EVERYTHING IS WORKING (IM)PERFECTLY

Why is the US so politically dysfunctional, and what can be done to fix it?  Only half facetiously, I recommend, "If you love your country, move to a state or into a Congressional district controlled by the opposite party.  Make America purple again!"

What's wrong?  Let’s start with the Senate.   

• The Constitution provides that each state shall elect two Senators to Congress, regardless of that state’s population. 
• This provision is inherently biased in favor of states with small populations; it codifies non-proportional representation.
• In the past three Senate elections, Democrats garnered more votes nation-wide than Republicans, but they failed to control the majority of Senate seats nonetheless. 
• Solution:  amend the Constitution to provide for proportional representation in the Senate. 
• Chance of success:  zero.  Amendment of the Constitution requires approval by 3/4 of all state legislatures.  The majority of state legislatures are currently controlled by the Republican Party; most of those states are rural with low populations.  These states will want to keep their outsized clout.

 The House of Representatives.

• The Constitution provides that each state shall elect a number of Representatives proportional to its population, which number is equal to the number of Congressional districts in that state. 
• The Constitution leaves the configuration of Congressional districts up to the state legislature of that state and its governor. 
• Enter gerrymandering:  "cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce its voting power in other districts). 
• The Supreme Court recently upheld this practice of gerrymandering on the basis of states' rights. 
• In the past four House elections, Democrats garnered more votes nation-wide than Republicans, but until 2018, they failed to control the majority of House seats in those elections nonetheless. 
• Solution:  either pass legislation at the state level outlawing gerrymandering to ensure proportional representation, or get out the vote. 
• Chance of legislative success:  extremely low.  Those states that have heavily gerrymandered their Congressional districts have no incentive to lose federal legislative influence or reduce their Electoral College votes.
• Chance of electoral success:  it worked in 2018, but vote suppression and manipulation is rampant.  With Trump's acquittal of attempted election interference in the impeachment trial, I would expect vote interference to escalate. 

Added sidebar and dangerous quirk to Senate and House elections. 

•  Enter the Primary Threat:  If you’re running for Congress in a state with a clear majority of voters from one party in your state or in your Congressional district, and if you’re a member of that party, you are almost guaranteed to be elected, unless you are "primaried” by your own party.  In other words, if you win the primary, you win the election. 
• The Primary Threat should answer the questions, “But how can these Congressmen and Senators continue to back Trump?  How can they vote against witnesses in the impeachment trial or vote to acquit?” 
• Solution:  everyone votes his or her conscience. 
• Chance of success:  snowball in Hell.  The name of the political game is to keep your ass in the chair at all costs.  It is not to do what’s best for your state or district, much less your country.  Witness the "primarily" predictable vote on witnesses and removal in the impeachment trial.

The Supreme Court. 

• The Constitution does not limit the number of justices who may serve on the Supreme Court.  It simply says:  The President shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint… Judges of the Supreme Court.
• Federal law established the number of justices at nine in 1869.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court by executive order, but this was ruled unconstitutional by the Court.
• Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, and George H.W. Bush each appointed a justice to the Court whose voting record can be considered liberal. 
• Since then, presidents have appointed justices who matched their party affiliation.
• Today, all of the conservative justices sitting on the Court were appointed by Republican presidents, and all of the liberal justices were appointed by Democratic presidents.
• These partisan appointments enhance the public’s perception that the Court is political, which undermines its legitimacy as an independent, final adjudicative body. 
• Solution:  elect a president who will restore balance on the court, or legislate term limits or an increase in the number of justices on the Court. 
• Chances of legislative success:  dim.  Legislative change requires agreement between Congress and the Presidency; otherwise Congress must overcome a veto, which requires 2/3 majorities in each house.  A bar that high would require significant universal bipartisanship, as it would grant presidents of each party additional appointments. 

The Electoral College. 

• The Constitution provides for the President to be elected by the Electoral College.
• The members of the Electoral College are equal to the number of Senators and Representatives from all states, currently 538. 
• The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico get no vote.
• Every state gets a minimum number of three Electoral College votes (two for its Senators and 1 for its Congressperson), regardless of how small its population is relative to a more populous state that also gets three votes. 
• Because the electoral system counts states and districts rather than people, and because of people's geographical self-sorting (see below), the GOP’s rural, small state coalition has a geographic advantage.  
• Currently, a member of the Electoral College is not bound to vote for the candidate who received the most popular votes in his/her state, which allows for a further distortion of the popular vote.   
• In six of the last seven presidential elections, the Republican Party lost the popular vote but won the presidency.
• Solution:  amend the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College. 
• Chance of success:  zero.  See above.
  

Dark Money in Politics.

•  Super PACs  can give unlimited amounts of money to federal election campaigns and need not reveal their donors. 
• Regular PACs can do the same and hide donor identity by bundling.
• The Supreme Court has upheld the Citizens United decision which blessed the Super PAC scheme above. 
• Solution:  amend the Federal Election Campaign Finance Act to limit the amount of all federal campaign contributions and require release of donor identities.  
  
• Chance of success:  probably zero.  Bipartisan federal campaign finance reform has failed before, because both parties benefit from the status quo.  Lotsa money sloshing around enhances the chances of keeping Senate and Congressional asses in their chairs.  That's the most important, if not the only important, goal.

 Voter Suppression, Looking at Race as One Example.

• The 15^th Amendment to the Constitution provides that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." 
• Reconstruction and Jim Crow did their best to subvert the Amendment. 
• In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Right Act which requires states with a history of voter suppression to obtain federal preclearance of any law regulating federal elections.  
• In 2013, the Roberts Court invalidated the provision of the VRA which established the formula for determining which states required federal supervision, pretty much gutting the VRA. 
• Minority voters tend to vote Democratic. 
• A December 2019 Gallup poll found that 28% of American voters vote Democratic; 28% vote Republican; and 41% vote Independent.  (That adds up to only 97%, so third parties make up the difference.)  But when voters were asked if they “lean” toward one party or the other, the percentages changed in Republicans’ favor.  43% vote or lean Democratic; 45% vote or lean Republican; and only 9% of Independents expressed no preference.  Clearly, to win elections, each party must get out the vote, which is where voter suppression comes in so handy. 
• Solution:   get out the vote!  Elect a president who will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who support the 15th Amendment and restoration of the VRA.
• Chances of success:  don’t hold your breath; Chief Justice Roberts is not a fan of the VRA.  Read this from Slate.

Ominous Portents.

•  By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in the 15 largest states and 50 percent will live in the eight largest states.  That means by 2040, 70 percent of America will be represented by 30 senators, while the other 30 percent will be represented by 70 senators.
• Democrats and Republicans have sorted themselves demographically.  The Democratic Party has become more ethnically and racially diverse, urban, young, and embracing of all religions or none.  The Republican Party has become predominantly white, rural, older, and Christian.
• Democrats and Republicans have also sorted themselves ideologically.  According to an Op Ed in last Sunday’s New York Times at Times Klein, “Three-quarters of Republicans identify as conservative, while only half of Democrats call themselves liberals—and for Democrats, that’s a historically high level."
• The geographic and age sorting aren’t helping Democrats.  See the map above which shows county by county losses (in red) or gains (in blue) in population.  As of 2018, 5.5m adolescents (between ages 10 and 19) lived in rural communities; 10.9m lived in urban centers; and 19.6m lived in metro areas outside principal cities.  Young urban voters tend to vote Democratic.  This population trend will further concentrate Democratic votes where they are not needed. 
• Polarization is increasing.  According to a review of the newly published book, Why We’re Polarized, at Book Review, “In the 1970s, voters tended to split tickets between, say, congressional and presidential races; in that decade the correlation of the two votes was 0.54%.  In the 1980s it rose to 0.65.  Now it is 0.97!  Just as stunning, another researcher, …, found that today’s self-proclaimed independents ‘vote more predictably for one party over another than yesteryear’s partisans.’” You can read the first chapter of the book here:  Excerpt.
•  It’s pretty clear that federal elections are now decided by the 9% of Independents who do not lean toward one party over the other.  That’s where the real fight is and that’s where it gets real dirty.

Ironically and tragically, everything is working exactly as the Framers designed, but not at all as they intended.  Their constitutional framework of three co-equal branches is working so imperfectly that it no longer (certainly not at the moment) functions.  What the co-equal system requires is this:  big tent, diverse political parties; an absence of extreme partisanship; comity among the branches and within the polity; politicians who put country before personal gain; restraint; and adherence to constitutional norms.  That’s out the window today.  

And make no mistake.  This breakdown of the US political system will have economic consequences.  I close by quoting at length from an opinion piece in the Washington Post at Pearlstein OpEd:

But Americans should understand that there will be a significant, long-term economic cost to our polarized politics and dysfunctional government, which has now reached the point of near-total breakdown of comity and cooperation between the parties, between the houses of Congress and among the various branches of government.

In the modern era, there are few if any examples of a country with a healthy, thriving economy and a broken political system. What distinguishes a successful economy from a failing one — what distinguishes Denmark from Italy and South Korea from North — is not how much capital it has or technology it produces but the quality of its institutions — the laws, rules, norms and policies that create the framework in which any economy operates. And there should be no doubt that as a result of broken politics, the quality of the United States’ institutions is already on the decline.

We can see such deterioration in our inability to adapt to changing conditions — the rise of China as an economic superpower, the influx of economic and political refugees, and the threat from global warming. People will inevitably disagree about how to deal with these serious economic challenges, but a country with a working political system would rather, after a modest debate, embrace the obvious compromises, building on what works and fixing what doesn’t.

In the United States, by contrast, our approach has been to deny the problem, demonize those with whom we disagree and ostracize anyone who dares to compromise. As a result, we now have millions of blue-collar workers who are idle or underemployed, millions of unskilled immigrants who are here illegally, and too few of the skilled immigrants we need. Our physical environment, meanwhile, is subject to an unending series of devastating floods, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather events. The cost, in terms of lost output and economic damage, runs to tens of billions of dollars every year.

 

To put some icing on that cake, according to Transparency International, since 2017, the year Trump took office, the US has slipped five points on the Corruption Perceptions Index, falling from 17th out of 180 countries to 23rd out of 180.  Per Wiki:    

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index published annually by Transparency International since 1995 which ranks countries "by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." The CPI generally defines corruption as "the misuse of public power for private benefit.”

Sound familiar?  Here’s the link to the rankings of the 180 countries covered:  C P Index

P.S.  There are human consequences of the breakdown of the US political system as well.  The US has the highest suicide rate in the developed world.  The map above shows the rates, county by county, in red as of September, 2019.  Rural states are among the hardest hit.  Compare this map with the Electoral College map above.  There is a significant overlap.

Keep it real!

Marilyn