Whips and Monsters

A prominent Ivy League-educated law professor recently argued that "Many Democracies Are Floundering."* He cites as the cause "political fragmentation [: ] the dispersion of political power into so many different hands and centers of power." **

Interesting, but I think he has engaged in the classic error of fighting a land war in Asia ..., sorry, make that mistaking correlation for causation. His lead example is the delayed passage of the infrastructure bill and the uncertainty surrounding passage of any part let alone the entirety of the Build Back Better proposal. I would argue it is not the "internal division of the Democratic Party" that slowed passage of the infrastructure bill, and empowered Sen Manchin. Rather, it is the likes of Sen McConnell, who has welded his party into a monolith, and used that as a cudgel to famously if ineffectively drive the other party from being able to exercise power. It is not Cruz and AOC and the other pretend 'free agents' who block legislation and the other exercises of legislative power. It is the failure of compromise, indeed the wielding of a refusal to listen as a weapon. The Social Security Act of 1935, derided as 'socialism' even by some Democrats, passed the House 372 to 33 - the official US House account is wrong when they say that margin is 'attributable to the Democrats' overwhelming majority' - even counting Farmer-Labor and Progressive*** seats with the Dems, they had 345 votes, the GOP 89. For the SSA of 1935, the vote was not the result of party whipping. Flash forward to the 1960s, we see the same thing with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights of 1965. For all three bills, which became central pillars of American government, passage was secured not by party-line votes no matter how ably and firmly whipped, but by reaching across the center aisle, setting aside both partisan differences and recalcitrant mavericks.

But in 2009, McConnell placed as the overriding goal of the GOP the limitation of President Obama to one term, which the Senator saw as ruling out any cooperation on major legislation, most notably on the Affordable Care act - which was itself closely based on a proposal from the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank closely aligned with the GOP. Party-line votes surged to the fore, cross-aisle cooperation began to disappear.

As a local example in the current day here in Minnesota, the GOP has used a one-seat "majority" in the Senate to block popular legislation and disrupt the Governor's 'cabinet'.

I also compare Denmark, where I served 1988-1990, which famously hasn't had a single party majority government since 1901, to Jamaica (served 1994-1997), where no third party has gained so much as one parliamentary member since independence in 1963, despite some efforts to break with the functionally two-party system. Denmark is far more viable.

As currently practiced, the strongest position in the legislature is NOT the Speaker of the House, but the majority whip, the enforcer of party discipline. Ranked third, they escape public and media notice (quick! name the US Senate and House whips), but without their active concurrence and compliance, nothing gets done in legislative bodies tightly bound by inflexible party discipline.

I have some optimism that the party whip is fraying, and our long national nightmare of partisan BDSM may dissipate. Oddly, I take comfort in the vast partisan difference at the grassroots in response to the pandemic -- much like Dr Frankenstein, the GOP leadership may be losing control of the monster they created.

* Fascinatingly, that appears to be the title chosen by the NYT editor - the title appears as "Why So Many People Are Unhappy with Democracy" in the url - which retains the original title of documents if the poster is not careful in editing the url.

** As an aside, as a good professor will do, he footnotes his thesis of "political fragmentation" - but to his own dang article. ]

*** Those were genuine third parties, caucusing with the Democrats.