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By inciting a riot, President Trump gave Democrats the chance to transcend the gamesmanship they helped to create, writes Salit.
More excessive partisanship will make wound from Capitol siege even worse
Jan 14 2021
Salit is president of Independent Voting, which works to promote the political clout of unaffiliated voters, and the author of "Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan America" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
<p>My father, a Navy veteran of World War II, just celebrated his 94th birthday. He is one of the estimated 300,000 living veterans of that war and he is healthy, mobile and active, with a wicked sense of humor. His memories are sharp, his voice raspy, and he offers colorful reflections on almost a century of American life.<br></p><p>Last weekend, I asked what the country was like when he was in college during and after the war. If you were in uniform and hitchhiking on leave, he said, drivers stopped and said they would take you wherever you wanted to go. In a bar, you couldn't pay for a beer or a meal. The country was united and he was so proud. </p><p>Then he paused. When he watched the events at the Capitol, he said, suddenly grim, he wished he was still in uniform. He wanted to be there to defend our democracy, to repel and punish those who would attack it. His voice was choking. </p><p>My heart ached. His pain and anger were palpable, even over Zoom. Yes, it was about the sordid events at the Capitol. But it was also about how much the fabric of the country had unspooled in his lifetime. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Like many, I watched members of Congress forced to evacuate after a failure by law enforcement to create a sufficiently secure perimeter around them or put a visible and well-equipped anti-riot force in place, as had been done before a thoroughly peaceful anti-racism protest the Rev. Al Sharpton led on Capitol Hill last summer. This double-standard must be investigated. </p><p>Eventually, last week's violence was ended. Debate resumed. Objections were heard, the separate houses debated. After courts had dismissed more than 60 lawsuits claiming fraud, after states conducted recounts that produced no different outcomes, Congress affirmed that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had the necessary electoral votes to be sworn in next week. </p><p>For my money, the democratic process held. The perpetrators who committed violent acts and brought lethal paraphernalia are being hunted down, arrested and charged. I disagree with those who breathlessly proclaim our democracy is fragile. In the face of ceaseless legal, political and procedural challenges culminating in this violent disruption, democracy looked pretty sturdy. </p><p>But what does seem fragile? The institutions that mediate and control the American people's relationship to our democratic republic. Here I refer to the two dominant political parties, the massively over-endowed and overreaching mechanisms of the exercise of political power. </p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Full disclosure: I'm an independent. I dislike the political parties and what they breed. They are dedicated to the proposition that their self-preservation, separately and together, is equivalent to the national interest. There are moments of upheaval where those can appear to be the same thing, but that is momentary. </p><p>This is part of the terrible pain of the moment. The vacuum in political leadership in America is wrenching. After a brutal election season — in which $15 billion was spent by both sides getting Americans to hate and fear each other — 41 percent of the electorate chose to identify with neither party. Declaring oneself a political independent is their statement of non-compliance with a wretched culture. </p><p>The House decided that an unprecedented second impeachment was the best way to sanction Trump, and 10 Republicans joined the Democrats to charge him with "incitement of insurrection" Wednesday. I sorely wish that partisan Democrats hadn't used the impeachment gambit once before, and with an almost totally party-line outcome.</p><p>It would have been better to tie the president's hands for his final days in office by having Vice President Pence and the Cabinet (what's left of it) invoke the 25th Amendment — followed by Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Kevin McCarthy standing together to promise a peaceful transition of power. </p><p>But I don't get to decide. I'm only one citizen, one who's sick and tired of being force fed a toxic brew every time something happens. </p><p>Trump, in his infinite narcissism, did more than incite a riot. He handed the Democratic Party a golden goose: the chance to ring the bell for democracy, to transcend the gamesmanship they helped to create. </p><p>In an Ipsos <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/abc-news-rioting-democracy-011021" target="_blank">poll taken last weekend,</a> 58 percent of independents said Trump should be removed from office before his term ends — surely the most nonpartisan view on that question. But the same poll found only half the country believes Democrats can be counted on to protect our democracy. Many independents are asking whether Democrats will champion the necessary political reforms to reverse the incentives driving partisanship. I have not seen evidence they will. </p><p>Meanwhile, Republicans are deservedly in chaos. Those high-minded government officials turning in their resignations have me laughing. Someone once said, when government officials talk about principles, hold on to your wallet. I just locked mine in a drawer. The GOP is assessing a vote to convict Trump in the Senate followed by a vote to bar him from any future office. A healthier option would be opening all the 2024 presidential primaries to all voters. Independents voted against Trump by 13 points in November, delivering the Democrats the White House and, later, the Senate. Trump could not survive an open primary in four years. The American people would be the deciders. </p><p>Perhaps the worst thing is that it's so hard to know what anything means. The 18th century philosopher Bishop Butler opined that everything is what it is and not another thing. Wishful thinking? Did the Democratic leadership pursue impeachment because they have the votes to stay Trump's hand? Or do they want to force the GOP to cast damaging votes? Are the resignations an "every man for himself" act of desperation? Or an act of conscience? Was the scene at the Capitol an actual insurrection or a crazed display of deformed defiance, with criminal acts that should be prosecuted? </p><p>Are all these events, and so many others, only one thing? </p><p>America is in crisis. Where do we go from here? The widening gulf between the positive traditions of our democracy, however flawed, and the current culture of partisan politics will have to be engaged. We can't continue as we are. This we know because we feel it in our gut. </p>
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Best electoral advantage is party, not incumbency, new study underscores
Dec 21 2020
Griffiths is the editor of Independent Voter News, where a version of this story first appeared.
A new report reinforces something political reform advocates and experts have been saying for years: Partisan identity is becoming the primary determinant in nearly every election.
The "Monopoly Politics" study, a biennial project of the electoral reform advocacy group FairVote, predicts the results of all 435 seats in the House long before Election Day. The 2020 version, released last week, predicted 357 "high confidence seats" with a 99.7 percent accuracy rate. The group bases its predictions on prior voting patterns, not on polling results, a methodology that has worked since FairVote began the project in 1997.
The predictions were made fully two years ahead of time, in November 2018, a startling reminder of how little competition there is in congressional contests and the consequence this has on the nation's politics. The authors say a central takeaway is the increasing role partisanship plays in the outcome of such elections.
<p>FairVote uses a metric it calls the "incumbency bump" to gauge performance of incumbents and so-called "crossover candidates," members of Congress who represent districts that supported the other party's presidential candidate in the previous election.<br></p><p>In other words, it is widely assumed there is an inherent advantage to being an incumbent. FairVote measures the strength of this advantage for Democrats and Republicans who were elected in areas that traditionally vote for the "other side."</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>According to the report, this advantage is shrinking, which means all the things that used to give incumbents a leg up on the opposition — money, name recognition, experience, etc — do not mean as much as the partisan-leanings of local voters.</p><p>After the 2018 midterm, 38 Democrats and just three Republicans were crossover members. And 29 of them won again this year, a further decline in an incumbency bump that has gradually dropped since peaking in 2000.</p><p>"An increase in the predictability of partisanship at the expense of incumbency advantage, even for incumbents who maintained moderate voting records, means something troubling: the identity of candidates and their campaigns are mattering less and less," the report states.</p><p>Many know the adage that "all politics is local." This means politics is more consequential to a person's daily life the closer it gets to home. It also used to also mean local values and issues shaped how voters selected candidates.</p><p>To various extents, that still holds true. But for several years now, the divide between Republicans and Democrats at the national level has seeped down to shape trends at a local level. </p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>This nationalization of politics is another warning sign that, as the divide between the parties expands, the state of elections will worsen: more candidates favoring divisive behavior to the detriment of their constituents and the country, and a further reduction in the number of candidates pledged to bipartisanship and moderation.</p><p>"If Americans feel as if they are split into red and blue camps more than ever, or that there's no room for cross-partisan dialogue, there's a very clear systemic reason for that," said FairVote President and CEO Rob Richie. "Our elections fundamentally reward partisanship. We will not be able to clear this hurdle and come together as a nation until we are able to enact the reforms ... that ensure Americans are more truly represented."</p><p>He pointed to legislation that's a top goal of his group, which has so far gone nowhere in Congress. Dubbed the Fair Representation Act, it seeks to end hyper-polarization in Congress by remaking the way the House is constituted: five or six members each representing a fewer number of congressional districts, and chosen in <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/ranked-choice-voting" target="_self">ranked-choice elections</a>.</p><p>"Multi-winner districts allow more voters to participate in meaningfully competitive elections, and the vast majority of voters of both parties would be able to help elect candidates from their districts who share their views," FairVote states. "This change would roughly triple the number of voters able to participate in competitive House elections."</p><p><em>Visit </em><a href="https://ivn.us/" target="_blank"><em>IVN.us</em></a><em> for more coverage from Independent Voter News.</em></p>
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Report cites a dozen narrow issues where partisan gridlock could be broken
Dec 11 2020
After an especially contentious election and with the coronavirus pandemic raging, American politics may feel as polarized as ever. A new study makes the case that there's still plenty of hope for bridging the partisan chasm on a dozen top-tier domestic issues.
Making government more transparent and trimming big money's sway over elections are the two good-government reforms on the list.
The 48-page report, released Thursday by three left-leaning advocacy groups focused on environmental policy, aggregates an array of research and polling by others before unveiling "a transpartisan agenda to rebuild trust and tackle America's biggest challenges."
<p>By confining their debates to these areas, the groups say, the incoming Biden administration and the new Congress — which will either remain divided or be controlled by only the narrowest of Democratic majorities — can steer the country over the political divide and toward a healing process after years of political warfare.</p>
<p>"This moment of heightened polarization also contains the seeds of renewal," says the report, by U.S. PIRG, Environment America and Frontier Group. "The good news is that there are a surprising number of public policies on which Republicans, Democrats and independents share common ground."</p>
<p>They see such consensus behind the notion that boosting transparency and accountability are imperative to restoring trust in government, and that for starters deals are within reach to bolster the ethics of federal officials and improve citizen access to information about government spending decisions.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Voters of both parties are comparably "sick and tired of expensive elections bankrolled by wealthy special interests," the report says, asserting it's possible to crack the partisan stalemate over campaign finance with proposals such as tax credits or matching grants for small political contributions.</p>
<p>Two areas are right in the wheelhouse of the groups who produced the report. The growing influence of younger voters is at least "opening the door to forge bipartisan agreement on specific policies around the edges of the climate debate." And tax credits for wind and solar power remain broadly popular, so there should be bipartisan support for their renewal — if only to spur the economy as the pandemic abates.</p>
<p>Other areas for compromise it sees include the establishment of a national lending institution for infrastructure projects, an expansion of national service programs, bolstering public access to broadband internet and revitalizing career and technical education.</p>
<p>Maybe most optimistically of all, the groups see hope for measures "to keep guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous people."</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>While there is not necessarily broad bipartisan support for more ambitious proposals on all these areas, the report says "it is precisely by working together to implement change in narrow areas of agreement that our government can begin to get its transpartisan 'muscles' working again."</p>
<p>Previous bipartisan cooperation has led to important policy decisions, including civil rights legislation in the 1960s, environmental laws in the 1970s, tax code simplification in the 1980s, the Americans with Disabilities Act in the 1990s and the campaign finance reform of the 2000s, the report notes.</p>
<p>"Research shows that increasing one's contact with members of another group is a consistently effective way to reduce prejudice and misunderstanding," the report says. "By partnering on a shared agenda, Americans of good faith may come to recognize that politics does not have to be a theater of total war, but can be a venture for actually getting things done that are in the public interest."</p>
<p>And the issues outlined in this report are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other areas, where elected officials can collaborate to identify potential solutions.</p>
<p>"By daring to venture across the political divide and find compromise on areas of public concern, leaders can get important work done for the American people, and that work itself will forge a pathway out of the nation's dangerous, counterproductive and toxic polarization," said Faye Park, president of U.S. PIRG.</p>
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Virtual Screening of 'UnRepresented' and Panel Discussion
Dec 11 2020
Organizer: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget/FixUS
The pandemic and election exposed deep divisions among the public and raised serious questions about whether our political system is up to the task of addressing the major challenges we face. Please join us for an advance screening of "UnRepresented" — a new documentary about how to overcome these partisan frictions — and exclusive access to a panel discussion featuring the filmmakers and subject matter experts.
This award-winning documentary explores the driving forces behind political dysfunction and highlights some of the reforms that are gaining traction to restore a government that better serves the people. It features experts such as Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School, and Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and FixUS.
A link to view "UnRepresented" will be emailed to you on Monday, Dec. 14. You will have 48 hours to view the documentary.
Location: Webinar
