I do not have much to add to this other than although Madisonian democracy has its problems it is not beyond repair. I have written this numerous times but I suspect:
1. Eliminating physical House districts and moving to a proportional system
2. Expand the House so no state has a single district
FIFY: "But Scholz can pass legislation only insofar as he can persuade Habeck’s party to back it, and Biden can pass legislation only insofar as he can persuade Manchin to back it."
I think this was not fixed from the original draft. Should be Lindner whom Schulz needs to persuade, not Habeck.
I was fascinated to read about the indictment of Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keeper leader, on sedition charges and learn he was a Yale Law grad. What were they teaching then in Constitutional Law at Yale? If any among Matt's readership were fellow students with Rhodes at Yale, I'd be curious to know if he was as unhinged then as it seems he is now.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What Progressives need to do is think about whether Manchin is really blocking an election winning set of legislative initiatives, or preventing them from enacting a self defeating set of legislative initiatives. I think it is some of both and calls for putting together a set that Is and Manchin can be persuaded is an election-winning set. Also it seems to me that viewing the sausage-making process is reducing the public's apatite for sausage.
I think we're set to lose whether these things pass or not. Progressives are largely aware of that, which is part of why they're desperate to pass stuff now.
nice idea: difference between Iraq parliamentary and Afghan presidential structures as important to how latter failed.
I do not have much to add to this other than although Madisonian democracy has its problems it is not beyond repair. I have written this numerous times but I suspect:
1. Eliminating physical House districts and moving to a proportional system
2. Expand the House so no state has a single district
3. Adding Puerto Rico as a state
I'm curious how adding PR as a state would change anything fundamental?
Helps rebalance the senate
FIFY: "But Scholz can pass legislation only insofar as he can persuade Habeck’s party to back it, and Biden can pass legislation only insofar as he can persuade Manchin to back it."
I think this was not fixed from the original draft. Should be Lindner whom Schulz needs to persuade, not Habeck.
The "A" in AfD stands for "Alternative," not "Alliance."
I was fascinated to read about the indictment of Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keeper leader, on sedition charges and learn he was a Yale Law grad. What were they teaching then in Constitutional Law at Yale? If any among Matt's readership were fellow students with Rhodes at Yale, I'd be curious to know if he was as unhinged then as it seems he is now.
Stunning!
Robert Habeck is the co-leader of The Greens not the FDP. You're thinking of Christian Lindner (who is finance minister not vice-chancellor)
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 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.
I’m not sure I fully buy that Sinema, say, is really just motivated by centrist policy preferences.
Fully 1000% agree on the poor quality of our institutions though.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Just for the record, here is what the Scholz cabinet actually looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholz_cabinet
You'd think Matt would know Robert Habeck better since he is probably the most powerful person in Europe (or the world) with a PhD in Philosophy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What Progressives need to do is think about whether Manchin is really blocking an election winning set of legislative initiatives, or preventing them from enacting a self defeating set of legislative initiatives. I think it is some of both and calls for putting together a set that Is and Manchin can be persuaded is an election-winning set. Also it seems to me that viewing the sausage-making process is reducing the public's apatite for sausage.
I think we're set to lose whether these things pass or not. Progressives are largely aware of that, which is part of why they're desperate to pass stuff now.
Then we should actually try to PASS stuff, not just complain about Manchin.