WHAT'S NEXT (CONCLUSION)

 What is government for? 

The United States of America has more than 330 million people living within its borders and it can’t rely on people’s comity, the market, religious institutions, or businesses to serve all of their interests, and serve them well, efficiently, and equitably. It needs an organizing system, a ‘higher power’ if you will, to keep it all together and moving forward. In America, that system consists of laws (including a constitution) and institutions that each provide stability to the structure. The purpose, of course, is to preserve the sovereignty and security of the nation, but right behind that, to advance the prosperity of the community at large as a complement to the collective pursuits of the individuals that, together, form this community. It is, in fact, pretty well described in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “In order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Sometimes, the system fails us. This is one of those times. Today, you would think that government is there for the purpose of providing a job and a soapbox to 435 politicians in the House of Representatives and 100 more in the Senate. And to allow them to spend their days being busy to get re-elected. It does not help that they keep themselves organized in only two parties that no longer reflect the diversity of creed and aspiration within the American population. It does not help that these parties and their leadership, not the individual lawmakers, dictate what causes get advanced and what causes get smothered before they get to the floor of the House or the Senate. Because of the relative parity of the two parties and the rules of order of the two chambers of Congress, nothing of substance gets advanced, everything smothered.

The bottom-line is that, for decades now, the existing political system has failed to offer durable solutions to the most pressing issues confronting the nation and its people. As a result, the most prosperous nation on earth has not found a way to keep its fiscal house in order; to upgrade and secure for the future a social safety net that protects vulnerable people from poverty and despair; to offer (all of) its people affordable education and healthcare of universal quality and universal accessibility; to articulate and maintain an immigration policy that allows it to draw on the best globally available talent and serves equally the needs of the economy, of a greying population, and of national security; to invest in an infrastructure for the future; to articulate a comprehensive approach to combat the challenges presented by climate change; and to combat the rise in racist and extreme anti-democratic sentiment.

In this four piece essay on the impact of the 2020 election, I have explored if, in the aftermath of the Trump defeat and the Democratic takeover of control of the Senate, there are any chances for a break in the impasse and I have come to the conclusion that such chances are slim. The voters have handed the reins to a 78 year old veteran without giving him a mandate in the form of a resounding defeat of Trumpism in Congress. His task is clear: He needs to give the American people what they need most now, control of the Covid-19 virus and revival of the pandemic ravaged economy and he has less than 2 years to do it or run the risk (near certainty) of annihilation in the 2022 midterm election, handing control of Congress right back to the GOP which is still under the spell of Trump.

Some conditions work in his favor. Vaccines against Covid-19 virus are available in increasing numbers and variations, and mask wearing and social distancing have become a way of life for most Americans. After a year of hesitation and denial, the conditions for getting the pandemic under control are in place and leadership from the top of the government is now assured. Also, both parties are ready to stimulate economic revival with a large additional relief package (even though there are significant differences of opinion about how large it should be). What is lacking though is a political landscape that is conducive to effective governance. The GOP smells blood in the water after making gains in both chambers of Congress in 2020 and gathering 74 million voters behind the top of their ticket. They will do just about anything to regain control of Congress in 2022, which would render the Biden administration handcuffed for the remainder of its first term in office. The Democrats smell blood in the water as well as they see the GOP fracturing in a populist, QAnon conspiracy inspired faction fighting for control of the party with a traditional republican, conservative, faction. Under these conditions, only an open, irreparable, split between the factions in the GOP can provide a chance for a centrist coalition of moderate Democrats and traditional Republicans to emerge as a dominating force in Congress that would allow the Biden administration to govern other than by executive order. If the next election would be 4 years away, that might happen, but with midterm elections now only 21 months away, I think we can rule out that scenario from coming into play.

Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, spelled it out in a tweet on January 29:”As difficult as it will be to get the pandemic under control and the economy growing again, it will prove far more difficult to make our politics functional, civil, rational, and safe again.”

The political system as it exists in America today is broken, and we know it. In this series of essays, I have outlined where it fails us and I have shared many of the thoughts brought forward by supporters of democracy on how to fix it. It comes down to making the process more democratic by getting all people engaged and making sure that voters get to pick their politicians rather than politicians, through gerrymandering, getting to pick their voters. It should not be that complicated. The problem is obvious and the solutions to the problem are known, available, and workable. The only issue is that it is no longer indisputable that the people, all of them, want democracy to function. 

There is no cure for that. You thought that four years of an anti-democratic experiment would have killed that beast, but many of our fellow citizens have thought, and are still thinking, differently.

America believed, with good reason, that the 2020 election would be exceptionally consequential. In one way it was. It removed a blatantly anti-democratic President from office. But it failed to create conditions for a re-set of the political system necessary to give America a government that is tooled and empowered to provide the nation with real and lasting solutions to the main challenges it faces and have been swept under the rug or kicked down the road for too long.

It is now clear that the 2022 and 2024 elections are going to be no less consequential than the election of 2020. God have mercy on America.

WHAT'S NEXT PART III

 The election is behind us and regime change has taken place in America, but the unease has not dissipated. We are finding out that even control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate in one hand is not enough to govern effectively. Obama found that out during his first two years in office, Trump found it out during his first two years in office, and now it is Biden’s turn to experience the same limitation.

We can justly argue that the country had to go through the Trump experience because, for decades, the conventional governance of Democrats and Republicans and the White House and Congress holding each other at bay had failed to produce results for the People and the voters were willing to give a populist authoritarian a chance to show that he could do better. That experiment did not exactly pan out as hoped for and so we are back to where we came from. But the fact that 47.8% of the voters were willing to give Trump a second chance and a second term shows that the voting public is still wondering if an authoritarian approach to governance isn’t needed to give them the results they are craving. Anne Applebaum’s 2020 book ‘Twilight of Democracy (the seductive lure of authoritarianism)’ has come alive in America. I don’t think that the viability of democracy per se is in doubt, but what is certainly in doubt is the effectiveness of the way America has interpreted, developed, and implemented the tenets of democracy in its political system. The system just has not produced for the large majority of Americans and allowed an untenable degree of inequality to take hold. Already in 2016, the top 1 percent of households accounted for 4 times as much income as the bottom 20 percent of households, and that disparity has only further increased under Trump and as a result of the Covid 19 induced economic downturn. And now we are about to find out that that same system stands in the way of Biden delivering on the campaign promises that got him elected.

The immediate hurdle to climb is that the existing system keeps any legislative initiative from clearing the Senate, unless it has the support of 3/5th of the Senate members. On paper that does not sound too bad, but in the real world of a closely balanced two party system, and with parties that refuse to see eye to eye, it has proven to be a recipe for unbreakable gridlock. Previous administrations have increasingly tried to work around this impediment by governing by executive order, but that only goes so far and is undesirable from a democracy point of view. The record shows that with the existing political system, and the relative parity in representation of the two parties, the legislative branch is incapable of crafting durable solutions to the nation’s major challenges. 

So, what’s going to give? If democracy isn’t delivering the goods, the likelihood is that the people will give authoritarianism another try. And there is enough extremist presence on both side of the aisle to jump on that opportunity. But it is not inevitable. 

The good news is that there is no lack of insight on ways in which the system can be improved, to make it work better, more democratically, for the people the government is supposed to serve. The presumption is that democratization of the system will lead to better outcomes for the people.

In my previous column, I have referenced the 2019 report ‘Our Common Purpose, Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century’ from the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. This report provides an excellent blueprint for system improvements by proposing 6 strategies:

1. Achieve Equality of Voice and Representation

2. Empower Voters

3. Ensure Responsiveness of Government Institutions

4. Expand Civic Bridging Capacity

5. Build Civic Information Architecture

6. Inspire a Culture of Commitment to American Constitutional Democracy and One Another

If this sounds a little ethereal, the content is very pragmatic and includes rational suggestions like increasing the membership in the House of Representatives; ranked-choice voting in presidential, congressional, and state elections; independent citizen-redistricting commissions in all fifty states; elimination of undue influence of money in our political system; make voting in federal elections a requirement of citizenship; establish same-day registration and universal automatic voter registration; restore federal and state voting rights to citizens with felony convictions immediately and automatically upon release from prison; establish a universal expectation of a year of national service for young Americans; invest in civic education for all ages and in all communities. It deals with the curse of gerrymandering and voter suppression. 

Other suggestions come from the National Constitution Center, which asked three teams of scholars, conservative, progressive, and libertarian, to draft, from scratch, new Constitutions for the United States in 2020. All three teams agree on the need to limit presidential power, explicitly allow impeachment for non-criminal behavior, and strengthen Congress’ oversight powers of the President. And the progressive and conservative teams converge on the need to elect the president by a national popular vote (the libertarians keep the Electoral College); to resurrect Congress’ ability to veto executive actions by a majority vote; and to adopt 18-year term limits for Supreme Court Justices.

The openness of our democratic system is also held back because of the tight control that party leadership has over the organization of primary elections and the introduction of legislative proposals on the floor of each of the chambers of Congress.

Talk is cheap. In America, there is never a shortage of think tanks, public policy groups, or academic platforms debating and criticizing the status quo. But none of it translates into actionable initiatives. And the reason for this is clear: In the two-party system, every proposal for change in the political system, can be calculated to favor one or the other. In most instances, the suggested adaptations are favoring the Democrats who are likely beneficiaries of increased voter participation and representation (there is a reason why the Republican Party has a long history and record of voter suppression). Such adaptations are going nowhere as long the Republican Party can mobilize at least 40 of its Senators against them.

Case in point is the ‘For the People Act of 2019’ (H.R.1) that addresses many of the proposed system changes and passed the House of Representatives in 2019 only to get stranded in the Senate. Or the ‘Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2019’ (H.R.4) that suffered the same fate in the Republican controlled Senate of 2020.

Now that the leadership has shifted to the Democrats in the evenly divided Senate, both bills have been reintroduced in the Senate, but have no way of passing as long as the filibuster rule is in play and may even have trouble to attract a simple majority. The Biden administration has a tough, fateful, choice to make if/when it determines that there is no basis for compromise with the Republicans on these issues: give up on the legislative process and try to implement its agenda as much as it can by executive order, or execute a power play to impose its will on Congress. Such powerplay could consist of several elements: 1) killing the filibuster rule in the Senate; 2) expansion of the House of Representatives based on the 2020 Census; 3) Statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. As of the time of this writing, Biden himself appears reluctant to resort to such powerplay and at least two Democratic Senators, Manchin and Sinema, have already come out against killing the filibuster rule.

It does not look good for the American people. The Republicans will speculate that they will have a good chance of conquering the majority in both chambers of Congress in 2022 if they can keep the Biden administration from coming to the aid of the hard-hit American people. And the best, most innocuous, way of doing that is by standing in the way of any change in the convoluted political system as it exists today.

In a final segment of ‘WHAT’S NEXT’ I will try to put it all together and fill in some blanks. Stay tuned!

WHAT'S NEXT PART II

The election is behind us. The 46^th President has moved into the White House and the next election is less than two years away (which means that The House of Representatives is already again in election campaign mode). There is an awful lot of sorting out to do between now and November 8, 2022.

Joe Biden will have to sort out what he will have to do to be able to make good on his ambitious campaign promises, with only the slimmest margin of control over the legislative branch and a significant left-wing representation in his party nipping at his heels.

The Democrats will have to sort out if ideological purity and revolutionary activism is more important to them than pragmatism.

Mitch McConnell will have to sort out if he is better off working with-and putting restraints on- Biden policy making or obstructing Biden in every move, trying to set the stage for yet another one term presidency.

The Republicans have the most and hardest sorting out to do. They will have to decide if they want to go back to traditional republican conservatism or become the national populist party, much in the way Donald Trump has pushed it for the six years since the start of his campaign and presidency. Their decision may, or may not, cause the fissure within the GOP, which so far has been taped over, to lead to a break-up of the party.

In all of this, the most important sorting out to do is for each of these policy makers to decide if they will put the interest of the American people over their narrow personal and partisan interests. The question is, if the momentous events since November 3, 2020 have shocked the policy makers enough to force them into acceptance of the fact that the American people need to see action now, or that any policy making will be further deferred until after the 2022 election (and then possibly again until after the 2024 election). The answer to this question will have to come clear during the first 100 days of the Biden administration, with a likelihood that the named policy makers will not all come up with the same answer in this binary choice. The betting will be on whether they think that they can improve on their political fortunes in the next Congressional election, in 2022. The outcome will nevertheless be hugely consequential for the health of the nation and our democracy. The choice is between a positive role for an effective-be it limited- federal government in the shaping of the destiny of the nation and its people, or continuing governance paralysis.

Today, it is too early to tell which way it will go. The upcoming impeachment trial in the Senate, now set to begin the week of February 8, will give us a hint. In the meantime, we can make up the balance on what positives and negatives have come out of the 2020 election and its aftermath.

Let’s start with the positives:

·       A horribly and dangerously unqualified President has been voted out of the White House.

·       Against all odds, Mitch McConnell has been deprived of his Senate leadership.

·       The Republican Party will have to re-articulate what it stands for and may be splitting.

·       The January 6 storming of the Capitol and Trump’s actions leading up to that may instill in some Republicans political courage that otherwise would have been absent.

·       Large political donors, business and otherwise, are shunning the lawmakers who propagated the fallacy of a stolen election and voted against the certification of the Biden election victory.

·       Our democratic institutions held under the onslaught of conspiracy, blackmail, and misinformation originating with Trump, his sycophants, and media pundits.

·       New leadership at the Department of Justice, in tandem with the investigative powers of Congress, is likely to discover who, inside and outside the halls of power, were the instigators and ringleaders of the January 6 insurrection.

But it is not all good news. The negatives that we will have to wrestle with include:

·       We have allowed trust in our political leadership, process, and institutions to erode to the point of leading to an insurrection.

·       We have condoned for too long an assault, by our President, on the truth, the facts, and the empirical reality.

·       The COVID-19 pandemic has been allowed to go rampant in the absence of government attention and leadership causing hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.

·       Fifty Democratic Senators represent 41.4 million more Americans than the 50 Republican Senators but have to rely on the Vice President to give these people a voice.

·       The election has failed to deliver a governable majority in Congress.

·       Too much energy will have to be devoted to ‘decontamination’.

·       The combination of seniority rules and absence of term limits has left us with Congressional leadership largely in the hands of septuagenarians and octogenarians.

·       The election has further dismantled the political center and boosted the presence and power of the extreme right and extreme left.

·       In summary: So much to do, so little time to do it, and not enough consensus to get it done.

At this point, it is entirely unclear if our politicians are capable of putting the People’s interest above their desire to get re-elected and hang on to power. Only time will tell.

There certainly is no shortage of challenges to address. Starting with the need to avoid further damage from the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn that has, once again, hit the most vulnerable segments of society the hardest. Even before and without this crisis, our society has shown to be in urgent need of addressing the untenable inequality that puts too many Americans at an insurmountable disadvantage, in income, in wealth, in education, in healthcare, and in general welfare and wellbeing.

In a next segment of ‘WHAT’S NEXT’ I will explore the governance system changes that can be considered if America wants to clean up its act and become yet again a vibrant, functional, democracy. Much of that I wrote in my 2014 book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, a First-Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’, but the recent events have surfaced many more inadequacies in the system that need to be addressed.

For that, we don’t have to start from scratch. A good starting point would be a reading of the 2019 report ‘Our Common Purpose, Reinventing American Democracy for the 21^st Century’ from the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/publication/downloads/2020-Democratic-Citizenship_Our-Common-Purpose_0.pdf .

The blueprint is there. Will the political courage be mustered to put this, or a similar, playbook in action?

WHAT'S NEXT?

I have intentionally held my breath until after the inauguration of the Biden administration, controlling my urge to chronicle and provide context to the many dazzlingly cascading events that have occurred since I wrote my previous column, ‘No Man’s Land’ on December 21. I wanted to see how it all turned out, and now we have at least a new starting point and a new observation platform from which we can look into the future.

From this platform we look at a drastically changed landscape, affected by political earthquakes, landslides and volcanic eruptions, that have all taken place in the last thirty days: Trump’s refusal to concede his defeat; his banishment from Twitter and Facebook; the stunning rebuke of the GOP in the special election for the two Georgia Senate seats resulting in Democratic control of the Senate; the storming of the Capitol in an effort to prevent the reading and confirmation of the Biden/Harris election by a joint session of Congress; the second impeachment of the 45^th President; and the rebuke of Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection by some prominent Republicans, notably Liz Cheney, Mitch McConnell, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney.
What does this landscape tell us about what we can expect to happen next?

There is a lot more to this question than can be handled in a single column. So, expect a series of columns that will try to shine a search light on the future. I limit the time horizon to two years, because that is the time we have until the next national election, which will, once again, have the potential of drastically changing the political landscape.

The defining question of the moment is if the Biden administration can positively affect the lives of the large majority of the American population that has taken the brunt of decades long government neglect resulting in unbearable inequality and crises like the 2008 great recession, the Covid19 pandemic and the resulting death and devastation. And, if it can do so soon enough and with enough penetration that it can determine the outcome of the 2022 midterm election. As we know, midterm elections are notoriously challenging for the party in power, having had too little time to make good on the promises made during the previous election that brought it to power.

A column in today’s New York Times by Ezra Klein quotes Amy Lerman, a political scientist and author of the book “Good enough for Government Work”. She writes that the best thing we can do right now to reduce levels of anger and frustration is to give people the things they need to live better lives and Ezra Klein concludes: “What the Democrats need to do is simple: Just help people, and do it fast.”

So much to do, and so little time to do it.

What is the urgency? It stems from the fact that Trumpism was not defeated in the November 2020 election. In fact, it drew more support than at any time in the Trump era, with more than 74 million Americans voting in favor of a second term for the incumbent. Only an extraordinary ‘get out the votes’ effort by the Democrats, tilted the balance in favor of Biden/Harris ending up with more than 81 million votes, a 4.5% advantage over Trump/Pence. The 74 million Trump voters have been told by the right-wing pundits on TV, radio, internet media, and the President himself that they only lost the election because of massive fraud and that, if only legally cast votes were counted, they would have won – by a landslide. They are outraged, as we have seen on January 6, and are looking for revenge.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor in Chief of The Atlantic, wrote today in a letter to subscribers: “A catastrophic presidency is over.” And he quoted George Packer who summarizes the verdict: “America, under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, slicker, and deader.” But the appeal of authoritarianism, that has surfaced time and again in American political history, has not diminished in the wake of Trump defeat and can easily win the day again if the Biden administration can’t address the legitimate grievances that have driven millions of underprivileged, mostly working class, Americans away from the establishment politicians into the fold of an authoritarian populist demagogue.

It looks like a herculean task for the Biden team, given how hard it has proven to be to get a partisan, divided Congress, to agree on any substantive legislation, particularly under the current rules where sixty votes are required to pass non-budget related legislation in the Senate. It immediately raises the question for the Democrats, while they have a hold of the White House and slim majorities in the House and Senate, if they should take the widely discussed, but highly controversial, step to break with existing norms and nix the remaining application of the Senate filibuster rule (for non-budget related legislation). They will also be tempted to try and strengthen their electoral strength by considering statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, which would give Democrats four more ‘safe’ Senate seats.

The Democrats will realize that taking these unorthodox steps is likely to rule out cooperation with moderate Republicans, eliminate the possibility of a coalition of the center (moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans), and harden the opposition by Trump loyalists in Congress and among the voting public. All reasons why Biden so far has refused to voice support for these fateful steps.

It looks to me that the decision in these matter lies with the Republican Party. Will it stay together as a united block to Democratic policy proposals? The answer may come when the Senate Republicans will have to decide the verdict on Trump’s second impeachment. If a good number of Senate Republicans end up voting for impeachment and barring Trump from ever running for office again, the likelihood of a split in the GOP between Trump loyalists and traditional Republicans will increase exponentially. Trump himself has already hinted at leaving the GOP and creating his own ‘Patriot Party’. 

If that happens, a smart, time- and battle tested, Joe Biden could succeed in crafting a strong enough informal coalition of centrist Republicans and Democrats to advance major parts of his program and pry the working-class voters back from the MAGA charade, just in time for the 2022 midterm election. Wishful thinking? Yes, very possibly. GOP Senators can easily avoid the dilemma by arguing that you can’t impeach a President who has already been replaced or, like they have done before, that Trump was guilty as charged, but that the crime does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Stay tuned.

In a next column, I will address the positives and negatives of the outcome of the 2020 election from the perspective of a population that so badly requires to see its daunting challenges addressed by an effective, compassionate, disciplined federal government that does not unduly interfere with individual freedoms and responsibilities but puts teeth in the constitutional  mandate ‘to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity’.

NO MAN'S LAND

Six years ago, before Donald J. Trump had come down the escalator to announce his candidacy for the American Presidency, I published my book ‘Neither Here nor There, A First-Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’. In the book, I was making an attempt to sort out for myself if my decision, made in 1983, to make America my permanent home, was warranted by everything that had transpired since that time. I chose the title ‘Neither Here nor There’ to indicate that I found myself in somewhat of a no-man’s land, not sure where I belonged, in the Netherlands where I was born, or in America, the country I had picked for the future. My conclusion was that the die had been cast, that with children and grandchildren growing up in America, I had irretrievably relocated my family, but I was still uneasy about the wisdom behind my decision. The core of my hesitation was that the forces pulling America apart were seemingly overwhelming the forces that bind America together.

Now, six years hence, it is time to update the picture. And it is immediately clear that the centrifugal forces that were pulling the fabric of the American society apart have only persisted and intensified. And the man at the top has been the catalyst for this development. There is no doubt that, over the last six years, no one has shaped the state of the nation more than Donald J. Trump. The 45^th President has, from the start of his presidential campaign and with great precision, tuned into the base instincts that, in America, have always lived right under the surface: xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, misogyny, hubris, greed, and resentment. So successful has he been at it, that he has been able to turn his political presence into a veritable cult. From the start it was clear that he had no traditional republican credentials, but he did not need them. It defies credulity, but with his cult following he was able to take over the Grand Old Party, eradicate the republican platform, and submit the republican cadre to subservience with the proverbial carrot (tax cuts and judicial appointments) and stick (purity tests, tweet attacks, and primary challenges).

That dominance has held until the election this year. It is too early to tell how the electoral defeat will affect the cult following, or if it will cause the MAGA cult to lose control of the Republican Party. But, given the 74 million votes collected by Trump, it is clear that the cult will not go away. The only question is if it will lose or gain steam as a result of the election defeat and if it will disassociate itself from the GOP.

The cult demands loyalty and purity and it is telling that Fox News is no longer considered loyal and pure enough to be serving as its mouthpiece, but getting pushed aside in favor of Newsmax and One America News Network. And, on these channels, there is increasing chatter about the desire to walk away from the GOP and create a populist ‘Patriot Party’ as a home for the purists in the MAGA movement.

That will not happen, unless Trump, after having relinquished the power of the White House, wants it to happen. It would be a remarkable turn of events. The ‘Never-Trumpers’ have, until now, struggled in vain to regain, if not control, some measure of influence within the GOP, but now they may be given their party back if, indeed, a mass exit of the MAGA cultists takes place. It would bring about the separation of the kernels from the chaff I wrote about in one of my previous columns https://castnetcorp.blogspot.com/ .

It would be ironic if democracy and effective federal governance would be restored by an act of separation or sedition by the MAGA cult that has fought toe and nail to keep control of the center of power in America. Creation of a populist third party would open the way to a political realignment that would place political power in Congress in the center, where moderate Democrats and Republicans can be expected to represent a workable majority.

This scenario, if it plays out as imagined, would offer the best, and maybe the only, chance for the Biden administration to begin to address the many challenges confronting a nation brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic crisis, and years of political stalemate. It would allow for the extreme elements on the right and the left to be put on the fringes and away from the center of power. This assumes, of course, that Republicans, voters and politicians alike, faced with a choice between the MAGA cult and true republicanism would, in majority, come back to the Grand Old Party. The creation of the ‘Patriot Party’ would force Republican members of Congress to decide to stay with the GOP, to switch allegiance to the new populist party, or to stay in Congress as Independent. It would finally bring clarity to the depth and scope of the MAGA cult and offer a prediction of its staying power. Would the movement go the way of the Know-Nothing Party, the Bull-Moose Party, or, more recently, Ross Perot’s Reform Party and fade away or establish itself for the foreseeable future as the dominant representation of the American right?

Without a split of the Republican Party, the prospects for an effective public governance under the Biden administration are bleak. Mitch McConnell was not successful in his effort and intent to keep the Obama administration to one term (even though he successfully blocked any significant legislative initiative after the 2010 midterm elections), but he is likely to redouble his effort with the Biden administration coming in. And, even in the unlikely event that the Senate will be evenly split at 50/50 for the next two years, the filibuster rule will give him enough legislative power to block any major Biden legislative initiative with respect to voting rights, taxation, immigration, or climate control. Biden would be forced to fall back to governing, as much as he can get away with, by executive order, which is the opposite of what he would want to do and counterproductive to any effort to restore democracy by restoring the proper balance between the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government. 

When I finished my book in 2014, the MAGA cult had yet to surface and, even without it, I felt like being in no-man’s land. The intervening six years have made it clear that America has a large minority of populist, anti-democratic, and semi-fascist fanatics. We can’t be quite sure how large a minority. Let’s pray that it is only a fraction of the 74 million votes received by its leader. They would do the nation a great, be it unintended, favor if they separated themselves by creating their own ‘Patriot Party’ so that we can see who is kernel and who is chaff.

If they don’t and, in the next few years, grow into an even more controlling force than they have been under the Trump regime, I will no longer find myself in no-man’s land. I will find that I have been dropped behind the lines into enemy territory. A place where I never intended or wanted to be.

WINNER TAKES ALL

 It is going to be a very different Thanksgiving in this pandemic year, in part because our government failed us at a time when we needed a strong unified federal response to the most serious attack to our safety and security since Pearl Harbor. A response that never came. Historically, shocks of this kind open the door to changes in the governance systems with an eye on better protecting us from the attacks on our way of life. This time may be no different. Particularly, since it coincides with an election result that puts a new chief executive in place.

This year’s election has spurred a new attention to the peculiarities of our election system, particularly the unique insertion, by our Constitution, of an Electoral College between the votes of the People and the selection of the country’s chief executive. With a race between a Republican (in name only) incumbent and a Democratic challenger, the media reminded us incessantly that the last two Republican Presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, were elected to the Presidency in spite of losing the popular vote to their contenders, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. (Before then, it had happened only 3 times in history). Could it happen again?  It did not, but that does not convincingly settle the argument in favor of staying with the system we have. At issue is the Electoral College, its existence and the way it is chosen.

Here is the rub.

Almost 6 million Californians voted for Trump (versus 11 million for Biden), but they did not get any of California’s 55 electoral delegates.

5.2 million Texans voted for Biden (versus 5.9 million for Trump), but they did not get any of Texas’ 38 electoral delegates.

Almost 3 million New Yorkers voted for Trump (versus 4 million for Biden), but they did not get any of New York’s 29 electoral delegates.

More than 1 million South Carolinians voted for Biden (versus 1.4 million for Trump), but they did not get any of South Carolina’s 9 electoral delegates.

The rub is not with the Electoral College, it is with the ‘Winner takes all’ rule applied to the nomination of Electors by 48 of our 50 States and by the District of Columbia. This rule, that is ordained by the State legislatures, awards all of the State’s electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in that State.

This situation is recognized as undesirable by many in the political arena from both sides of the aisle. It has led to a ‘National Popular Vote’ initiative that, since 2006, advocated for an interstate compact to change the ‘Winner takes all’ rule in all of the 50 States and in the District of Columbia. In fact, as a result of this initiative, a National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 15 States and the District of Columbia and passed at least one legislative chamber in 9 additional States.

Unfortunately, this bill is proposing to remove the rub the wrong way. The bill dictates that the participating States award all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of what the voters of their State decided. It replaces one undesirable system with another. If this interstate compact had been enacted in time for the 2020 election, it would have forced all States to award all of their electoral votes to Joe Biden. Not hard to imagine how that would have gone over in Alabama, the Dakotas, Idaho, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee!

The merit of an interstate compact as a means to change voting laws as proposed is that it keeps the Electoral College in place, avoiding the need for a Constitutional Amendment, which in the current political constellation would be impossible to achieve. The more reasonable and politically palatable compact would be for the States to agree to split their electoral votes in proportion to the votes received in each State by the top two candidates in the race for the Presidential election.

The ‘Winner takes all’ method of awarding electoral votes is not enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It is enacted by State law in all but two States (Maine and Nebraska, that each split their electoral votes by District). It can therefore be changed by a vote in each of the States’ legislatures. If a system of proportional awarding of electoral votes (‘proportional rule’) had been in place in time for the 2020 elections, Trump would have been awarded 19 electoral votes in California and 12 electoral votes in New York. And Biden would have collected 18 electoral votes in Texas and 4 in South Carolina. The ‘proportional rule’ applied to all 50 States and the District of Columbia would have awarded 281 electoral votes to Biden and 257 to Trump (a fair reflection of the national popular vote of 80 million to Biden and 74 million to Trump).

Another suggestion for improvement of the existing system for the Presidential election comes from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS). In a 2019 report from the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, it proposes to substantially enlarge the House of Representatives through federal legislation to make it (and the Electoral College) more representative of the nation’s population. The AAAS report points out that the framers of the Constitution set a constitutional cap of 30,000 constituents per representative. With population growth, the House grew from the original 65 to 435 members in 1929, when Congress capped its size. As the population has kept growing, the average member of the House now represents 750,000 constituents, 25 times the number set by the framers of the Constitution.

The AAAS report leaves the scale and implementation of the proposed expansion of the House to ‘vigorous discussion and debate’, but points out that the Capitol building could easily accommodate an additional 50 members. One can imagine a House of Representatives with 500 members. The addition of 65 members would make it possible to adjust the number of Representatives for each State to better reflect their population size. The 2020 Census could provide the data that would guide the distribution of the 65 additional seats over the individual States. Since each State has as many Electors as it has members of the U.S. Senate and House, addition of 65 members to the House would automatically increase the number of members of the Electoral College (from 538 to 603), which would increase the number of electoral votes needed to be elected President (from 270 to 302.)

These two steps to adjust the existing Presidential election system to the exigencies of contemporary demography and democracy (replacing the ‘Winner takes all rule’ and expansion of the House of Representatives), would go a long way to silencing or muting the voices clamoring for abolition of the Electoral College.  They would avoid the necessity of another Constitutional Amendment. They would respect the protection of the voice and vote of each State, large or small, in the election of the holder of the highest office in the land. They would diminish the risk of a large discrepancy between the outcome of the national popular vote and the electoral vote. They would stimulate voter participation by giving a Republican in a blue State and a Democrat in a red State a further, compelling, reason to go to the polls and vote. And they would provide incentive for Presidential candidates to campaign in every State of the Union and not forego States where the ‘Winner takes all’ rule takes them out of the race.

The pandemic, the change in occupancy of the White House, and the not before seen contentiousness of the election results, are all good reasons to pause and reflect on the rules and regulations in place in our election system. Do they enhance or hamper a functioning democracy?

It turns out, the ‘Winner takes all’ rule does not make the American voter a winner.

KERNELS AND CHAFF

November 15, 2020

The election that, by many, was termed the most consequential election of our lifetime, is now twelve days behind us and the dust is beginning to settle even as the outgoing president is kicking up a storm by refusing to accept defeat. It shows a mixed picture and it certainly did not comply with mainstream predictions and expectations. Case in point: the prediction that this would be a ‘coattail’ election in which whoever would win the White House would take control of both houses of Congress with him did not come true, on the contrary.

Joe Biden won, but by a much narrower margin of 306 versus 232 Electoral Votes than the polls had made us believe; he failed to take outright control of the Senate, and lost a significant number of seats in the House of Representatives. Note, that the Senate composition will not be decided until January 5 when the State of Georgia will hold a run-off election for 2 open seats and that the race for 13 seats in the House has yet to be decided. At the time of this writing, Republicans hold 50 seats in the Senate, versus 48 for the Democrats and 203 seats in the House, versus 219 for the Democrats.

Republicans picked up one governorship in the State of Montana and flipped control of the New Hampshire legislature by winning a majority in both the New Hampshire House and Senate. Trump won half of the 50 States of the Union, but he lost the popular vote by almost 4% (>5.5 million votes).

The only ‘blue wave’ in this election was the one caused by the order of ballot counting, with in person Election Day votes being counted first, before the mail-in votes were canvassed. Trump overwhelmingly won the Election Day vote, creating late on November 3 and early on November 4, the impression that he was heading for a clear and convincing win, but, as the vote counting progressed, he kept losing his advantage and ultimately lost the battle ground States of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and, surprisingly, also the States of Georgia and Arizona.

On the other hand, Trump won handily in key other States that had been considered to be ‘in play’: notably Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Ohio.

The bottom line is that Trump and Trumpism did not win the day, but did not get irrevocably repudiated either. In a basketball context a 78-73 score would signal a very close game. And the question is, what can the winning team, this time squeaking by, do to confidently look forward to the next contest?

The answer to that question is very much in the hands of the Republican Party. It has been taken over by Trump and his acolytes, but it has left a large number of traditional Republicans out in the cold. What are they to do in the run up to the next national elections in 2022 and 2024? Will they step in line and close ranks with the Trumpists to maintain party unity? Will they find temporary refuge, at least until the storm passes by, at the Democratic Party, if not as active members then as sympathetic outsiders? Or will they accept the GOP as a cause lost to Trump and seek to establish a new, republican party that can fundamentally change the American political landscape by giving the voters a choice for a centrist alternative for the existing two parties?

Somebody, the Democrats or these Centrists, will have to test the cohesiveness of the Trump voting block in the coming 4 years. Trump has already hinted at his intent to run again in 2024 and it is hard to see how the GOP can deny him the nomination now that he has shown to have the support of 73 million Americans. It is easy to see a repeat of the 2020 primaries in which no serious GOP contender chose to run against him.

It raises the question who will be able to peel the onion and what will it take to pry constituencies away from the defeated 45^th President? In order to break the impasse, someone will have to separate the kernels from the chaff from amongst the Trump supporters. Let Trump have the bigots, the white supremacists, the xenophobes, the fascists, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Boogaloos, but find out what drove all others to vote for him and what it will take to bring them back into the fold of traditional American democracy.

Anecdotally, we know of some of the reasons why people voted for Trump even though they would take exception to being part of the cult that has formed around the style and personality of the 45^th President:

·       Fear of the extreme left tendencies in the platform of the Democratic Party.

·       Rejection of the violence and looting that has accompanied widespread street protests against police brutality.

·       Disdain shown by the ‘establishment’ for the needs and opinions of the less educated.

·       Disregard shown by the ‘establishment’ for the negative effects of globalization on the lower income classes.

·       Desire to shake up the system that has sharply increased inequality in all aspects of life and failed to deliver on the wishes and expectations of the ‘common man’.

Who is going to compete with Trump in addressing these serious and legitimate gripes many Americans, call them the ‘righteous disgruntled’, have with the current political constellation?

In that contest, the Democrats will have to overcome three handicaps. First, unless they miraculously win the 2 open Senate seats in Georgia, they will be paralyzed in Congress to advance any major legislation. Second, because of the lack of legislative progress, they will be hard pressed to keep the support of a majority of Independents and the traditional Republicans. The Democrats can, ironically, be happy to have Trump as the opponent, because any other populist (without the personal flaws and age of Trump) would be much better positioned to capture these constituencies and address the grievances of the ‘righteous disgruntled’. Third, they will have to neutralize the extreme left wing of their party that has scared away all but the most ideologically driven voters.

The traditional Republicans have even larger handicaps to overcome. Since they have virtually no chance recapturing control of the GOP anytime soon, they would have to create a viable third party in the very short time available until the 2022 elections. And build a party on a platform that can attract the ‘righteous disgruntled’, plus a majority of the Independents and some centrist Democrats. As of the time of this writing, we detect no action in this direction. A centrist third party could be the catalyst needed to finally break through the gridlock that has dominated American politics now for decades. The election result of 2020 can be interpreted as showing a reluctance by the voters to give either the Trump GOP or the Democrats full control of the DC machinery. A constellation with a centrist party flanked by a populist, rightwing, GOP and a leftwing Democratic Party would provide the American voters with a much clearer choice, but history has proven to be very averse to backing away from the two-party system.

A reshuffling of constituencies between the parties, like we have seen in the South where, in the second half of the 20^th century, the Republicans have supplanted the Democrats, is much more likely. Unless a centrist third party gets created and takes a hold, the GOP will more and more become the party of the reactionary nationalists, the under-educated, and the rural population, with the Democratic Party capturing the urban and suburban elite and the progressive intellectuals.

Either way, the opposing powers in Washington are now confronted with the choice to allow Trump to consolidate his support with the righteous disgruntled or to pry these voters away from him by addressing their grievances by their actions and promises. Will the Democrats accept that challenge or will it be up to a yet to establish opposition party? And, whoever picks up the flag, can they pull it off?   If neither party can separate the kernels from the chaff, they will implicitly cede the high ground to the Trump GOP.