36 percent of a democracy
by Tom Sullivan
If as our messaging gurus advise, progressives’ goal should be to force opponents to publicly defend their noxious beliefs, then Hillary Clinton’s advocacy for automatic voter registration this week sets a tone we can only hope others from her party will echo going forward. If uber-patriots on the right believe America is the world’s greatest democracy, fine. They should support policies that encourage Americans to act as if that’s true, instead of locking in voting restrictions that help ensure we are only 36 percent of a democracy. Democracy is like freedom, isn’t it? More is better?
Writing for Washington Monthly, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin believe a big hurdle to a more progressive politics is the mistrust of government Republicans have carefully cultivated:
Much of the blame can be heaped on an obstructionist right blocking policies designed to help working families and on the priorities of conservatives in Congress and state legislatures seeking to advance the agenda of the wealthy. But progressives’ own deficiencies in articulating a vision of government that links collective action to individual empowerment and opportunity, and in defending the institutions of government from the predatory influence of outside interests, has also contributed to the steep decline in public support for government.
Nancy LeTourneau (also at Washington Monthly), reminds us that those obstructionist policies aren’t given the sanitizing sunlight they so richly deserve. She quotes former Republican Hill staffer Mike Lofgren’s 2011 confessional:
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn (“Government is the problem,” declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).
They are still obstructing, as Jonathan Bernstein reported for Bloomberg. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to block the president’s appointments, “slow-walking dozens of judges, ambassadors, members of government boards and everybody else”:
This isn’t about the specific nominees. Mostly, this is just an expression of contempt for the man in the Oval Office — and, really, contempt for the Constitution and the senators’ oath of office.
It is the Senate’s duty to defeat judicial nominees it believes (within reason) are outside the mainstream, and it absolutely should exercise the leverage it is given by the Constitution to secure influence over executive branch departments and agencies through confirmations. That’s not what’s happening here. McConnell and the Republicans are undermining the constitutional order by simply ignoring their responsibilities. That’s a big deal, and the press and anyone who cares about a functional government should be angry.
As Anat Shenker-Osorio said recently, problems have a source. If we don’t provide an origin story for voters, people will fill one in for themselves. That is what Lofgren was getting at. (And what I hear regularly from relations: it’s all “dirty politics.”)
Stanley Greenberg explains that Democrats will not be able to win back control of Congress unless they can woo back working-class whites and white unmarried women. Voters are well aware of how screwed up things are in Washington. They want it fixed:
What really strengthens and empowers the progressive economic narrative, however, is a commitment to reform politics and government. That may seem ironic or contradictory, since the narrative calls for a period of government activism. But, of course, it does make sense: Why would you expect government to act on behalf of the ordinary citizen when it is clearly dominated by special interests? Why would you expect people who are financially on the edge, earning flat or falling wages and paying a fair amount of taxes and fees, not to be upset about tax money being wasted or channeled to individuals and corporations vastly more wealthy and powerful than themselves?
We have arrived at a tipping point at the outset of the 2016 election cycle, where the demand to reform government is equal to or stronger than the demand to reform the economy. More accurately, reform can make it possible to use governmental policies to help the middle class. In short, it is reform first.
But included as part of that narrative is the message that the people best qualified to fix Washington are not those committed to monkey wrenching it. As long as the public believes nothing will change, we will still remain 36 percent of a democracy.