Thoughts About the 2022 Midterms

A lot of post-midterms articles are out there on the Intertubes, a number of wry observations and urgent recriminations towards Republicans, and I would recommend glancing at Rude Pundit's to get a taste of the schadenfreude getting served over the GOP's historic failures.

I say "failure" even as the Republicans claimed (slim) control of the U.S. House of Representatives - and retained control of a number of Red states - because it's been traditional in the modern era of partisan politics that the party in opposition to the White House - this year the Republicans in opposition to the Democratic President Biden - wins big in the following midterms. This year, the Republicans were expecting a "Red Wave" to counter the 2018 "Blue Wave" that gave Democrats control of the House vs. donald trump.

The polling - mostly from conservative-leaning providers like RCP - were all pointing to a huge 30-seat flip of the House. There were a number of projections Republicans could regain a tightly fought Senate, even in spite of the crazed candidates running in various campaigns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Arizona (and several others).

Republicans were beating the war drums hard on the economy, railing against signs of a recession as inflation (re: gas prices) soared to levels that hurt any President's standing with voters.

This was also all happening with the 2022 district realignments for the House, where the updated Census numbers required new maps and allowed the parties - yes, Democrats did it too - to aggressively gerrymander those districts to give them advantages. Republicans held the gerrymander advantage due to controlling enough battleground states to outduel the Dems (who also shot themselves in the foot by not gerrymandering New York to their advantage, screw you Andrew Cuomo).

Throw in the Republicans attempts at voter suppression - far greater than what they had in 2018 and 2020 - and there was every likelihood that turnout would drop, hurting Democratic chances.

And with all of that going the Republicans' way... they STILL failed to retake the Senate - which added an extra Democratic seat meaning the 50-50 power-sharing is no longer working and Mitch McConnell can suck it - and their win in the House was by a meager five seats, causing headaches for party leadership they weren't expecting.

It is, according to historians, the worst midterm performance for an opposition party since 1962. There was a similar situation for Democrats in 2002 failing against Dubya, but the 9/11 attacks and the patriotic fervor clearly skewed the situation. There were the Republicans failing against FDR in 1934, but the Great Depression was still happening and a lot of Americans still hated them and Hoover for screwing them over.

The Republicans ought to be rejoicing in that they control the House, which they can use to investigate Biden's administration family for scandals every day they meet on the Hill, and file every impeachment complaint until all they do is vote on embarrassing Biden and Harris for the 2024 campaign (lacking control of the Senate, no impeachment will go their way: For the Republicans it's all about making the Democrats look corrupt and weak to their own voting base). They are openly planning repeated hearings over Russia's planted evidence Hunter Biden's laptop, as it's the only thing they can do other than force federal shutdowns to break the entire government.

Instead, the Republicans are in-fighting over the poor results. They were expecting a wave and all they got was a trickle. The My Pillow guy Mike Lindell - who is constantly shilling conspiracy theories for trump's Big Lie about "stolen votes" - is challenging for control of the RNC, arguing the current head - Mitt Romney's daughter Ronna McDaniel - failed to inspire better turnout. There were a number of reports of GOP leaders railing against trump's involvement, pushing on them unstable and unpopular candidates like Hershel Walker in Georgia who hurt turnout among needed independent voters.

There are going to be post-mortems, autopsies, follow-up reports, what have you, which the Republicans will ignore like they did after they were stunned in 2012, when they expected four years of Tea Party fauxrage would turn America against Obama. The GOP's response after that loss was to double-down on the Far Right fearmongering to encourage their voting base to stay faithful, and they've been spiraling downward ever since thanks to trump's takeover in 2016.

If the midterms are showing me anything, these are the observations I've made:

Like Bob Burnett points out at Common Dreams, the American electorate is polarized to the point of frozen stasis. In previous eras before the Culture War shifted all of the Conservative votes to the Republicans after 1994, there was an expectation of centrist/moderate party voters crossing the aisle to vote for candidates or issues regardless of party. By 2014, branding won out: Republicans (tm) can no longer find themselves voting for ANY Democrat (tm) (and the same goes for Dems refusing to vote for any GOPer) even when the issues should compel them to vote for the other party that's in favor of those issues.

While this means you can rely on your party base, it means you can't expect any more voters to flip your way. Whatever independent/No Party Affiliate voters are out there, you find yourself praying for them to show up for you to overcome any demographic limitations you've already set for your party with the gerrymandering and suppression. And voter turnout for NPAs is unreliable at best.

The results are also telling me that for the Republicans this is the best they can do for turnout, and they STILL screwed up. This is as far as they can get for voter turnout and numbers going their way. Even WITH the extreme gerrymandering favoring them, even WITH the voter suppression laws they put in place to reduce turnout numbers... the Republicans STILL couldn't pull off a Red Wave of their own.

For every voter the GOP had on their side showing up angry over inflation, the Democrats had voters showing up angry over the loss of abortion rights. For every Red state they held onto, the Republicans lost control of a couple of state legislatures they could not afford to lose.

And this was the midterms. Voter turnout for Presidential election cycles are higher, and 2024 could well be a repeat of 2020 in that regard.

This is also something hurting Republicans in the long run: The inevitable demographic shift of older (Boomer) voters to younger (Gen Z/Millennial) voters is starting to happen. One of the things the Republicans realized in 2012 was that by 2028, simple dying off of the older generations that make up the Conservative voting base will increase just as the kids who grew up watching Republicans burn everything down will get old enough to vote. (The divided Generation X sitting between the two generations is too small a voter bloc - they're the ones not showing up to vote at all - to help Republicans) We are looking at a one-two punch for Liberal-leaning younger voters that could flip even Red states Blue in ways that suppression and gerrymandering can't stop. 

It's one big reason why the Republicans doubled-down anyway: They figured that the 2028 demographic shift was unstoppable, so they worked in the short-term to dominate Congress and the White House to ensure the one thing that could counter that Blue shift - a Far Right Supreme Court - would be in place to prevent the full liberalization of America that would undo everything they've done since Reagan's tenure.

In the short term, the Far Right won. In the long term, the bill for all the damage they've done - the racism, the deficits, the corruption made worse by trump's rise to power - is coming due. This middling, frustrating midterm fiasco for the Republicans is the beginning of the end of the control they've had on the public discourse since 1980.

And it terrifies them. The Far Right Republican base have a pretty good idea what these midterms mean, and the panic showing through their ongoing performative outrage is going to get worse.

The Wingnuts are about to double-down on the previous double-down to turn crazier than they've ever been. Stay safe, people.

And Io Saturnalia!

A Dark Truth About American Partisanship

When Election night happened, one of the arguments about how bad everything was going turned on the fact that the voter turnout seemed LOWER than the 2012 Election. Arguments were made about how UNPOPULAR the candidates were and how it doomed voter turnout to give Trump an Electoral College victory by eke-ing out better turnout in the mid-sized battleground states.

Thing was, it was too soon to make that claim. This election cycle had a ton of voters do so by Absentee ballot and mail-ins, which required hand counting and took longer than expected even after you threw in the time for recounts. As a result, the "low" turnout actually kept ticking upward with more ballots confirmed...

So by now, the weekend before the actual Electoral College does their thing, we do have a realistic accounting of the results for 2016.

Clinton: 65,844,594 votes
Trump: 62,979,616 votes
Other: 8,137,687 votes

Here's the thing about the 2012 turnout:

Obama: 65,915,795 votes
Romney: 60,933,504 votes
Other: 2,236,110 votes

Notice anything? The 2016 turnout kinda matched the 2012 voter turnout. Granted, Trump got about 2 million more voters than Romney did, but Romney also got a slightly higher percentage (47) of actual votes than Trump (45). The real difference was the third-party voter turnout, but that was more to the Libertarians with Johnson getting 4.4 million of those votes with a 3 percent share.

We can nitpick at the numbers and the results, but here's what I'm getting from these comparisons:

Our elections are no longer about the issues, the elections are no longer even about the candidates: the elections are about partisan turnout.

Let's face it. Both major parties had up for nomination two of the most unliked candidates in modern times. NOBODY running for the highest office had these kinds of Unfavorable numbers (polling in the mid to upper 60 percent "hate him/her"). And yet... Hillary did just about as well as the popular and charismatic Obama (who suffered the same amount of mudslinging if not more from the GOP) and the blatantly vulgar Trump did slightly better than Romney (whose biggest sin is his personality being more plastic than a Lego toy store). Trump is still polling under 50 percent on the popularity charts, which is rare for a "winner" heading into the inauguration: Even Bush the Lesser had a Favorable bump from Americans in general wishing him "good luck" at the start of his tenure.

The issues can go sit in a corner and sulk, but the polling showed solid majorities of people wanted immigration reform (that didn't involve mass arrests) and wanted Obamacare and wanted their Medicare and Social Security untouched... and they still voted for the Republicans in large enough numbers to guarantee that party held both Congress and the White House, and to assuredly DESTROY each and every one of those items on the checklist.

No, what's happening here is clear evidence of the political divisions that have polarized our nation. The voters - the citizens who are paying attention to who's doing what in government - are now so set in their voting preferences that nothing - not the issues, not hated candidates - can change their views.

Even with the all-too-obvious clues that Trump was IS a tiny-fingered vulgarian of the highest caliber - his caught-on-tape rant of "Grab Em By the Pussy" should have driven his sorry sexist ass into exile on the furthest island in the South Pacific - a solid number of "Christian" holier-than-thou "clean thoughts chum" Republicans still voted for sexual assaulter to represent them. I've noted before there were clear factions among the GOP base - the ones who cheered Trump on vs. the ones who held their noses and closed their eyes and clapped slowly in the background - and yet when the time came those "clean" and clear-headed Republicans still voted for the vulgarian because they honestly cannot cross the aisle to vote for someone else or even leave their choice blank in protest.

Even with Hillary suffering hit after hit from the media over inflated (and FAKE) "scandals" like her emails, even with her coping against a Far Left Progressive group still pining for Bernie Sanders, even with enough voters thinking to themselves "do we WANT another four years of Clinton culture warfare"... she STILL got as many votes as Obama had in 2012. Granted, she didn't get the voter percentage, but the numbers still prove the solid base of Democratic voters sided with her despite the trepidation and worry. Being hated wasn't the reason why she lost (she lost due to voter suppression in key states, and to minor shifts in voter turnout in others).

The Democrats could have run the Second Coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the voter turnout would have stayed roughly the same. The Republicans could have run the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan and the voter turnout would have stayed roughly the same.

Either party could have run a dead dog as their candidate and the voter turnout would have stayed roughly the same.

Because we're locked in now. There are so few voters who have the willpower to shift their opinions and their choices in any way to affect the outcomes. Nearly everybody has made up their mind and are rooting for THEIR team no matter the circumstances.

There may be generational differences - older voters Republican, younger voters Democrats - but that didn't mean much now and it won't until the demographic shift (I *was* hoping it'd have been now, but it's looking like 2020 or 2024) really finally kicks on. There may be voters who actually care about the issues, but they had no impact on this election cycle as they were drowned out by the partisans who place party above the people. And there's no sign of that changing for the next cycle.

Unless there's a massive economic or natural disaster. Unless the voters - especially the White majority voters - are directly impacted by the destruction of the incoming Legion of Doom. And even then I wouldn't doubt that the voters would stick by their party to the bitter end. And by then we're likely seeing a body count of innocent lives ruined by the failure of our voters to actually step back and realize "HOLY SHIT WE JUST LET A CON ARTIST INTO THE WHITE HOUSE."

We as a nation are no longer capable of choosing our candidates with any rational or sensible guidelines. Because of that, we're not going to get any genuine reforms and policy shifts we need to keep ourselves educated, or employed, or healthy, or improved.

It's no longer the elections than decide our nation's fate. It's the disasters we let happen because we've let the parties make the choices for us.

Clarifying a Question: WHY Are There So Many Candidates Running On the Republican Presidency Ticket?

(Update: hello to the Crooks and Liars visitors from Mike's Blog Round-Up!  Welcome back, hope you enjoy stopping by to read my offerings.  Please stick around, and I wanna mention I just finished writing my take on the likelihood of a rigged GOP convention this coming July 2016...)

Screen-captured from Wednesday night's GOP debate (via Adam Baldwin):

I wrote a little earlier about "why" we have so many candidates - still about 16 even with Rick "Oops" Perry dropping out - on the Republican roster for the 2016 primaries.  I focused on the mechanics of "why": the simple fact that the Citizens United ruling makes it possible for fringe candidates to survive longer during a prolonged campaign than ever before.  I focused on the practicalities of "why": as long as you're a candidate on the list, people are paying attention to you, inviting you to the Talking Head shows, and creating a foundation of keeping yourself on the speaking circuit gravy train for life.  There's also the fact that as long as there's no clear front-runner - or the front-runner is so reviled by the party leadership (Hi, Donald!) that the party will block him from ever winning - it's in everyone's favor to stick in the race (wow Rick Perry did you screw this one up) and vie for the front-runner spot or at least a spoiler spot that guarantees you a seat at the money table.

I didn't really get into the psychology of "why" there are so many candidates this time around.  Or the politics of it.  Let me try here.

So, let's re-ask the question: Why are there so many candidates among the Republicans running for the Presidential nomination for 2016?

It's more than just making a cynical play for prestige, recognition, money.  There has to be even a sliver of belief among the candidates that each of them thinks he/she has a legitimate shot at winning the nomination and thence a shot at winning the biggest job title of all.  Even the ones who aren't doing a good job of it - Hi, Jeb! Hi, Scott - are running because a lot of people within their circle (themselves included) convinced them they had a shot.

It has to do with intra-party discipline.  And how now there is no longer much of it.

A political party forms when enough people of a like-minded persuasion organizes around shared beliefs.  Historically, our two-party system founded around two economic viewpoints - mercantile vs. agrarian - with differing positions on which takes priority - the mercantile/business class preferred a strong federal government, the agrarian class preferred more state/local powers that protected farmers' interests.  Other issues - foreign policy, social policy, technology, theology - coalesced around them as the Democrats and the Federalists/Whigs/Republicans became the two parties we know today.

It helped that our elective system - a winner-takes-all for Congressional districts and an Electoral College for Presidents that answered to winning states over the general population - encourages to this day only two parties to thrive.

Thing is, even within a party there are factions: certain issues that take priority over other issues; or internal debates over how exactly to resolve those issues (in a liberal, moderate, or conservative way).

For Republicans, the factions (up until the 1990s) mostly hewed to:

• Pro-Business (few regulations, free markets, praise to the allmighty CEO),
• Foreign Policy (a realist, trade-oriented stance with other nations, albeit with an isolationist - or Monroe Document - bent),
• Social conservatism (small-c conservatism that viewed a paternalistic status quo based on non-Evangelical Christian beliefs).

What kept these factions in line with the party - both of them - was the overall moderate or centrist viewpoints of the party's leadership that played to the liberal or conservative leanings on certain issues at one time but not another.  Back when both Democrats and Republicans had active liberal and conservative wings, this helped maintain the balance (and it helped with bipartisan legislation over the decades).

Other methods of maintaining party loyalty - doling out favors, controlling who got nominated for offices at state and congressional levels - were also used.  In Congress this used to mean control committee assignments, and of the purse-strings for pet projects/pork barrel spending.

In the Republican Party, at least this modern (post-1992) incarnation, a lot of those rules changed as the power of the factions changed.

With the hunt for "soft" RINOs (AKA Republicans-In-Name-Only) after the end of Bush the Elder's tenure, the conservatives within the GOP removes one half of the balancing act within the factions making up the whole party.  They drove out anyone who didn't agree to cut taxes across the board; they drove out anyone "liberal" or "un-Christian" on social issues like abortion and gay rights; they drove out anyone with a multinational view of diplomacy, in favor of a foreign policy that revolved around an aggressive unilateral stance against foe and ally alike.

A seemingly honest reform effort in the 1990s - by the new Republican leadership that rose in response to Bill Clinton - to end certain acts of favoritism such as committee seating assignments took away a major carrot party leaders in Congress used to control their back-benchers.

The Republican Party no longer handles discipline, in some respects they haven't since 1994: they've given that power over to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.  As a result, the elected officials most likely to stand as party leaders pay allegiance to Roger Ailes and Rush: those two un-elected men - among others - who control the messaging for conservative dogma, and dominate the audiences those elected officials need to garner votes (and keep their cushy jobs).

As a result, the factions that make up the Republican Party tilted exceedingly Right-Wing to the point where there are no ideological differences within the party itself.  Certain figures may speak or act on specific issues disparate from the GOP party line, but it's usually on just that one (pet project) issue.  Everybody toes the party platform because that's how Fox News can sell it every night.

And with the homogenization (unity) of the message, it suddenly made it harder (yes) for one specific person to become a standard-bearer with the factions within the party.

When the factions had to bicker over the issues, it made it easy to rally members around leaders on that issue and allow those leaders - who tended to be charismatic or well-informed - to personalize the debate, make it easier for voters to identify the person to the party.  This method also created a form of meritocracy where seniority of an effective politician translated into leadership.  Someone who'd gotten elected multiple times arguing well on that issue earned that leadership role.

As a result, the Republicans were able to over the years raise significant leaders to control the party both at the podium and behind the scenes.  Sometimes it would boil down to just one person (say, Robert Taft in the 1940s), but often there were several at one time: someone strong on foreign policy, someone strong on domestic issues, someone strong on finance, and often someone else on each topic arguing a different tack to provide honest debate (say, Goldwater vs. Rockefeller in the 1960s and 1970s).

When it came to Presidential primaries, those leaders would be the likely candidates (or a proxy who ran with that leader's blessing): as a result, most of the campaigns would orbit around four to six of them, making it easier to determine which candidate (and which issues) would win that election cycle.  It was rare to see more run in any given election cycle: 1980 was packed up to ten candidates due to incumbent President Carter's weakness and the awareness of the nation's mood shifting to a post-New Deal conservatism.  And even then, it was a clear two-candidate race between Reagan and Bush the Elder.

But today for 2016, lacking any genuine differences between candidates on the issues, it means ANYONE can stand up and declare him/herself a standard-bearer not just on specific issues but for the whole party.

Worse, it means that anyone within the Republican Party itself that's not even an elected official - hi, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson and Donald Trump - can rise to claim the standard-bearer role without ever proving themselves capable of winning any election in the first place.  The entire meaning of merit - of experience and leadership on politics and issues - no longer has value.

And once again to note: the Citizens United ruling about uncontrolled campaign spending by third parties (SuperPACs) made it so that candidates no longer have to rely on the party for financial help: a candidate can rely on a single uber-rich backer who wants his special issues solved his way (which may harm the Republicans' overall popularity with regular voters).  Candidates can also rely on nation-wide fund-raising efforts that don't have to go through the party.  At this point, the RNC is a vestigial organ, much like the earlobe or the appendix: it's only real value is that they allow the candidates the means to get their names on the ballot.

As a result, we've got the most number of candidates running for the Republican ticket that has ever been seen (when Perry was in it, that made seventeen (!) names on the list).  And while some of them are clearly nowhere near an honest chance of winning, as long as they can pay their bills they are in this thing muddying the waters and adding to the noise.

Let's look again at the natural factions that exist within the Republican Party, although now there's four instead of three:

• Pro-Business (has changed the least, still pushing for deregulation and tax cuts, essentially what passes for the Establishment leadership today)
• Foreign Policy (now a neo-conservative fringe that seeks an aggressive stance to the point of unilateral wars against "enemy states")
• Social Conservatism (now a Big-C Conservatism that follows an absolutist evangelical approach to Christianity)
• National Populism (a mixing of various elements from the other three factions that created its own Nativist and anti-Establishment world-view)

Rather than having one or two prominent figures in each faction, there are several in each.  Making it worse is that as the Republicans merged every issue into a broad conservative agenda, the candidates have to pander across the board like never before: they cannot indulge in being "just" a tax-cut candidate or a "Praise Jesus" candidate (back in 1988 for example there were clear distinctions between George HW Bush and Bob Dole and Pat Robertson) they have to be both (even when those issues really do not blend well).

As a result, nobody can just say that Jeb! Bush is a Pro-Business candidate because he's also deep into the Social Conservatism range (think Terri Schiavo) as well as the Neocon Foreign Policy stance (due to having to defend his brother George W.'s debacles with the War on Terror and an unneeded Iraqi invasion).

And none of these candidates are willing to step down and back a more charismatic figure to ensure their issues hold sway.  (Also because, honestly, few of these jokers are charismatic enough to pull it off)

And this means there is no one true standard-bearer around which the party can rally.  Not even the clear Establishment name in Jeb!, who is right now drowning in the shallow end of the candidate pool in single-digit polling numbers.

If I had to break down the candidates by faction, it wouldn't be a clean break for most:

• Pro-Business: Jeb! Bush, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry
• Foreign Policy: Lindsey Graham, Jeb! Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul (interestingly not as a neocon that dominates this issue nowadays)
• Social Conservatism: Jeb! Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio (except on immigration), Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry
• National Populism: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz

Not a single stand-out figure for any faction, save for Donald Trump: the only candidate polling in double-digit leads over everyone else.

It is telling that the candidates right now in the Republican lead - Trump, Carson, with Fiorina nearing the top of the pack - are the ones with least experience and merit within the party ranks.  They are the ones pandering best to the primary base, all because the party platform itself - drawn up and marketed by a conservative media more interested in creating outrage to generate ratings over actual governance - ignores and despises such expertise.

This is a problem for the Republicans and not the Democrats by the by because the Democrats did NOT go through any ideology purge like the Republicans did with their RINO hunting.  As a result, there are clear distinctions between factions among the Democrats now to where only a handful of candidates - Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and maybe Joe Biden - have a clear reason to run.  And right now the race is clearly a two-choice race between Hillary and Bernie.

For the Republicans, you are not going to see any clear distinctions any time soon.  Not even when the primaries kick in for real and candidates actually start winning and losing votes.  We may see another low-tier candidate fail out due to lack of funds, but none of them really stand out as an obvious to-fail name.  Right now, all of them profit by staying in the race just a little bit longer... and a little bit more...

'Cause the candidates aren't really running for the Presidency.

The candidates are running for the next Fox News hosting gig.

About the Constitution: It IS a Feature, It IS a Bug In the System, It ISN'T Fatal

One of the blogger/editors you need to read often (and who doesn't publish often enough) is The Atlantic's Yoni Appelbaum.  When he publishes something, it's a well-researched, citation-backed article delving into a particular issue and breaking down the arguments in a concise, readable way.

Appelbaum's current article is on a topic I hold dear: our nation's history and the founding of the Constitution that makes the United States of America (and its three branches of federal government) what it is.

To Appelbaum, it's a flawed and fragile jewel of sorts, one that the Founding Fathers failed to design as a durable foundation:

The system isn’t working. But even as the two parties agree on little else, both still venerate the Constitution. Politicians sing its praises. Public officials and military officers swear their allegiance. Members of Congress keep miniature copies in their pockets. The growing dysfunction of the government seems only to have increased reverence for the document; leading figures on both sides of the aisle routinely call for a return to constitutional principles.

What if this gridlock is not the result of abandoning the Constitution, but the product of flaws inherent in its design?

He's getting into the Checks And Balances aspect of our government, and primarily into the splitting of power between a President (executive) and Congress (legislative).  (The Judiciary's role as Judge/Arbitrator between the other two branches in this matter is limited)  He focuses on the Presidency in particular, a game-breaking political force that could (and has) wield remarkable unilateral authority when needed.

When, in 1985, a Yale political scientist named Juan Linz compared the records of presidential and parliamentary democracies, the results were decisive. Not every parliamentary system endured, but hardly any presidential ones proved stable. “The only presidential democracy with a long history of constitutional continuity is the United States,” Linz wrote in 1990. This is quite an uncomfortable form of American exceptionalism.

Linz’s findings suggest that presidential systems suffer from a large, potentially fatal flaw. In parliamentary systems, governmental deadlock is relatively rare; when prime ministers can no longer command legislative support, the impasse is generally resolved by new elections. In presidential systems, however, contending parties must eventually strike a deal. Except sometimes, they don’t. Latin America’s presidential democracies have tended to oscillate between authoritarianism and dysfunction...

To Appelbaum, the flaw is that there exists the possibility of deadlock.  The Founders did intend, from what we've read of their arguments on the matter, to use deadlocks as a means of putting the brakes on reckless legislation or executive actions that would otherwise occur in a parliamentary system.  Also, to use the threat (or reality) of deadlocks to enforce compromise between the sides to ensure enough people are satisfied (or dissatisfied, which also works) with the results.

The flaw for Appelbaum is allowing those deadlocks to evolve into outright obstructionism.  Something we're seeing today as one branch of government - the Legislative - collapses in on itself in a wave of obstruction over partisan rancor.

Until recently, American politicians have generally made the compromises necessary to govern. The trouble is that cultures evolve. As American politics grows increasingly polarized, the goodwill that oiled the system and helped it function smoothly disappears. In 2013, fights over the debt ceiling and funding for the Affordable Care Act very nearly produced a constitutional crisis. Congress and the president each refused to yield, and the government shut down for 16 days. In November 2014, claiming that he was “acting where Congress has failed,” President Obama announced a series of executive actions on immigration. House Republicans denounced him as “threatening to unravel our system of checks and balances” and warned that they would cut off funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless Obama’s actions were rolled back. For months, the two sides faced off, pledging fealty to the Constitution even as they exposed its flaws. Only at the 11th hour did the House pull back from the edge.

Strikingly, in these and other recent crises, public opinion has tended to favor the president. As governments deadlock, executives are inclined to act unilaterally, thereby deepening crises...

Appelbaum is correct in that our current political malaise is based on the structural flaws of our Constitution: there are no emergency powers to override one branch of government when one party driven by reactionary dogma controls that branch and abuses the rules into a paralyzing gridlock.

As a side note: It's interesting that Appelbaum is arguing about the disproportionate powers of the Executive branch in times of deadlock, but that the causes of our current deadlock woes are all on a one-party-rule Congress refusing - including excessive vacationing as outright job avoidance - to do its job.  I can see where he's concerned that the President in these circumstances could say "to hell with it" and go into Full Dictator mode like a Caesar of old, but the core problem is still with a lazy and broken Congress... Again, I digress.

However, I disagree with Appelbaum on one point: the flaw in our government's Constitution isn't fatal.  It's a serious weakness, granted, but it's one that can be fixed.

It can be fixed because as much as things change, there is always (except for one exception, hello 1860) some moment or some twist in the ongoing historical narrative that is the present day that breaks the gridlock.  I'm not talking some kind of Deus Ex Machina, but about an external or internal shift of events that "wakes up" the political elites - the patrician class that holds the real power in the nation - into making the necessary reforms to end that crisis and ensure future crises do not return.  I'm thinking back to such moments as the Progressive Era at the start of the 20th Century which was a response to the decades of Gilded Age greed and social inaction on women's rights; back to the New Deal era reforming federal government into a regulator of our fiscal and business needs; back to the Civil Rights reforms in the 1960s to end a century of Jim Crow segregation.

It can be fixed because when this happened before - when the system broke down enough during the Civil War - the majority of Americans still worked for repairing and rebinding the nation back to what it was.  Partly to rub the salt in the wounds of the secessionists who lost, but mostly because Americans saw (still see) America as a whole and unified nation despite the disagreements.

And it can be fixed because our nation's Founders were smart enough and hopeful enough to establish the means to Amend the Constitution itself.  That is a step of Last Resort, of course, and difficult to manage.  However, if the crisis becomes that obvious, our nation has shown in the past it is capable of making the effort to amend the flaw and get government working again.  That the amendment process even exists is an example of faith: the men of power 200-plus years ago trusted future generations to see to making repairs when they were needed.

There will come a moment when the gridlock ends.  The causes of this current crisis - the unresponsive House designed by rampant gerrymandering, a Republican Party consumed by hardening Far Right ideologies against women's health rights and immigration - can't last forever: simple demographics will see to part of that by 2020, and a growing state-level push for election reforms will see an end to gerrymandered "safe" districts sooner rather than later.  The restrictive limits of an obstructionist faction historically have a habit of collapsing on themselves (the purity purges), and we are getting signs of the Far Right Republicans about to implode over their inability to compromise even among themselves.

There is going to come a point when the need for reform is so obvious that every level of society from rich to poor will agree to its passage.  And the ones who refuse to see it either remove themselves from the equation to ensure its passage or else pursue a destructive course that ends up hurting themselves (although others can get hurt in the process).

A lot of this doesn't even involve the Amendment process, although once reformers gain power in Congress and the White House (and enough states) they are likely to codify their reforms with an appropriately-worded amendment to ensure the safety of our nation's well-being to future generations.

Future generations who will likely complain about the deadlocks in government they're facing when it's their turn to question what's broken in the Constitution and what needs to be done about it.  Heh.

I'm not being flippant about what Appelbaum writes: he is correct in that our current political woes are due to failings in the Constitution and that there's a possibility these failings can get worse.  I'm noting we've been able to fix and reform the Constitution before and that we're able to do so again.

I'm just saying there are alternatives to letting it all fail: I'm just saying we need to start fighting to get those fixes in place, and removing the blockage of obstructionism causing damage to our nation.

I am, again, saying we need to stop voting into office the party responsible for all this obstruction in the first place.  Yup.  Please please please, stop voting Republican.

Trying To Rank Scandals, Phase Three: Separating Schadenfreude From Serious Scandal

The scandal of the last two weeks - the ongoing BridgeGate matter of Chris Christie, which is becoming more like BullyGate well heck BullyGate's taken by the Dolphins, what are we gonna call the blocking of relief funds to Hoboken - has a parallel scandal erupting in another state (Virginia) as I write tonight: the ongoing federal corruption probe into former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife has led to 14 counts of corruption handed down by the grand jury investigation.

McDonnell addressed media hours after a federal grand jury delivered a 14-count indictment against the governor and his wife, Maureen. The charges stem from state and federal inquiries into the couple's relationship with a prominent donor, Jonnie R. Williams, the head of a dietary supplements manufacturer. Williams showered the McDonnells and their family with gifts and favorable loans, but the former governor insisted all have been repaid and none of the gifts were meant as a way to curry favor.

Based on the previous article I wrote, these is seriously damaging to McDonnell's political career: Corruption scandals hurt more than any of the others (Financial, Sexual, Political).

The charges represent a stunning fall from grace for McDonnell, the Republican governor from a swing state that doubles as a political seat of power. Mitt Romney considered the governor as a potential running mate in 2012, before the 2013 trial of a former executive chef for McDonnell on unrelated charges unearthed details about the governor's relationship with Williams.

McDonnell's early response to this has been to avoid blame by pointing out he never did favors in exchange for all these gifts, and arguing that if what he did was truly criminal the federal prosecutors would have to arrest every other politician from Obama on down.  I'm slightly surprised he didn't outright blame his political opponents or any "vast liberal conspiracy".

Because, let's be fair, the ones most likely to push any criminal or corruption investigation would be your political opponents.

This is THE problem with creating an honest-to-goodness ranking system for political scandals: It's that there is a bias one way or another over each and every scandal (and inflated non-scandal) when they erupt.  Even when there is a legitimate crime taking place, like covering up illegal wiretapping, or selling arms to Iran and then using that money to fund rebel forces in Central America, or outing a covert CIA operative as political payback: there is a bias to the force that pushes those investigations into the open.

And it's not exactly wrong for an opposition party or faction to be obsessed with finding fault with the person or party in charge.  Just look to those nations with one-party or authoritarian regimes (cough China cough): without an outside faction with some legitimacy and ability to investigate, corrupt forces within that one party will remain unchecked until serious disaster happens. And by then - with hundreds if not thousands dead, or with a government bank bled dry - it'd be too late.  This is the one advantage democratic institutions have: opposition parties help keep the other parties (relatively) honest, or at least give the disgruntled suffering masses another banner to rally to.

The problem with a partisan investigation is the schadenfreude that propels it, the malicious joy the opposition forces are feeling whenever their hated rival(s) are stewing in a hell of his/her/their own making.  That schadenfreude - that desire to humiliate the suspected wrong-doer not only for the crime committed but for merely existing - may drive the investigation into improper actions all its own.

What happened to Bill Clinton is a perfect example.  By 1992 there were legitimate questions into Bill and Hillary's financial dealings in land developments, well enough that by 1993 a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate.  The original investigator had been appointed by Clinton's AG (Janet Reno), but the courts determined there was a conflict of interest and so appointed Ken Starr, who was scrupulous enough to have served as a judge but was partisan (conservative Republican).  Driven and supported by anti-Clinton factions both in private and in Congress, Starr dug into every rumor and every misdeed in an attempt to get "something" on Clinton, even when it didn't relate to Whitewater (or to the Vincent Foster suicide, which was included in Starr's investigation).  In the end, all Starr could turn up was a college-age intern named Lewinsky who had an adulterous affair with the married President.  That was pretty much all Starr and the Republicans had on Clinton when Congress pushed for impeachment.  All it did was make the Republicans look like idiots and haters to the majority of Americans, and Clinton left office unimpeached and (still) popular.  All because Clinton's attackers overreached.

To a lesser extent, the investigation into the Valerie Plame reveal has a partisan edge as well.  A serious security breach occurred when one (or more) White House officials leaked to various columnists that the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who criticized Bush the Lesser's assertions that Saddam Hussein had secured weapons-grade uranium, was working for the CIA (implying that Wilson was siding with the CIA, which opposed Bush and Cheney's assertions about Iraqi WMD efforts, because of who his wife was).  Problem is, revealing a covert agent (No Official Cover, or NOC) is a serious federal felony (doing so has gotten people killed).  The investigations got as high up the chain of command as Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff.  The far left - which opposed the Iraqi invasion, and was horrified by Bush the Lesser's entire administration - openly pined for the grand jury probe headed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to line up every possible suspect - from Cheney to Rove to even Bush himself - for indictment.  Just Google (tm) search the word "Fitzmas": there was literally a high level of giddiness among the liberal columnists that the Plame investigation would bring an end to the Bush/Cheney regime.  It ended up indicting just one person - Libby - while letting Rove (who was caught lying multiple times to the FBI) and Richard Armitage (revealed to be the one who DID leak Plame's employment) and Cheney (whose office benefited most from destroying the CIA's credibility) off the hook.  The best that could be said about Fitzgerald's efforts is that he didn't let the schadenfreude get the better of his investigation: but it was there, at least in the media coverage.

What's going on right now with Obama's administration is another example.  There's been an obsession by the GOP House - alongside their far right media supporters - to investigate (almost) every little thing that has happened and is happening.  Rep. Darrell Issa, head of the Congressional Oversight committee, has been pursuing a handful of "scandals" - an IRS regional office investigating partisan superPACs like Tea Party organizations, the failure of security at the Benghazi embassy that left four dead, a gun-smuggling operation involving ATF that got out of control - that most observers (both Right and Left) deem as attempts to get impeachment proceedings established.  But Issa's investigations, even after months (now years) of digging, have led nowhere: official investigations into all three haven't turned up the "holy grail" of evidence that Obama had a hand in any of them, or even that Obama's major allies (Hillary Clinton (again), AG Holder) were complicit or committed crimes.  What's driving Issa's investigations is the hatred the Far Right have for Obama, to the point where the Republicans are convinced that Obama is guilty of all of these things regardless of the uncovered facts and that all they need is the flimsiest thread (my Shoelace Hypothesis) they can find to stop him.  That partisan need is blinding the Far Right, making them cry Wolf every hour of every day.

So the big question: how can we separate schadenfreude - worse, partisan anger - from what's deemed scandalous?  How can we establish a truthful measurement of a scandal and its importance that's not blinded by political opposition?  What can we agree on is a true scandal and not a witch-hunt?

I'll save that for Phase Four...

Andrew Sullivan Thinks it's Petty to Punish Wilson

Let us not look at the rebuke of Rep. Joe (if that IS his real name) Wilson in terms of politics, but in terms of his actual behavior.

He acted rudely during a formal presentation. Let us not consider the location - Congress - as a place of political discourse and instead consider it as a workplace, or a school auditorium.

If a teenager disrupted or acted rudely during a formal presentation, the school administration has to punish him. Not because it is petty but because the school can't function if students are allowed to disrupt events in any way.

If an employee disrupted or acted rudely during a formal orientation or meeting, the upper management has to discipline that employee, because again the workplace can't function if disruptions like that are allowed. Personal experience bears this out: a low-level employee at my previous workplace made snarky and uncalled-for remarks about a guest speaker during an annual orientation, and that employee wasn't an employee two weeks later because of it. It wasn't pettiness: it was necessary.

If a Congressman acts the way Rep. Wilson does, and is not rebuked or punished, then not only will that Congressman continue to act that way we will have more and more Congressmen acting that way. And yes let's please consider the worse-case scenario that unpunished behavior will get worse (when shall we start seeing congressmen carrying canes, hint hint). And please also consider Wilson's behavior since then. His apology to Obama afterward is turning out to be weak tea: Wilson is selling t-shirts now promoting his 'stand' against Obama, for God's sake. That 'apology' of his now reeks of insincereness.

If you think that Wilson getting rebuked is partisan politics, then you're thinking exactly like Wilson and his fellow far-right GOP hacks: that it's all politics, that it's all fair game, that punishments are a ticket to martyrdom. You're not thinking like a manager of a workplace, or a high school principal who has to say "This is it, this is the line of common decency and acceptable behavior. This line, and no crossing it."

We've lost all common sense regarding acceptable public behavior. Is Congress not allowed to try and reset the guidelines again?