The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
–Federalist No. 47
In our polarized political environment, Michael Tomasky’s article in the Daily Beast will be dismissed by the people who need to understand it most. Republicans Don’t Just Want to Win—They Want to Rig the Game gets at a problem identified in the the Federalist Papers: legislative tyranny.
Our founders were extremely concerned about the tyranny of royalty, but after the Articles of Confederation and before the Constitution, they witnessed the capture of state governments by single factions. They termed it legislative tyranny. And it has been the goal of The Republican Party for quite some time.
As hard as it is to remember now, but there was a time when the Republican Party accepted the existence of the Democratic Party and its agenda. The GOP may have disagreed with Democratic goals and competed against them, but Republicans weren’t dedicated to eliminating Democrats. There were rules, and they more or less played by them. President Trump is a feature, not a bug of the modern Republican Party. Trump is the apotheosis of the GOP goal of one-party rule, of legislative tyranny. By breaking the rules, he is taking their strategy to its logical conclusion. Accepting the aid of Russia is just another step in the quest for one party rule.
[Republicans] refuse to stand up to Trump because they like what Trump is doing.
They’re embarrassed by him here and there (tweets), and they disagree with him here and there (tariffs).
But for the most part, they don’t complain too much out loud or carefully limit the scope of their complaints when they do because they’re with him on the most fundamental commodity in politics: power, and its use. Trump’s anti-democratic instincts, which are so dangerous to so many of us, do not trouble Republicans in the least….
The Democrats and Republicans have been our country’s two main parties since the 1850s. In that time, they have disagreed on a lot of things. But they have agreed on one big thing: They have followed the rules of the game established by our Founders (and subsequent generations) about the basic democratic allocation of power.
The main rule is that if you lose an election, you suffer consequences. The most obvious example of this is the Supreme Court. When Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer to the Court in 1994, then-Texas Senator Phil Gramm said Breyer was “as good as we have a right to expect.” Gramm was an arch-conservative in his time, but he was acknowledging there the central truth about the democratic allocation of power, and Breyer was confirmed 87-9.
For 140 or so years, both parties mostly agreed on the rules. Yes, there was FDR’s court-packing scheme, which most of his fellow Democrats did not support. But after that, a broad consensus held for a long time. Then, the Republicans started behaving a little differently. They started challenging the rules. Democrats did too, a little, especially on judicial nominations, but it was Republicans who drove this change.
The shutting down of the recount in Florida in 2000. The aggressive gerrymandering, first engineered by Tom DeLay. The Hastert Rule, holding that bills could pass the House only with a majority of Republicans, and not with bipartisan support. The attacks on voting rights—straight-up attempts to make it hard or even impossible for certain citizens to vote….
So in sum, for a generation now, Republicans haven’t been just arguing with Democrats about who wins elections. They’ve been trying simultaneously to change the rules of the game so that they will win every election (their Supreme Court majority has done its part too, by the way, by allowing all this dark money into the system).
It’s hard to believe things will go back to normal any time soon. Too many the rules are not laws, and some laws may turn out to be unenforceable. Most of America has yet to wake up to the what has happened. They dislike Trump. They disapprove of him. But they haven’t realized the rules haven’t just changed. The GOP has destroyed them.
We could start by going hard left, instead of trying to appease the mythical voters who are “centrists”. Our constant willingness to meet the hard right “half way” has brought the party to looking like Republican Party Lite.
Leftist ideas and rhetoric that don’t produce results are a waste of time. Case in point: single payer.
I attended an organizational meeting by some people who are pushing for single-payer. There’s no question that single-payer would be the most efficient way to deliver healthcare. The argument for single-payer is persuasive, but the devil is in the details.
And they have no plan except to push elected officials to support the idea and provide job training for the displaced workers who work in the insurance bureaucracy. In other words, they have no plan. They push and complain and elected officials are going to do the “right thing.” Ain’t going to happen. Things don’t work that way. My lefty friends will never motivate enough citizens to support them. Our elected officials represent more people than my lefty friends can ever hope to mobilize. Single-payer is not politically or rhetorically feasible. Bernie’s plan was pixie dust: people will accept a massive tax increase, agree to displace hundreds of thousands of workers, trust government with a massive, government program, and eliminate the decent employer-sponsored insurance many of us have. It’s not going to happen. (That’s not to say I wouldn’t support the change. I would). Besides, my guess is that most people care more about having decent, affordable health care than how it is paid for.
I bring single payer up as an example of Lefty policy. Bold claims and ideas that ignore the details and hard work other people have to do some time in the future. Organizing is hard. Making new law is at least as hard.
I don’t know if this is what you’re talking about, John, but I think it’s part of the problem with the Left. Bold promises with no path to reality.
As the Republicans have shown, it’s easy to tear things down. Including reality. On our side, we need clear victories and results.
Medicare for all. Change the wording, A majority support it.
Meanwhile…:
According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively.
“This represents a 12-point decline in young adults’ positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively,” notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29.
Meanwhile, 51 percent of young people are positive about socialism.
You mean like “Make America Great Again”. Yeah, that will never sell.
MAGA was useful because it promised nothing. If we want to make empty promises, we might be able to score big like the GOP. Of course, we want to build things, not tear them down, and we value the truth, not myths.
)Medicare for All is not necessarily single-payer. Single-payer isn’t necessarily single payer. England has public and private health care. Other countries have multiple providers, but set the costs of services).
I think what we all want is affordable, universal healthcare that is easier to understand than a cell phone plan. Single-payer is one option. In the article I linked to, Jacob Hacker uses Medicare for All because everyone understands and likes Medicare. You’d have to read the article, but he uses Medicare as a sort of public option to the ACA. That’s a starting point, not an end point.
No argument there. It’s like “Support the Troops”.
But it’s hard to argue against it. It worked.
Nope. Got to drop the “affordable” from the language. Affordable means it’s not a right and it’s something that the working class has to purchase from the ownership class.
And I am okay with that.
Here’s an idea: Lower the age of eligibility to 50. That way those enter their 50’s can not opt out of an employer plan, thus saving the employer the cost of health care and making older workers less likely to lose their jobs
(and then lower it to 40 once this catches on….and then 30)
I should have included “guaranteed” in my description of health care.
I don’t care if it’s single-payer or straight from the government or from private vendors if it is “guaranteed, affordable, and universal” for everyone, not just the rich or well-employed.
I like the lowering age of Medicare for All. I think that’s workable strategy.
I liked both of your comments up thread. Mark is correct that we cannot be caught flatness footed without a realistic plan of action if we have a governing majority again. I think that was a real weakness of the ACA debate and the all too brief two years of control between 2008-2010. The GOP failing to have policies in place to plug and play saved Obamacare and wasted most of the legislative capital GOP has. I do not want the same thing happening if and when Democrats get another shot at governing. Mark is correct that we need workable policies.
To Johns point, we need policies that are easy to sell and none of the workery of health care is easily sellable. Sticking to vague ideas like Medicare for All, free college tuition, paid leave, and a job guarantee are winning ideas that majorities of Americans support. Leaving the price tag and budget debate to the governing phase is the right way to sell the public on these ideas.
Bork and Garland would both be on the court following this standard. Perhaps it is one Democrats should have kept fighting for, in hindsight. I definitely blame the GOP for the latest and devastating round of norm breaking, but norm breaking on the court is not a new political sin nor one confined exclusively to the other side.
This is a dumb, and egregiously false, equivalence: Robert Bork got a hearing and a vote on his nomination of exactly 100 Senators, 58 of whom said NO (7 of whom, IIRC, were Republicans) and so, he was not seated exactly according to the rules laid out in the Constitution. The standard is not “we’ll be nice and let you have what you want” the standard is to fight it out according to rules.
Garland got NO hearing and no confirmation vote in a decide arrogation of the rules by the GOP. The point.
I do not dispute your facts about the differences between Bork’s and Garland’s nominations and apologize for inadvertently making any false equivalence between the two. John Danforth and other moderate Republicans opposed Bork as well, but the broader point contained in that quote is that Graham voted for Breyer despite disagreeing with him ideologically. Applying that same standard for Democrats would necessitate a vote for the imminently qualified but certifiably extremist Bork in the 1980’s.
This is not the precedent that Teddy Kennedy followed when he lead the charge against Bork. It is certainly not the precedent Barack Obama followed when it came to his votes against Alito or Roberts, and it is certainly not the precedent I favor today when it comes to Kavanaugh or when it came to Gorsuch.
Ted Kennedy had every right to wage ideological warfare against Robert Bork’s America, my broader point was, the modern right is now as vigilant abot overturning Roe as Teddy was defending it. It seems highly unlikely we can go back to that era of genteel bipartisan confirmations for some time, barring judicial term limits or a similar reform that defuses the stakes of a lifetime appointment.
My recollection is that the opposition to Mr. Bork wasn’t about ideology. It was instead about whether or not he was qualified. For example, in retrospect it was clear that Anita Hill was more right than wrong. America is better off because Mr. Bork’s nomination was rejected.
Meanwhile, Mr. Garland was not even considered, and I think that’s the point that petr is trying to make.
While in the hands of today’s GOP, the House and Senate fails to do its most basic constitutional duties. We Democrats never trashed the constitution and the rule of law in any way remotely similar to what the GOP has been doing at least since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
We have, today, the spectacle of the GOP House and Senate doing all in its power to derail a legitimate and vital investigation into clear and compelling evidence of venal corruption, obstruction of justice, and explicit collusion with Russia to change the outcome of the 2016 election.
This while the same GOP government does all in its power to hamstring the agencies doing their best to prevent a recurrence in 2018 (never mind 2020).
America has NEVER seen this kind of blindly partisan disregard for the fundamental bedrock of the American experiment.
Yeah I’ll walk back the comparison between Bork and Garland completely, withholding hearings was a new level of unprecedented obstructionism. As is the complete lack of oversight over this White House in any capacity.
The Bush years were formative ones in my own political understanding and I do not look on them with a false nostalgia. I do recall times when Republicans would stand up to Bush on tax cuts and spending, eventually the war, the marriage amendment, the Patriot Act and the occasional appointment like Miers or Bolton. I see none of that in our current era. Even Richard Burr, the anti-Nunes, is starting to parrot administration talking points on the Russian investigation.
Back to confirmations, the better comparison would be between Roberts and Garland. Both were qualified jurists with impeccable credentials and a history of not taking controversial stances on hot button issues, but we could guess one had a center-left record and the other a center-right record.
If we really want the go back to the days of up or down votes purely on qualifications it would stand that a Senator, in good faith, would have to vote for both. It is unlikely that is politically possible in today’s environment. I for one, strongly disagree with the notion of Democrats voting for Gorsuch or Kavanaugh to restore comity to the process. I think we have to play hardball until they other side breaks, so do they.
A new point to build on Marks original post, I think the last time the Democrats held a federal trifecta they mismanaged the opportunity to pass process reforms critical to our democratic future. A future trifecta should immediately act to pass legislation overturning Citizens United, ensuring non-partisan gerrymandering, restoring simple majority rule to the Senate, restoring and strengthening the Voting Rights Act, repealing the Patriot Act and all outstanding AUMFs, and/or expanding the House or beginning the process to kill the Electoral College.
The right currently enjoys several built in assymetric advantages that stymie democracy and prevent Democrats from governing when they do have the power. Cloture, gerrymandering, unlimited corporate funds, voting rights, and a House size and Electoral Vote allocation that grossly favor rural voters at the expense of population centers. To the point where a Republican President can routinely get elected without winning the popular vote and a Republican Congress can be sworn in despite losing the national popular vote percentage.
If you want to fundamentally change the construction of our Republic don’t you think the Senate should be eliminated? Why should small states have an over-sized influence in the political process. While you’re at it why doesn’t Mass do away with the state Senate? Will you support eliminating the State Senate?
Imperial Rome ignored their hinterlands and it led to their demise, but I’m sure nothing like that could happen with the upstanding, ethical politicians we have.
Let’s go for some real change and let people vote for secession, we just have to decide by states?, regions?.
The point of the Great Compromise was to have the Senate be the body with equal representation representing states. The House was always meant to be proportional and best reflect the will of the people. Yet population centers are severely underrepresented in the current house size while rural areas are over represented. The House has not been expanded since the 1920,, after decades of being regularly expanded with the census to keep up with a growing nation.
It is now frozen at 435 despite the nation tripling in population size. The US has one of the highest federal legislator-constituent ratios in the developed world. The current imbalance not only hurts big states but small ones too. Montana has an at large district of over a million voters but under the number to justify two whole districts. Wyoming has a little over half a million voters. Clearly the system is not working properly, and that ratio shortchanges NY, CA, TX, and FL not to mention MA.
Switching to the cube root rule (cube root of the US population-100 for the senate=district size) or Wyoming Rule (size of the smallest possible district is the size for all districts), would be fairer. 593 under the later and 577 under the former. 43 or 45 states would gain seats under either method, spreading out the gains and limiting the effect on the Electoral Collehe or partisan composition. Unlike other major reforms, it’s doable with a simple majority in both Houses of Congress and a presidential signature.
As an aside, I favor a unicameral legislature for Massachusetts. I would merge the House and Senate into a 100 body unicameral chamber. It would reduce the clout of the Speaker and Committee Chairs without endangering equal representation for rural areas too much. Progressives should like it since it will result in a more progressive and transparent legislature than present, Republicans should like it since it makes the Governor a more coequal branch, bolsters their checking argument, and saves taxpayer money on duplicate committee chairs and extraneous legislators.
I understand what you’re saying but good luck trying to sell any plan that will increase the number of people that get sent to Washington. There are reasons that polls show politicians are among the least trusted people in the country.
@ least trusted people: I think you and we have to decide if want to pander to our prejudices or address and attempt to solve the issues that face us.
I submit that there are some obvious reasons why such polls say what they do:
1. Something approaching half of Americans get their “news” from Fox. Fox tells them that Democrats lie whatever Democrats say.
2. Fox itself broadcasts so many lies that discerning truth from lies is impossible.
3. Donald Trump and the GOP Collaborators flagrantly lie at every opportunity. Anybody who has even fifth-grade analytic skills correctly chooses to not trust ANY of those politicians.
It seems to me that increasing the ability of every American to vote against politicians that they distrust and vote in support of politicians that they do trust is among most effective items in our toolbox.
If that means that we send more men and women to Washington, then surely we should do just that.
Go back in time, you think politicians were trusted before Trump? Part of Trump’s allure was he was an outsider and he would drain the swamp. Turns out he and his cabinet choices are just other foxes guarding the hen-house. You’re an old guy like me, remember ABSCAM? Crooks in Washington long before Fox news.
@abscam: The Abscam convictions were traffic tickets in comparison to what the GOP is doing today.
Surely you are able to discern the difference between politicians getting caught in a sting involving payments of $50-100K and top GOP campaign officials selling access to foreign governments for tens of millions of dollars (emphasis mine):
The GOP has been lying for thirty years. Today’s GOP has escalated that to wholesale attacks on virtually everything America stands for.
It was obvious during the 2016 campaign that Donald Trump was lying through his teeth every time he opened his mouth. Donald Trump has, since being elected, done exactly what he (privately) said he said he would do. He has done exactly Hillary Clinton said he would do.
The idea that today’s explosion of corruption is comparable to Abscam is like comparing Seung-Hui Cho’s 2007 massacre of 32 (wounding 17 others) at Virginia Tech to a 19 year old’s conviction for graffiti.
There have always been crooks. Long past when the entirety of everybody alive today is gone, there will be other, newer, crooks. The issue is not about crooks but about what ostensibly upstanding and law abiding people should do about the crooks. .
The issue not that Trump is a crook: the issue is the Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have not and will not punish Trump for being a crook, They are the only two people, at this present pass, able to do something about Trumps corrupt nature: Instead they have enabled his behavior so that they may enact their legislative agenda: an agenda that is itself decidedly more rigging the game than rigorous adherence to the rule of law. They have succeeded in this because the Republicans have mastered the dark art of gerrymandering to the extent that a clear minority of all citizens is on the cusp of legislative tyranny outright and undiminished control of all three branches of government.
@ rigging: Not just gerry-mandering.
These same GOP thugs turned the constitution on its ear by refusing to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. In a different thread, Christopher said that we don’t need to worry about the GOP passing a current-day analog to Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933. My response is that our GOP will pay no more attention to whatever constitutional provisions stand in the way that they paid to their obligation to consider Merrick Garland.
These Collaborators have mastered not only the dark art of gerrymandering, but more dangerously the dark art of packing the bench. The GOP henchmen of George W. Bush began embedding the U.S. Attorney’s office with right-wing hacks and we Democrats did NOTHING about it (just like we ignored the torture and war crimes of that administration).
Now we see that particular kind of cancer spreading to the Supreme Court.
To quote Michael Avenatti in Iowa:
Fighting war-crimes, torture, embezzlement, corruption, obstruction of justice, outright treason, and so on with nail-clippers (and Mr. Avenatti is right on the mark about that) is approximately as effective as fighting gun violence with thoughts and prayers.
I think we need to get off our backsides and FIGHT.
The Enabling Act you refer to was in fact an amendment to the Weimar Constitution that was strong on executive prerogative and weak on preserving checks and balances and political rights. Some non-Nazis were kept away on the day of the vote, though procedure was followed in other ways. If you seriously believe that there is going to be enforced one-party rule here, you have to believe that Dems will be kept out of Congress by force of arms; that the Constitution would ever be amended to allow such an act; that the people would take it lying down; that the states will follow suit and stop holding elections. There are just way too many moving parts and much more of a democratic culture than Germany had for something that drastic too ever happen. There is not a doubt in my mind that I will be casting a free ballot this November and again in 2020
@ Enabling Act: I fear you misunderstand me.
The current administration has already betrayed America and flaunted the constitution The GOP has done absolutely NOTHING, and has blocked and sabotaged the efforts of Democrats to do anything at all about it.
I seriously believe that the GOP will continue to be very creative in how they present whatever happens. Mr. Trump will continue to lie about it. Fox News will continue to lie about all of it, and a great many Americans will swallow those lies hook line and sinker.
I have no clue what bizarre pretext these thugs might invent. They might, for example, say “there has been extensive fraud and illegal voting. Unknown players have tampered with vote counts. The results of the 2018 mid-term election are therefore null and void. The House and Senate will remain unchanged until an emergency election can be scheduled”.
I suggest that the Constitution will be ignored, rather than amended. An extremist Trumpist majority on the Supreme Court will rule that whatever has been ordered is correct.
We are in la-la-land — completely uncharted territory. The growing evidence against Mr. Broidy suggests to me that the entire GOP is in Mr. Putin’s pocket. A sitting President is betraying our allies and doing the bidding of our most hostile opponents.
I think just about anything can happen, frankly.
If your scenario didn’t play out in the 1860s it won’t now. You are being paranoid, and THAT is what I see as la-la land. I really wish you would have a little more faith in the resiliency of our country and constitutional system. As much as the Garland nomination was playing politics at it’s worst it IS the purview of the Senate to schedule hearings or not. No rules were actually broken there, though I think the constitution should be amended to allow for the automatic seating of nominated judges 90 days after being nominated if the Senate takes no action.
@ paranoid: I hope I am proved wrong.
There was no Fox News in the 1860s, poisoning the views of more than half of America with outright lies. Meanwhile, it was only through the heroic efforts of courageous legislators and public officials with moral backbones that America survived the 1860s. Today’s GOP has none of those.
Who is today’s Abraham Lincoln?
I was accused of being “paranoid” here (among other insults) when I called out today’s GOP as “Collaborators” two years ago. I stand by that characterization.
These are harrowing events. In my view, the cancer that underlies today’s GOP and Trumpism is an existential threat to our Republic — as clear and present a threat as any weapon or hostile power.
Remember — just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
There may not have been Fox News, but enough of America was poisoned to actually secede from the union over an election result they didn’t like and willfully misinterpreted.
90 day rule is a great idea. That should be a litmus test for any Senate candidate.
If you’re interested I did a full diary on this matter shortly after Scalia died, including my proposed language for such an amendment.
This country has a long history of using the force of arms to deprive people of their rights. Your suggestion that it could never happen to you goes beyond laughable complacency and into more disturbing territory.
I’m talking about legislators. Members of Congress have NEVER been kept away from the Capitol by force to prevent them from casting a vote.
I think it’s fine for ideology to factor into a Court vote. Since they will serve for life with very little check, we do want to have some idea that they will reflect our values in the broad sense. I just want people to be honest about it and let the confirmation come to a vote rather than obstruct.
Why did you bring up Anita Hill in a paragraph otherwise about Bork? It was Clarence Thomas she accused and he of course was confirmed, her allegations notwithstanding. As a federal judge and Solicitor General he was as qualified as anyone to sit on SCOTUS and my understanding is that opposition was entirely ideological as presented by Ted Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech. At least he was rejected the right way – by getting more nays than yeas in a straight up-or-down vote of the full Senate rather by obstructionist tactics.
Agree with Christopher. The Gregory Peck ads and the Cox firing controversy were all used to suggest that he was ideologically disposed to executive power and a potential vote not only against Roe but against Brown. The Haynsworth and Bork nominations were both killed with the help of moderate pro-Civil Rights Republicans.
I do think we would have ultimately been better off waging an aggressive campaign to keep Thomas off the court and to defend Anita Hill. It’s really the Achilles heel of a Biden 2020 candidacy that he failed to protect her testimony from the outright misogynist questioning from his Republican friends on the committee. Even if HW Bush picked another equally conservative jurist after withdrawing Thomas, it would be better for women if he was not on the bench.
The only example remotely close to Garland was the Abe Fortas nomination for the Chief Justice, and even then, this was a situation denying a widely unpopular President not running for re-election the opportunity to promote a less than qualified personal friend from associate to chief while facing an ethics probe (over a speaking fee quaint by today’s standards). It also did not deprive the court of a ninth justice for nearly a year and a half.
You’re absolutely correct, I mis-remembered those dark times.
I will say, for the record, that America would have been better off without Clarence Thomas. Mr. Thomas is without doubt the least competent member of the Supreme Court in my lifetime. His nomination exemplifies the off-the-rails nomination process that we’re discussing.