Democrats should take the deals on climate and the Electoral Count Act, then pivot to getting majorities in 2024. That's the stuff on the table and we are out of time.
Yes, and pass Endless Frontier. That's actually a pretty good track record of accomplishment for a congress (including infrastructure and ARP), and leaves more to campaign around in November.
Yeah that would make sense and accept that Sinema and Manchin are not getting rid of the filibuster, but they won’t. Instead they’ll continue the “fight” and lose massively to republicans in November.
A lot of the bad vibes in our system come from the mismatch between the President's actual institutional power, and the public and punditry's expectations of what a President can do. A President can talk a big game, has a big bully pulpit, but except to the extent that Congress delegates actual lawmaking power to the President, that power resides in Congress, notwithstanding public expectations.
This mismatch that creates the bad vibes could be resolved two ways: increase the President's actual lawmaking power to rule independently of Congress, by allowing or encouraging Congress to delegate more power to the President. Or seek to diminish the power and prestige of the Presidency, treat the President less like a king and more like an administrator in chief, and seek to build up the policymaking infrastructure and capabilities of Congress. The kind of policymaking staff and apparatus, and the budget that goes with it, that lives in the White House could instead be in the Speaker and Majority Leader's offices.
It seems clear which one is the better solution, if one cares more about long-term institutional health than winning the short-term policy battle of the day.
The interesting thing is that the President is a king--specifically, he's George III. The institutional powers and duties of the presidency almost perfectly match the formal institutional powers and duties of the British monarch in the 18th century: Power to sign or veto legislation? Check. Power to appoint all members of the judiciary and all other civil officers of the state? Check. Power to remove all civil officers of the state? Check. Commander-in-chief of the armed forces? Check. Power to negotiate war and peace? Check. Pardon power? Check. Big speech to the legislature? Check. Powers to call the legislature into special session and to adjourn the legislature? Check. And the list goes on.*
About the only significant difference between the powers and duties of the American president and the 18th-century British monarch is that in certain cases (e.g. war/peace powers and appointments) the president is formally required to consult with and get a majority (sometimes a 2/3 majority) of the Senate. Old King George formally didn't have to do this, but it turned out that in practice he did.
And herein lies the rub: It turns out that (1) when you have reasonably coherent parties, the separation of the executive and legislative powers is pretty much a myth, and (2) reasonably coherent parties are pretty much inevitable. It was this that kept the monarch from governing as he wanted, because if he wanted any legislation or any money he had to ask Parliament, so whoever controlled Parliament basically controlled the king. Add that to some monarchs uninterested in actually exercising their power (the first two Georges), and by the reign of George III it was seen as so rare for a monarch to actually exercise his powers directly that doing so was seen as both stupid (because how is he going to get anything done without Parliament?) and vaguely illegitimate. George himself gave up trying after losing the American War of Independence. So the monarch steps into the background.
But the monarch's powers don't just go away. Instead, they fall to the slowly coalescing office of Prime Minister. The PM's office didn't formally exist until the 20th century, but this is largely because the PM was, in effect, exercising the monarch's power on behalf of Parliament. And of course, because the Prime Minister by definition has the support of Parliament, there isn't any question of them being unable to follow through.
Across the Atlantic, the Framers were intimately familiar with the British system (since they had been British just a few years earlier) and had their own ideas about how it should work. It's unclear to me if they just weren't aware how much the king's power had eroded (it wasn't especially obvious at the time) and assumed that George III had all the powers of Queen Anne, or if they recognized this but thought that it was a corruption of the way things were supposed to work. So when the Framers whipped up a new constitution in 1787, they put in a king with all the formal powers of the British monarch they knew (with some limitations), but actually expected them to work independently of the legislature.
As we can see today, it didn't work. While we avoided this conclusion for a long time because parties were not coherent (in the sense of party discipline more importantly than ideology), we now have coherent parties, and the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches has revealed itself to be a myth. The question now is whether we can move ahead in doing what the British did 200 years ago and assign the President's powers to a new officer responsible to the House or if we'll keep stumbling along.
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*Note: If this seems like it's just a list of what the "executive branch" does, please recall that Montesquieu, who came up with the three-branch theory of government, was writing in the 18th century as someone who wanted to bring the British system--broadly speaking--to France. That political project animated his writing of The Spirit of the Laws. The powers of the 18th-century British monarch are therefore ancestral to the whole idea of "the executive power" in later political theory. However, as Bagehot later observed--and is now accepted as true--the separation of the executive from the legislative power is (again) largely mythical.
The Founding Fathers don't seem quite as inspired and original when you realize how much of the Constitution is basically a written description of the British system at the time, with a few substitutions, changes in terminology, etc. We froze things in place as of 1787 with a written constitution that's hard to amend; the British system, having no written constitution, kept evolving.
One way to at least downplay the mismatch you're referring to is for the parties to not select their presidential candidate through a drawn-out reality show-like public contest. I'm not sure it's possible to put that cat back in the bag, though.
I'm gonna throw supply-chain management into the things that people think the American President can fix but cannot. It's just sad to watch people who know better write takes like that.
1) Isn’t the CBO roughly as big and capable as the OMB?
2) Unless there is going to be a legislative shadow agency for each cabinet department and independent agency, the executive will always have more bureaucratic heft, one would have to limit congressional institutions to planning snd oversight to avoid inefficient replication.
3) I absolutely agree that public perception overrates the importance of the presidency, but how does one fix this? It’s almost a feature of human nature to ask “who is in charge?” and “those 535 people” is not a hugely helpful answer for our primate brains
On (3), the solution is obvious--a prime-minister-type figure who is responsible to the House but exercises the powers of the presidency. (See my post above.) The question is whether we'll do it.
One of my proposed compromise solutions would be to elect the House to 4 year terms, using PR. (I'm not married to the PR idea, but I'm concerned that a whole 4 years is too intense when combined with FPTP. When you lose, you've really really lost!) The ruling coalition then selects a Prime Minister as per normal. Maybe you Constitutionally include that they have to do it within x months, to prevent the protracted negotiations we sometimes see. No minority governments allowed either- the PM has to be selected by some coalition. This should incentivize the various parties to negotiate harder- you have a deadline, and if you can't reach a deal with X or Y party someone else likely will.
What's the difference between that and a 'normal' parliamentary system? No snap elections. The House is there for 4 years, no matter what. They can still recall the PM for misconduct if needed, but otherwise he/she's basically a President otherwise. Norway has used this exact system since the early 1800s.
To my mind this gives you the best, consensus-building features of a parliamentary country, with far less indeciveness & constant snap elections- and the ability to recall a PM if they get too demagogic
In technical terms, it could be done by constitutional amendment. (I've sketched out what this would look like.) In practical terms, an amendment isn't going to happen immediately and possibly (indeed probably) never will. But those of us who know that there's a better way can be more vocal about it in a way that makes it more visible and mainstream. Take-slingers like MY have the biggest megaphone on this front (which is why it's great he's slinging these takes). But we can also try and spread the word that (1) the stuff you learned in civics class was a cool theory 200 years ago, but our current predicament shows that it was wrong, and (2) there's a better way and we can do it. At the very least, spreading the idea is a good way to nudge people towards MY's view that this is all coalition politics and it's nothing to be mad about.
Yes (3) is the issue. The institutional incentives for members of Congress just seems to make it very hard for Congress as an institution to ever be unified enough, under strong enough leadership, to hold its own against the President, on the sustained basis that would be needed to effect a lasting shift in power from the Executive Branch to Congress.
Yeah but we're pretty good at knowing when small councils are in charge. The idea is to make a situation where the President, the Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader are basically a council of three who are collectively in charge.
Or, alternatively, go the French route and make the President even more powerful so that when they are in charge they are *actually* in charge.
The bar is so low, it really takes a lot for politics to truly disgust me, but when Obama and the Ds took over in '08 and took a look around at the War on Terror AUMF, and gitmo and the Patriot act and basically went thisifine.jpg was the most radicalizing fucking shit in the world.
People like us, who are really interested and follow politics, despair over our government because of its inability to get things done most of the time. But the dirty secret of our system is that is pretty much what the American people want. They're deeply suspicious of active government (sadly, often with good reason) and most of the time want it to not do that much. And that's just what they get! In an unironic sense (the opposite of what he meant), H. L. Mencken was right when he defined democracy as "the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
Basically, the population is fine when the government steps in to solve pressing crises, but is otherwise ineffectual. And that's pretty much what happens. We got superfast vaccine development (with some government help) and then a ton of fiscal assistance to magically help us through the economic crisis. And that was pretty good!
This doesn't make me happy -- we need to do more on climate change (and maybe we will) -- but it's pretty clear to me that that's not where the people are. Even as they grouse and complain, I think overall they're satisfied with the amount of government activism we have: immediate crisis yes, otherwise, not so much.
"People like us, who are really interested and follow politics, despair over our government because of its inability to get things done most of the time. But the dirty secret of our system is that is pretty much what the American people want. They're deeply suspicious of active government (sadly, often with good reason)"
If we look at the locales where big American government has had free rein, we get clued in to as why people might not be thrilled with that.
I find it frustrating how risk-averse and status quo-oriented a lot of people are toward our governing structure. Manchin and Sinema won't get rid of the filibuster even though they would have more control over outcomes. There's very little coverage of how it's unusually hard to get things passed in the US.
I wish we just had more general awareness of how the system could be better instead of endless quotes about how things would be worse if we tried anything new.
"There's very little coverage of how it's unusually hard to get things passed in the US."
I would generally agree with this statement, but I think we're cherry picking a bit as well. The "hard to pass" US passed significantly more COVID support then any of the other western country. There have been numerous conversations about how "secret congress" is able to accomplish things. I think the frustration comes in that its very hard to pass things over the objection of the minority party. Which is why many people tend to like the filibuster. Anything that comes up with limited objection can be passed easily and often does. Its only the contentious things that are hard to pass - and probably should be!
That's a fair analysis. But I think the record indicates that it should be easier to pass things over the objection of the minority party. At a bare minimum, we should be able to pass more climate legislation. We are on a dangerous path partly b/c the Republican Party essentially won't acknowledge that climate change is a problem that requires a more forceful response. There are real and damaging missed opportunities happening b/c it's so easy for the minority party to block things.
You run into the same problem with climate change, voting rights, even judicial appointments. The more exceptions you make, the more exceptions will be made. Everyone has their issue that are paramount and deserve the exception.
Yeah, I mean I think the fact that it's blocking something as existential as climate change action is evidence we shouldn't have it at all. Even if it works in theory, in practice it's causing real harm.
I would prefer a system in which either party has much increased unilateral ability to gore some of the other side's sacred cows when they win a majority.
Even if it produces some "policy swings", and even if it occasionally hurts the country at large.
Because when what a governing coalition wants is bad for the country it should be permitted to prove just that before the next election.
I kind of agree with you, but real question - if a majority of the US public does not, should we change it? I think that given the relative little "c" conservative nature of the public, they don't.
If someone's obliviously driving towards the edge of a cliff do you stop them or not?
I'm not the sort of person to put these questions to because I have effectively no principles at all.
If I thought destroying the filibuster would go against the will of the majority of the populace but produce better outcomes, and I had the power, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Since I do believe that, if you gave me the power, I'd do it.
In the broader sense, I guess we shouldn't, but we're going to pay for it quite a bit at some point.
Obviously the best form of government is an autocracy with the version of me as I am today at the helm, and reset every five years to keep power from going to my head.
Equally obviously, that's nuts.
So democracy of some sort will have to do, because the alternatives (various forms of authoritarianism with *other* people at the helm) are just horrible.
:-D
Anyway, yes, it seems there's (very, very bare) majority support for keeping the filibuster, so it's going to stay.
I don't think it's long for this world; things are going to break in this country quite badly over the coming 3-4 decades, and for various reasons a lot of people will want to see changes that will be blocked by it and similar anti-majoritarian institutions.
I could wish it were otherwise, but the best I can do is try to prepare for the storm.
I think that even on this front a non-functioning legislature doesn't deliver. Instead of legislation deciding policy, you rely more on executive orders and unelected judges setting policy. As one can see from OSHA vaccine mandate, this can create a lot of chaos.
"Manchin and Sinema won't get rid of the filibuster even though they would have more control over outcomes." This just isn't true. They might get some more positive agenda control temporarily, i.e. the ability to pass legislation, but they would definitely lose a lot of negative agenda control permanently, i.e. the ability to block legislation. You might prefer to eliminate the filibuster, but it's fantasy to think that it's in Manchin and Sinema's interest and that they're just too stupid to realize it. All models are wrong, but it's much more useful to understanding politics to assume that politicians are rational self-interested actors than to assume the politicians you don't like are just stupid idiots who don't know what's good for them.
I don't think they are stupid idiots. What I find frustrating is that they seem to prefer negative agenda control to positive agenda control. I think government would work better if they had particular demands that they were driven to achieve, instead of prioritizing stopping things.
Maybe I am wrong! But that's what I meant, not that I think they are dumb.
Yes. Every centrist Senator I can think of in the last 20 years --and maybe longer-- has this had same problem and it's super frustrating. A small bipartisan coalition of centrist Senators would have huge positive agenda control, yet they only do that rarely, in an ad hoc way for specific issues (e.g. gang of 8). I usually think this is from fear of being primaried, but those who survive that experience are still timid.
Yeah, we don't even need to abandon our entire system of government to become less of a vetocracy. Yet the Senate won't even reform basic shit like the filibuster.
So much of the coverage and debate concerning the US Senate gets wrapped up in its own "lore" that there needs to be more coverage of just how much of an outlier it is among legislative bodies, both in the US and internationally. I believe only one state legislature (Nebraska) has an equivalent to the filibuster. If "protecting minority voices" is such an important part of the democratic process, why is the US Senate one of the only ones that is required to do it?
And Nebraska is unicameral, so there's still fewer veto points there.
Altho it would be cool if more states experimented with other governor structures instead of just copying the national model. Let's get a state-level parliament!
It's pretty clear that Manchin and Sinema don't support eliminating the filibuster because they believe it helps their chances of reelection, and if they don't get reelected they have no control over anything.
Idk if that's so clear. If there was no filibuster, they would still control the agenda and could extract concessions they feel are helpful. And they would still make news as pivotal Senators, so they could project moderation in the media.
What's the electoral advantage of fighting for the filibuster? Do they think there will be effective attack ads on it?
Well yeah, at this point, crazy at it is to say, there probably would be attack ads based on the dimensions the filibuster thing has taken (even though there's no natural reason the right wing would be any more favorable to a minority being able to hold things up in this way either...) .
Now, Manchin and Sinema could nonetheless vote to eliminate the filibuster and then do the leg work of explaining to their voters why doing so wasn't particularly partisan, etc....But I digress :)
Until recently the loudest voices who have been calling to remove the filibuster have from people on the left side of the party who want to be able to pass a bunch of progressive legislation, so moderates had a political incentive to oppose them. I thought this dynamic might change once more mainstream Democrats got on board with eliminating the filibuster (like what happened with impeachment), but alas, that hasn't happened.
Eh, this is a bit of a shallow take on how parliamentary systems work. Matt doesn't mention coalitions collapsing, which uh..... happens nonstop in the more unstable countries. At the end of the day, institutional design is just a lot less important than culture. If you picked German institutions up and transported them to say Brazil overnight, Brazilian politics would (no offense) still find a way to make a mess of it. Lots of parliamentary countries with PR & consensus-style governing institutions are a hot mess and have a new government every year- sometimes less! Bulgaria has PR and has had I think 3 governments in 1 year so far.
The real thing that makes passing major legislation in the US difficult is that the country is actually pretty closely divided on a lot of stuff (53-47%, usually). Like if you think in Germany they're using that coalition to easily pass lots of sweeping, controversial legislation that 47% of the population pretty strongly opposes- no, they're not, that's a bad take. Consensus in German politics is a function of consensus in German society overall- as for America, well....
I agree with the Matthew Yglesias who last night tweeted:
Honestly, "both parties struggle to make large policy shifts in the face of a closely divided and change-averse electorate" is a very banal take but seems pretty accurate
If you asked me to try to fix US politics, I'd make the parties much stronger- to make being an obstinate holdout like Sinema that much harder. Get rid of primaries and let the parties select who represents them, loosen campaign finance restrictions so that the parties control the cash spigot and can turn it off or on depending on how well the representative is playing ball- as opposed to now, where (frequently insane) outside groups control the cash flow and the parties are weak. Bring back earmarks and let the majority leaders do what they need to do in order to get bills passed. Strengthen the committee structure and let the majority leader promote- or fire- representatives based on how compliant they are.
Sinema should be looking at being stripped of committee assignments, an automatic challenger in the next election with lots of party-funded cash, and no earmarks for Arizona. BTW, this is how parliamentary systems actually do work in practice! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_discipline
If you did to Sinema what you suggested, wouldn't she simply switch to Republican or just independent aligned with Republicans? Democratic leadership cannot afford to infuriate either Sinema or Manchin to much or they lose much more than votes on BBB. They could lose votes on judges, administration positions, any possible reconciliation bills for the next two years, etc. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
I think it probably would be better for our politics if Sinema and Manchin were in their own centrist third party. Probably not better for me on policy as a Democrat, but institutionally it might be better because it would provide clearer signals to America about our policy divides.
Maybe, but why shouldn't the decision whether to push through an important piece of legislation that might cost a party its majority be in the hands of party leaders rather than random backbenchers? A party leader that didn't exercise that power well would soon be deposed, so it's not as if the rank and file would have no say or influence.
Legislation (important or not) only passes if enough random backbenchers vote for it. If they are just expected to vote on whatever the majority leader proposes, then why have them at all. Just have a general election to select the majority leader or elect a president and have them implement policy without a legislature. If we're not going to do that, then you get what we have now. Which is that in a closely divided legislature, every backbencher becomes incredibly important to passing legislation. Many will fall in line, but whoever doesn't becomes the point of failure and has to be negotiated with to accomplish something.
Brazil is a presidential country, so they don't form coalition governments, unlike Germany and unlike the whole thrust of Matt's piece. I think you might have lost the plot on what the discussion is about. Anyways, my only points are:
Ultimately the core of what makes a country work or not is culture, and institutional design is secondary to that. I understand that's confusing to a lot of left-brained engineering types who look down the social sciences, and who imagine institutions are systems engineering problem where they can find the 'optimal' system, like it's a circuit board or a carburetor. These are the types of people who want to believe that IRV or Approval Voting are going to seriously remake US politics. Unfortunately, that's just wrong. Germany & the Scandinavian countries could use a Presidential system & FPTP and still function just fine, because they're culturally stable. Afghanistan could use the best designed, most consensus-oriented system known to man, and still collapse, because they're culturally unstable. QED.
And, consensus-oriented systems like Germany's are not passing sweeping reforms that 47% of the population strongly oppose- that's just wrong too. The main issue preventing BBB or electoral reforms from passing in the US is a divided populace, not institutional design. (As Matt pointed out with his Secret Congress piece, they actually do pass a lot of stuff that's nonpartisan/non-controversial)
I mostly agree with this, and am not really pro-PR either, but want to point out that one reason our people are divided is that there are only 2 parties, and that leads people to adopt the policy preferences of one or the other. So in my opinion a part of why Germany doesn't pass sweeping reforms opposed by 47% of the population is that Germany's coalition governments cause people to be more supportive of government policy because they see that a bunch of disparate parties all back a policy "so it must be good"
I agree this is an accurate description of the current Republican party. But:
Not necessarily a description of the current Democratic party, especially not its voters, who are much less ideologically coherent than party elites. The Dems are a big tent party with lots of moderates & even social conservatives, along with progressive Squad types, democratic socialists etc. I think the Dems are a lot less unified in what they're for, or against.
And, we've basically only had two parties for 150+ years, but they weren't this ideologically unified until recently. The two party system of the 50s, 60s and 70s was nothing like today- there was a ton of intraparty debate about civil rights, Vietnam, etc. So, doesn't seem like a permanent feature of a two party system, necessarily
I don't think this actually fits the Republican party either. There are plenty of religious conservatives and irreligious conservatives who are very uneasy allies in the Republican party for example. The same is true for a whole host of other issues as well - e.g. party elites want to cut SS and Medicare/Medicaid vs majority of the base which doesn't.
Well, the other major difference you don't mention is that here in the US we don't actually have coherent political parties - they've become more like brands. Germany doesn't have open primaries that allow literally anyone to compete to be the party representative in office, for example. Parties outside the US act like institutions and control who represents them and what their platform is. When was the last time a party platform in the US had any relevance?
So, as institutions, our parties are fundamentally different than parties anywhere else on the globe. And I think the dysfunction of our parties is the most relevant factor for our political dysfunction today. After all, our institutions haven't changed. What's changed is that our parties have become both more "democratic" but also institutionally weak.
Manchin can tell the President and progressives to eff-off because the party both has no control and almost zero influence over him. They cannot really punish him, nor can they horse-trade in the way that most parties around the globe do, and as US parties used to do before democratic primaries and campaign finance "reforms."
So you really have to look at the current political incentives of our politicians vs politicians elsewhere. The incentives pretty much everywhere else point toward party loyalty and subsuming the individual politician's desires into the party platform.
Here in the US, our politicians are atomized and their incentives are aligned with three things:
- Pleasing primary voters. Those in purple seats also have to worry about the general electorate but most don't.
- Donors - Politicians don't rely on parties anymore for financial support - it's about small individual donors as well as the big players. Our current parties have no ability to protect incumbents, even from primary challenges.
In summary, our national institutions are not the core problem today, it's the weakness of our parties which act like brands and not coherent political entities.
It's not entirely a coincidence that the US has weak parties:
- In parliamentary systems, MPs aspire to become ministers and ultimately prime minister. This requires the support of party leadership, which incentivises loyalty from MPs. It's not the only reason the US is the only place where party leaders are constantly called corrupt *by their own politicians*, but it's one of them.
- In parliamentary systems, shit gets done. If you win an election, generally you can enact the key planks of your manifesto. In the US, this rarely happens, because you often lack control of one of the numerous veto points. This undermines parties because voters constantly feel betrayed by their own side.
Yes, but an important reason things get done in parliamentary systems is because if a random backbencher doesn't fall in line with the party leadership, they can be kicked out of the party and their name won't be on the ballot next election. That's not true here in most states, where primary voters, not party leaders, choose party nominees and control ballot access, so party leaders have less ability to enforce party discipline. Every politician here has an individual inventive to grandstand, try to become their own social media and fundraising star, etc.
I do think our parties have always been weaker for the reasons you cite - but our parties have never been this weak and do not function like parties anymore.
As someone that strongly agrees though- it would be very challenging to get rid of primaries wholesale. The populist cries of 'they're rigging the elections!' would be extremely loud (and bipartisan). (To be fair, I will say that the Republicans have had a bit of success with it recently- first Glenn Youngkin, now they're talking about doing it in Idaho for the Governor's race there too).
My proposed solution would be that the parties put forward a slate of 3-5 nominees, and either
1. Voters get to pick one in a primary. Or
2. We use approval voting in the general, with both parties having their 6-10 nominees on the ballot, and the voters can approve their way into picking one of them
Yeah, I totally agree we probably can't get rid of primaries - we seem to be trapped.
Glenn Youngkin is a good example for a potential middle ground though - the primary he won utilized ranked-choice-voting. It's unlikely he would have won without it. It's only a single data point, but it seems to have resulted in a much better candidate than the normal plurality system does.
Yes but I think the actual voting was done by party elites for the most part, not regular Republican voters. From what I read, the only reason they didn't hold the process in an actual convention hall, early 20th-century style, was just Covid. (To be clear I think this is fantastic) Make Party Conventions Great Again!
I think it would be true to the Constitution and the original skepticism of political parties for Supreme Court to endorse and enforce a constitutional doctrine of separation of party and state. Forbid taxpayer funded and administered elections for the benefit of private political parties, which is what partisan primaries are.
If parties want to pay for and conduct their own private primary elections to choose their candidates for the general election, fine. But taxpayer and state resources should not be used to subsidize the internal governance of private political parties.
That's an important point. The main reason, IMO, the current parties haven't died like the Whigs is because they are so entrenched in the current system that it's simply much easier to capture them than start a new party.
The “problem” with Joe Manchin isn’t him blocking the Biden agenda. He has proven friendlier to the Biden agenda than the median senator*. The problem is that the West Virginia delegation has 2% of senatorial voting power despite representing 0.6% of the population, that other low population states are even more over-represented, and that all these rotten boroughs place Manchin at the tipping point when he should be in opposition. Repeating the mantra “Manchin is a junior coalition partner” would not sooth the frustrations of malapportionment. Three quarters of the evils of our system could be fixed by abolishing the senate, even if we didn’t go full parliamentary.
*The median senator is likely the average of Manchin and Murkowski.
A system in which the Senators are still elected in statewide, winner-takes-all elections but their power is weighted by population would be *even less* representative than we have today.
California has more Republicans than Texas, which in turn has more Democrats than New York.
I believe this is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution, which says equal representation in the Senate can't be changed by amendment. We'd be talking a constitutional convention and a new constitution.
This is not the problem. Sinema represents a big state. The problem is both houses of congress are narrowly divided under basically any representation scheme.
The academic game theory analog to this post is a paper by Groseclose and McCarty called "The Politics of Blame: Bargaining Before an Audience." The paper starts with the puzzle of why Congress would ever waste time passing legislation they know the president will veto. The answer in the formal model is that even if Congress knows the president's preferences, the public does not know them exactly, but can learn through whether or not the president signs or vetoes legislation. In one equilibrium if the president is sufficiently extreme relative to voters and sufficiently motivated by policy to still veto then Congress prefers to pass legislation that they know the president will veto in order to reveal to the public that the president is extreme relative to voters and make his less popular.
In the model, Congress makes a proposal to reveal the president's preferences to a single national audience. In the current situation, it seems like the president is making a proposal in order to reveal Congress' preferences, i.e. Manchin's preferences, before multiple audiences with different preferences and different levels of attention. In particular, it seems like the core issue for Biden to the extent that he is more moderate than progressives inside and outside of Congress is that he needs to convince a progressive activist audience that Manchin in fact won't support their own special preferred policy that they think they could get him to go for. This requires putting public pressure on Manchin which progressive politicians and groups are happy to do because they benefit from this with their supporters and Manchin is happy to be on the receiving end because he in turn benefits from his more conservative voters seeing him publicly block progressive legislation. Particularly to the extent that activists pay attention to legislative bargaining, but the general public only pays attention to legislation that actually passes it's in the interest of Biden to have Manchin very publicly block progressive proposals and then pass more moderate legislation so that Biden can blame Manchin with activists, but is not shown to the general public to have extreme views relative to their own preferences.
Bargaining in parliamentary coalitions might look less messy because it's less public, but because it's more private coalition government particularly under proportional representation means that it's less clear in the next election which party will be held responsible for economic performance. While it looks like a messy shit show, in a first past the post + presidential system the Democrats and particularly Biden knows that he will be held responsible for economic performance in the next presidential election. Biden can't control gas prices, but like other presidents he is strongly incentivized to avoid economically destructive policy that hurts economic growth.
Small correction: you write that "In Germany, the head of the center-right FDP holds the title of Vice Chancellor." But Habeck is co-leader of the Green party not of the FDP.
I don't think this really makes the case that the way our system works is worse than parliamentary systems (to say nothing of "worst possible way"). As you describe, the outcomes seem similar to what you would expect from a centrist grand coalition -- legislation on areas where there is broad agreement (infrastructure, initial COVID relief) -- and little movement on more aggressive transformation either party might want. So the bad part is the "vibes".
But the "vibes" are really just a choice Joe Biden is making. He could decide to sit down with Manchin and Sinema (and/or Murkowski, Collins, etc), and see what they are willing to accept as the hinge votes, and then push for that as his platform. He seems to think it is more important to assuage his base that he is *trying* to accomplish much more but nothing he is doing publicly seems to be changing the outcome.
So I think he has miscalculated as it makes it look like 1) Democrats are infighting, 2) Biden himself has little control over the party, 3) Biden is representing the left interests vs the center, alienating independents/moderates, 4) he is achieving no incremental policy wins. But I don't think it's fair to pin that on institutional design - I think it's just bad White House decisionmaking.
(It's also true that as a rule the US does not want to install autonomous executives with a lot of authority into countries where we had to wage war to topple a dangerous strongman... this does not prove much in terms of how US government should be structured.)
To me, this is the great mystery of the Biden administration. Why pick an unrelenting fight with the median senators? Precisely as you write, it is a path that minimizes both your chances to get legislate wins and to win the next election. It is baffling.
The bad "vibes" coming from the President/Senator negotiations are a two-way street. I have a hard time understanding what Sinema/Manchin's mindsets are here. They seem to believe engaging in regular public displays of their opposition to Biden's agenda helps them back home electorally, which I'm not sure is necessarily the case. Or maybe they just like the attention (plus Sinema seems kind of flighty in general).
Manchin clearly benefits at home from being seen as deviating from Biden's (or Pelosi's/Schumer's) agenda in high-profile ways. I think that is undoubtedly correct! Everyone should understand that and play the game accordingly.
Sinema is a bit harder to read but I do not think she is flighty at all. My best guess is a) she is more moderate than most Dems in her policy preferences, b) she thinks Dems will be more successful electorally with less aggressive legislative programs, and c) she enjoys being seen as a McCain-style maverick and thinks building a high-profile brand around that is the best way to succeed as a moderate in Arizona. We will see if her calculations are correct (I am skeptical on c).
For the record, I know Manchin benefits at home from being in opposition to his party's agenda. I'm just not sure this level of constant public fighting helps his case because it gives off vibes of "Washington dysfunction". What he should do is quietly make a deal with Biden over what to support and then do a bunch of paid media in WV boasting that he stopped items "x, y & z" but instead he's relying on earned national media attention from publicly fighting with the President, which hurts the overall Democratic brand and thus his electoral chances.
I don't think Biden is worried about a primary challenge (from who? AOC?). He handled challengers from the left pretty deftly in 2020 without committing to go as far down the path of the left as he is now doing. I think he is getting bad advice from his team, who are listening more to activists than voters.
After her petty and juvenile boycotting of Biden's voting rights speech in Atlanta, if she wins in November, I'm guessing Stacey Abrams will seriously consider challenging Biden in 2024.
If that's who he's worried about I think he should sleep well at night.
Most political actors understand the simple fact that no sitting president has ever been reelected when faced with a serious primary challenge. That's why there hasn't been one in 30 years. Unless Biden completely discredits himself over the next 2 years (or decides to retire) the party will back him.
In general I agree with you there can be tension here, but I don't think Biden should be worried about that right now. His base is scared enough of Trump coming back that they will fall in line.
I would like to see if there's actual political science showing whether there is a real electoral tradeoff between appealing to voters in the "center" and losing votes from your own party "base" to protest voting or them staying home. People argue frequently over this without any evidence to back up their assumptions (I think the 2000 election and the Nader factor may have been what kicked off this argument).
If I could scrap America’s constitutional framework and start from scratch, I’d go with some kind of unicameral legislature elected proportionally.
But since a new Constitutional Convention doesn’t look imminent, and since Sinemanchin don’t seem likely to move on the filibuster, I think it might be time to just take the Electoral Count Act fix and move on. Maybe try to pass a watered down BBB this spring, and then figure out something fun with the other reconciliation bill we’ll get for 2022.
The other thing that was terrible about the institutional design of Afghanistan was the electoral system - they didn't choose a PR system, but Single Non-Transferable Vote. This worked kind of well in postwar Japan until the 90s, where the strength of the democratic system, the state, and the 1955 party system ensured an odd kind of political pluralism and competititon with factions in the LDP that chimed with economic growth and development and voter support for reform.
But it was a catastrophic choice for Afghanistan. SNTV is highly individual-centric and induces factionalism, as it means that multiple candidates from the same party can split the party's share of the vote. As the state, political system, and the parties were all so weak, unlike Japan SNTV led to chronic infighting and squabbling not just in Kabul but in national elections and across the wider political system. In a society as complex and divided as Afghanistan (and the US!) SNTV was a terrible idea, but they introduced it practically by accident - the perils of path dependency! See: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/196965
The concept of elections was a farce in Afghanistan. I recall reading somewhere that America had people in Afghanistan worrying about ballot design, when those people would never have been able to leave their base without a helicopter. The electoral system barely mattered.
That's not true. The elections as processes were reasonably successful, all things considered. The wider political system failed, and the electoral system itself was part of that failure, but it wasn't as if there were mass boycotts or Afghans across the entire country were too intimidated to vote.
TIme to throw the "Worthless piece of fabric" (as Hamilton called the Constitution) and get a strong PR unicameral national government with a good bar for entry.
Everyone counts.
No more constantly pining away for rural white voters who are our overlords.
I do think it’s worth a note that these rural white “overlords” are not imperialists or necessarily even conscious of this. It’s their representatives and those with an interest in keeping their representatives in an easy power spot who cause unbalanced political life. The voters may be people i disagree with but we shouldn’t begrudge them for voting
They are not worth more than me. Sorry. I will not apologize for thinking that.
A system where we have to constantly pander to a privileged minority is not a good system. Their representatives use that power to suck resources out of the rest of us.
Is there any reason why we have to subsidize corn syrup and make the rest of us unhealthy except for their ridiculous over-representation?
They are worth the same as me. I take the words of the Dec. seriously: "All men are created equal."
"I take the words of the Dec. seriously: 'All men are created equal.'"
If so, you should also take seriously, "...as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
The Free and Independent States came together as a union with the representation arrangements that they still, as Free and Independent States, enjoy today.
I don't think that is historically accurate. During the war the Articles of Confederation were written and voted for which bound the states more. I take Abraham Lincoln's reading of this at Gettysburg in 1863. I don't take the John C. Calhoun view.
If you are trying to argue that the states are independent, that dog won't hunt. Even in 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence in a unanimous vote, not as different colonies.
I don't give a s-it about where Lord Baltimore and the Penn family drew boundaries over what the King gave them. I don't think there is anything in political society that makes giving us two Dakotas and a bunch of empty states as a way to offset the end of Reconstruction by the Republican Party is somehow a sacred thing we should have to suffer forever.
“There is no question that state and local authorities possess considerable power to regulate public health. They enjoy the ‘general power of governing,’ including all sovereign powers envisioned by the Constitution and not specifically vested in the federal government.”
It is historically accurate. It's how the states saw themselves and it was one of the major factors that shaped the Constitution. Rhode Island, for example, would never have agreed to a union without assurances that it would not be steamrolled* by, for example, Virginia. By entering the union the states agreed to give up some of their independence, but not all of it. (As far as historical accuracy, you might want to consider what, exactly, "All men are created equal" meant at the time. I'm sure it's not what you mean today.)
I completely agree that beyond "all men are created equal" there is no particular political arrangement that is sacred. But why would West Virginia or Vermont or Maine agree to give up their representation in the Senate? What would they gain for their citizens?
These were little colonies set up by accidents of history in a weird patchwork quilt of conflicting lines. Heck CT and PA even fought over where Scranton is today. Who gives a sh-t? This is ancient history. People matter not these idiotic political boundaries that go back to the freakin' King of England.
Rhode Island was an ardent proponent of Independence without any assuarances.
Rhode Island joined last because they were on the outs by themselves.
You are right, people in WV, and VT are privileged politically. As the saying goes, "People with privilege see equality as unfair." Time for them to grow the hell up and realize they are not any better than anyone else and their voice doesn't count more.
I mean heck, John C. Calhoun used to argue the South should count more because of the economic might of cotton and what their exports as a share of the economy.
Many of these small states can't even argue that. Instead they demand subsidies while getting more say.
It is an immoral system that nobody would design for themselves to govern a country.
No I get frustration with the system. But the voters alive in the system now have the same ability to change the system as you or I. They’re just voting.
They have been fed the nonsense that they are "real Americans" as opposed to the rest of us.
I fail to see how their views matter more than the Asian community in cities that add far more value and revenue to the system but get a fraction of a fraction of political representation that rural whites get.
Why is is to hard to say this system is immoral?
A political system that values anyone's votes more than anyone else is a bad system and downright immoral. I said it.
Asians are a plurality of voters in Hawaii, the 11th smallest population state, and 5 out of 8 Asian-American Senators have been from Hawaii. Are these the spoiled, small state voters you want to put in their place?
To be honest I’d do it in a heartbeat “if everyone else did.” If a lot of people did this. The public schools in these places would be great, and there would be cool people to hang out with and a lot of stuff to do.
Small towns are great. But they can’t be ya know, what are basically abandoned towns that have lognormal age distributions.
I don't think we should take it as a law of nature that rural white voters really prefer to keep out high-skilled immigrants, see agricultural exports disadvantaged, oppose more progressive taxation, oppose a higher EITC or child tax credit if they did not increase the deficit.
Look I am for getting rid or telling to shut up to the toxic part of the Dem coalition of DEI industrial complex. If that is what is getting them mad, it is also getting me mad. When I see people trying to destroy education on the basis of "equity" I get mad. I fight back as a Dem.
It is not going to get me though to vote to screw myself and the whole country though.
An even bigger institutional issue is that the President doesn't completely control who is in the Cabinet. You could see a scenario where a unified slate was agreed based on reserving some cabinet posts for dissident Republicans...but Biden can't guarantee their chooses would get through the Senate
I don't actually think having a greatly empowered centrist coalition would be an improvement.
I'm happy to have someone question this formulation, as I'm kinda making it up on the fly:
The parliamentary model works to consolidate control in a more homogenized centrist coalition empowered on a majoritarian basis.
The Madisonian model distributes power more like a donut. The power gets distributed out away from the center to various antagonistic wings through parties, branches, federalism, etc. It then constrains these wings, not through popular will, but by checks and balances and constitutional constraints. So while you still trend to a centrist balance, you end up with a much broader, more pluralistic set of interests that must be satisfied to legislate.
The value, and point of the Madisonian structure is specifically to constrain the scope of government in favor of a more broadly pluralistic society.
Democrats should take the deals on climate and the Electoral Count Act, then pivot to getting majorities in 2024. That's the stuff on the table and we are out of time.
Yes, and pass Endless Frontier. That's actually a pretty good track record of accomplishment for a congress (including infrastructure and ARP), and leaves more to campaign around in November.
Yeah that would make sense and accept that Sinema and Manchin are not getting rid of the filibuster, but they won’t. Instead they’ll continue the “fight” and lose massively to republicans in November.
Especially since that stuff is quite important
A lot of the bad vibes in our system come from the mismatch between the President's actual institutional power, and the public and punditry's expectations of what a President can do. A President can talk a big game, has a big bully pulpit, but except to the extent that Congress delegates actual lawmaking power to the President, that power resides in Congress, notwithstanding public expectations.
This mismatch that creates the bad vibes could be resolved two ways: increase the President's actual lawmaking power to rule independently of Congress, by allowing or encouraging Congress to delegate more power to the President. Or seek to diminish the power and prestige of the Presidency, treat the President less like a king and more like an administrator in chief, and seek to build up the policymaking infrastructure and capabilities of Congress. The kind of policymaking staff and apparatus, and the budget that goes with it, that lives in the White House could instead be in the Speaker and Majority Leader's offices.
It seems clear which one is the better solution, if one cares more about long-term institutional health than winning the short-term policy battle of the day.
The interesting thing is that the President is a king--specifically, he's George III. The institutional powers and duties of the presidency almost perfectly match the formal institutional powers and duties of the British monarch in the 18th century: Power to sign or veto legislation? Check. Power to appoint all members of the judiciary and all other civil officers of the state? Check. Power to remove all civil officers of the state? Check. Commander-in-chief of the armed forces? Check. Power to negotiate war and peace? Check. Pardon power? Check. Big speech to the legislature? Check. Powers to call the legislature into special session and to adjourn the legislature? Check. And the list goes on.*
About the only significant difference between the powers and duties of the American president and the 18th-century British monarch is that in certain cases (e.g. war/peace powers and appointments) the president is formally required to consult with and get a majority (sometimes a 2/3 majority) of the Senate. Old King George formally didn't have to do this, but it turned out that in practice he did.
And herein lies the rub: It turns out that (1) when you have reasonably coherent parties, the separation of the executive and legislative powers is pretty much a myth, and (2) reasonably coherent parties are pretty much inevitable. It was this that kept the monarch from governing as he wanted, because if he wanted any legislation or any money he had to ask Parliament, so whoever controlled Parliament basically controlled the king. Add that to some monarchs uninterested in actually exercising their power (the first two Georges), and by the reign of George III it was seen as so rare for a monarch to actually exercise his powers directly that doing so was seen as both stupid (because how is he going to get anything done without Parliament?) and vaguely illegitimate. George himself gave up trying after losing the American War of Independence. So the monarch steps into the background.
But the monarch's powers don't just go away. Instead, they fall to the slowly coalescing office of Prime Minister. The PM's office didn't formally exist until the 20th century, but this is largely because the PM was, in effect, exercising the monarch's power on behalf of Parliament. And of course, because the Prime Minister by definition has the support of Parliament, there isn't any question of them being unable to follow through.
Across the Atlantic, the Framers were intimately familiar with the British system (since they had been British just a few years earlier) and had their own ideas about how it should work. It's unclear to me if they just weren't aware how much the king's power had eroded (it wasn't especially obvious at the time) and assumed that George III had all the powers of Queen Anne, or if they recognized this but thought that it was a corruption of the way things were supposed to work. So when the Framers whipped up a new constitution in 1787, they put in a king with all the formal powers of the British monarch they knew (with some limitations), but actually expected them to work independently of the legislature.
As we can see today, it didn't work. While we avoided this conclusion for a long time because parties were not coherent (in the sense of party discipline more importantly than ideology), we now have coherent parties, and the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches has revealed itself to be a myth. The question now is whether we can move ahead in doing what the British did 200 years ago and assign the President's powers to a new officer responsible to the House or if we'll keep stumbling along.
---------------------------
*Note: If this seems like it's just a list of what the "executive branch" does, please recall that Montesquieu, who came up with the three-branch theory of government, was writing in the 18th century as someone who wanted to bring the British system--broadly speaking--to France. That political project animated his writing of The Spirit of the Laws. The powers of the 18th-century British monarch are therefore ancestral to the whole idea of "the executive power" in later political theory. However, as Bagehot later observed--and is now accepted as true--the separation of the executive from the legislative power is (again) largely mythical.
The Founding Fathers don't seem quite as inspired and original when you realize how much of the Constitution is basically a written description of the British system at the time, with a few substitutions, changes in terminology, etc. We froze things in place as of 1787 with a written constitution that's hard to amend; the British system, having no written constitution, kept evolving.
One way to at least downplay the mismatch you're referring to is for the parties to not select their presidential candidate through a drawn-out reality show-like public contest. I'm not sure it's possible to put that cat back in the bag, though.
I regret I have but one like to give this comment
Ending the imperial presidency should be a top priority.
I'm gonna throw supply-chain management into the things that people think the American President can fix but cannot. It's just sad to watch people who know better write takes like that.
A few points;
1) Isn’t the CBO roughly as big and capable as the OMB?
2) Unless there is going to be a legislative shadow agency for each cabinet department and independent agency, the executive will always have more bureaucratic heft, one would have to limit congressional institutions to planning snd oversight to avoid inefficient replication.
3) I absolutely agree that public perception overrates the importance of the presidency, but how does one fix this? It’s almost a feature of human nature to ask “who is in charge?” and “those 535 people” is not a hugely helpful answer for our primate brains
On (3), the solution is obvious--a prime-minister-type figure who is responsible to the House but exercises the powers of the presidency. (See my post above.) The question is whether we'll do it.
One of my proposed compromise solutions would be to elect the House to 4 year terms, using PR. (I'm not married to the PR idea, but I'm concerned that a whole 4 years is too intense when combined with FPTP. When you lose, you've really really lost!) The ruling coalition then selects a Prime Minister as per normal. Maybe you Constitutionally include that they have to do it within x months, to prevent the protracted negotiations we sometimes see. No minority governments allowed either- the PM has to be selected by some coalition. This should incentivize the various parties to negotiate harder- you have a deadline, and if you can't reach a deal with X or Y party someone else likely will.
What's the difference between that and a 'normal' parliamentary system? No snap elections. The House is there for 4 years, no matter what. They can still recall the PM for misconduct if needed, but otherwise he/she's basically a President otherwise. Norway has used this exact system since the early 1800s.
To my mind this gives you the best, consensus-building features of a parliamentary country, with far less indeciveness & constant snap elections- and the ability to recall a PM if they get too demagogic
Isn’t the subsidiary question “how do we do it?” Since there is no way to do so, this discussion is pretty silly.
In technical terms, it could be done by constitutional amendment. (I've sketched out what this would look like.) In practical terms, an amendment isn't going to happen immediately and possibly (indeed probably) never will. But those of us who know that there's a better way can be more vocal about it in a way that makes it more visible and mainstream. Take-slingers like MY have the biggest megaphone on this front (which is why it's great he's slinging these takes). But we can also try and spread the word that (1) the stuff you learned in civics class was a cool theory 200 years ago, but our current predicament shows that it was wrong, and (2) there's a better way and we can do it. At the very least, spreading the idea is a good way to nudge people towards MY's view that this is all coalition politics and it's nothing to be mad about.
Yes (3) is the issue. The institutional incentives for members of Congress just seems to make it very hard for Congress as an institution to ever be unified enough, under strong enough leadership, to hold its own against the President, on the sustained basis that would be needed to effect a lasting shift in power from the Executive Branch to Congress.
Yeah but we're pretty good at knowing when small councils are in charge. The idea is to make a situation where the President, the Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader are basically a council of three who are collectively in charge.
Or, alternatively, go the French route and make the President even more powerful so that when they are in charge they are *actually* in charge.
The bar is so low, it really takes a lot for politics to truly disgust me, but when Obama and the Ds took over in '08 and took a look around at the War on Terror AUMF, and gitmo and the Patriot act and basically went thisifine.jpg was the most radicalizing fucking shit in the world.
People like us, who are really interested and follow politics, despair over our government because of its inability to get things done most of the time. But the dirty secret of our system is that is pretty much what the American people want. They're deeply suspicious of active government (sadly, often with good reason) and most of the time want it to not do that much. And that's just what they get! In an unironic sense (the opposite of what he meant), H. L. Mencken was right when he defined democracy as "the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
Basically, the population is fine when the government steps in to solve pressing crises, but is otherwise ineffectual. And that's pretty much what happens. We got superfast vaccine development (with some government help) and then a ton of fiscal assistance to magically help us through the economic crisis. And that was pretty good!
This doesn't make me happy -- we need to do more on climate change (and maybe we will) -- but it's pretty clear to me that that's not where the people are. Even as they grouse and complain, I think overall they're satisfied with the amount of government activism we have: immediate crisis yes, otherwise, not so much.
"People like us, who are really interested and follow politics, despair over our government because of its inability to get things done most of the time. But the dirty secret of our system is that is pretty much what the American people want. They're deeply suspicious of active government (sadly, often with good reason)"
If we look at the locales where big American government has had free rein, we get clued in to as why people might not be thrilled with that.
I find it frustrating how risk-averse and status quo-oriented a lot of people are toward our governing structure. Manchin and Sinema won't get rid of the filibuster even though they would have more control over outcomes. There's very little coverage of how it's unusually hard to get things passed in the US.
I wish we just had more general awareness of how the system could be better instead of endless quotes about how things would be worse if we tried anything new.
"There's very little coverage of how it's unusually hard to get things passed in the US."
I would generally agree with this statement, but I think we're cherry picking a bit as well. The "hard to pass" US passed significantly more COVID support then any of the other western country. There have been numerous conversations about how "secret congress" is able to accomplish things. I think the frustration comes in that its very hard to pass things over the objection of the minority party. Which is why many people tend to like the filibuster. Anything that comes up with limited objection can be passed easily and often does. Its only the contentious things that are hard to pass - and probably should be!
That's a fair analysis. But I think the record indicates that it should be easier to pass things over the objection of the minority party. At a bare minimum, we should be able to pass more climate legislation. We are on a dangerous path partly b/c the Republican Party essentially won't acknowledge that climate change is a problem that requires a more forceful response. There are real and damaging missed opportunities happening b/c it's so easy for the minority party to block things.
You run into the same problem with climate change, voting rights, even judicial appointments. The more exceptions you make, the more exceptions will be made. Everyone has their issue that are paramount and deserve the exception.
Yeah, I mean I think the fact that it's blocking something as existential as climate change action is evidence we shouldn't have it at all. Even if it works in theory, in practice it's causing real harm.
"Its only the contentious things that are hard to pass - and probably should be!"
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was pretty contentious yet passed easily.
I would prefer a system in which either party has much increased unilateral ability to gore some of the other side's sacred cows when they win a majority.
Even if it produces some "policy swings", and even if it occasionally hurts the country at large.
Because when what a governing coalition wants is bad for the country it should be permitted to prove just that before the next election.
I kind of agree with you, but real question - if a majority of the US public does not, should we change it? I think that given the relative little "c" conservative nature of the public, they don't.
If someone's obliviously driving towards the edge of a cliff do you stop them or not?
I'm not the sort of person to put these questions to because I have effectively no principles at all.
If I thought destroying the filibuster would go against the will of the majority of the populace but produce better outcomes, and I had the power, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Since I do believe that, if you gave me the power, I'd do it.
In the broader sense, I guess we shouldn't, but we're going to pay for it quite a bit at some point.
Then you're okay with Republican anti-democratic moves, you just disagree with their chosen policies?
That was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Obviously the best form of government is an autocracy with the version of me as I am today at the helm, and reset every five years to keep power from going to my head.
Equally obviously, that's nuts.
So democracy of some sort will have to do, because the alternatives (various forms of authoritarianism with *other* people at the helm) are just horrible.
:-D
Anyway, yes, it seems there's (very, very bare) majority support for keeping the filibuster, so it's going to stay.
I don't think it's long for this world; things are going to break in this country quite badly over the coming 3-4 decades, and for various reasons a lot of people will want to see changes that will be blocked by it and similar anti-majoritarian institutions.
I could wish it were otherwise, but the best I can do is try to prepare for the storm.
I think that even on this front a non-functioning legislature doesn't deliver. Instead of legislation deciding policy, you rely more on executive orders and unelected judges setting policy. As one can see from OSHA vaccine mandate, this can create a lot of chaos.
"Manchin and Sinema won't get rid of the filibuster even though they would have more control over outcomes." This just isn't true. They might get some more positive agenda control temporarily, i.e. the ability to pass legislation, but they would definitely lose a lot of negative agenda control permanently, i.e. the ability to block legislation. You might prefer to eliminate the filibuster, but it's fantasy to think that it's in Manchin and Sinema's interest and that they're just too stupid to realize it. All models are wrong, but it's much more useful to understanding politics to assume that politicians are rational self-interested actors than to assume the politicians you don't like are just stupid idiots who don't know what's good for them.
I don't think they are stupid idiots. What I find frustrating is that they seem to prefer negative agenda control to positive agenda control. I think government would work better if they had particular demands that they were driven to achieve, instead of prioritizing stopping things.
Maybe I am wrong! But that's what I meant, not that I think they are dumb.
Yes. Every centrist Senator I can think of in the last 20 years --and maybe longer-- has this had same problem and it's super frustrating. A small bipartisan coalition of centrist Senators would have huge positive agenda control, yet they only do that rarely, in an ad hoc way for specific issues (e.g. gang of 8). I usually think this is from fear of being primaried, but those who survive that experience are still timid.
Yeah, we don't even need to abandon our entire system of government to become less of a vetocracy. Yet the Senate won't even reform basic shit like the filibuster.
Maybe when the Democrats really return to power in 2032.
So much of the coverage and debate concerning the US Senate gets wrapped up in its own "lore" that there needs to be more coverage of just how much of an outlier it is among legislative bodies, both in the US and internationally. I believe only one state legislature (Nebraska) has an equivalent to the filibuster. If "protecting minority voices" is such an important part of the democratic process, why is the US Senate one of the only ones that is required to do it?
And Nebraska is unicameral, so there's still fewer veto points there.
Altho it would be cool if more states experimented with other governor structures instead of just copying the national model. Let's get a state-level parliament!
Not to mention how new the ubiquity of the filibuster is. It wasn't a de facto block for most legislation until like 10 years ago.
It's pretty clear that Manchin and Sinema don't support eliminating the filibuster because they believe it helps their chances of reelection, and if they don't get reelected they have no control over anything.
Idk if that's so clear. If there was no filibuster, they would still control the agenda and could extract concessions they feel are helpful. And they would still make news as pivotal Senators, so they could project moderation in the media.
What's the electoral advantage of fighting for the filibuster? Do they think there will be effective attack ads on it?
Well yeah, at this point, crazy at it is to say, there probably would be attack ads based on the dimensions the filibuster thing has taken (even though there's no natural reason the right wing would be any more favorable to a minority being able to hold things up in this way either...) .
Now, Manchin and Sinema could nonetheless vote to eliminate the filibuster and then do the leg work of explaining to their voters why doing so wasn't particularly partisan, etc....But I digress :)
Until recently the loudest voices who have been calling to remove the filibuster have from people on the left side of the party who want to be able to pass a bunch of progressive legislation, so moderates had a political incentive to oppose them. I thought this dynamic might change once more mainstream Democrats got on board with eliminating the filibuster (like what happened with impeachment), but alas, that hasn't happened.
Eh, this is a bit of a shallow take on how parliamentary systems work. Matt doesn't mention coalitions collapsing, which uh..... happens nonstop in the more unstable countries. At the end of the day, institutional design is just a lot less important than culture. If you picked German institutions up and transported them to say Brazil overnight, Brazilian politics would (no offense) still find a way to make a mess of it. Lots of parliamentary countries with PR & consensus-style governing institutions are a hot mess and have a new government every year- sometimes less! Bulgaria has PR and has had I think 3 governments in 1 year so far.
The real thing that makes passing major legislation in the US difficult is that the country is actually pretty closely divided on a lot of stuff (53-47%, usually). Like if you think in Germany they're using that coalition to easily pass lots of sweeping, controversial legislation that 47% of the population pretty strongly opposes- no, they're not, that's a bad take. Consensus in German politics is a function of consensus in German society overall- as for America, well....
I agree with the Matthew Yglesias who last night tweeted:
Honestly, "both parties struggle to make large policy shifts in the face of a closely divided and change-averse electorate" is a very banal take but seems pretty accurate
This is a better take!
If you asked me to try to fix US politics, I'd make the parties much stronger- to make being an obstinate holdout like Sinema that much harder. Get rid of primaries and let the parties select who represents them, loosen campaign finance restrictions so that the parties control the cash spigot and can turn it off or on depending on how well the representative is playing ball- as opposed to now, where (frequently insane) outside groups control the cash flow and the parties are weak. Bring back earmarks and let the majority leaders do what they need to do in order to get bills passed. Strengthen the committee structure and let the majority leader promote- or fire- representatives based on how compliant they are.
Sinema should be looking at being stripped of committee assignments, an automatic challenger in the next election with lots of party-funded cash, and no earmarks for Arizona. BTW, this is how parliamentary systems actually do work in practice! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_discipline
If you did to Sinema what you suggested, wouldn't she simply switch to Republican or just independent aligned with Republicans? Democratic leadership cannot afford to infuriate either Sinema or Manchin to much or they lose much more than votes on BBB. They could lose votes on judges, administration positions, any possible reconciliation bills for the next two years, etc. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
I think it probably would be better for our politics if Sinema and Manchin were in their own centrist third party. Probably not better for me on policy as a Democrat, but institutionally it might be better because it would provide clearer signals to America about our policy divides.
Maybe, but why shouldn't the decision whether to push through an important piece of legislation that might cost a party its majority be in the hands of party leaders rather than random backbenchers? A party leader that didn't exercise that power well would soon be deposed, so it's not as if the rank and file would have no say or influence.
Legislation (important or not) only passes if enough random backbenchers vote for it. If they are just expected to vote on whatever the majority leader proposes, then why have them at all. Just have a general election to select the majority leader or elect a president and have them implement policy without a legislature. If we're not going to do that, then you get what we have now. Which is that in a closely divided legislature, every backbencher becomes incredibly important to passing legislation. Many will fall in line, but whoever doesn't becomes the point of failure and has to be negotiated with to accomplish something.
Brazil is a presidential country, so they don't form coalition governments, unlike Germany and unlike the whole thrust of Matt's piece. I think you might have lost the plot on what the discussion is about. Anyways, my only points are:
Ultimately the core of what makes a country work or not is culture, and institutional design is secondary to that. I understand that's confusing to a lot of left-brained engineering types who look down the social sciences, and who imagine institutions are systems engineering problem where they can find the 'optimal' system, like it's a circuit board or a carburetor. These are the types of people who want to believe that IRV or Approval Voting are going to seriously remake US politics. Unfortunately, that's just wrong. Germany & the Scandinavian countries could use a Presidential system & FPTP and still function just fine, because they're culturally stable. Afghanistan could use the best designed, most consensus-oriented system known to man, and still collapse, because they're culturally unstable. QED.
And, consensus-oriented systems like Germany's are not passing sweeping reforms that 47% of the population strongly oppose- that's just wrong too. The main issue preventing BBB or electoral reforms from passing in the US is a divided populace, not institutional design. (As Matt pointed out with his Secret Congress piece, they actually do pass a lot of stuff that's nonpartisan/non-controversial)
I mostly agree with this, and am not really pro-PR either, but want to point out that one reason our people are divided is that there are only 2 parties, and that leads people to adopt the policy preferences of one or the other. So in my opinion a part of why Germany doesn't pass sweeping reforms opposed by 47% of the population is that Germany's coalition governments cause people to be more supportive of government policy because they see that a bunch of disparate parties all back a policy "so it must be good"
I agree this is an accurate description of the current Republican party. But:
Not necessarily a description of the current Democratic party, especially not its voters, who are much less ideologically coherent than party elites. The Dems are a big tent party with lots of moderates & even social conservatives, along with progressive Squad types, democratic socialists etc. I think the Dems are a lot less unified in what they're for, or against.
And, we've basically only had two parties for 150+ years, but they weren't this ideologically unified until recently. The two party system of the 50s, 60s and 70s was nothing like today- there was a ton of intraparty debate about civil rights, Vietnam, etc. So, doesn't seem like a permanent feature of a two party system, necessarily
I don't think this actually fits the Republican party either. There are plenty of religious conservatives and irreligious conservatives who are very uneasy allies in the Republican party for example. The same is true for a whole host of other issues as well - e.g. party elites want to cut SS and Medicare/Medicaid vs majority of the base which doesn't.
Well, the other major difference you don't mention is that here in the US we don't actually have coherent political parties - they've become more like brands. Germany doesn't have open primaries that allow literally anyone to compete to be the party representative in office, for example. Parties outside the US act like institutions and control who represents them and what their platform is. When was the last time a party platform in the US had any relevance?
So, as institutions, our parties are fundamentally different than parties anywhere else on the globe. And I think the dysfunction of our parties is the most relevant factor for our political dysfunction today. After all, our institutions haven't changed. What's changed is that our parties have become both more "democratic" but also institutionally weak.
Manchin can tell the President and progressives to eff-off because the party both has no control and almost zero influence over him. They cannot really punish him, nor can they horse-trade in the way that most parties around the globe do, and as US parties used to do before democratic primaries and campaign finance "reforms."
So you really have to look at the current political incentives of our politicians vs politicians elsewhere. The incentives pretty much everywhere else point toward party loyalty and subsuming the individual politician's desires into the party platform.
Here in the US, our politicians are atomized and their incentives are aligned with three things:
- Pleasing primary voters. Those in purple seats also have to worry about the general electorate but most don't.
- Donors - Politicians don't rely on parties anymore for financial support - it's about small individual donors as well as the big players. Our current parties have no ability to protect incumbents, even from primary challenges.
In summary, our national institutions are not the core problem today, it's the weakness of our parties which act like brands and not coherent political entities.
It's not entirely a coincidence that the US has weak parties:
- In parliamentary systems, MPs aspire to become ministers and ultimately prime minister. This requires the support of party leadership, which incentivises loyalty from MPs. It's not the only reason the US is the only place where party leaders are constantly called corrupt *by their own politicians*, but it's one of them.
- In parliamentary systems, shit gets done. If you win an election, generally you can enact the key planks of your manifesto. In the US, this rarely happens, because you often lack control of one of the numerous veto points. This undermines parties because voters constantly feel betrayed by their own side.
Yes, but an important reason things get done in parliamentary systems is because if a random backbencher doesn't fall in line with the party leadership, they can be kicked out of the party and their name won't be on the ballot next election. That's not true here in most states, where primary voters, not party leaders, choose party nominees and control ballot access, so party leaders have less ability to enforce party discipline. Every politician here has an individual inventive to grandstand, try to become their own social media and fundraising star, etc.
I do think our parties have always been weaker for the reasons you cite - but our parties have never been this weak and do not function like parties anymore.
As someone that strongly agrees though- it would be very challenging to get rid of primaries wholesale. The populist cries of 'they're rigging the elections!' would be extremely loud (and bipartisan). (To be fair, I will say that the Republicans have had a bit of success with it recently- first Glenn Youngkin, now they're talking about doing it in Idaho for the Governor's race there too).
My proposed solution would be that the parties put forward a slate of 3-5 nominees, and either
1. Voters get to pick one in a primary. Or
2. We use approval voting in the general, with both parties having their 6-10 nominees on the ballot, and the voters can approve their way into picking one of them
Yeah, I totally agree we probably can't get rid of primaries - we seem to be trapped.
Glenn Youngkin is a good example for a potential middle ground though - the primary he won utilized ranked-choice-voting. It's unlikely he would have won without it. It's only a single data point, but it seems to have resulted in a much better candidate than the normal plurality system does.
Yes but I think the actual voting was done by party elites for the most part, not regular Republican voters. From what I read, the only reason they didn't hold the process in an actual convention hall, early 20th-century style, was just Covid. (To be clear I think this is fantastic) Make Party Conventions Great Again!
I think it would be true to the Constitution and the original skepticism of political parties for Supreme Court to endorse and enforce a constitutional doctrine of separation of party and state. Forbid taxpayer funded and administered elections for the benefit of private political parties, which is what partisan primaries are.
If parties want to pay for and conduct their own private primary elections to choose their candidates for the general election, fine. But taxpayer and state resources should not be used to subsidize the internal governance of private political parties.
That's an important point. The main reason, IMO, the current parties haven't died like the Whigs is because they are so entrenched in the current system that it's simply much easier to capture them than start a new party.
Norm and I are thinking of starting the Aristocrats Party. No filibuster in hell folks
Um..... Now I have more questions about who is behind this account.
The “problem” with Joe Manchin isn’t him blocking the Biden agenda. He has proven friendlier to the Biden agenda than the median senator*. The problem is that the West Virginia delegation has 2% of senatorial voting power despite representing 0.6% of the population, that other low population states are even more over-represented, and that all these rotten boroughs place Manchin at the tipping point when he should be in opposition. Repeating the mantra “Manchin is a junior coalition partner” would not sooth the frustrations of malapportionment. Three quarters of the evils of our system could be fixed by abolishing the senate, even if we didn’t go full parliamentary.
*The median senator is likely the average of Manchin and Murkowski.
Would you really be satisfied if the senate was population proportionate, but 41% of them could still block majority legislation?
A system in which the Senators are still elected in statewide, winner-takes-all elections but their power is weighted by population would be *even less* representative than we have today.
California has more Republicans than Texas, which in turn has more Democrats than New York.
I believe this is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution, which says equal representation in the Senate can't be changed by amendment. We'd be talking a constitutional convention and a new constitution.
I wasn't proposing it, just saying that it'd be even worse.
This is not the problem. Sinema represents a big state. The problem is both houses of congress are narrowly divided under basically any representation scheme.
If you work remotely or are retired you can move to Wyoming.
The academic game theory analog to this post is a paper by Groseclose and McCarty called "The Politics of Blame: Bargaining Before an Audience." The paper starts with the puzzle of why Congress would ever waste time passing legislation they know the president will veto. The answer in the formal model is that even if Congress knows the president's preferences, the public does not know them exactly, but can learn through whether or not the president signs or vetoes legislation. In one equilibrium if the president is sufficiently extreme relative to voters and sufficiently motivated by policy to still veto then Congress prefers to pass legislation that they know the president will veto in order to reveal to the public that the president is extreme relative to voters and make his less popular.
In the model, Congress makes a proposal to reveal the president's preferences to a single national audience. In the current situation, it seems like the president is making a proposal in order to reveal Congress' preferences, i.e. Manchin's preferences, before multiple audiences with different preferences and different levels of attention. In particular, it seems like the core issue for Biden to the extent that he is more moderate than progressives inside and outside of Congress is that he needs to convince a progressive activist audience that Manchin in fact won't support their own special preferred policy that they think they could get him to go for. This requires putting public pressure on Manchin which progressive politicians and groups are happy to do because they benefit from this with their supporters and Manchin is happy to be on the receiving end because he in turn benefits from his more conservative voters seeing him publicly block progressive legislation. Particularly to the extent that activists pay attention to legislative bargaining, but the general public only pays attention to legislation that actually passes it's in the interest of Biden to have Manchin very publicly block progressive proposals and then pass more moderate legislation so that Biden can blame Manchin with activists, but is not shown to the general public to have extreme views relative to their own preferences.
Bargaining in parliamentary coalitions might look less messy because it's less public, but because it's more private coalition government particularly under proportional representation means that it's less clear in the next election which party will be held responsible for economic performance. While it looks like a messy shit show, in a first past the post + presidential system the Democrats and particularly Biden knows that he will be held responsible for economic performance in the next presidential election. Biden can't control gas prices, but like other presidents he is strongly incentivized to avoid economically destructive policy that hurts economic growth.
Small correction: you write that "In Germany, the head of the center-right FDP holds the title of Vice Chancellor." But Habeck is co-leader of the Green party not of the FDP.
Thanks for pointing that out, we’ll make the correction ASAP
I don't think this really makes the case that the way our system works is worse than parliamentary systems (to say nothing of "worst possible way"). As you describe, the outcomes seem similar to what you would expect from a centrist grand coalition -- legislation on areas where there is broad agreement (infrastructure, initial COVID relief) -- and little movement on more aggressive transformation either party might want. So the bad part is the "vibes".
But the "vibes" are really just a choice Joe Biden is making. He could decide to sit down with Manchin and Sinema (and/or Murkowski, Collins, etc), and see what they are willing to accept as the hinge votes, and then push for that as his platform. He seems to think it is more important to assuage his base that he is *trying* to accomplish much more but nothing he is doing publicly seems to be changing the outcome.
So I think he has miscalculated as it makes it look like 1) Democrats are infighting, 2) Biden himself has little control over the party, 3) Biden is representing the left interests vs the center, alienating independents/moderates, 4) he is achieving no incremental policy wins. But I don't think it's fair to pin that on institutional design - I think it's just bad White House decisionmaking.
(It's also true that as a rule the US does not want to install autonomous executives with a lot of authority into countries where we had to wage war to topple a dangerous strongman... this does not prove much in terms of how US government should be structured.)
To me, this is the great mystery of the Biden administration. Why pick an unrelenting fight with the median senators? Precisely as you write, it is a path that minimizes both your chances to get legislate wins and to win the next election. It is baffling.
The bad "vibes" coming from the President/Senator negotiations are a two-way street. I have a hard time understanding what Sinema/Manchin's mindsets are here. They seem to believe engaging in regular public displays of their opposition to Biden's agenda helps them back home electorally, which I'm not sure is necessarily the case. Or maybe they just like the attention (plus Sinema seems kind of flighty in general).
Basically both sides are engaging in game theory and getting the worst outcome: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1046180183/congressional-game-theory
Manchin clearly benefits at home from being seen as deviating from Biden's (or Pelosi's/Schumer's) agenda in high-profile ways. I think that is undoubtedly correct! Everyone should understand that and play the game accordingly.
Sinema is a bit harder to read but I do not think she is flighty at all. My best guess is a) she is more moderate than most Dems in her policy preferences, b) she thinks Dems will be more successful electorally with less aggressive legislative programs, and c) she enjoys being seen as a McCain-style maverick and thinks building a high-profile brand around that is the best way to succeed as a moderate in Arizona. We will see if her calculations are correct (I am skeptical on c).
For the record, I know Manchin benefits at home from being in opposition to his party's agenda. I'm just not sure this level of constant public fighting helps his case because it gives off vibes of "Washington dysfunction". What he should do is quietly make a deal with Biden over what to support and then do a bunch of paid media in WV boasting that he stopped items "x, y & z" but instead he's relying on earned national media attention from publicly fighting with the President, which hurts the overall Democratic brand and thus his electoral chances.
My read of it is that it's Biden who is defecting from this approach, and the breakdown hurts Biden much more than it hurts Manchin.
I don't think Biden is worried about a primary challenge (from who? AOC?). He handled challengers from the left pretty deftly in 2020 without committing to go as far down the path of the left as he is now doing. I think he is getting bad advice from his team, who are listening more to activists than voters.
After her petty and juvenile boycotting of Biden's voting rights speech in Atlanta, if she wins in November, I'm guessing Stacey Abrams will seriously consider challenging Biden in 2024.
Or maybe even if she loses in 2022.
If that's who he's worried about I think he should sleep well at night.
Most political actors understand the simple fact that no sitting president has ever been reelected when faced with a serious primary challenge. That's why there hasn't been one in 30 years. Unless Biden completely discredits himself over the next 2 years (or decides to retire) the party will back him.
In general I agree with you there can be tension here, but I don't think Biden should be worried about that right now. His base is scared enough of Trump coming back that they will fall in line.
I would like to see if there's actual political science showing whether there is a real electoral tradeoff between appealing to voters in the "center" and losing votes from your own party "base" to protest voting or them staying home. People argue frequently over this without any evidence to back up their assumptions (I think the 2000 election and the Nader factor may have been what kicked off this argument).
If I could scrap America’s constitutional framework and start from scratch, I’d go with some kind of unicameral legislature elected proportionally.
But since a new Constitutional Convention doesn’t look imminent, and since Sinemanchin don’t seem likely to move on the filibuster, I think it might be time to just take the Electoral Count Act fix and move on. Maybe try to pass a watered down BBB this spring, and then figure out something fun with the other reconciliation bill we’ll get for 2022.
The other thing that was terrible about the institutional design of Afghanistan was the electoral system - they didn't choose a PR system, but Single Non-Transferable Vote. This worked kind of well in postwar Japan until the 90s, where the strength of the democratic system, the state, and the 1955 party system ensured an odd kind of political pluralism and competititon with factions in the LDP that chimed with economic growth and development and voter support for reform.
But it was a catastrophic choice for Afghanistan. SNTV is highly individual-centric and induces factionalism, as it means that multiple candidates from the same party can split the party's share of the vote. As the state, political system, and the parties were all so weak, unlike Japan SNTV led to chronic infighting and squabbling not just in Kabul but in national elections and across the wider political system. In a society as complex and divided as Afghanistan (and the US!) SNTV was a terrible idea, but they introduced it practically by accident - the perils of path dependency! See: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/196965
The concept of elections was a farce in Afghanistan. I recall reading somewhere that America had people in Afghanistan worrying about ballot design, when those people would never have been able to leave their base without a helicopter. The electoral system barely mattered.
That's not true. The elections as processes were reasonably successful, all things considered. The wider political system failed, and the electoral system itself was part of that failure, but it wasn't as if there were mass boycotts or Afghans across the entire country were too intimidated to vote.
TIme to throw the "Worthless piece of fabric" (as Hamilton called the Constitution) and get a strong PR unicameral national government with a good bar for entry.
Everyone counts.
No more constantly pining away for rural white voters who are our overlords.
I do think it’s worth a note that these rural white “overlords” are not imperialists or necessarily even conscious of this. It’s their representatives and those with an interest in keeping their representatives in an easy power spot who cause unbalanced political life. The voters may be people i disagree with but we shouldn’t begrudge them for voting
I am talking about the system.
They are not worth more than me. Sorry. I will not apologize for thinking that.
A system where we have to constantly pander to a privileged minority is not a good system. Their representatives use that power to suck resources out of the rest of us.
Is there any reason why we have to subsidize corn syrup and make the rest of us unhealthy except for their ridiculous over-representation?
They are worth the same as me. I take the words of the Dec. seriously: "All men are created equal."
"I take the words of the Dec. seriously: 'All men are created equal.'"
If so, you should also take seriously, "...as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
The Free and Independent States came together as a union with the representation arrangements that they still, as Free and Independent States, enjoy today.
I don't think that is historically accurate. During the war the Articles of Confederation were written and voted for which bound the states more. I take Abraham Lincoln's reading of this at Gettysburg in 1863. I don't take the John C. Calhoun view.
If you are trying to argue that the states are independent, that dog won't hunt. Even in 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence in a unanimous vote, not as different colonies.
I don't give a s-it about where Lord Baltimore and the Penn family drew boundaries over what the King gave them. I don't think there is anything in political society that makes giving us two Dakotas and a bunch of empty states as a way to offset the end of Reconstruction by the Republican Party is somehow a sacred thing we should have to suffer forever.
Give up, he's trolling. Fuck only knows what he actually believes.
Just counter-troll, it's more fun.
Then there’s this:
“There is no question that state and local authorities possess considerable power to regulate public health. They enjoy the ‘general power of governing,’ including all sovereign powers envisioned by the Constitution and not specifically vested in the federal government.”
It is historically accurate. It's how the states saw themselves and it was one of the major factors that shaped the Constitution. Rhode Island, for example, would never have agreed to a union without assurances that it would not be steamrolled* by, for example, Virginia. By entering the union the states agreed to give up some of their independence, but not all of it. (As far as historical accuracy, you might want to consider what, exactly, "All men are created equal" meant at the time. I'm sure it's not what you mean today.)
I completely agree that beyond "all men are created equal" there is no particular political arrangement that is sacred. But why would West Virginia or Vermont or Maine agree to give up their representation in the Senate? What would they gain for their citizens?
*No steamrollers at the time, I realize.
These were little colonies set up by accidents of history in a weird patchwork quilt of conflicting lines. Heck CT and PA even fought over where Scranton is today. Who gives a sh-t? This is ancient history. People matter not these idiotic political boundaries that go back to the freakin' King of England.
Rhode Island was an ardent proponent of Independence without any assuarances.
Rhode Island joined last because they were on the outs by themselves.
You are right, people in WV, and VT are privileged politically. As the saying goes, "People with privilege see equality as unfair." Time for them to grow the hell up and realize they are not any better than anyone else and their voice doesn't count more.
I mean heck, John C. Calhoun used to argue the South should count more because of the economic might of cotton and what their exports as a share of the economy.
Many of these small states can't even argue that. Instead they demand subsidies while getting more say.
It is an immoral system that nobody would design for themselves to govern a country.
Best emigrate to the EU, then!
Enjoy!
No I get frustration with the system. But the voters alive in the system now have the same ability to change the system as you or I. They’re just voting.
I am not saying they should not vote.
However, they are spoiled.
They have been fed the nonsense that they are "real Americans" as opposed to the rest of us.
I fail to see how their views matter more than the Asian community in cities that add far more value and revenue to the system but get a fraction of a fraction of political representation that rural whites get.
Why is is to hard to say this system is immoral?
A political system that values anyone's votes more than anyone else is a bad system and downright immoral. I said it.
Asians are a plurality of voters in Hawaii, the 11th smallest population state, and 5 out of 8 Asian-American Senators have been from Hawaii. Are these the spoiled, small state voters you want to put in their place?
We could move to Wyoming its there they have jobs remote work is a thing retirement is a thing.
To be honest I’d do it in a heartbeat “if everyone else did.” If a lot of people did this. The public schools in these places would be great, and there would be cool people to hang out with and a lot of stuff to do.
Small towns are great. But they can’t be ya know, what are basically abandoned towns that have lognormal age distributions.
Cheyenne has like 60k people. It has restaurants community groups etc. it does not have the NFL or NBA but it has civilization.
Cheyenne? I think Jackson Hole will be a hot destination.
Lol! I’m like most people. I’m a “take the vaccine guy.” But not “participate in a vax trial guy.” I’m a second 200K to a city guy.
I don't think we should take it as a law of nature that rural white voters really prefer to keep out high-skilled immigrants, see agricultural exports disadvantaged, oppose more progressive taxation, oppose a higher EITC or child tax credit if they did not increase the deficit.
Look I am for getting rid or telling to shut up to the toxic part of the Dem coalition of DEI industrial complex. If that is what is getting them mad, it is also getting me mad. When I see people trying to destroy education on the basis of "equity" I get mad. I fight back as a Dem.
It is not going to get me though to vote to screw myself and the whole country though.
No, but they vote that way.
Which means that we ought to engage then on those issues, not JUST try to find enough other voters to outvote them.
An even bigger institutional issue is that the President doesn't completely control who is in the Cabinet. You could see a scenario where a unified slate was agreed based on reserving some cabinet posts for dissident Republicans...but Biden can't guarantee their chooses would get through the Senate
I don't actually think having a greatly empowered centrist coalition would be an improvement.
I'm happy to have someone question this formulation, as I'm kinda making it up on the fly:
The parliamentary model works to consolidate control in a more homogenized centrist coalition empowered on a majoritarian basis.
The Madisonian model distributes power more like a donut. The power gets distributed out away from the center to various antagonistic wings through parties, branches, federalism, etc. It then constrains these wings, not through popular will, but by checks and balances and constitutional constraints. So while you still trend to a centrist balance, you end up with a much broader, more pluralistic set of interests that must be satisfied to legislate.
The value, and point of the Madisonian structure is specifically to constrain the scope of government in favor of a more broadly pluralistic society.