By constitutional design, only a third of the Senate is up for reelection at any given time. This is supposed to stiffen the body’s ability to rebuff populist passions that will inevitably arise from time to time and manifest in foolish and panicked legislation in the House of Representatives whose whole body is accountable to the voters every two years.
For the same reason, senators were not supposed to be elected directly by the people, but the corruption that seemed to attend every vacancy in the Senate caused progressives to push for reform. In 1913, the 17th Amendment was ratified. It was an advance in accountability but a blow to the Senate’s independence. After all, we already had one representative body, and its design was calibrated to reflect the actual distribution of population in the country. The Senate’s two-seats-per-state rule isn’t representative at all, so it’s hard to discern its purpose if all it does is act as a second directly elected legislature.
The Senate’s filibuster rule has served as one meaningful distinction with the House. By requiring unanimous consent to do anything, and a supermajority (once 67 votes, now 60 votes) to overcome a lack of unanimous consent, the rule gave power to the minority party and assured that some compromise was necessary. This has served our nation as a kind of ballast that lengthens the wavelength of our political oscillation in power. It has made sudden change difficult, with a trade off of unique reliability and stability. We could spend a lot of time considering the tradeoffs involved. Injustices tend to persist for longer periods here than in parliamentary systems, but, once attained, rights tend to persist, and the world uses our currency and follows our leadership for reasons that go beyond raw economic and military power.
This has been our system, and it has always been a thumb in the eye of any conceit that we’re a true direct and representative democracy. We’ve lived with, enjoyed and suffered from its flaws and virtues, but it has now fully broken.
Already weakened, the filibuster will most likely soon suffer another blow as it is taken away from the Democrats in order fill a stolen seat on the Supreme Court. It may persist a while longer for legislation (as opposed to nominations) but the principle that undergirds the filibuster will be eviscerated. If the Senate Democrats obstruct President Trump’s legislative agenda, the filibuster will go the way of the Whigs.
It’s not unprecedented, but it’s a good example of the unrepresentative nature of the Senate that the members who voted against the nomination of Betsy DeVos (all the Democrats and two Republicans) represent 36 million more people than the members who voted to confirm her. In this respect, the new Secretary of Education is much like the new president, who attained his position despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes.
Or consider the following statistics. In 2012, the popular vote for the House of Representatives favored the Democrats 59,645,531 to 58,228,253, yet the Republicans won 234 seats and the Democrats only won 201 of them.
When it comes to the Senate, the GOP currently has a slim 52-48 advantage over the Democrats but the Democrats have almost no hope of taking over the chamber in the near future. To demonstrate my point, the Class of 2019 which is up for reelection in November 2018, only includes the following Republicans:
1. John Barrasso of Wyoming
2. Bob Corker of Tennessee
3. Ted Cruz of Texas
4. Deb Fischer of Nebraska
5. Jeff Flake of Arizona
6. Orrin Hatch of Utah
7. Dean Heller of Nevada
8. Roger Wicker of Mississippi
There will also be a special election to fill out Jeff Sessions of Alabama’s full term.
I suppose anything can happen, but the Democrats aren’t currently favored to win any of those seats and only one of them (Nevada) is from a state that Clinton or Obama ever won. The chances of the Democrats holding all of their seats in 2018 and winning at least three of the seats listed above are vanishingly small, and the Class of 2021 hardly looks more promising.
It’s inescapable at this point that the demographics and politics of our country have evolved in a way that the Democrats cannot rely on getting more votes or having more popular support to translate into having more power. And that’s before we even begin discussing things like the power of Fox News, talk radio, fake news, and Vladimir Putin. It’s before we talk about the effectiveness of Republican efforts to suppress our vote.
So, when Brian Beutler writes about the Republicans’ apparent lack of concern that they’ll be held accountable, let’s keep all of this in mind.
Just as now, the [new administration’s] idea in 2001 and 2009 was to get as much done as possible, as quickly as possible—to consciously take on water and then bail out as much as possible later on, ahead of the next election. The difference is that Republicans today are accepting all the risks their predecessors did, but with few guaranteed returns to show for it.
Beutler is talking about something a little different than what I’m focused on, but it shouldn’t surprise people anymore that the Republicans are less risk-averse than the Democrats. Their built-in advantages have been so strong that they haven’t had to worry too much about getting held accountable for their actions. When you consider that their anti-government message actually is bolstered when the government doesn’t function well, the accountability differential grows even larger.
And now we have Jeff Sessions running the Department of Justice. Jeff Sessions is every nail in the coffin of the left’s aspirations to fight on an even playing field.
At this point, our whole political system lacks credibility, and it’s a fools errand to go to progressives and argue that we can win just by doing a better job organizing or just by winning more votes.
It’s already obvious that there will be a backlash against Donald Trump, and even the prospect of what the congressional Republicans intend to do is activating a dormant army of newly concerned citizens. But whatever accountability comes, it’s going to be badly muted in its actual effectiveness. We’ve been neutered.
Insofar as this is partly attributable to the Democratic Party’s demographic problem, the party could self-consciously work to extend the breadth and geographic scope of their support. And that is something I highly recommend they do. Because of a collapse of rural and exurban support, the Democrats have been wiped out in state legislatures and have almost no prospect of making a comeback by relying solely on growing strength in the suburbs. For the same reason, (assisted, but not caused, by gerrymandering) the Democrats will have tremendous difficulty winning back control of the House. Their hopes of winning control of the Senate in either of the next two elections are close to nil no matter how many more million votes they get.
There’s no choice but for the party to change, and not in ways that it wants to change. I don’t want some of the changes that need to be made. But the Republicans’ advantages are currently so great that we cannot get any accountability. And, soon, there’s a real risk of a breakdown in public order when people finally realize that our country is no longer even passingly representative.
>>There’s no choice but for the party to change, and not in ways that it wants to change.
good analysis Booman. gloomy but accurate IMO.
what chance do you see that the DC Democratic party will agree? I have a hard time seeing the necessary changes from the current “leadership” and would assert that the Democratic party (as embodied by its elected officials) is in no way capable of that change or interested in making it.
I don’t want some of the changes that need to be made.
What changes are those? Do you mean the filibuster? Other changes?
I think this is far too pessimistic, on several accounts.
The big question is whether Trump has caused some enduring reaignment of American politics, or whether he got lucky and caught lightning (along with Comey and Putin) in a bottle. If it’s the former, then yes, the outlook is grim. If it’s the latter, then we may be able to bounce back from this far more quickly thatn you imagine. In fact, the backlash could actually accelerate progressive change in the intermediate-to-long term. (Not that I want it this way, because we have to survive the next 4 years first. But still.)
Speaking specifically, when a backlash comes, it causes things that you wouldn’t necessarily anticipate (just as Trump’s rise, itself a backlash, caused things we couldn’t anticipate). So if he screws up badly enough, and we don’t have a major terrorist attack to unify things, I would not exclude the possibility of retaking the House in 2018 (less likely) or 2020 (more likely). This is especially true if the gerrymandering cases which will be hitting the Supreme Court soon get decided in our favor (which is a distinct possibility, even with Gorsuch on the Court).
As for the Senate, I don’t know why you are so pessimistic about 2020. I see at least 3 legitimate targets for Democrats (Collins, who may well be governor by then and have been replaced by someone less potent, Gardner in CO, and Tillis in NC). That’s without any unforeseen strength of the kind that nearly took out Roy Blount in November.
Ben Shapiro, formerly of Breitbart, HATES Trump and Bannon.
Why do I mention this? Because it illustrates a problem with what you are saying here. Shapiro hates Trump and Bannon because, in his view, they have totally destroyed Breitbart News.
Bannon is out to DESTROY Paul Ryan. So Paul Ryan supporters are not likely to be keen on Trump either. But such people will never vote for a Democrat, they’ll vote for Ryan or somebody like him.
All kinds of people hate Trump, but that does not necessarily mean they are eager to vote for Democrats.
Even the Trump voters who used to vote for Bill Clinton and Obama will not come back to the Democrats if it remains the party of Hillary.
So Booman’s right, the party’s got to change, and that change has to be a move to the left.
And even then, reinforcements will come mainly from FORMER Democratic voters, and young people of the kind that are attracted to Bernie Sanders. IF the party gets on the Sanders/Warren road, that is.
This is Josh Marshall’s take TPM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/remember-your-history
We are hearing again now that the repeated protests and aggressive questioning at Republican townhalls is Democrats taking a page from the Tea Party playbook of 2009 and 2010. People have short memories. The real reference is to 2005 when Democrats turned out at Republican townhalls to protest President Bush’s plan to partially phaseout Social Security. Those protests (or in many cases simply turnout) helped kill the plan by scaring off congressional Republicans. They also presaged the Democratic blowout in the 2006 midterms. It was 2005 that Tea Partiers (and the GOP pressure groups organizing them) explicitly referenced in 2009.
It is indeed difficult to know what the Dems can do. The principal problem seems to be that their strategists (if they even have them) seem not to recognize just how bad things have gotten. They have never thought to assail the permanent Repub House as illegitimate, nor have they begun a perpetual campaign of trying to taint Repubs as vote suppressors and haters of majority rule.
Now the problem very likely is that the white electorate, after decades of happy shit-eating, has been lobotomized and turned thoroughly incompetent. They cannot now be “brought around” by facts Their voting behavior is now (very largely) tribal and based on their white and/or Christian identity—as much as they scorn supposed “identity voting!” by (other) racial and ethnic groups! As always, It’s OK If You Are White.
So Dems can’t sit still as you sensibly counsel, but they obviously have no plan, as Happy Warrior Schumer blithers and blathers about “bipartisanship” with Trumpists, even as the federal courts rebuff the Great White Leader’s white nationalist progrom. So we have no national leader worth shit, add that to the mountain of problems.
With a senate Dem bloodbath looming in 2018, McConnell can just wait and he will have an excellent chance of the 60 votes needed to vote cloture down the throats of the rump Dem party without killing the filibuster. Yes, things can get worse! The House is likely gone for as long as one wishes to project, and the idea that a Repub controlled Supreme Court is going to up-end the precise rigged game that the 5 phony justices themselves created to aid Repub candidates is comic.
Sometimes one has to fight simply to fight. There is no plausible Dem strategy and no existing national leader arising to carry it out should it be envisioned. It is doubtful that there could be any type of agreement on exactly what sort of positions a “New Bluedog” Dem should have even to run in these now 85% white tribalist districts. But that seems a very high priority to attempt right now.
The odds of some level of civil war developing are increasing year by year, as the 18th century constitution (RIP) has finally failed, largely because the “conservative” movement wanted it to fail. But in order to create an authoritarian corpocratic tyranny you have to break a few eggs….
so you’re taking the side that white voters are all racists, Dems shouldn’t even try to reach any of them, and that economic issues don’t matter. Isn’t that the viewpoint that got us here?
That’s quite a stilted reading of that post.
The Dem party has never taken any of those positions vis-a-vis white voters, and just ran a national campaign that certainly tried to address economic issues. Trump ran an explicitly white nationalist (MAGA!) campaign, with intense grievance-airing over the loss of manufacturing jobs, something that had been occurring for on the order of 20 years, but which only now got white working class attention?
Trump won (sort of), and I suppose we can agree that HRC “ignored” the aggrieved rural/exurban white vote (she didn’t visit the towns anyway), but the Dem platform certainly wasn’t more hostile to them than the Repub platform. Despite the more economically lib’rul platform, 2016 showed (once again) that the Dem party has been destroyed as force to be reckoned with in monolithic white America. Are these voters really so ill-informed that they continue to think “conservative” economics is the answer? If not, what’s motivating their thinking/voting?
Commenters have thrown out two possible motivating factors: white nationalism and/or job losses/community decline. We’ll never figure out the “split” between them as motivators in these new 85% Repub districts, IMO. I was trying to say that coming up with a platform for Dems to run candidates in these new monolithic districts is the highest strategic priority. But what in hell are the “positions” to be?
Honestly not sure how much value positions actually have. Unless something is happening that directly impacts people, its mostly emotional and group signifiers.
http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/
“Are these voters really so ill-informed that they continue to think “conservative” economics is the answer? If not, what’s motivating their thinking/voting?”
As a very longtime Dem white man, who is now very strongly supporting Trump and non-racist Americans, my motivation is entirely opposition to the intense racism and sexism of today’s Democratic party. For me it’s a matter of survival, motivated more and more by fear of the thugs in the Dems, who are now openly attacking of engaging in violence towards white men. It’s also a question of being a real American, since that means standing up for civil rights and fighting racism and sexism, even if it’s now coming from black people and women. There’s really no difference. It’s mostly a question of being educated and informed and grown-up. If you are, then you support the Repubs. If you aren’t, then you support the Dems. Perhaps that’s a bit oversimplified, but not very much.
Poe’s law?
If we grant that the party needs to make changes, the question becomes: “What changes?”
People are going to argue the Dems have moved too far to the economic left.
People are going to argue that they’re too beholden to Wall Street.
People are going to argue that they need to abandon their commitments to the civil rights of racial minorities, or religious minorities, or LGBT rights, or reproductive rights.
Basically people are going to ride their particular policy hobby horse. There’s no consensus in the party as a polity or as an organization on any of this. Traditionally conservative Democrats ran in conservative districts and liberal Democrats ran in liberal districts, but the polarization of the electorate and nationalization of elections, where congressional and even statewide and local offices closely track presidential approval, has made this strategy at least somewhat ineffective.
So again, what actual changes do you propose?
The polarization of the electorate is based on a political model that conservatives introduced to the GOP in 1964 with Ronald Reagan’s nomination speech and Barry Goldwater’s run for President. It took life as Democrats lost younger voters because of the Vietnam War and led to the close Nixon victory over Hubert Humphrey. That political model says that like the British parties, US political parties must be ideological. It also says that the conservative Republicans are fighting the socialism of the FDR Democrats, which at that time got branded (thanks to Walter Lippman’s writing during the New Deal) as “liberal”. The liberal ideology vs. conservative ideology only became entrenched with the Nixon Presidency.
The first change I propose is to come up with a new model of the political cleavage between Democrats and Republicans. Actually, given the death of the donkey as effective branding, Democrats might not be able to move that far out of their current perceptual trap.
So what is that model of cleavage. Occupy Wall Street suggested it was a conflict between to 1% who make the rules and boss the organizations and the 99% who have to live by the rules and put up with the boss. That is a structural, not an ideological definition. Justice is structural as well, regardless of ideology. The little guy gets a fair shake or he/she doesn’t, regardless of what they believe about politics. Both conservatives and liberals can be screwed by the same government policies. That’s the first thing to change.
The second is the role of government and law in addressing issues of freedom, justice, and equity. Lawyers love definite laws; they can be wheedled into special privileges for paying clients and then destroyed because they have been corrupted. A lot of the justice-oriented, environmental, and gender-related legislation has created lucrative playing fields for the hired wheedlers. Some “progressive”, for lack of a better term, legal beagles in jurisprudence theory need to look at a more effective (and less lucrative for counsel) way of legislation in these critical areas.
The third is a re-examination of the role and privileges of corporations vis-a-vis private individuals. Corporations essentially have no accountability under the current loose Delaware-style laws. This can only be done if the grassroots understands how corporate law is affecting their lives more than government regulations are. Just look at the fine print in every invoice you currently receive. There are huge issues here that have been bought off in the gelding of Dodd-Frank by Dodd and Frank.
The fourth is the geographical focus of the party structure. At the moment, it is a top-down party essentially owned by the elected officials who cement their power by independently raising their own campaign finances plus a little extra for the party structure. To have a grassroots driven party, one has to invert that financing mechanism so that the grassroots aggregates small donations and sets the direction of policy, recruits and vets candidates, and ensures turnout without the expense of mass for-profit media. As long as the state and national party institutions are dead weight that gets its cut first, grassroots donations will be wasted on DC-centered consultants and media firms acting as a marketing operation for a consumer product instead of a political party.
Fifth, the framing of the commitments need to change. The commitment is to equal justice under the law. Period. For civil liberties and civil rights, that means recognizing that there are classes historically defined and currently treated as second class citizens and liberties that are increasingly at the convenience of a government acting under emergency powers. And that “reproductive rights” are really a combination of a right to privacy and a right of ownership of one’s own body. These are not policy hobby horses unless politics has become completely unserious about people and their standing.
Traditionally, conservative Democrats were all Democrats. And then FDR had to deal with a Great Depression. And the social democratic and socialist policies that he put forward were designated as “liberal” to avoid the propaganda that conflated them with Stalinist totalitarianism. And who came up with that propaganda? The same big business marketers who drive current GOP propaganda. And what were conservative Democrats about? Small farmers, lots of them, cheap transportation, good roads, public education, Jim Crow laws, urban machines of ethnic voters, and religious conservatism. And lots of patronage greasing the grassroots.
Sixth, stop nationalizing elections. Fight back at GOP efforts to nationalize elections. Nationalizing the 2002 election with the marketing of the Iraq war was how the GOP used 9/11 to seize power, even sliming Max Cleland.
Seventh, work on simplification and de-professionalizing the skills needed to understand government and the laws. If by 2020, the opposition to Trump does not have a total and comprehensive list of the laws and regulations that must be simplified in order to weed out the loopholes and to make it easier to enforce fairly and understand. Complexity works to the advantage of those with the resources to exploit it to gain more control of resources.
Eighth, commit to winding down all wars, rolling back the size of the military, reforming the legal basis of the intelligence services so that there is accountability and public knowledge of what has been done. Make secrecy contingent and reviewable by the other branches of government. Reverse the Orwellian state.
In short, start moving the government in the direction of those wonderful civics courses that legislators are so fond of mandating that all school students go through. A number of generations of people are cynical now because those expectations, no matter how practical, were betrayed by engrained corruption and the legacy of plantation slavery and genocidal expansion.
Some good comments here pushing back a little on the doom of the post. But there’s some additional considerations. Politics, like Nature, abhors a vacuum. The bald fact of the matter is that American political views whether social, cultural or economic embrace a very wide spectrum from lefty progressive to arch reactionary. The GOP, as presently constituted at every level of government (except possibly the municipal level) is extremely narrow and far right reactionary. This means that, at the national level, well over half of the population does not have a Representative or Senator that reflects anything like their values. Or put another way, Republican congress critters largely do not reflect the actual views of any but a tiny fraction of their electorate. They instead have been exploiting a small number of grievance issues that they then largely ignore during actual governance. This means there is now an enormous latent, unmet demand for problem solving in at least a centrist-Liberal fashion if not progressive fashion that could leverage a lot of red state votes never mind purple ones. But the Democrats have to go out and use that frustration to actively get those votes.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but I do see a threshold problem highlighted by Richard Florida yesterday (http://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/02/the-still-conservative-states-of-america/515592/?utm_source=
nl__link3_020917).
“Conservatism is most pronounced in America’s least well-off, least educated, most economically hard-hit states. In many ways, it is the ideology of the economically left behind.”
There is no plan, ideology, approach, etc. that will lead to these voters voting for the Democrats unless the Democrats are the party that helps these individuals economically catch up. I don’t think it exists or it would have been implemented by now.
An there is no way for Democrats to help unless they gain power of the state legislatures and governors offices in these states.
And it is in the interests of big corporations to ensure that that situation does not change. (At least until the corporations lose all of their market demand in the US.)
Not only are the pickings on the Republican side slim, Democrats will be obsessed with defense. Just look at the vulnerable seats (D < 5 * , R => 0 * * ).
Dianne Feinstein – CA
Chris Murphy – CT
Tom Carper – DE
Bill Nelson – FL * *
Mazie Hirono – HI
Joe Donnelly – IN * *
Angus King – ME (caucuse with Democrats)
Ben Cardin – MD
Elizabeth Warren – MA
Debbie Stabenow – MI *
Amy Klobuchar – MN *
Claire McCaskill – MO * *
Jon Tester – MT * *
Bob Menendez – NJ
Martin Heinrich – NM*
Kirsten Gillibrand – NY
Heidi Heitkamp – ND * *
Sherrod Brown – OH * *
Bob Casey – PA*
Sheldon Whitehouse – RI
Bernie Sanders – VT
Tim Kaine – VA *
Maria Cantwell – WA *
Joe Manchin – WV * *
If Republicans run the table on this bunch through hook or crook they pick up 13 and retain their 7. Result would be 65 R – 35 D. But where will further gerrymandering move supposedly safe seats?
This was an existential year for both parties. The Democratic Party must die and be reborn as an opposition party with a clear economic and foreign policy position instead of being a funding machine with elected officials and voters an inconvenience to the paid strategists and media consultants.
The kicker is that Democrats must have power in order to gain credibility on their direction on economic issues. Me-too economics has sapped their credibility. There has been yammering from progressives about this for a quarter century, but somehow the Democratic establishment never thought they would be around for the meltdown. And the amount of corruption and cynicism from office-holders has been visible and contemptuous of voters. That marginally suppresses the vote on its own and makes the gerrymanders much more difficult to overcome.
And then there’s that white reactionary victim consciousness that cannot possibly understand that their white betters are the ones who have stolen their cheese. But scapegoating is much easier when all your near networks are doing it and it becomes your daily environment.
(Eff the automatic translation of asterisks.)
The party in power loses seats in Congress in every mid-term with only very few exceptions (1998 and 2002).
Trump has 42% approval. Should it drop to 35% or so, we will win 3 seats and lose none.
Repeal Obamacare without a replacement or an inferior replacement might do it. Passing tax reform with cuts to Medicare will do the same.
no matter what numbers you’ve found, i don’t think anyone writing from here in California would consider DiFi vulnerable.
Miss interpretation. All seats up were listed. * means Dems had a sub 5% advantage, ** means parity or greater GOP advantage.
by whose count is any CA statewide election less than a 5% dem advantage?
DiFi isn’t a starred (*) race above. The starred races are the D < 5%.
finally i get the idea…
Certainly there’s nothing wrong with laying out the state of play. 2018 was always going to be an advantageous year for the Rs just based on the seats that were contending. But that being said, you’re presenting a worst case scenario where the R-D plus and minus doesn’t change or improves for the Republicans. That seems extremely unlikely. Not impossible, but it would be historically rare, especially with a guy who steps on his own dick as often as Trump, and a congress seemingly dead-set on enacting widely unpopular legislation.
The way midterms work, especially with an unpopular and incompetent President like Trump, the * seats aren’t much at risk. That still leaves 7, and I agree losses are likely even with a substantial swing in our direction, but catastrophe is pretty unlikely.
The thing about this political climate is that national popularity or unpopularity means little. For the Senate, the popularity or unpopularity of Trump within that state is what counts.
Thinking that a catastrophe is unlikely is what set up the failures in Congressional elections of the past four cycles. But I would also work to be able to extend the map and put pressure on the GOP incumbents.
The difficulty is fighting incumbents with deep pockets at their disposal without losing credibility by being indebted to those deep pockets who might want to use you or who are straddling their support to get a winner.
If you mean blue dogs I dont think that is going to work
(Cross-posted from the corresponding Washington Monthly posting.)
The Republican Party has finally purified itself into a conservative party, where conservatism means, first and foremost, sadism, and consequently unaccountability and dishonesty.
“We’re not sadists” gets no traction.
“We don’t lie” gets no traction.
“It’s the unaccountability, stupid” might get some traction. It certainly hasn’t been tried. If the game is to establish a contrast, it is the only way to go. And I do not think there can be any other game.
I love Booman. He’s my favorite blogger. But while things suck, thry’re not as hopeless as Booman makes it out to be.
Keep in mind Booman has not been all that accurate with his prognostications.. He’s written several time in the past on on how the Republicans could not win the Presidency any longer. Or how there was no Republican wave and the Democrats would hold the Senate. Or how Hillary would win. I believe one post was titled “This is what a landslide looks like”.
My point isn’t to shit on Booman. He’s great, and more often than not spot on. I’m simply saying no one knows what the hell is going to happen in the future and it most like likely is not nearly as bleak as it seems.
Think of election night 2004. A second term for Bush, with control of the house and senate. Could anyone have predicted that four years later we would have the presidency, the house, the senate, the majority of governorships, a black President named Barack, and soon after marriage equality, and health reform.
Yeah, things suck. But don’t go putting your head in an oven. Things have a way of not turning out as expected.