Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on March 16 fired a shot across the bow of the Democratic Party. If Democrats get rid of the filibuster, Mitch blustered, it would be ‘scorched-earth’ politics. Republicans would go to the mattresses and stop at nothing to bring the business of the Senate to a halt.
What this tells us, of course, is that nothing frightens Mitch more than losing the filibuster. Without it, Republicans would be unable to stop a tidal wave of progressive legislation that would threaten to reshape electoral politics for a generation. “Government bad, private sector good” has been the Republican mantra for decades. What if government starting giving Americans the things they want? For Republicans, this is an existential threat.
Today’s politics are dominated by the fierce populist and anti-liberal reaction now unfolding in the US, Europe, Israel, Brazil and elsewhere. Popular anger is a result of the many insults and indignities inflicted at the hands of an unchecked private sector, which has been lionized and coddled by conservatives since the Reagan era. The economic and technological forces let loose have, in America, devastated thousands of communities and destroyed millions of jobs. Deaths of despair are ravaging the working class. Inequality grows in good times and bad. Monstrous media empires shape our public discourse in ways that no one wants but no one can control.
Despite agreement on the problems, little has been done in response. Underneath the anger at political elites is a terrible fear that democracy has been corrupted and is not up to the task of managing the market.
Mitch’s conservatives remain wedded to weak government and an unchained private sector. Every problem is solved with the same all purpose patent medicine of lower taxes and less government. This nostrum long ago lost its efficacy, but the liberals in the Democratic Party have allowed themselves to be stymied by rules and processes that favor a determined minority. When one side favors weak government, structural features that make it hard to act automatically favor conservatism.
Over the years I have spent a good amount of time studying how democracies fail. One clear lesson is that impotence is fatal. Key groups become dissatisfied and demand change. Often this change is in the direction of a strongman who promises to cut through roadblocks and get things done. Democracies in Latin America, for instance, have regularly disintegrated when the executive and legislative branches gridlock, leading to military coups or auto-golpes by elected leaders.
The classic analysis by Juan Linz thirty years ago argued that presidential systems, popular in Latin America (often because they copied the North Americans), are especially prone to breakdown.[1] Parliamentary democracies are less likely to fall apart because they have built-in mechanisms to overcome deadlocks and get rid of toxic leaders.
Linz cited the United States as the most prominent exception to this process. The US was the most stable democratic system in existence. Linz pointed out, however, that this was due to “the uniquely diffuse character of American political Parties—which, ironically, exasperates many American political scientists and leads them to call for responsible, ideologically disciplined parties.”
Today, however, no one is exasperated by the diffusiveness of our two parties. They have become more and more distinct to the point that studies show the most liberal Republican barely overlaps in voting behavior with the most conservative Democrat.
As another distinguished political scientist, Scott Mainwaring, observed about two party systems, they are preferable to multi-party systems largely because “ideological polarization is unlikely.”[2] For much of our post Civil War history our two parties did indeed tack to the center and avoid sharp ideological differences. But now that polarization has taken hold, having only two parties is a source of instability.
The American presidential system is dangerously brittle if the two major parties are in rigid opposition. Under these conditions the executive and legislative branches are often at odds. Control of one of the two legislative branches is enough to prevent most major legislative initiatives. Gridlock becomes the norm. We have moved into Latin American territory.
There have been two inevitable results. One is greater executive authority, and neglect or weakening of legislative prerogatives, in order to carry out normal government functions and implement a coherent program. This dangerously concentrates power in the executive and leads to populism as voters and powerful elites look to the President to bypass the legislature to get things done. The 2020 Republican Party platform famously had no goals or legislative initiatives; it was just “whatever Trump wants.”
The other is a move towards performative and symbolic politics. The harder it gets to actually pass legislation and take action, the greater the temptation to posture and turn every issue into a zero-sum war of identities and cultures. This is where we now find ourselves.
Today’s fight over the filibuster brings these systemic problems to the fore. Even when one party controls the Presidency and both houses of Congress, the minority can thwart it. Procedural shenanigans like “reconciliation” have limited scope and throw the law-making process into disrepute.
The good news is that the filibuster is a Senate rule that can be changed by a simple majority. This would unleash a wave of potentially transformative legislation: political reforms to restore trust in democracy, infrastructure programs that build the working class and incorporate serious measures against global warming, a tax system that works against inequality, healthcare for all, and more.
If Democrats blink and refuse to use their power while they have it, it will reinforce the view that gridlock is the system default. Since one of our two parties is averse to government action, it benefits more from this perception. It is wrong to argue that the filibuster serves both parties equally. The party that prefers an active government has much more to gain by ending it. This is why Republicans did not move against it when they controlled the government in 2017-18 (except to ram through Supreme Court appointments).
In the short run the best hope for reducing polarization is that Democrats will use their temporary power to quickly implement large-scale government action that benefits the American people. A party that simply says ‘no’ to every initiative will be punished at the polls if voters see that its opponent will use its power to help them. As long as the ‘party of No’ can be prevented from controlling the Presidency and both houses, the many other checks in the system will limit the damage it can do.
The most urgent step is to prevent the ‘party of No’ from tilting the political playing field even more in its favor. Republicans already have systemic advantages built into the Senate and the electoral college. They control the Supreme Court and much of the federal judiciary. They are now moving against democracy in the states via voter suppression, redistricting, and control of the courts.
HR 1, the “For the People Act,” is therefore the most important first step. It will stop Republicans from implementing their anti-democratic agenda at the state level—which since it is states who control election law, even for national office, means an advantage at every level of politics. HR1 has no chance of passage under the current filibuster.
Passing HR 1 would give American democracy a breathing spell and the time to consider further necessary changes. Our presidential system in its current form almost guarantees further dysfunction and the erosion of liberal democracy. We need to contemplate systemic political reforms; if not a switch to a parliamentary system, then major fixes such as ending the electoral college, expanding the size of the House, multi-district elections, ranked-choice voting, public-financing for campaigns, and more. All these would help move parties towards the middle while widening voter participation.
From the 1930s to the 1970s the United States moved, fitfully but surely, in the direction of social democracy. Our anti-government tendencies were moderated by programs that helped the middle class, provided a universal safety net, and laid the basis for broad prosperity. But a determined effort by corporate interests—who discredited government programs largely by inciting a backlash against racial equality—ended this trend. The Reagan Revolution led to deepening distrust of government and a systematic effort to counter any popular new social programs, like universal healthcare. Republicans went all-out against Obamacare not because it wouldn’t work, but because they feared it would.
Since Reagan we have been at best treading water. It is time to resume forward progress. Call Mitch’s bluff and change the country for the better.
[1] “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Juan Linz, Journal of Democracy, 1990; https://scholar.harvard.edu/levitsky/files/1.1linz.pdf.
[2] “Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination,” Scott Mainwaring, Comparative Political Studies, 1993.