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!
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