated... But the thing is, much of the spending seems arbitrary and is now in the process of getting backfilled to figure out what exactly it will be spent on.
Ex: $10B (or whatever) for the Civilian Climate Corps! Ok cool, what are they going to actually do over the next 10 years? "Job training and stuff...it'll be like CCC but for the climate!" Ok, but what will they spend the money on? "We haven't figured that out yet, but building stuff somehow, maybe..."
There are oodles of these types of things making up the $3.5T, and while they aren't all in this category, I don't think it's unreasonable (if you are Joe Manchin) to say: please tell me what this bullet point intends to spend money on, how it'll actually do it, and why it's a good investment?
I'm not enamored of the filibuster per se, but I'm deeply skeptical of the take that eliminating it will contribute to breaking gridlock through successful centrist legislating, rather than empowering an even more destructive partisan pendulum. It seems just as likely that the parties circle the wagons around agendas with zero overlap whatsoever and yank the country back and forth until it goes entirely off the rails. The gridlock in response to party polarization is a feature of the system not a bug. The system is intended to constrain legislation within pluralistically acceptable bounds, not hand unchecked powers to whatever coalition can cobble together 51% support at any given moment.
I used to think that, but Matt has made a strong case to me that the 60-vote requirement as used in practice is a fairly recent (within my mid-40's lifetime) development. And it sure doesn't seem like it's made things better.
First, this reconciliation stuff means the pendulum gets to swing _anyway_, but on strangely written giant bills where it's very hard for you to petition your senator/representative one way or the other. If you love/hate the dental benefits in this bill, or community college, well - there is so much tied up in this that you kind of have to accept the whole deal.
And nobody has to go on the record as opposing any of it - because it would take 10-12 Republican votes (or more) for any of this then any individual Republican who needs the cred can say they support it but likely without having to actually vote against it.
Second - this seems to have ended up making the supreme court even more of a fight - because if you can't legislate then you may have to do executive actions, and then we fight about that all the time.
I think if we had a multi-party system that requiring > a majority might be worthwhile to prevent that pendulum swinging(although I'd like to look at what other first world democracies have seen from needing/not-needing this to be sure), but that's not what we have.
I think there's an obviously compelling argument that congress is broken, and pretty much everything you said is true, I just happen to think getting rid of the filibuster alone, without some broader set of reforms, is more likely to make the problem worse than better. Breaking congressional gridlock by empowering greater national majority rule will deepen the fracturing of the country. When losing a single vote to the other side flips major legislation it turns up the pressure to turn every election into a national one and makes electing a congressperson with idiosyncratic views an even greater liability.
This path ultimately ends up with fewer idiosyncratic or centrist congresspersons being elected and the unconstrained extremes of the parties dragging their centers even further apart. The only way dropping the filibuster helps is if there's a substantial enough overlapping of the parties for you to empower into a sustainable coalition.
I think it really comes down to whether you want congressional gridlock or not. Right now, the filibuster prevents the passage of bills and the feedback that comes from doing things and getting voter feedback on your performance. If you are happy with the status quo and lack of action by Congress, then I understand your position. If you are motivated by a fear of what comes next by removing the filibuster, then I would just say that the country survived without a filibuster for many many years (it essentially was only used on civil rights legislation historically). So we can probably survive without it. And it is fundamentally unjust that a majority of a legislature cannot pass bills.
I think the gridlock that we have right now is the intended outcome of our partisan polarization. Both parties are in a race to expand and commandeer the power of the government to install a "permanent" ruling coalition. Getting rid of the filibuster at this point point empowers that end rather than impedes it. Impeding that outcome means electoral reforms that promote the success of idiosyncratic candidates, things like ranked choice voting, and systemic limits on the ability of the federal government to impose the sweeping policy preferences of small national majorities on places where they are deeply unpopular.
Outside electoral reforms, I actually think the best thing that could happen to congress is if Justice Gorsuch can actually revive the non-delegation doctrine. Congress should be spending much more time an taking many more actual votes directing the mundane operation of government, rather than being allowed to hand everything off to the executive and only voting on things they want to use as a campaign ad. The fundamental problem right now is that there's no actual mechanism for making sure congress has a job to do, so they all sit around being pundits and only voting on the things that fire up their primary voters.
That's interesting to consider. The Rs want to steal elections with maybe more petty ambitions. The Ds want to throw out all the constraints in the name of expansively remaking society. The Ds mostly want to do it in good faith. The Rs are almost entirely corrupt. It's definitely not symmetrical in many ways, but I regularly struggle to decide which is more dangerous.
What I get from this comment is that you like gridlock and are worried about changes in laws. That's ok, but that's a fundamentally conservative viewpoint, and is focused on protecting past successes as opposed to making changes now.
Congress should have to vote and go on record for or against changes to the Code of Federal Regulations - they are legislation in every meaningful sense of the word, and approving legislation is the job of the legislature. They don't have to write them - agencies have the expertise for that - but we shouldn't have a system that favors members of Congress who are so unserious they'd rather be grandstanding pundits than dirty their hands with legislative compromise.
I think congress should function efficiently within it's properly constrained pluralistic box. Expansive changes rightly require amendments, not legislation. There are such amendments I would support. Gridlock is bad, but it's better than letting either party break the system in the name of their own permanent rule.
I recognize that some people support vision of governance that in America is effectively revolutionary. The question those people need to ask themselves is if they're interested in the bloody kind. Because if they can't even pass an amendment, that's what they're gonna end up with if we keep tearing down the checks and balances of the system.
My take on the Supreme Court is that they will strike down whatever laws they want to strike down and leave in place whatever laws they want to leave in place. It's true that they would probably strike down an anti-gerrymandering rule for state legislatures but they also might strike down an anti-gerrymandering rule for congress. Trying to read the text of the constitution isn't going to give us any insight whatsoever into how the justices will behave in the future.
Over time, hopefully, we can rework American political institutions and improve them — including drastic changes to the functioning of the Supreme Court. But until then you may as well write the best laws you can, then hire the best lawyers you can to defend them.
Robert's Rucho v. Common Cause decision made pretty clear that congress could use the elections clause to address gerrymandering at for house districts. That's not to say that they'd let absolutely any anti-gerrymandering law fly, but they're at least open to them --- whereas I doubt they're at all open to a federal anti-gerrymandering law for state legislature districts.
Rucho pretty strongly implies Congress can't regulate state partisan gerrymanders. Congress has power under the 14th amendment to pass laws to prevent states from violating the federal rights of US citizens, but Rucho said there is no federal right to proportional representation by party.
Roberts is no longer in charge, and there is no indication that the new majority that works without him would let anything stand up.
Of course, if the Democrats did manage to pass a narrowly-tailored anti-gerrymandering bill and it was struck down, they'd absolutely come for the Court with knives out once they do manage to fight their way back into a trifecta, no matter how slim.
If the Republicans are looking to institute a majoritarian dictatorship, they're certainly on the right track, by cranking up the other side's frustration to 11.
The Voting Rights Act applied to state legislatures—the decision that struck down parts of it was based on subjecting particular subdivisions of states to enhanced scrutiny. A general rule that districts may not be drawn on the basis of race or partisanship should pass constitutional muster.
The voting rights act never applied to partisan gerrymanders --- only to racial ones. SCOTUS has been clear that congress can pass gerrymandering restrictions for house districts as part of their power given by the clause
"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
I assume that's somehow about the fact that state legislatures were given the power to choose Senators, so that it required a constitutional amendment to make it an election?
And importantly, the Reconstruction amendments gave Congress the power to overrule states on things involving racial electoral equality, but not the rest of the state power.
We'll see how serious Dems are about raising the taxes on rich people when they either repeal or keep the SALT deduction caps. A repeal of the cap really would signify the party is for rich, snobbish people that live in big (high tax) cities.
We'll see how serious Republicans are about being the party of the working class when they repeal the carried interest loophole to fund an increased minimum wage. It's easy to play this game.
Methinks Chuck Schumer is as important as the Republican caucus in protecting the carried interest loophole. How do you think he climbed the greasy pole?
I'm curious how to reconcile the recent Weeds podcast where Matt and David Shor discussed the public being mostly change resistant with the desire to remove the filibuster. My read is that the filibuster allows the public to vote more progressive than it actually is because they assume the government won't/can't make radical change. If you remove the filibuster and actually have one wave election create the potential for much more radical change, I think the public will be much more likely to vote conservative.
E.g. Britain has that capacity and has been Conservative for 70% of the time over the last 40 years - and the period of Labour control was under Tony Blair a VERY moderate Labour leader.
What matters isn't who's in charge, it's what policy passes. UK Conservatives are very far to the left of US Republicans. This week the UK Conservative government raised taxes in order to increase spending on the national health service. Can you imagine Republicans doing that?
Your & Dan S point about the welfare state being difficult to undo is very well taken. I think the point has been made here before that Boris Johnson has been a much more successful Trump in that he has taken populist positions on NHS while being significantly more conservative in other areas.
The key difference is that people are little "c" conservative. They don't want Republicans taking away current benefits/systems that seem to work okay, but are suspicious that new programs will make things worse instead of better. This creates an inherently anti-progressive mood that is overcome currently with "identity" politics. The identity stuff is so strong because the filibuster makes it hard to do radical things. Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking.
"Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking."
This is likely true, and it would be a good thing.
We really shouldn't be trying for "improvement in massive bursts with no opportunity for iteration or developing best practices."
Also, you suck the identity politics out of it, and rural conservatives are suddenly a lot more focused on making the state they have work for them, which will, after a bit of thought, turn to capacity building, something on which both sides can likely reach some agreement.
Agree with Binya. If we care about outcomes instead of branding and symbolism, the UK has instituted (in general) more of the Democratic party's platform than here in the US.
There was also that great moment in Ezra Klein's podcast with Fareed Zakaria when Ezra pitched his similar abolish the filibuster argument and Fareed responded with basically ... ok, so you'd to simulate parliamentary politics here in the US, but that's basically trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and I don't know if it'd work out exactly as you intend (e.g., as you mention, it could just shift the power to the more conservative temperament movement).
This post is indicative of a habit of supporters of even small c conservative policy in America of operating from a position of complete ignorance. There is always uncertainty in life. But parliamentary democracies exist all over the world. In general they function a lot better than the US' stack of veto points and malapportionment.
If you like the system as is, just say so. Don't hide behind a self imposed veil of ignorance.
If you are suggesting we remake congress and have a parliament, I would support that. There is a difference between that and some sort of hybrid contraption that is awkwardly created under the existing constitution.
More to the point - HAVE A STATE DO THIS! If its so clear that a parliamentary system is better, why not have a referendum in California on it?
(The answer is because it would lose! 80% of the public are moderate/conservative which essentially means they are small "c" conservative.)
By looking at the historical record. Juan Linz goes into detail on this. Presidential republics tend to undergo various crises and collapse, as seen in Central and South America and even places like France. The US narrowly dodged the bullet on this during the US Civil War, and was genuinely lucky to have people like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant in positions of power during that time. It could be argued that the US has certain characteristics that make it unusually resilient to the pressures faced by other governments that divide power between strong executive presidents and parliaments, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.
As a general rule, if every country that's ever carbon-copied your constitution has spent the majority of its existence under one flavor or another of oligarchy or dictatorship, it's likely the constitution in question isn't a very good one.
We've been lucky, but our politics are definitely becoming more "Latin American". I don't think we're going to stay lucky.
Already we've started not staying lucky. Trump was pretty unlucky (even a lot of Republicans — maybe most — will admit that privately. January 6th was pretty unlucky. Elections nullification legislation in myriad states is unlucky. The question isn't do we stay lucky. The question is how much more unlucky do we get.
I agree that a parliamentary system is better. However, the real kicker is always the strength of various institutions in constraining political actors from ignoring the rules. There are plenty parliaments that are just as bad as any presidential system.
No veil of ignorance Binya. I do like the current structure. As others have mentioned here in the comments and I agree, these are features not bugs. Only pointing out that trying to "simulate parliamentary politics" within our current structure isn't actually implementing a parliamentary system ... so Fareed's square peg + round hole comment.
To re-inforce one of David Shor's points ... 80% of America is either moderate or conservative. Their conversation spells out the implications of that quite well.
probably worthwhile noting that 80% of Americans self-identifying as moderate or conservative is virtually meaningless. Identifying as a moderate is one of American life's great acts of virtue signaling that is functionally irrelevant. 80% of Americans think Congress is broken, it's hard to argue there's a constituency for stasis even if both parties would implement policies more extreme than the median voter. It'd actually be healthy for our civic and political cultures to refocus on policy arguments rather than the incessant beat of culture war bullshit and obfuscation that currently dominates political coverage. If Democrats were able to pass their immigration and abortion policies and force republicans to have debates on the merits it'd probably do some political damage to both sides but be a more honest debate than Susan Collins lying about the implications of her Supreme court votes and then pivoting to Sara Gideon being a socialist.
IDK Anonymous ... David Shor's opinion seems well regarded on this Substack. Meaningless seems pretty strong there. Did you catch that last The Weeds podcast? Both he and Matt felt that this 80% of the electorate is "not-Progressive" fact explains some of the results across the last three election cycles and further constrains Progressive optionality going forward. I tended to agree with the points of their discussion. Certainly they could be wrong.
"But precisely because he’s the key actor here, he’s the one who ought to be talking about which measures he does believe in strongly enough to push on a party-line vote.
But he’s not, and his intransigence isn’t a coherent theory of political change any more than the left’s."
Manchin can't name the measures because he does not 'believe' in any of them. He will sign only on those bills (Dem or otherwise) that will not diminish his changes of keeping his seat in a red state. He will go with ANY bill that can get some red votes (to cover his bases), ideology be damned. Contrast that to the Left's view, "Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned".
It's kind of hilarious how these simple truths don't penetrate the titanium bubble of those who genuinely believe the status quo Senate rules "force compromise".
One truism of our era is that nothing in the real world--not wars, not disease, not even actual politicians' record--budge people from the fortress silos of priors they built decades ago. Self-described "independents" and "moderates" are as bad as the worst partisans and then some on that.
Insight for the day: “If you make it impossible to legislate, then politics really is just culture war posturing…”
I believe the third sentence in the second paragraph contains a typo and should read "than the roughly $1 trillion Affordable Care Act." Currently it says "billion" and not "trillion."
it's all just an accounting gimmick anyway
I think you could critique this article, though, using your own style of "realistic politics" arguments.
Joe Manchin isn't getting rid of the filibuster because he knows you're right and doesn't *want* power. With great power comes great responsibility. More to the point, with great power comes "getting things done," and with getting things done comes... losing in West Virginia.
I think Democrats underestimate the practical, real-world, intractable problem that comes with the 50th Democrat in the Senate serving in a state where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 39%. Democrats have literally no leverage over Joe Manchin, and it's in Joe Manchin's rational political interest to ensure that nothing gets done. It's still better than majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Matt did a podcast several months back about the filibuster, and the point was made that functionally, the filibuster protects the moderate wing of the majority party from the extreme wing by allowing them (the moderate senators) to avoid voting on controversial bills that are no-wins for them. As long as the filibuster exists, they can pretend to have it both ways by declaring lukewarm support for the bill but never having to actually vote yes and blaming the minority party for preventing its passage.
This is true for both Democrats and Republicans which both have crazy extreme wings and both have a good number of moderates that wish the crazy ones would shut up.
Manchin's going to lose in 2024, he should just use these last three and a half years to help people and build a legacy for himself in his state and nationally. If he's pathologically addicted to holding office Biden can give him DHS or something if he wins reelection.
"Realist Joe Manchin", who was not obsessed with nostalgic fantasies about the bipartisan comity of the past, would recognize that he is not going to win his next Senate race. (Even if he tried to switch parties he'd lose the GOP primary to a Trumpist.) Given that, he would care about having an actual legacy, and reforming the Senate to actually bring back bipartisan legislation would be a pretty great legacy.
People underrate the degree to which Manchin genuinely believes that the filibuster fosters bipartisanship
Allegedly, Manchin didn't want to run in 2018 anyway; Schumer all but held a gun to his head. And he's 74. I don't think reelection is a primary concern.
It seems to me that the direct connection you make between 'abolish the filibuster' and 'add 2-8 Democratic Senators on a party line vote' is pretty much the reason that moderates don't support it. That would be an incredibly toxic thing to do and I don't see how people don't realize that.
Separately, maybe Manchin just doesn't think it makes sense to pass the top 20 Democratic priorities all at once. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with picking one (maybe Climate Change) and passing a bill dedicated to that priority, then next year picking another one (maybe Medicare age/dental for the seniors).
Congress would certainly work better without the filibuster, but since abolishing it appears to mean immediately creating a massive political crisis by adding as many as 4 states I can see how people support the status quo.
Why is adding states a political crisis? We've done it throughout American history. Why is DC residents not being full citizens not a crisis? Why is the current filibuster (which has changed throughout history) sacrosanct? You do realize that the filibuster has largely shrunk over time as it has been abused?
If you don't think eliminating the filibuster and then immediately passing legislation to add states that are likely to increase a Democratic majority would cause a major crisis I don't know what to tell you.
I am truly not debating the individual merits of either DC Statehood or abolishing the filibuster in the abstract here. I'm just saying that linking the two makes the entire premise appear to be a naked power grab.
Stiffing Merrick Garland and forcing Kavanagh and Amy Barrett through was a naked power grab, and yet the Republicans seem to have suffered no real ill effects. I think eliminating the filibuster and adding DC statehood is defendable on the merits, and so why should we care if Republicans complain? They don't care when we complain.
OK
Why would you engage with people in this way?
I looked through some of your other comments so I'm not going to engage with your argument because I suspect it is unfalsifiable. I would just propose that you're not going to win many converts to your cause responding to minor disagreement with an ad hominem attacks and broad generalizations.
There's no need to call anyone an idiot here, especially for just making an argument you disagree with. The question of whether the Senate bias is something that is working as intended or not is one that reasonable people can disagree about. I believe it's pretty bad but I understand the opposing argument.
Either way, adding states is a big deal and is likely to be a big deal for a very large % of Americans (if you have polls that show this is false I'll gladly change my mind) because it hasn't been done in a long time and is very visible and feels major in a way that the Republican escalations are not (those may be more impactful but they are generally boring and not visible). Maybe that's worth doing but if you can't see how that's a huge deal to a lot of people including likely a lot of moderate democrats then you are probably in a bubble...
The Democratic party has won equally for the last 20 years and has expectations that they will continue to make gains due to demographic and generational changes. Maintaining a system that gives them at least equal power is not unilateral disarmament!
"Also, most previous states were adding during times of political tension, mainly in ways to block slave-holder states from gaining more seats in the Senate"
That really doesn't seem like an accurate description of the main reason 37 additional states were added to the union, following the original 13.
You can look over the list of states and dates here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_admission_to_the_Union. 21 states were added between 1790 and the outbreak of thee civil war, of which only 13 were non-slaveholding.
Without wasting the rest of my night looking into it, my understanding is that slavery became a salient factor accelerating statehood for territories as the tensions mounted before boiling over into the civil war, but outside of that period raw partisan calculations weren't really the driving force in state creation.
The Senate isn’t supposed to be democratic. It’s supposed to represent states.
using your power in politics isn't a naked power grab. elected officials are allowed to govern
“Why is DC residents not being full citizens not a crisis?”
Because they are full citizens.
If I'm a DC resident, why aren't I represented in Congress? Taxation without Representation was a justification for the American Revolution. DC residents aren't full citizens in this democracy and have no effective vote-taking representation in Congress.
“If I'm a DC resident, why aren't I represented in Congress?”
https://norton.house.gov/
You calling the Honorable Ms. Norton a liar?
Get out of here Ken, no one likes you.
Ok, Mack.
I’d say I am an educator if Jimmy L truly was unaware that DC has representation in Congress.
DC statehood is a pipe dream. A much simpler and less contentious solution, which would give you all the rights other Americans have, would be to split the District in half (draw the line wherever you want) and give half to Virginia and half to Maryland. The District has outlived any purpose it ever had.
Simpler yet, give it all to Maryland, since Virginia got its part back in 1847. If you want a rump DC, it could encompass the Capitol, the White House and the Mall. No one lives there except the Bidens, who vote in Delaware and maybe some homeless encampments whose residents can hardly plead 'no taxation without representation'.
So you and the Republican caucus would support that, you think?
It might be less contentious, but Maryland would have to be persuaded to change its opinion on retrocession: it's opposed.
The only thing I've learned from this comment thread is that you really don't like Ken M and seem to enjoy calling him names. For someone like me, who prefers retrocession over statehood but doesn't have a super-strong view on the matter, name-calling is not very convincing.
I’ll thank you to mind your manners, Danny boy, and not insinuate that innocent people are racists.
“It actually doesn't matter if you are racist or not.”
It does to me.
“The Senate under represents black people and you don't care.”
Maybe because 1) I understand that the Senate represents states, and, 2) I am not obsessed with the politics of skin color.
'I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with picking one (maybe Climate Change) and passing a bill dedicated to that priority, then next year picking another one (maybe Medicare age/dental for the seniors).'
Why is doing a maximum of one thing per year the ideal pace for legislating?
Don't assume Puerto Rico Senators would be Democratic.
I support giving them a binding referendum for statehood because it's the right thing to do, but their pro-statehood party seems fairly aligned (other than the statehood issue) with stateside Republican politics.
If the GOP had any brains, SCOTUS would overrule Roe, making abortion a live issue, and then Republicans would introduce statehood legislation for PR.
"If the GOP had any brains" it would go whole hog on a mild right-populism similar to what Trump campaigned on in 2016, or what the British Tories have been gutting Labour with.
Most of the GOP base would happily be all-in on federal investment in the American people if it were couched in something other than identity politics pseudo-leftist-speak.
Alternatively, Democrats could work in a bipartisan fashion to create bills that are supported by more than 60 Senators. Though that wouldn't add up to $3.5T, restructure the welfare state, lay the groundwork for adding new states, revamp voting in all 50 states, increase taxes on "the rich" and attempt to eliminate the oil & gas industry.
In other words, try to pass moderate, incremental changes that reflect the views of most of the electorate rather than the slightly-modified wish list that originated from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
Is this a joke? The only things that pass with 60 votes are infrastructure bills and anything that says “screw China.” Republicans are too politically interested in disfunction.
Those aren't the only things Republicans think about. Those are the things blind partisans think Republicans think about.
What do you think Republicans are interested in passing? Specifically, what will they actually vote for, as opposed to saying they will vote for it, then pulling out at the last minute and forcing a party line vote that fails due to the filibuster? I want to see evidence from you that there are actually bipartisan bills available to pass. Name them.
You have your own blind partisans, who are probably a larger part of the GOP electorate than they are of the Democratic electorate, but yes, fundamentally, you're right.
There's plenty that can be done on a bipartisan basis... and has been, and will continue to be. The infrastructure bill is fairly noncontroversial unless you're an OANN-chugging nutjob. So is the R&D bill, and some of the criminal justice reforms, and there will be plenty more things of a similar nature.
But at the end of the day, the United States is a democratic republic, and as such it also has the mechanisms in place for partisan majority rule. These are confined to certain certain issues, and heavily circumscribed by law and the Constitution, but they're there.
Within that framework... "you lost, deal with it."
No one, and I mean no one, asked the Democratic minority in the Senate and House if that clusterfuck of a 2017 tax "reform" bill that handed another trillion dollars to rich people was acceptable to the half of the country they represented. If a bill that's likely to spend $2-3 trillion, most of it on middle-class folk, ends up as unpopular as you say, you'll have your chance to undo it in due course.
If you're being honest with yourself, the reason you don't want it to happen in the first place is that you know that much of it will be quite popular, and that it will never be undone.
1. tax receipts actually went up from the tax reform bill.
2. Margin tax rate reductions were also coupled with elimination of a lot of special interest deductions, so the effective tax rate most people pay stayed about the same.
Mathew, Economist, CPA
Tax receipts went up because the Fed finally decided it would let the economy "overheat," then discovered that there was a huge amount of productive slack due to premature tightening of monetary policy in 2015-16.
As for the second point, sure, for most people, but not for the richest. You've seen the same analyses I have; even the Heritage Foundation admits that the direct tax benefits accrued disproportionately to the top less-than-a-percent of households. They just bullshit their way into saying indirect benefits were high, lol. Trickle-down still works, dontcha know?
Moreover, you should understand better than most that after the temporary provisions sunset, the net impact to post-tax income for all but the top 10% of so of households is negative.
Of course the benefits tended to go to the top households, they pay most of the tax.
The top 10% earns 40% of the money, but pays 70% of the tax.
If control of the Senate weren't balanced on a knife's edge, that *might* happen. But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins that would help them retain control next year.
It's hard to pursue good governing for the sake of good governing when the tiniest movement can cause enormous changes in the balance of power.
Worth noting that the bipartisan infrastructure deal passed with 19 GOP votes in the Senate!
Ah, but this is the exception that . . . um . . . doesn't prove the rule. It certainly seems out of character for the Republicans, outside of the Secret Congress stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is that they decided it wouldn't be that politically valuable enough of a win for Biden, and it would make Manchin (et al?) even more adamant that no bill can pass that is not bipartisan, meaning other, more important things won't pass.
Or maybe my theory isn't airtight. Not sure.
Your theory sounds highly plausible. A small ball infrastructure bill that increases spending very little on net (and won't do much to fuel MAGA primary challenges) is a small price to pay for preventing permanent, large scale increases in the size of the welfare state.
I am fairly certain that for at least _some_ of the Republicans that voted for the bipartisan infrastructure package, the primary goal was keeping Manchin and Sinema on-side to prevent the larger package from passing. (And they may be hoping that in the end if the larger package doesn't pass, the progs in the House will tank the bipartisan package too, as they have threatened.)
"But all the incentives for the Republicans are to avoid giving Democrats huge wins"
but 17 of them voted for the infrastructure bill...
I'd be interested in your answer to this too. Some of my wishlist items would be cutting bad regulation and spending more on innovation and I could see Republicans going for those but likely few Dems.
The devil is in the details, as we've found out in the past forty years. Tell me what's bad regulation and what's good regulation and I'll let you know if I agree. Whenever I see a poll asking people if they're for cutting regulation without being specific I want to gag. Are we talking about the regulation of homicide, or zoning restrictions?
I agree, though I would argue that if you asked people on the left like to have more regulation and people on the right less, so there some general assessment based on political orientation.
I think all regulation creates some small cost because of added complexity and the more of it there is the higher complexity (probably in some non-linear fashion). This by itself should mean that we should (all other things being equal) keep regulation somewhat in check and not add to it "needlessly" (yes, devil is in the details on all of this, just making general points).
In terms of the content it's obviously a mix and people's judgment of it will vary, but there's probably a bunch of regulations that many people agree are very good, some that many people can agree are bad (though most don't think about them), and then a bunch that are hotly debated though likely only by those who pay attention to them.
Let me rephrase to make my initial statement slightly more useful: "Eliminate or change regulation that has failed to have its intended effect or that has had perverse outcomes." The devil is still in the details and many of these choices would be controversial, but again this is my wishlist. Some random choices: Reduce/improve zoning, get rid of or rework many aspects of state licensing, streamline environmental reviews, figure out how to streamline FDA approval and make it faster/cheaper.
I'm all for faster/cheaper so long as it weeds out drugs with no particular benefit other than ever-greening incumbent pharmas' patents at higher prices and what turn out to be dangerous drugs like thalidomide. The FDA today seems to have become subject to a lot of regulatory capture and 'faster/cheaper' is a mantra that exacerbates, rather than solves, the problem, like 'cutting bad regulation'.
Actually I'd probably just support whatever Eli Dourado wants to do. That would likely work out well in practice.
Wait, you mean Republicans don't want to pass a progressive wish list? oh noes...
I bet you could fit both an immigration bill and a climate bill under the "screw China" column.
That used to work when the minority party cared about policy. But under McConnell, it’s become clear that the minority party gets better electoral strength through unanimous opposition.
Addendum: I don’t know why Matt’s advice to Kamala Harris (take positions that appeal to the median, swing voter) differs so much with his advice to Senate Democrats. Seems like a broad and popular bill would be better than whatever can scrape by with 51 votes.
Raising taxes on the rich, providing the child tax credit, dental care for seniors etc etc ARE popular among the majority of electorate.
His advice to Harris would help her become more popular (and so stand a better chance of winning a presidential election some day). His advice to Senate Democrats would help them enact legislation. Different goals for different methods.
Governing requires doing things that are unpopular. Regardless of political affiliation, virtually no one thinks our immigration system is anything better than broken. Should it just be ignored because any legislation will be unpopular?
Because he wants more people on welfare.
How do you determine what is popular? Seems like some blind partisanship might be clouding your vision in that regard.
Except for the fact the (establishment) GOP economic ideas are actually unpopular. The rise of Trump with his unabashed 'soak the rich' approach proves it. GOP base would love to have a generous safety net just and they don't mind taxing Wall Street for it. People who DO mind about taxing Wall Street (to fund Medicare) are the Limousine Liberals & Norquist Conservatives. Interestingly enough, they both agree on Culture War that it doesn't matter.
The problem is that when you go to 60 votes, you start vastly reducing the amount of overlap there is. Going by 538’s ranking of how often senators vote along with the Democrats’ position, the 10th most cooperative R Senator is *Mitch McConnell*. Which means to get a bipartisan bill through the filibuster, you need something that every Democrat plus Mitch McConnell and everyone at least as willing to play ball as him to agree to.
I'm curious if you think increasing the number of Senators would do something here. Keep the 60% requirement, but increase the number to 200. All of a sudden you will have more people to find trade offs. Would that help or make no difference?
Interestingly, changing the size of the Senate --- in either direction --- doesn't require unanimous consent by the states.
Talking about "the median Senate seat [being] something like R+2 rather than R+6" is really quite disingenuous. The median Senate seat is R+6 for a Democratic Party that's indulges affluent white progressives' social liberalism. Is R+6 for "celebrate your abortion" and decriminalizing border crossings.
But it's not R+6 for Barak Obama, who opposed same sex marriage, railed against exporting jobs to Mexico, and cracked down on illegal immigration. It was less than a decade ago, when Obama's blue wall still held, that Democrats were preening about a permanent electoral college advantage: https://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/do_democrats_have_a_permanent_electoral_college_advantage/
Obama was *exactly* a Democratic Party that indulges affluent white progressives’ social liberalism and “celebrate your abortion” and decriminalizing border crossings. Biden is the one who is reinforcing Trump’s border and tariff policies.
The difference in the electoral issues has nothing to do with the candidates or their messaging. It’s entirely based on how many young college educated people from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have moved to Virginia or Colorado or Texas or Georgia or Arizona. There’s also an effect of greater educational polarization during that time, but that isn’t being driven by the presidential candidates (except maybe Trump).
Go back and listen to Obama’s pre-2008 speeches. That’s where the party went, but that’s not how he campaigned.
The 2004 DNC speech that made him famous was all about unity (identifying commonality between his white native and Black immigrant family), hard work, the Declaration of Independence, shipping Union Maytag jobs to Mexico, etc. He sounded more like Nikki Haley’s 2020 RNC speech than Kamala “they never saw as as fully human” Harris.
Obama came out strongly against illegal immigration in 2005, and implemented eVerify in office. He deported more people than Trump. He opposed same-sex marriage. He talked about Black people needing to take personal responsibility.
I attended 2019 DNC events in Iowa. The contrast with how Obama campaigned just a decade before was incredible.
And no, there was no mass exodus of young college educated people from these states from 2012 to 2016. Demographics is shifting, but much more slowly than Party attitudes are changing.
TBH I agree with both of you here and I think you both make important points. Sadly I don't have time to really flesh this out more but just a few quick thoughts. I think it's a mix of the effects you described Kenny (people moving + increasing partisanship) but also a shift on trade & border policies (rightward on the latter, protectionist on the former) + a shift leftward on social spending and some other things + a big shift on narrative/framing (as e.g. described here https://www.slowboring.com/p/obama-pander/comments). I don't have any strong sense of how big each of these factors are and if there's a winning strategy without giving up huge parts of the platform (or even just period) but I do think Ray brings up an inconvenient fact that's often ignored by us liberals.
Some truth to this, but the real problem isn't "democrats are X", it's "the cultural elite that dominates the media and much of the public faces of major corporations are X".
It literally doesn't matter what the Democratic Party claims it stands for or what the majority of the Party supports, when it spans an entire ordinary nation's political axis from left to right and has no truly partisan media organizations to spearhead its messaging.
The Republican Party can exert message discipline because it has media, corporate, and political arms that are closely coordinated and can exert some limited "bubble" effect around core voters.
The Democratic Party cannot and likely never will be able to stop its nutjob activists and the obscenely cosmopolitan-biased media elites from screwing its message up.
Things will only go back to normal (as compared to the rest of the globe) if the Republicans overreach so far that, in the immediate aftermath, the Democrats enjoy the unity necessary to pack the Supreme Court, overturn Citizens' United, and destroy Fox, OANN, and Newsmax (also MSNBC and maybe CNN) by reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine.
Then they'll go back to squabbling as usual, but the boil will have been lanced and the "conservative" movement will stop being so goddamned poisonous, so it won't matter.
The US is never going to be a left-liberal country, but nothing in 1960 foreordained that the right was going to be batshit insane by global standards.
You want to talk global standards? How is voting done in France or Germany? How often do their courts override voters on key social issues? How are less religious countries like Germany allowed to have religious education in schools, and the most religious country in the developed world isn’t? How is second trimester abortion unusual in Europe, but constitutionally required in the US? Why is there a right to gay marriage in the US constitution, but not the European Convention on Human Rights?
In terms of how much elites override the people on cultural issues, the US left is batshit insane by global standards.
We've been over this. I couldn't give less of a damn about most of that, and certainly don't regard any of it as "leftist" or "rightist".
You and I both know that on economic, regulatory, and environmental matters, the Republicans are batshit insane.
A few examples:
1. Before US federal research funding and manufacturing prowess in the States, Europe, and China pushed down the cost of solar cells and windmills to the point where they can outcompete natural gas on their own, we were staring down the barrel of an existential crisis that carried serious risks of ending industrial civilization worldwide.
The GOP's response was to try to directly subsidize coal, oil, and natural gas use at home and increase the security subsidies we provide to the Middle East to keep that market "stable." Had they been in charge since 2008, the investments in R&D that led to the current market environment in which fossil fuel investments are unprofitable would never have happened, and we'd be completely and utterly fucked.
2. Since 1980, the Republicans have been the party of wild, radical experimentation with the national economy. Republican-led financialization of the economy has GUTTED the real standard of living of the American middle class in favor of the wealthy, while dramatically destabilizing working class employment structures. The result? Relative to incomes, the prices of several of the basics of life (none of which are included in the CPI basket) have absolutely skyrocketed, most egregiously those of housing, healthcare, education, and childcare. Between the four of them, they now account for well over half a median-income households *lifetime expenditures*.
Because of those high prices, it is effectively impossible for a working-class family to subsist on a single income without state aid, and very difficult for a second-wage earner to enter the workforce without a grandparent or other relation stepping into handle child care affordably. It is very nearly impossible for a middle-class family to "scrimp and save" their way to ownership of a decent capital portfolio to cover retirement. Only by rapidly pushing into the ranks of the professional classes while still quite young can one be assured of a decent future, and even that's at risk of a momentary, ill-timed disruption in employer-provided healthcare coverage during a serious illness.
3. At the same time, the GOP has presided over hollowing out state capacity at every level, allowing regulatory capture, monopolistic business practices, and outright corruption to dictate the pricing structures in industries as diverse as public infrastructure construction, higher education, and healthcare. In all three, we spend vastly more and achieve vastly less than any number of countries that didn't go through the same ill-considered processes of deregulation and weakened state government oversight in the 1980's and 90's.
4. Finally, and relevant to your question regarding voting, for some Godforsaken reason, even intelligent "conservatives" such as yourself have been taken in by this insane delusion that you lost in 2020 because of mass fraud, rather than because Donald Trump is singularly unpopular and because my generation finally decided to turn up at the pools. Your response has been to try to smash the entire system of our democratic republic rather than risking losing again.
In both Germany and France the national/federal government issues an ID, free of charge, to every citizen. They are incredibly easy to access and are mandatory. They're required to present it when either voting in person or applying for a mail-in ballot, which can be requested for any or no reason. I'd be completely fine with the ID requirement, so long as they were free and easy to get; the problem is that every time the GOP strengthens an ID requirement, DMVs in Democratic-leaning areas mysteriously adjust operating hours or are "consolidated". So no, the point you were trying to make about voting is not true at all. It is consistently easier to vote everywhere else in the developed, democratic world.
I'll be frank. I find it completely nonsensical for a "conservative" to give a good goddamn about something like gay marriage; why would it be "conservative" for someone to want to deny the opportunity to create stable family structures to any segment of society? It's as profoundly stupid as anti-miscegenation laws were, and is justified with the same set of stupid arguments. As for religious education, in case you're not aware, the US is Constitutionally-bound to observe separation of church and state, and public education is clearly, obviously, indisputably a function of the state. Germany is not so bound, nor is Sweden. France is far more extreme on the topic.
But I do not care about these things. I don't have the luxury of caring, because the very underpinnings of American prosperity, security, and democracy are under serious threat from our so-called "conservatives" while you whine about how American elites are "culturally leftist."
Maybe, maybe not. Other countries have established religions and enforce cultural and religious ideas on populations. There's never been a Catholic PM in the UK, for example. We've had at least two Catholic Presidents here in the US. The amount of elite enforcement of laicite in France (ostensibly leftist from the French Revolution) would make your head spin here in the US.
No... it's simple math which points out sparsely populated states are over represented in the senate by design. Pretending otherwise is quite disingenuous.
Some basic facts about Senate representativeness.
Divide the states into four tranches by population:
Smallest 15 states: equally split between D and R Senators
Next group of 15: dominated by Republicans (primarily southern states)
Next group of 15: dominated by Democrats
Top 5 states: equally split between D and R Senators
State population is really very weakly correlated with partisan bias. It's time for Democrats to stop whining about how the Senate is skewed against us and get good candidates, run great campaigns, and win more seats. You know, like we did so well in 2006 and 2008 (peaking at 60 Senators!) when we had exactly the same fifty states.
Agree. In 2010, 5 of 6 statewide elected positions in Montana were held by Democrats. Today, its the opposite. I don't think the party got that much more liberal, although the ACA was very unpopular here ten years ago. Instead the Democrats just stopped trying to appeal to rural voters and went all-in on cities. They don't have any rural-directed messaging, except for some hand-waving about broadband, and it'll cost them the Senate and maybe the White House.
I'm afraid Montana may be negative evidence for my recommendations. Can you explain why Steve Daines thumped Steve Bullock by a pretty dominating 10 point margin? I thought Bullock was pretty popular in the state.
Two reasons: one, Bulock's presidential run, followed by promising not to run for Senate, and then running for Senate, was a bad look. He didn't take any unpopular positions, necessarily, but he had to focus on the national Democratic conversation, instead of regional concerns, which damaged his credibility/authenticity. Also, the pandemic: turnout was up, due to an all-mail election, which, in a conservative state, helped GOP candidates more than Dem candidates.
Ah, thanks. This makes me feel better. (Also, I note his gubernatorial victories weren't *that* big (less than 4 percentage points in his reelect)).
Lots of "basic facts in this article" as well.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-makes-it-very-hard-for-democrats-to-win-the-supreme-court/
Sure, you've got to play the hand you're dealt as best you can, but why pretend the playing field isn't skewed significantly to the right of the median voter? Pointing that out is just stating the obvious, and I'd contend working to make things somewhat less skewed (say by making DC a state) is a perfectly reasonable response... not whining for the sake of whining.
"Obviously, political coalitions can change over time. Maybe you’re reading this article in 2036 and it seems incredibly silly because Mormons have become a super Democratic group and Montana, Utah and Idaho are all blue states … who knows. But for the time being, the Senate is effectively 6 to 7 percentage points redder than the country as a whole, which means that Democrats are likely to win it only in the event of a near-landslide in their favor nationally. "
I'm fine with making DC a state. High time we did it. Unfortunately, I just found out my name is not Joe Manchin and my friends tell me I'm not the Senator from West Virginia. He's not going to do it, so it's simply not going to happen . . .
Unless we get really good at this election thing and win net 3 or 4 more Senate seats and then we may have more flexibility to get things done like ending the filibuster and adding new states.
There is no one weird trick for getting what you want done in such a narrowly-divided country. There is only one strategy that can work:
Run the country competently. Do everything we can to have a booming economy with no COVID. Get rid of the incendiary woke stuff and run on popular issues with attractive candidates. In 2022, 20 Republican seats are up versus 14 Democratic seats. Let's go get them, for heaven's sake.
This treats the current in-transition-between-party-systems alignment as a given. It's not, and it will certainly break in the next decade or two.
Agreed. We're in an unusually narrowly divided party environment, more like the 1867-1895 period than anything that came after it.
Consider how long each party controlled the House of Representatives at a stretch. Starting in 1867, it went 4 Republican terms, then 3 Democratic, then 1 Republican, 3 Democratic, 1 Republican, and 2 Democratic. That was a chaotic environment! (And not much got done).
But for the next 100 years (!) things moved glacially: 8 Republican terms in control of the House, then 3 Democratic, then 8 Republican, 8 Democratic, 1 Republican (1947-49), then the monster 22 terms controlled by the Dems.
Starting in 1995 it went 6 Republican terms, 2 Dem, 4 Republican and 2 Democratic (so far -- we'll see if they hang on for #3 next year).
With such fragile and often narrow majorities like we've seen in recent history, it just makes it a lot harder to get things done.
Bad timing, given climate change bearing down on us, but we'll probably get through it.
Even as polarized as things are, the median voter in each party does not care enough about politics or the other side's "wrong opinions" to start shooting over it. Without that willingness, neither side has the mechanisms necessary to really enforce some sort of authoritarian or autocratic system.
So "US slides into fascism" and "US slides into civil war" are both edge cases at best; the most likely outcome is that we muddle through while life gets harder for ordinary people, and maybe a few states get their shit together to govern well enough to fill in the gaps the Federal government has left unattended. Then the Party System recoalesces in some new paradigm that is completely impossible to predict today.
The most likely "bad" outcome is that we slide into a period of illiberal, herrenvolk democracy that ends when the side that spearheads it fucks up so badly that the other side smashes it at the ballot box despite all its extra-legal bullshit.
After that, it's much harder to predict. Does that get us a period of other party dominance and major reforms, a new Constitutional Convention with one side sidelined, a second "Reconstruction", a managed partition... who knows?
We should make DC a state because DC citizens should have representation in Congress. That's how democracies work. I would support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans.
I would support making DC a state if its no longer the center of the federal bureaucracy. Remove 90% of the federal jobs and spread them around the country so that DC has about the same % as Vermont or Maine - which would take it from about 350k to about 10k.
The question is would DC be willing to make that trade?
Why? Do you think DC residents get some special benefit over and above Northern VA, southern MD, New Mexico, or Nevada in terms of government largesse? Median income in DC is larger than MD's, but pretty close.
I wouldn’t support DC as a state even if it helped Republicans. The seat of federal power shouldn’t be treated as a normal place. It’s right out of Hunger Games.
You do realize how weird it is that citizens who live in the capital city can't vote in legislative elections? People in the Federal Region in Brazil elect people to seats in the legislature. Same for Berlin, Paris, London. I'm struggling to find an example overseas where this is not true. Evoking a novel seems neither here nor there.
Yes, clearly true. It's not a tough call...
Being sparsely populated isn’t the same as leaning Democrat. Farmers were a key part of the FDR coalition.
The Senate can't be abolished without convening a constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution. A new constitutional convention happens to be a popular idea in some corners of the far right - so is the Sunrise Movement in agreement with that? Seems like a really bad idea to open that Pandora's box.
It might be constructive, though, to propose and work for an amendment that gives the House power to override the Senate - that wouldn't deprive any State of equal representation in the Senate so would be allowable.
If that was paired with an amendment to modify the Electoral College so each State's EVs are based solely on its representation in the House, not the Senate, that would address most of the major structural complaints with the federal government, with modest tweaks.
But slogans are more fun.
If you’re amending the Constitution, why bother making the presidency better when you can turn it into a ceremonial figurehead and create an office of chancellor responsible to the House who would de facto exercise the executive power?
Because amendments are hard and get a lot of resistance. A slight change to the Electoral College to align it more with the population would be an uphill struggle. A more far-reaching one would have even less chance of success.
What's the current status of the constitutional convention push? I heard about it periodically during the tea party days, but I haven't heard anything in the last few years. (Altho that may simply because other stuff has been happening.)
I think the "new constitutional convention" is in the "be careful of what you wish for" category.
As always, the enemy gets a vote. I shudder to think what those folks would put into our new plan for government.
A new Constitutional Convention that wasn't conducted at the end of a civil conflict with one side or the other held at complete bayonet point and prevented from having a significant voice would result in partition, pure and simple.
Which would be fine.
I mean... good fucking luck.
It would most certainly not be fine. Outside of the coasts and black belt, we're basically talking about ripping the economic hubs of the country out of their supporting hinterlands and conducting massive population movements/ethnic cleansing to put people on the right side of those lines.
Not gonna work.
What *might* work would be a genuinely confederal system with two federal governments overseeing rural and urban areas separately, cooperating on foreign policy and infrastructure links but free to pursue economic policy.
And even that makes no sense because it's a permanent "fix" for a transitory political arrangement that's viewed as a "problem".
I think there would be problems with partition (even a peaceful one) but loss of "economic hinterlands" isn't a real thing. Kansas and California engage in a lot of trade under the status quo. There's no reason that couldn't, wouldn't continue if they were to become parts of different countries.
A confederal system partitioned on rural/urban lines doesn't work without slicing states into smaller pieces, which is a non-starter for all the existing states that are clearly dominated by their metropoles or hinterlands, respectively. While that would probably be a better outcome, how would one actually get from here to there?
I get the argument that the top line number isn't arbitrary, in the sense that it got negotiated... But the thing is, much of the spending seems arbitrary and is now in the process of getting backfilled to figure out what exactly it will be spent on.
Ex: $10B (or whatever) for the Civilian Climate Corps! Ok cool, what are they going to actually do over the next 10 years? "Job training and stuff...it'll be like CCC but for the climate!" Ok, but what will they spend the money on? "We haven't figured that out yet, but building stuff somehow, maybe..."
There are oodles of these types of things making up the $3.5T, and while they aren't all in this category, I don't think it's unreasonable (if you are Joe Manchin) to say: please tell me what this bullet point intends to spend money on, how it'll actually do it, and why it's a good investment?
Plant 1 Billion trees? Or whatever the number needed is. Honestly, I don't hate the idea.
At least it’s measurable. You just know that the poorly-defined programs are primarily slush funds.
sounds like a good time to me, do you know where we sign up?
I’m sure Biden’s people will let you know when the time is right.
I'm not enamored of the filibuster per se, but I'm deeply skeptical of the take that eliminating it will contribute to breaking gridlock through successful centrist legislating, rather than empowering an even more destructive partisan pendulum. It seems just as likely that the parties circle the wagons around agendas with zero overlap whatsoever and yank the country back and forth until it goes entirely off the rails. The gridlock in response to party polarization is a feature of the system not a bug. The system is intended to constrain legislation within pluralistically acceptable bounds, not hand unchecked powers to whatever coalition can cobble together 51% support at any given moment.
I used to think that, but Matt has made a strong case to me that the 60-vote requirement as used in practice is a fairly recent (within my mid-40's lifetime) development. And it sure doesn't seem like it's made things better.
First, this reconciliation stuff means the pendulum gets to swing _anyway_, but on strangely written giant bills where it's very hard for you to petition your senator/representative one way or the other. If you love/hate the dental benefits in this bill, or community college, well - there is so much tied up in this that you kind of have to accept the whole deal.
And nobody has to go on the record as opposing any of it - because it would take 10-12 Republican votes (or more) for any of this then any individual Republican who needs the cred can say they support it but likely without having to actually vote against it.
Second - this seems to have ended up making the supreme court even more of a fight - because if you can't legislate then you may have to do executive actions, and then we fight about that all the time.
I think if we had a multi-party system that requiring > a majority might be worthwhile to prevent that pendulum swinging(although I'd like to look at what other first world democracies have seen from needing/not-needing this to be sure), but that's not what we have.
I think there's an obviously compelling argument that congress is broken, and pretty much everything you said is true, I just happen to think getting rid of the filibuster alone, without some broader set of reforms, is more likely to make the problem worse than better. Breaking congressional gridlock by empowering greater national majority rule will deepen the fracturing of the country. When losing a single vote to the other side flips major legislation it turns up the pressure to turn every election into a national one and makes electing a congressperson with idiosyncratic views an even greater liability.
This path ultimately ends up with fewer idiosyncratic or centrist congresspersons being elected and the unconstrained extremes of the parties dragging their centers even further apart. The only way dropping the filibuster helps is if there's a substantial enough overlapping of the parties for you to empower into a sustainable coalition.
I think it really comes down to whether you want congressional gridlock or not. Right now, the filibuster prevents the passage of bills and the feedback that comes from doing things and getting voter feedback on your performance. If you are happy with the status quo and lack of action by Congress, then I understand your position. If you are motivated by a fear of what comes next by removing the filibuster, then I would just say that the country survived without a filibuster for many many years (it essentially was only used on civil rights legislation historically). So we can probably survive without it. And it is fundamentally unjust that a majority of a legislature cannot pass bills.
I think the gridlock that we have right now is the intended outcome of our partisan polarization. Both parties are in a race to expand and commandeer the power of the government to install a "permanent" ruling coalition. Getting rid of the filibuster at this point point empowers that end rather than impedes it. Impeding that outcome means electoral reforms that promote the success of idiosyncratic candidates, things like ranked choice voting, and systemic limits on the ability of the federal government to impose the sweeping policy preferences of small national majorities on places where they are deeply unpopular.
Outside electoral reforms, I actually think the best thing that could happen to congress is if Justice Gorsuch can actually revive the non-delegation doctrine. Congress should be spending much more time an taking many more actual votes directing the mundane operation of government, rather than being allowed to hand everything off to the executive and only voting on things they want to use as a campaign ad. The fundamental problem right now is that there's no actual mechanism for making sure congress has a job to do, so they all sit around being pundits and only voting on the things that fire up their primary voters.
While I find this entire exchange very interesting, the only thing I feel compelled to comment on is this:
" Both parties are in a race to expand and commandeer the power of the government to install a "permanent" ruling coalition."
This is not a symmetric phenomenon. At all.
That's interesting to consider. The Rs want to steal elections with maybe more petty ambitions. The Ds want to throw out all the constraints in the name of expansively remaking society. The Ds mostly want to do it in good faith. The Rs are almost entirely corrupt. It's definitely not symmetrical in many ways, but I regularly struggle to decide which is more dangerous.
What I get from this comment is that you like gridlock and are worried about changes in laws. That's ok, but that's a fundamentally conservative viewpoint, and is focused on protecting past successes as opposed to making changes now.
Congress should have to vote and go on record for or against changes to the Code of Federal Regulations - they are legislation in every meaningful sense of the word, and approving legislation is the job of the legislature. They don't have to write them - agencies have the expertise for that - but we shouldn't have a system that favors members of Congress who are so unserious they'd rather be grandstanding pundits than dirty their hands with legislative compromise.
I think congress should function efficiently within it's properly constrained pluralistic box. Expansive changes rightly require amendments, not legislation. There are such amendments I would support. Gridlock is bad, but it's better than letting either party break the system in the name of their own permanent rule.
I recognize that some people support vision of governance that in America is effectively revolutionary. The question those people need to ask themselves is if they're interested in the bloody kind. Because if they can't even pass an amendment, that's what they're gonna end up with if we keep tearing down the checks and balances of the system.
Yes, I agree that yanking back and forth is the more likely outcome.
TIL what "catbird seat" means
"ideally addressing not only congressional elections but state legislatures, too."
I mean, we can all dream, but there's zero chance the supreme court would let congress make rules for state legislature districts.
My take on the Supreme Court is that they will strike down whatever laws they want to strike down and leave in place whatever laws they want to leave in place. It's true that they would probably strike down an anti-gerrymandering rule for state legislatures but they also might strike down an anti-gerrymandering rule for congress. Trying to read the text of the constitution isn't going to give us any insight whatsoever into how the justices will behave in the future.
Over time, hopefully, we can rework American political institutions and improve them — including drastic changes to the functioning of the Supreme Court. But until then you may as well write the best laws you can, then hire the best lawyers you can to defend them.
Robert's Rucho v. Common Cause decision made pretty clear that congress could use the elections clause to address gerrymandering at for house districts. That's not to say that they'd let absolutely any anti-gerrymandering law fly, but they're at least open to them --- whereas I doubt they're at all open to a federal anti-gerrymandering law for state legislature districts.
Rucho pretty strongly implies Congress can't regulate state partisan gerrymanders. Congress has power under the 14th amendment to pass laws to prevent states from violating the federal rights of US citizens, but Rucho said there is no federal right to proportional representation by party.
Roberts is no longer in charge, and there is no indication that the new majority that works without him would let anything stand up.
Of course, if the Democrats did manage to pass a narrowly-tailored anti-gerrymandering bill and it was struck down, they'd absolutely come for the Court with knives out once they do manage to fight their way back into a trifecta, no matter how slim.
If the Republicans are looking to institute a majoritarian dictatorship, they're certainly on the right track, by cranking up the other side's frustration to 11.
The Voting Rights Act applied to state legislatures—the decision that struck down parts of it was based on subjecting particular subdivisions of states to enhanced scrutiny. A general rule that districts may not be drawn on the basis of race or partisanship should pass constitutional muster.
The voting rights act never applied to partisan gerrymanders --- only to racial ones. SCOTUS has been clear that congress can pass gerrymandering restrictions for house districts as part of their power given by the clause
"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
That doesn't cover state legislature districts.
"except as to the Places of chusing Senators"
That's a very odd exception.
I assume that's somehow about the fact that state legislatures were given the power to choose Senators, so that it required a constitutional amendment to make it an election?
And importantly, the Reconstruction amendments gave Congress the power to overrule states on things involving racial electoral equality, but not the rest of the state power.
"Last week, Joe Manchin pumped the breaks on Democrats’ legislative agenda....
Brakes, for heaven's sake. Brakes.
"The Sunrise Movement responded to Manchin’s break-pumping op-ed...."
Good grief.
We'll see how serious Dems are about raising the taxes on rich people when they either repeal or keep the SALT deduction caps. A repeal of the cap really would signify the party is for rich, snobbish people that live in big (high tax) cities.
We'll see how serious Republicans are about being the party of the working class when they repeal the carried interest loophole to fund an increased minimum wage. It's easy to play this game.
Methinks Chuck Schumer is as important as the Republican caucus in protecting the carried interest loophole. How do you think he climbed the greasy pole?
Right, so if Democrats lose the Senate, do you think that the Republicans will get right on that over Schumer's supposed objections?
Nope, nor do I think a Democratic Party under the leadership of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi will either.
Maintaining 100% party cohesion on dozens of different issues is hard.
I'm curious how to reconcile the recent Weeds podcast where Matt and David Shor discussed the public being mostly change resistant with the desire to remove the filibuster. My read is that the filibuster allows the public to vote more progressive than it actually is because they assume the government won't/can't make radical change. If you remove the filibuster and actually have one wave election create the potential for much more radical change, I think the public will be much more likely to vote conservative.
E.g. Britain has that capacity and has been Conservative for 70% of the time over the last 40 years - and the period of Labour control was under Tony Blair a VERY moderate Labour leader.
What matters isn't who's in charge, it's what policy passes. UK Conservatives are very far to the left of US Republicans. This week the UK Conservative government raised taxes in order to increase spending on the national health service. Can you imagine Republicans doing that?
Your & Dan S point about the welfare state being difficult to undo is very well taken. I think the point has been made here before that Boris Johnson has been a much more successful Trump in that he has taken populist positions on NHS while being significantly more conservative in other areas.
The key difference is that people are little "c" conservative. They don't want Republicans taking away current benefits/systems that seem to work okay, but are suspicious that new programs will make things worse instead of better. This creates an inherently anti-progressive mood that is overcome currently with "identity" politics. The identity stuff is so strong because the filibuster makes it hard to do radical things. Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking.
"Remove that and I think you will see a people much more focused on stuff not breaking."
This is likely true, and it would be a good thing.
We really shouldn't be trying for "improvement in massive bursts with no opportunity for iteration or developing best practices."
Also, you suck the identity politics out of it, and rural conservatives are suddenly a lot more focused on making the state they have work for them, which will, after a bit of thought, turn to capacity building, something on which both sides can likely reach some agreement.
Obamacare another case in point.
Agree with Binya. If we care about outcomes instead of branding and symbolism, the UK has instituted (in general) more of the Democratic party's platform than here in the US.
There was also that great moment in Ezra Klein's podcast with Fareed Zakaria when Ezra pitched his similar abolish the filibuster argument and Fareed responded with basically ... ok, so you'd to simulate parliamentary politics here in the US, but that's basically trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and I don't know if it'd work out exactly as you intend (e.g., as you mention, it could just shift the power to the more conservative temperament movement).
This post is indicative of a habit of supporters of even small c conservative policy in America of operating from a position of complete ignorance. There is always uncertainty in life. But parliamentary democracies exist all over the world. In general they function a lot better than the US' stack of veto points and malapportionment.
If you like the system as is, just say so. Don't hide behind a self imposed veil of ignorance.
If you are suggesting we remake congress and have a parliament, I would support that. There is a difference between that and some sort of hybrid contraption that is awkwardly created under the existing constitution.
More to the point - HAVE A STATE DO THIS! If its so clear that a parliamentary system is better, why not have a referendum in California on it?
(The answer is because it would lose! 80% of the public are moderate/conservative which essentially means they are small "c" conservative.)
“In general they function a lot better…”
By what measure?
By looking at the historical record. Juan Linz goes into detail on this. Presidential republics tend to undergo various crises and collapse, as seen in Central and South America and even places like France. The US narrowly dodged the bullet on this during the US Civil War, and was genuinely lucky to have people like Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant in positions of power during that time. It could be argued that the US has certain characteristics that make it unusually resilient to the pressures faced by other governments that divide power between strong executive presidents and parliaments, and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.
I think the US’s record vis a vis Central and South American is abundantly clear. And the US president isn’t an especially strong executive.
As a general rule, if every country that's ever carbon-copied your constitution has spent the majority of its existence under one flavor or another of oligarchy or dictatorship, it's likely the constitution in question isn't a very good one.
We've been lucky, but our politics are definitely becoming more "Latin American". I don't think we're going to stay lucky.
Already we've started not staying lucky. Trump was pretty unlucky (even a lot of Republicans — maybe most — will admit that privately. January 6th was pretty unlucky. Elections nullification legislation in myriad states is unlucky. The question isn't do we stay lucky. The question is how much more unlucky do we get.
I agree that a parliamentary system is better. However, the real kicker is always the strength of various institutions in constraining political actors from ignoring the rules. There are plenty parliaments that are just as bad as any presidential system.
What, Congress is a legislation factory or something?
No veil of ignorance Binya. I do like the current structure. As others have mentioned here in the comments and I agree, these are features not bugs. Only pointing out that trying to "simulate parliamentary politics" within our current structure isn't actually implementing a parliamentary system ... so Fareed's square peg + round hole comment.
To re-inforce one of David Shor's points ... 80% of America is either moderate or conservative. Their conversation spells out the implications of that quite well.
probably worthwhile noting that 80% of Americans self-identifying as moderate or conservative is virtually meaningless. Identifying as a moderate is one of American life's great acts of virtue signaling that is functionally irrelevant. 80% of Americans think Congress is broken, it's hard to argue there's a constituency for stasis even if both parties would implement policies more extreme than the median voter. It'd actually be healthy for our civic and political cultures to refocus on policy arguments rather than the incessant beat of culture war bullshit and obfuscation that currently dominates political coverage. If Democrats were able to pass their immigration and abortion policies and force republicans to have debates on the merits it'd probably do some political damage to both sides but be a more honest debate than Susan Collins lying about the implications of her Supreme court votes and then pivoting to Sara Gideon being a socialist.
IDK Anonymous ... David Shor's opinion seems well regarded on this Substack. Meaningless seems pretty strong there. Did you catch that last The Weeds podcast? Both he and Matt felt that this 80% of the electorate is "not-Progressive" fact explains some of the results across the last three election cycles and further constrains Progressive optionality going forward. I tended to agree with the points of their discussion. Certainly they could be wrong.
"But precisely because he’s the key actor here, he’s the one who ought to be talking about which measures he does believe in strongly enough to push on a party-line vote.
But he’s not, and his intransigence isn’t a coherent theory of political change any more than the left’s."
Manchin can't name the measures because he does not 'believe' in any of them. He will sign only on those bills (Dem or otherwise) that will not diminish his changes of keeping his seat in a red state. He will go with ANY bill that can get some red votes (to cover his bases), ideology be damned. Contrast that to the Left's view, "Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned".
“Contrast that to the Left's view, ‘Give us the bill/Ideology, votes be damned’.”
Ah, so the Left prefers ideology to democracy? Got it.
The Senate counts all votes equally, so I don’t know what you’re on about.
It's kind of hilarious how these simple truths don't penetrate the titanium bubble of those who genuinely believe the status quo Senate rules "force compromise".
One truism of our era is that nothing in the real world--not wars, not disease, not even actual politicians' record--budge people from the fortress silos of priors they built decades ago. Self-described "independents" and "moderates" are as bad as the worst partisans and then some on that.