About That Constitution...

The 112th Congress, and in particular its Republican leaders, plans to read the entire United States Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives. They might also be planning to require bills to list the parts of the Constitution they rely on for authority. The idea seems to be that these provisions will ensure that people don't pass unconstitutional laws because, you know, things like the individual mandate happen because of sloppiness and not knowing the Constitution.

They are also planning to pass state bankruptcy laws that prohibit states from being forced to raise taxes by bankruptcy judges, with the aim of forcing states to default on their pension contracts with unions. And they plan to pass laws stripping birthright citizenship from the children of illegal immigrants. Ahem:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

 - Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

- Amendment 14, Section 1, Clause 1

I'm not sure of the bankruptcy thing is unconstitutional, though it's at least as marginal a case as the individual mandate. Stripping citizenship from "anchor babies" by plain statute, however, is one of the most extravagantly unconstitutional things you could do. But remember, it's Republicans who respect our Constitution!

 

The Kennedys

It is currently being said that when Representative Patrick Kennedy (my Congressman at school!) leaves office this January, it will be the first time no Kennedy has held a federal elected office in over 60 years. The date people would mention is January 3rd, 1947, the date John Fitzgerald Kennedy took his seat as the Representative of Massachusetts' 11th district. This is factually incorrect, totally 100% wrong.

The supposed chronology is this: John Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946, 1948, and 1950, and then to the Senate in 1952 and 1958. Then he was elected President in 1960. Edward Kennedy was elected Senator from Massachusetts in 1962, 1964, 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2006, dying in 2009. Patrick Kennedy was elected Representative from Rhode Island in 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008, and will leave office in January. But there's a problem with all of this.

The Elusive Trifecta

No one has ever held a Constitutionally-defined post in each of the three branches of the United States Government. I consider those offices to be President, Vice-President, Senator, Congressman, and Supreme Court Justice. No one has ever held one in each Branch, and nor, obviously, has anyone ever held all five.

I began to notice this fact a few years ago, just scanning over the lists of Presidents and Vice-Presidents in my mind. I just now confirmed it by checking all Supreme Court Justices through history: none of them have been both a Member of Congress and either President or Vice-President (indeed, none of them has been Vice-President at all!). Only William Howard Taft was both Chief Justice and President of the United States, and he was never in Congress.

The Palin Disaster/Spectacularity

There's a recent poll showing Sarah Palin trailing Obama 55-33 in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. When I saw that, my first thought was... whaaaaattttt? That just can't be right, can it? The last time a Presidential election saw a popular vote margin of 22 points was, well, Nixon '72; also LBJ '64 and FDR '36. These are historic landslides we're talking about. So I was pretty skeptical.

But a couple of new polls from the good folks at PublicPolicyPolling makes me skeptical of my skepticism. Specifically, Palin trailing Obama by 14 points in North Carolina and Florida. When you put it that way, 22 points nationally just isn't that outlandish. So here's the 2012 map assuming Obama wins by 22 points and the swing is nationally uniform:

But of course, that's assuming a uniform national swing, an assumption on which Obama would win Washington, D.C. by over 100 points. Keeping in mind my previous discoveries about the counter-cyclical nature of big swing elections, I made up a scenario in which Obama beats Palin by 22 points that I thought was a little more realistic, i.e. pushing a lot of solid-blue states to the 65%-70% range and then making up what needed to be made up among the non-swing states. Here's what that ends up looking like:

Fun, huh? That's starting to resemble the great landslides of the past. Obama would win 518 EVs, with Palin taking home 20. Yeah, that's right: 20. Boy would this ever be fun...

The Paradox of the 111th Congress

Lily Ledbetter. SCHIP expansion. Biggest stimulus ever. Serve America Act. Credit CARD Act. Tobacco Prevention. Cash for Clunkers. Hate crimes inclusion for LGBT. Pay-Go. Health care reform. Student loan reform. Reform of veterans' care. Financial regulation. Small business jobs. Yet another round of (somewhat suckier) stimulus. DADT repeal. The START treaty. Sound familiar? These are the things the 111th Congress has gotten done. That's the biggest and best list of legislative accomplishments since at least the LBJ days.

But of course, we have the impression that this Congress represented a new step down the road to total gridlock and obstructionism and nothing ever getting done. Why might that be? I dunno, but it could be because...

One party had a 59-41 majority in both Houses of Congress!!!!!

Usually, when that happens, you expect that it will simply do Everything It Wants. And that's how it should be: both Houses of Congress are set up so that getting to that 18% majority is really, really hard. It represents a simply phenomenal victory, usually in multiple consecutive elections, and indeed, that's what the Democrats had. Between 2006 and 2008, 0 Democratic Senate seats changed hands, along with just 5 House seats (2 of which for flagrant corruption), while the Democrats picked up 14 Senate seats and 56 House seats. When that happens, and you have almost three-fifths of both Houses of Congress, the voters have spoken as plainly as voters ever speak that you ought to rule the roost for the next two years. And of course, here's another litany:

Bigger stimulus! Public option! Cap and trade! Stricter financial regulation! Ending the Bush tax cuts! Immigration reform! The DREAM ACt! Letting Guantanamo close! Employee free choice act! Repeal of DOMA!

That's an awfully long list of things that didn't get done in this Congress, despite the fact that most of them probably had 50 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House for the entire time. This is what we call a FAIL. And these are just the things that Congress considered doing, not the things it would've been nice if it had managed to do but it was clear from the beginning that it wasn't going to have the time to think about it.

And more to the point, I think it's instructive not just to look at legislative victories on paper but on the substance of the policies. Again, 59-41 majorities in both Houses, with some of the most liberal Democrats the Congress has ever seen. So, what were their Big Legislative Victories? A one-third tax cuts stimulus. Health-care reform that bent over backwards to keep the private insurers running the show. Financial regulation that didn't place any particularly hard-and-fast rules on banks. Tax cuts for the rich! A nuclear arms treaty with Russia. For god's sake, a small business jobs bill! These are not the priorities of liberal Democrats. Most of them were the priorities of mainstream Republicans fifteen years ago, and some of them were John McCain's priorities as recently as the day before he lost the election.

Now, some may look at this and say, yes, wonderful, so a lot got done but it was bipartisan! But if everything is always to be bipartisan no matter how resounding the electoral victories, then elections no longer matter. And if elections no longer matter, then we don't have a democracy. Maybe we have something else that is working for the time being, but it ain't democracy. Elections ought to matter, and the election of 2008 had a pretty resounding message. Voters elected a guy promising health-care reform with a strong public option, a cap-and-trade system to put a price on carbon emissions, and education reforms, and ideally comprehensive immigration reform if there was time left over. And they gave him the biggest legislative majorities anyone's seen in this country since Jimmy Carter (yeah, that Jimmy Carter). And he got... well, none of those things, really: he compromised out a debatably essential part of one of them, and just plain didn't get the other three.

This is how you reconcile the appearance of gridlock with the reality of accomplishment: in a sane legislative chamber with this kind of majority, we would have had a lot more get done. Something like what the 111th House of Representatives got done, and mind you, essentially none of the changes made to accommodate the Senate were because the median Senator wasn't on board with what the House passed.

About that "Encroaching National Power"

Tea Partiers are pushing a Constitutional Amendment that would let two-thirds of states vote to overturn/veto any Act of Congress. Needing to push back the invasions of the federal government and all that.

You guys know that James Madison wanted Congress to have a veto over all State laws, right? And that, uhhhh, not sure if y'all noticed, but we kind of fought a war about whether states are sovereign and get to nullify laws or not, and uh, the states-rights crowd, they lost. And in losing they were made to accept this thing called the 14th Amendment, see, and it makes it pretty abundantly clear that no, the states are not sovereign. And again, why do we give a damn?

Even from an antifederalist perspective, it's tricky to see what this does since it's states that elect Congress in the first place. Anything that passes Congress is going to be unlikely to be disliked by two-thirds of states, since you need at least half of Senators to pass a bill.

ALSO: Would the Tea Partiers please admit that they think our Constitution has some major flaws in it? Otherwise, why do they want to repeal Amendments 14 and 17 and add this one, which would radically alter the constitutional structure toward something which has never been even close to contemplated? All this talk about loving the Constitution is a load of bull; see here, specifically the last part.

On Tents

I usually have tremendous respect for the analytical skills of Charles Blow, but his latest column strikes me as being Just Plain Bad. It has two basic premises: the Democratic Party is becoming more and more the party of liberals, which in the short term alienates it from independents, and the liberals in the Democratic Party show a tendency toward "eating their own." Each argument has, as I see it, one fundamental problem: drawing lines through the electorate differently doesn't actually change the electorate, and the second argument is simply and utterly incorrect.

Limited Government: We Don't Have It

A rather well-cited, by now, post by libertarian Radley Balko asks we liberals whether, under our view of the Constitution, there's anything the federal government can't do, aside from those in the Bill of Rights. I think he ought to expand that exemption to include Article 1, Section 9, as well as, potentially, the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 21st Amendments, because those are all the places that put restrictions on what Congress can do. The idea is that if the government can force us to buy insurance under the power of the Commerce Clause, what is there it can't do? The exemption is carved out to make it clear he's talking about the "limited and enumerated powers" strategy toward limiting powers that's in the Constitution, and not the protected-rights strategy. There are responses to this question within its own framework, and I think I think there are things that the federal government can't do. But I'd like to ask him a question in return:

In your view, outside of the provisions of Article 1, Section 10, Articles 4, the Bill of Rights as incorporated by the 14th Amendment, and the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments, is there any limitation on what the entire governmental structure of this country can do? And if your answer is yes, then have you been paying attention?

In other words, nobody has ever maintained that our country has a system in which the power of government is limited by anything other than specific individual rights which are phrased as direct prohibitions against government action. Nobody. Federal power may be limited and enumerated, yes, but state power is plenary and includes every power not forbidden by the Constitution. States can require you to eat your broccoli, unless you can object to it under the 14th Amendment. The only things no part of our government may do are those things forbidden by the provisions I mention above. Article 1, Section 10 placed certain limitations (like no ex post facto laws) on state governments. Many of those things are also forbidden to Congress in Section 9, and are therefore simply off limits. Article 4 says that states mayn't deny citizens of other states the privileges and immunities of their own citizens, or ignore the judicial acts, records and proceedings of other states. The 13th Amendment prevents any part of government from having slavery. The 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments created distinctions on the basis of which the right to vote cannot be denied, by anyone. And the 14th Amendment, together with the Bill of Rights, means that no part of the government may abridge free exercise of religion, free speech, freedom of assembly, the press, or petition, nor establish religion; they may not (as of 2009) abridge the right to keep and bear arms (unduly), or quarter soldiers in your house in peace-time, or search and seize you unreasonably, or take life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or try you without a jury, or enact cruel and unusual punishments. And states at least, and probably also the federal government for some reason, cannot deny you the equal protection of the laws.

These are the only restrictions on what our government can do. Is there a particular philosophical reason, as of 2010 and not simply because it's the way we do it, for caring that some amount of the remaining power, which is not limited by any rule of enumeration, be given to the states and denied the federal government? Most of the time when people have made a fuss about caring about that, it's been for the purpose of keeping black people down. Other than that, do we still have a particularly good reason to mind exactly how much of the power of the government of the United States is in the federal part of it?

The Twisted Game Theory of the Tea Party

There's a post from Tom Jensen of PublicPolicyPolling making the case that Obama's problem isn't with liberal Democrats, it's with conservative Democrats. The heart of the argument as to why:

Conservative Democrats are ultimately a bigger threat to Obama's reelection prospects than liberal ones. They don't necessarily make a lot of noise about it when they're unhappy- they just go out and vote for Republicans. Liberals on the other hand really have nowhere to go- they can stay at home or vote for Ralph Nader but ultimately that's just going to get them someone who makes them a lot more unhappy than Obama. It's not a pleasant reality, but in our two party system that's just the way it goes- conservatives definitely have more leverage than liberals within the Democratic coalition and that's why they so often get their way despite their smaller numbers.

This feels right to me, and it's certainly the way things like the Median Voter Theorem are supposed to work in an electoral system set up like ours, i.e. not actually moving both parties to the opinions of the median voter but forcing both parties to be able to make a strong pitch to that median voter. But what I keep wondering is, why on earth doesn't this work on Republicans? Why is it that the conservative Republicans keep having so much more influence, despite the fact that it ought to be the members of a coalition who lie closer to the median of society who have the leverage?

I think it's because the hard-right faction of the Republican base is willing to make a credible threat to be irrational. That is to say, they are willing to nominate candidates who are more conservative than the establishment alternative and who then lose. Theoretically, when they lose their primaries, they are willing to run genuine third-party candidates. Liberals, after flirting with this irrationality in 2000, have learned our lesson, so a threat to be irrational isn't particularly compelling. We won't make it, because we all know that the result is too horrible to be contemplated. But the Tea Partiers have shown no particular preference for having a moderate Republican in office than having a Democrat in office. And that gives them power.

New Rule

Any Amendment to a piece of legislation is nullified if its sponsor votes against the final bill. The Congress should adopt this. I don't see why you should get to change a bill or contribute to it if you don't ultimately vote for it. Congress has such broad authority to set its own rules that I don't see how this rule wouldn't be fine constitutionally, and I just don't see any philosophical objection to it. Republicans put earmarks in bills they vote against. They got big changes made to the stimulus, and the health-care bills, etc. It should be simple: you don't vote for a bill, your contributions to that bill are void. And maybe you also don't get to be in the conference committee. Whatever. If you don't vote for a bill, it doesn't belong to you, at all.

The Tax Deal

I think I have a handle on the split among liberals about this tax cut deal. We all agree that tax cuts for the rich suck, and that doing a little bit of stimulus is worthwhile. I don't think there are very many liberals who would disagree that bribing a few rich people with a hundred billion dollars over a couple of years in exchange for stimulus is a bad thing to do, though we think it's regrettable that we have to do it. There are two fundamental schisms, though: some of us think that the Bush tax cuts will eventually be made to expire, while others assume that they will be made permanent; and some of us think that the payroll tax cut will destroy Social Security, and others of us don't.

I should just clarify that if in reality the payroll tax cut will destroy Social Security, then the deal is horrible and shouldn't be done. I can see the arguments on both sides, really, though I'm essentially certain that it doesn't destroy Social Security if Democrats make a strong fight about it in a year or two, and get the payroll tax raised again. If this cut becomes permanent, then it's a more complicated political argument; yes, the strength of SS was originally derived largely from its insurance character, but it's not clear at this point that the powerful senior lobby isn't strong enough to keep it safe and it also seems that the "we own it" thing about SS is mainly used to argue for privatization.

If this ends up with the Bush tax cuts becoming permanent, then I think you can make a genuine case that that's enough to make this a bad idea. But I think that's a much closer case, and when I read sentences like "this deal will keep 2 million Americans out of poverty," I have a hard time agreeing with that case.

So that's my take on this situation. In any event, the deal is going to pass. What I think we can all agree with is that if this deal ends up with, say, a further 1-year extension of the payroll tax cut and then that tax cut ends, and if the handouts to the rich end in two years, then this will have been a good deal. And what determines whether that happens is whether Democrats, and Barack Obama in particular, want to bring the fight over the next couple of years.

Carl Crawford, Cliff Lee, and Jose Reyes

I've seen several articles making the argument that the Carl Crawford deal means that Jose Reyes will not be a Met long-term. The argument goes like this: if Reyes isn't back to form in 2011, he's leaving anyway, and if he is up to form, now that there's a precedent for giving Crawford-esque people $142 million deals, and given that Jose Reyes is a hell of a lot better than Carl Crawford when playing at potential, he'll command way more money than Sandy Alderson and the Mets will have any reason to give him. asda

But there was another contract precedent set recently. Cliff Lee decided to play in Philadelphia, rather than New York or Texas, despite the fact that the Phillies were offering him decidedly less money ($40 million less) than the Yankees were. I've also heard people saying that this is an example of free agency at its best: players choosing to play where they want to play, not just being sold to the highest bidder with essentially no personal discretion. Doesn't that latter description sound a little bit like slavery? If a player is not free to choose to play for Team X instead of Team Y despite the fact that Team Y is offering more money, then it's not free agency after all, it's just a different kind of corporate ownership of the players.

The point of all of this is that I think we have reason to believe that Jose Reyes likes being a Met. I think he likes New York. He lives in New York, with his wife. He's said he wants to keep being a Met. Etc., etc. When people say Reyes will command a contract of size X, what they mean is that there will be teams willing to give him a contract of size X. That doesn't mean he's obliged to take that contract. The Mets probably have a lot of intangibles working in their favor vis-a-vis Jose Reyes, which should let them sign him to a smaller contract than anyone else would (though still making him so obscenely wealthy that neither he nor his foreseeable descendants will ever need to work [except by playing shortstop!] for money).

It's like the situation with the Yankees in reverse: in that situation there were reasons why the Yankees would inevitably give their aging, not-very-good-anymore shortstop a bigger contract than he was worth, and why he both would have to accept it and would be a fool not to. In this situation, the Mets might find themselves able to get Jose Reyes, a player at the absolute top of the league in terms of talent, under medium-long-term control for below market value, because he wants to play here. That sounds like a win-win to me.

So if one of the long-term repercussions of Cliff Lee's signing with the Phillies is that players become a little more willing to engage in free agency, rather than automatically selling themselves to the highest bidder, and that makes Jose Reyes spend his entire career as a Met, then thank you, Phillies.

Four Philosophies of Interpretation

This is continuing on a theme from the previous post (EDIT: two previous; I made a different post in the interim), which was tangential to the argument of that post but which I think is genuinely interesting. Namely, what is the proper constructional attitude to take toward the Constitution's grants of power and its declarations of rights? Or more to the point, what philosophy is desirable toward a constitution's grants of power and declarations of rights? That is to say, independent of what any of us might admit about what the clear text of the Constitution actually requires, how would we like to go about interpreting these two kinds of constitutional clauses? I think there are four basic philosophies in this realm, which I will call the liberal, conservative, libertarian, and populist philosophies.

Basically, these four philosophies are a combinatorial combination of two possible interpretive philosophies, broad and narrow, with two kinds of Constitution provisions, powers and rights. Liberals favor a broad construction of both; conservatives favor a narrow construction of both; libertarians wish to construe powers narrowly and rights broadly; and populists wish to construe powers broadly and rights narrowly.

On the Subject of Illegitimate or Wrong

So it seems that a group calling itself No Labels had a convention today where people like Michael Bloomberg and Evan Bayh spoke about how bad partisanship is. The idea is that we should put aside our labels and come together to find solutions for America. To which my answer is... what the hell do you think we're trying to do?!?!! We liberals are not not trying to find solutions to America's problems. The difference between a liberal and a centrist is either disagreement about what the problems are or about how they ought to be solved. Probably there are substantive value/goal/priority disagreements involved. You disagree with us. But that doesn't mean we aren't making a good-faith effort to make the world better as we see it. Yes, to the extent that there are policies that advance the goals/values/priorities of everyone involved, or a substantial majority, or whatever, we should do them, but there is no particular law that says there has to be. There are plenty of areas where in all honesty what the liberal-most 40% of the country thinks is good is something the conservative-most 40% of the country thinks is horrible, and vice-versa, not because we are devoted to slavish partisanship and antagonism but because we disagree. Moreover, it is inevitable in a free society that there will be things people disagree about, and they will become the battleground for political conflict; those things everyone agrees about will simply be a part of the underlying consensus.

So yeah, y'all disagree somewhat with me, or with Bernie Sanders, and we probably all disagree with Jim DeMint. But in general the presumption should be that people are genuinely trying to advance their own view of good and that they disagree about what is good, not that everyone can agree about what is good but some of us (i.e. the partisans) are just bickering and stopping good from being done.

ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that I think a lot of centrists think we ideologues/partisans are being ideological and partisan for the sake of being ideological or partisan. We aren't. I don't think conservatives/Republicans are this, either, except for the limited sense in which Congressional Republicans right now are making a concerted effort simply to make Obama fail, which involves blanket obstruction regardless of the merits of the policy. In general, though, we are all ideological or partisan because that's what we believe. As I argued in a previous post, the people who are most likely to form their opinions out of a desire to come down in a particular spot on the political spectrum are the a priori centrists.

Illegitimate or Wrong?

Conservatives are opposed to activist judges, right? They think it's just plain wrong, illegitimate, and undemocratic for judges to overturn the will of the people, right? That's what we've been hearing since at least 1973 and Roe, and realistically more like since 1954 and Brown. So, uh... yeah. George F. Will's latest column: "The case for engaged judges." I'm not kidding. Basically it's an argument why striking down the health care reform law would not constitute activist judging. The closing paragraph:

"There is," Willett explains, "a profound difference between an activist judge and an engaged judge." The former creates rights not specified or implied by the Constitution. The latter defends rights the Framers actually placed there and prevents the elected branches from usurping the judiciary's duty to declare what the Constitution means. Let us hope the Supreme Court justices are engaged when considering the insurance mandate.

Right. Okay. The former creates rights not specified or implied by the Constitution, the latter defends rights the Framers actually placed there. Sure.

Bring Back The Awesomeness

I am someone who obsesses over politics. I am someone who finds the mechanisms of politics fascinating. I am someone who finds American electoral politics fascinating. I am someone who finds, slightly less than the other two things mentioned, the nuts and bolts of public policy fascinating.

And yet, I cannot deny that recently American politics has been lacking very much Awesomeness. You know what I mean. Here's a good day in American politics: a rather mediocre piece of legislation that is nevertheless the best we're likely to get any time soon passed. You don't need to hear a list of bad days, but one of them goes like this: "Senate rejects health care for 9/11 heroes, citizenship for innocent children who go to college or join the military, and tax cuts for the entire nation, with solid majorities in favor of each item." Bad day in politics.

But one of the interesting things about this year was that there were two instances of Genuine Awesomeness, one at either end of the year. And I think we can learn from them. On January 29th, President Barack Obama went into the lion's den, to the Republican House caucus conference in Baltimore, and... took questions! And he gave answers. And they were tough questions and they were tough answers. Who won? No one was really sure; obviously both sides thought they did, and I obviously thought Obama did, but Who Won wasn't even really the point. Everyone started realizing, hey, this was kind of Awesome. Our head of state and his opposition engaged in dialogue with one another, actual literal dialogue, and the nation got to watch! Wouldn't it be great if that happened once in a while?

And today, on December 10th, Senator Bernie Sanders, the only Socialist in the history of the United States Congress and the longest-serving independent in our nation's history, launched the Best Filibuster In The History of the World. What made it that? Well, it wasn't in support of segregation of any sort, it wasn't about blocking a policy that most people like, it was Bernie Sanders, and, well, it wasn't actually blocking anything. But more to the point, Senator Bernie Sanders, with two brief respites provided by Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, held the floor of the United States Senate from 10:25 a.m. until 7:00 p.m., and then took the presiding officer's gavel and called the day's work to a close. That's right: a filibuster. (A mock filibuster; there wasn't anything else on the schedule today.) One Senator stood up for eight hours and thirty-five minutes and gave an impassioned, impromptu speech in opposition to a shadowy back-room deal that he and much of the country believed was being shoved down our throats. Now, never mind that I support that deal, more or less. Here's the point:

This is what a filibuster is supposed to look like!!!

So that got me thinking that it's time to put the awesomeness back in American politics. Let's make the mechanics of governing and politicking into compelling political theater, not in the sense of a scripted farce designed to pull the wool over people's eyes but just in the sense of entertaining. Let's make American politics fun to watch, and not just for the uber-wonks like myself. Let's reduce the facepalm moments, when the United States Senate, supposedly the world's "greatest deliberative body," declares that 41 is greater than 59. Or when all 40 failed filibusterers then vote for the underlying bill. Let's change the practice of having our elected representatives spend the majority of their time begging for money. And let's get our politicians to actually engage with us, and with each other.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that eternal paradox, said that the death of a Republic would be marked by political apathy in its citizenry. One is always well advised to take anything Rousseau said with a grain of salt, but this point at least has some truth to it. Most people don't like watching American politics. I don't think that's because they don't care, I think it's because our politics suck. Our system is absurd. The last time this nation decided to actually think out in careful detail about how we wanted our government to operate was, well, 1789. And most of the decisions we made were about accommodating the South and slavery. Since then we've been making it up as we go along, inventing ad-hoc rules to address the immediate short-term problems of the day. That's no way to craft a government!

I don't think we need a constitutional Amendment to bring back Awesomeness to our politics, except maybe something on the subject of campaign finance reform. We shouldn't so much abolish the filibuster as reintroduce it. Get rid of shadow filibusters, and make what Bernie Sanders did today the standard procedure again. I like Merkley's proposal to have a gradually increasing requirement of filibustering Senators on the floor at once; that would make a substantial chunk of the obstructing minority have to be very flagrant about what they were doing, and it would turn it back into a test of wills and an appeal to public opinion. We should definitely create a Question Time sort of thing, possible a dozen or so a year, when the President takes questions from both Houses of Congress, both parties. (Shouting, maybe not. Although, who knows, Democrats seem to have gotten into the let's-all-shout-at-Obama thing...) And it should be televised, not just on C-SPAN (though they'd love to have it; it'd boost their rating a whole frickin' lot!) but on all the major news networks.

There are probably other ways of Bringing Back Awesomeness that I haven't thought of here. But I just think it's worth noting that this very very un-awesome year began and ended with peculiarly awesome moments, and we should try to learn something from that.

The Point of the Estate Tax

This should be obvious, but even people who are attacking, rightly, the estate-tax cuts don't seem to be saying it. An estate tax is not a death tax. It is an aristocracy tax. The point is, really, to work toward the Republican idea of "equality of opportunity" by not letting certain families just accumulate billions of dollars and hand them down through the ages, creating a de facto aristocratic class in this country even though our very Constitution prohibits a de jure aristocracy. That is the point of the estate tax. That is why we have it. Republicans, in arguing against it, are arguing in favor of letting this country turn into an aristocracy. And Democrats should call them out on it.

Bad Arguments

I happen to think that this tax cut deal fiasco is a situation in which there are genuine substantive arguments on both sides both as to policy and as to politics. But there are two arguments that the anti-deal people are making that I think are just plain a load of bull:

1) "We can win this fight because the American people are on our side." If what this means is that we could make a credible threat to pass no tax bill and let everyone's taxes raise and the American people wouldn't blame us because they're on our side on the underlying policies, that's one thing (I happen to think that's wonderfully optimistic). If it means that we can bring enough public pressure on the Republicans to get a "good" tax bill passed through the Senate, what are you smoking, and can I have some? Not happening. Republicans know no shame. They are immune to public pressure, at least until the 2012 election gets a hell of a lot closer. They are fine, ceteris paribus, with screwing over anyone and everyone, especially if it makes Obama's re-election less likely. They just really, really want to give money to the rich, which is why we've been able to get them to agree to this much already. We should try to make the bill as much better *as possible*, but with a realistic understanding of what is actually possible.

2) "This deal represents a tax increase for poor Americans." Yes, the Making Work Pay tax credit which will expire was worth more to poor people than the proposed payroll tax holiday will be. But don't y'all get that, if no bill passes, poor people get no Making Work Pay tax credit, and no payroll tax holiday. Compared to a better deal, this is a tax increase. Compared to doing nothing, this is a tax cut. Do the people saying this think that Obama can reasonably get that better deal that includes a Making Work Pay extension, without all 42 Senate Republicans bolting and dooming the entire deal, and sending us back to worst-of-both-worlds? If not, then this objection is just gibberish.

American Elections, Part 2: Counter-Cyclical Movements

(I said they would be irregularly spaced!)

Imagine you're a state. Imagine, moreover, that you are a "safe state" for one of the two parties. And in Election Year X, you dutifully cast upwards of 60% of your popular votes for the candidate of that party, only to watch helplessly as your party's lousy candidate gets just 45% of the national vote. But then, four years later, rejoice! Your party has found a much stronger candidate, the incumbent is disliked, and your party wins the national popular vote 53-47! That's a net 16-point swing nationally. And like the rest of the nation, you're excited by this new stronger candidate, and you give even more of your vote to that candidate than you did last time.

Except, you don't give a net 16 points more of your vote to that candidate.

American Elections, Part 1: Personality Effects, Debt, and Stickiness

This is the beginning of an undefinedly-long and irregularly-spaced series on my analysis of state-by-state voting patterns in American Presidential elections. As the title mentions, this installment will discuss personality effects, debt, and stickiness, which will be discussed later. First, a brief overview of what data I have and how I've been manipulating it.

This started almost entirely by accident. I wanted to figure out the relationship between how high a percentage of the electorate a Presidential candidate take and how large the variance in their performance across states. To do this, I ended up copying down the state-by-state popular vote data for every state and every candidate (with approximately 1% or more of the national vote) since 1828, the start of the popular vote in earnest, from Dave Leip's elections atlas site, which is truly wonderful. Some time later, I realized that I had just created a Microsoft Excel document with the entire history of US Presidential elections on it, to the hundredth of a percent, and that this was a gold mine.

That Excel document now has fifteen worksheets in it. "Total," the first one, is what I copied directly, the vote percentages of each candidate in each state since 1828. "Democrats," "Republicans," and "Whigs," respectively, are the data for just the Democratic, Republican, and Whig candidates; no shocker there. "Total Votes" is, again rather obviously, the number of total votes cast for President in a given state in a given year; "Vote %" is the share of the total national electorate that each state had in a given year. Two others relate to an attempt by me to figure out, for instance, how many people from each era of American politics have cast their votes for Democrats in Alabama. Then comes the interesting part. "Margins" is fairly simple: it's the Democratic margin of victory in a given state in a given year, in percentage terms. Sometimes when third parties get involved things get tricky, but it's a fairly simple concept. "Relative Margins" for a given state is the Margin in that state minus the national popular vote margin. So, for instance, if Candidate D wins State X by 10% and nationally by 3%, their Relative Margin in State X is 7%. This is about seeing where the strongholds of a party are, filtering out the actual balance of the electorate. "Swing" is fairly simply defined as the change in the Margin in a state between two elections. "Trend" (and I'm taking these terms from Dave Leip's site) is the change in the Relative Margin in a state between two elections. "Rolling Average" is the average Relative Margin in a state in the five Presidential elections prior to a given year, and "Trend Adjusted" is a state's Relative Margin minus its Rolling Average. The point of Trend and Adjusted Trend is to see a) how the party strongholds are changing over time, filtering out who's winning elections, and b) to see how well each candidate did in various states relative to the approximate recent status quo heading into that election. For various reasons, which have a lot to do with personality effects, debt, and stickiness, I found that the adjustment was useful for Point b).

2012 State-Level Data

The good folks at PublicPolicyPolling, one of 2010's best pollsters, have begun a series of state polling for the 2012 cycle. In each state they're testing Obama against a standard battery of Romney, Palin, Huckabee, and Gingrich, plus occasional 'bonus' candidates in relevant states. I have checked for each of the numbers from each of the states what that poll suggests about the 2012 election, under the assumption of uniform national swing. In Britain they use UNS to go from national polls to district-level polls; here, I'm going from state-level to national-level. But then I'm going back to state-level to see how many electoral votes Obama would then win, using a likely 2010 apportionment. The takeaway? The only polls showing Obama losing are from essentially Mitt Romney's home states. Obama is leading this election.

Schadenfreude

Here's a position-by-position comparison of the current projected Yankees and Red Sox for next year. Each position is classified as toss-up, leans, likely, or strong for one team or the other; these are electoral categories, but I'm using them anyway. Deal with it. The numbers are the player's approximate average WAR per season, either since their first full season or since something like 2003 if they've been around since the 90s.

Catcher, Jason Varitek (2.0) vs. Jorge Posada (3.5): Leans Yankees. They're both old, so I think both numbers are overestimates of their worth, but there's no reason to think Posada's moreso than Varitek's.
First Baseman, Adrian Gonzalez (4.5) vs. Mark Teixeira (4.5): Leans Red Sox. Obviously, it's an exact tie, but Gonzalez is trending over the last few years (2.9, 3.8, 2.9, 7.0, 6.3), and he's going to be moving from PETCO to Fenway.
Second Baseman, Dustin Pedroia (4.5) vs. Robinson Cano (4.0): Toss-Up. Pedroia's coming back from injury, and Cano's trending, but basically they're both MVP-caliber players.
Shortstop, Marco Scutaro (2.5) vs. Derek Jeter (4.5): Toss-Up. Scutaro isn't nearly the level of player as his opponent, for their careers. But Jeter's trending... down. No reason to think that changes. Heheh.
Third Base, Kevin Youkilis (4.5) vs. Alex Rodriguez (6.0): Likely Yankees. Sorry, Youk, there's no denying it. (Though Youkilis' WAR numbers will be inflated a little by a shift to third base).
Left Field, Carl Crawford (3.2) vs. Brett Gardner (2.8): Likely Red Sox. Crawford's been in the 4.5-range the last couple of years, and with that offense behind him... yeesh.
Center Field, Mike Cameron or Jacoby Ellsbury (2.0-ish) vs. Curtis Granderson (4.0): Likely Yankees. No denying it, Granderson's a better player than the other two.
Right Field, J.D. Drew (4.0) vs. Nick Swisher (2.7): Likely Red Sox. Swisher's just not all that good, when you come right down to it.
Designated Hitter, David Ortiz (2.5) vs. Marcus Thames (0.7): Likely Red Sox. Lest you think I'm overselling Ortiz, he was worth 3.3 last year.
First Starting Pitcher, Jon Lester (5.6) vs. C.C. Sabathia (4.0): Toss-Up. Their ERA+ for the last three years are both right around 140.
Second Starting Pitcher, John Lackey (3.5) vs. A.J. Burnett (2.0): Likely Red Sox. They're both trending down, but in Lackey's case that means he was average last year; in Burnett's, it means he was sub-replacement.
Third Starting Pitcher, Josh Beckett (3.0) vs. Phil Hughes (1.0): Likely Red Sox. If it weren't for the other guys, Beckett could be an ace; indeed, he recently was their ace. Phil Hughes... yeah.
Fourth Starting Pitcher, Clay Buchholz (2) vs. ??? (0): Likely Red Sox. Andy Pettite (2.5) is said to be retiring; if so, the Yankees don't actually have a fourth starter right now. And Buchholz is trending, having been worth 5.4 in his first full season.
Fifth Starting Pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka (2.5) vs. ??? (0): Solid Red Sox. Again, the Yankees don't have anyone, and Matsuzaka is not a fifth starter on a normal team. Hell, he's practically be the Mets' ace until Santana got back...
Closer, Jonathan Papelbon (2.8) vs. Mariano Rivera (3.5): Leans Yankees. Yeah, well, Rivera is better than Papelbon. Worse still, he's coming off, like, his best year ever, or close, while Papelbon just had his worst. But it's worth noting that Papelbon has a higher ERA+ for his career than Rivera, and much higher than Rivera's through a similar age, and after all he's over a decade younger. So who knows?

The total projected wins using these WAR numbers are 101 for Boston, 97.5 for the Yankees. Oh, actually, that was including Pettite, so taking him out the Yankees fall to 95 wins, 6 games back. Cliff Lee is only worth a 3.0 in this algorithm, so they need two Cliff Lee-level pitchers to make up the gap. The Red Sox are better than the Yankees. This is going to be fun.

Dear Republicans

Through long December nights we talk in words of rain or snow,
while you, through chattering teeth, reply and curse us as you go.
Why not spare a thought this day for those who have no flame
to warm their bones at Christmas time?
Say Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow.

Now as the last broad oak leaf falls, we beg: consider this:
there's some who have no coin to save for turkey, wine or gifts.
No children's laughter round the fire, no family left to know.
So lend a warm and a helping hand:
say Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow.

    As holly pricks and ivy clings, your fate is none too clear.
    The Lord may find you wanting, let your good fortune disappear.
    All homely comforts blown away and all that's left to show
    is to share your joy at Christmas time
    with Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow.

Through long December nights we talk in words of rain or snow,
while you, through chattering teeth, reply and curse us as you go.
Why not spare a thought this day for those who have no flame
to warm their bones at Christmas time?
Say Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow.




(If I were to be overly literal/optimistic, I'd say the word "Lord" refers, in this case, to the American sovereign, We the People.)

Constructive Criticism

While I tend to think that the current framework for a deal is at least good enough that it should be passed if the alternative is passing nothing, I also agree with the criticism that Obama's harsh words for liberals at the end of his press conference last night were a pointless and counterproductive venting of personal frustration that is somewhat undeserved by the left anyway. But I think the left has been rather pointless and counterproductive in the way we treat Obama, and I do mean that from a strategic point of view.

When Obama makes some compromise with Republicans, we tend to say of him the following sorts of things: He has betrayed us. He's just a corporate shill after all. He doesn't actually have anything he really believes in. He's not much of a liberal after all. Etc, etc. And Hillary supporters love to mock we Obama supporters for having believed, you know, that the sky would open and the light would come down, etc.

But I at least never believed that. I knew that there was essentially no policy daylight between Obama and Clinton (and Hillary supporters should remember that now!). I supported Obama mainly because I thought he would have a better chance of winning. The entire point of "change we can believe in" was that this time, we'd actually be getting someone who would get the change done. And what we have gotten are a series of incremental measures each of which changes the country for the good in a non-negligible way, but a smaller way than could have been. Is Obama a "liberal"? Not the way I am. Is he more liberal than any President since at least Lyndon Johnson? Definitely. Is he more liberal than any Democratic nominee since at least McGovern if not Humphrey or Johnson himself? Again, yes. He is what I call an idealistic pragmatist, one who believes that the country can and should be made better but that the way to do this is by taking what you can, compromise, deal-making, politicking. He has always advertised himself as this. Yeah, maybe he was naive about how well he could get Republican support, but remember, he has needed Republican support (or Lieberman support, which is almost as bad) every day of his Presidency. And honestly, if it had worked, if the current culture of total obstruction had not taken total hold of the Republican caucus, if he had managed to be successful in his overtones toward them, we'd be in much, much better shape today.

So what should liberals say when Obama makes a disappointing deal with Republicans? We should say this: Look, Barack, we know you're trying and that your heart is in (approximately) the right place, and that you believe very strongly in the art of the possible. But this deal is not acceptable. You need leverage to drive a harder bargain from Republicans, well here it is: we can't support this current package. Improve it enough, maybe we will. If this position means that the whole deal falls apart, feel free to blame us; we're mainly from safe enough districts that we don't lose our elections because of it.

If, instead, we make criticisms like "Obama is just a tool of our corporate overlords" (which I've seen recently popping up on DailyKos), he has little or no incentive to cooperate with us. It's an irrational criticism. It is unlikely, given the fact that he's compiled the best domestic-policy record of any liberal President since LBJ, that there's very much he could do to placate it. And yeah, we have nowhere else to go; it's just true. So he has no particular incentive to cooperate with us. If we make it clear that we are not personally abandoning him, but that we are going to hold him to a high standard and in doing so we are going to strengthen his hand toward the Republicans with whom he must negotiate, then he does have an incentive to work with us. So there's plenty of blame to go around, but part of it lies with those Obama was criticizing.

The Game Theory of Deal-Making

The President has announced the framework of his deal on tax cuts, and as I see it there are now four possible outcomes:
1. The deal passes, more or less as is.
2. A stronger version of the deal passes (stronger = more liberal)
3. A weaker version of the deal passes
4. No deal passes.
What, I wonder, are the consequences of each outcome? In order of how obvious I think the answer is:

4: Everyone gets mad at everyone. Liberals are mad at Obama for giving in to Republican rhetorical points, and for failing to get UI extension, DADT repeal, the DREAM Act, etc. Republicans are mad because they don't get their tax cuts. Centrists are mad because the parties have failed to get along with each other.
3: Republicans are gleeful. Democrats are, legitimately, mad as hell, primarily at Obama.
1: Many liberals continue to be very disappointed with Obama; others think it was a pretty good deal, and not any worse than anything we had seen before from him. Republicans are probably reasonably happy.

2: Now here's the question. In this scenario, does Obama get credit? Might there be some way for him to pivot around to the front end of that strengthening effort that would get him some credit? Probably Pelosi and Reid get most of the praise from liberals, and scorn from Republicans. Would this help Obama's standing among liberals at all? Should it? If not, does he have an incentive to cooperate with liberal efforts to sweeten the deal? Should liberals make it clear that, by working the deal into a yet-better shape, Obama can win back some of our support, just to incentivize him to do so? Can we?

And more importantly... how far toward Option #2 can we push the scenario before Republicans pull out and we're back at Option #4? Do we, liberals, prefer Option #1 to Option #4? How far do we have to go toward Option #2 before we do prefer the status quo to Option #4? Is there an overlap where we and Republicans will both be happy enough about the deal to go along with it? If not, what do we do?

(My guess is that there is some room to make the deal better and keep the GOP on board, since this is the one thing they actually care about, and that ultimately Obama will dodge most, but not all, of the criticism he's come in for if the final deal ends up being significantly better than the current one. Sort of like with HCR: when we thought he had just massively bungled the whole thing, lots of liberals got really mad at him; once it passed, the active mutiny died down, but his standing with liberals, especially the liberal "elite," was noticeably diminished.)

More Mets Thoughts

Apparently the Mets and Red Sox are talking: Beltran (Boston wants) for either Daisuke Matsuzaka or Marco Scutaro (Mets want). I'd definitely do it for Matsuzaka, who would fill our pitching wants in a hurry. Scutaro would be the solution at second base. Obviously, if we trade Beltran, we move Pagan to center field and put who in right field? Nick Evans? Jason Pridie? Fernando Martinez? Daniel Murphy? Lucas Duda? All of which is a considerable trade down from Beltran. Basically, this trade makes sense iff you think that Beltran will have a year considerably below his career standards in 2011, which I'm not sure I do. I might do it for Matsuzaka, but I'm less convinced as to Scutaro.

Set a Precedent

I am basically fine with this tax-cuts deal. No, we can't pass a just-the-middle-class tax cut without Republican support; no, Republicans will not support that bill; therefore, realistically, the choice is between "cave on tax cuts, get some additional stimulus/anti-contraction now, and have a chance of passing stuff like DADT repeal etc." against "let all taxes rise and do nothing else for the rest of the lame duck session." I'll pick the former every time. But two points:

1. Let this be a lesson to us liberals: the filibuster must go. Any Senate Democrat who complains about this compromise and then votes against filibuster reform in January is an idiot; the only reason we didn't do the middle-class tax cuts, say, last year was that we need Republican support despite having 58 Senators. Go with Merkley's plan.

2. This would actually be a good occasion on which for liberals to genuinely play a little hardball. Why? Because it is the one issue in the entire world of issues where Republicans have an actual substantive desire. They really, really want to give rich people money. Like, really, really, really. So use that leverage. Have Bernie Sanders, whatever friends he can gather, and the CPC say basically the following:

"Hey, look, we'd be fine with letting everyone's taxes go up, if you can't do better than this. And we don't trust you to let us have our 50-margin votes on DADT and the DREAM Act anyway. So how about this: we'll let you have your tax cuts for the rich but only if we add in a few hundred billion in infrastructure spending, an even bigger payroll tax holiday, and we hold cloture votes on DADT and the DREAM Act before we'll agree to pass the bill."

What do Republicans do if the Democrats say this? Remember, they really want tax cuts for the rich; it's the only thing they care about. And Obama as much as said that he had to give in because the Democrats couldn't hold the line in Congress; he might very well support their efforts to make the deal even better. If Speaker Pelosi, backed by a lot of her caucus, and either 41 Senate Democrats or Harry Reid and a bunch of Senate Democrats would be willing to make that statement as above, I have trouble seeing the Republicans declining. After all, they don't actually give a damn about anything except cutting taxes for the rich. So why not take this opportunity to set a precedent: the liberals can play hardball, too.

On American Exceptionalism

Republicans like to talk about American exceptionalism. A lot. We're the greatest, strongest, freest country EVER!!! So sayeth Sean Hannity, repeatedly, and others mirror the sentiments. And they are horrified by the way that some people, say, a particular descendant of those we once held in slavery who is now first lady, have expressed the view that America, at least in the past, may not have been all that worth being proud of.

So, naturally, 52% of Republicans think America's "moral values" are "poor," the worst option on Gallup's excellent-good-fair-poor scale. Compared to just 35% of Democrats. Yeah, conservative love America, all right.

Historical Psephology

I've been spending my spare time of late, what little of it there is, compiling charts of complete U.S. Presidential election state-by-state history. The result of all of this is that I'm noticing some interesting patterns, in particular in the way states move relative to the national average. I expect that at some point, probably over next weekend when I'll have a little more free time, I'll have a bunch of posts out with some conclusions from that data. I think it's all really interesting. Some of it might even allow one to predict the relative standings of states in 2012, quite apart from the overall national popular vote.

Oh, and if I make predictions about the relative positioning of the states in 2012 using this as my evidence and I'm right, I am going to crow so much about it two years from now. Seriously.

Illusionary Discipline, an Anecdote

Apparently Mitch McConnell failed to get all his Republicans to refrain from objecting to motions to move forward on four votes on tax cuts, two Democratic ones extending tax cuts up to $250,000 and $1,000,000 respectively and two Republican ones that would extend all the tax cuts. McConnell thought he would actually be able to allow a unanimous consent agreement to work, for what feels like the first time in years. But no, some Republican objected.

Instead, Harry Reid is just filing cloture on the two Democratic proposals, and the Republican proposals can go to hell. See, this is what happens when you aren't the one holding the whip.

Maybe There Is An Eleventh Dimension?

There was recently much hyperventilating about Obama's announcement of a (desired) "pay freeze" of federal employees for two years. Reactions, predictable: Republicans liked it but said it didn't go far enough, Democrats (self included) said it was bad policy and, given that he made the concession unilaterally instead of in return for something, bad politics; and "centrist" Very Serious People praised it as the kind of tough choices and hardship-enduring we just need to do. As I said, I counted myself in the second group: giving people money is generally a good thing in a depressed economy, federal employees just as much as anyone else. And yeah, the politics were dumb, one way or another.

But wait! It turns out that this is not a moratorium on raises, just on the cost of living adjustment. Which is based on inflation, usually the CPI. Which is currently standing at... 0.6%. I.e. nothing. And it is, after all, trending downward. If that 0.6% annual inflation rate keeps up, then someone who started making $50,000 this year would, after strict COLA increases, make $50,300 next year and $50,601 the year after that. So we're talking about $901 out of $100,901 in salary, or a pay cut compared to the status quo of 0.9%. Sure, that's not great, but it's also virtually meaningless. And of course, if we hit deflation next year, which sure as hell seems likely, then the Cost of Living isn't going up anyway, so..... And there will still be raises, after all, and it wouldn't be shocking if those raises somewhat compensate for the 0.9% of non-paying that would otherwise maybe be going on.

So the eleventh dimension here is that maybe the policy isn't so much bad as just really, really trivial and pointless. In which case there isn't necessarily anything to get all that mad about, since Obama didn't "give away" anything worth holding on to, and it may have somewhat inoculated the federal workforce from further Republican attacks. It's a possibility.

ALSO, on another subject. To the left: stop concluding that Barack Obama will reach an unacceptable result before he does so. Y'all said this about health-care, remember? And it passed. Moreover, recognize that yeah, it sucks, but yeah, for the time being the Republicans have a veto over all legislation. "The time being" extends until at least January 2013. So don't blame Obama for his inability to run roughshod over them: he can't! In which case, the best result of the tax-cuts debate is a deal in which the giveaways to the rich are extended for the next two or three years and a bunch of other, much more important stuff, like unemployment benefits, START, DADT, and DREAM, get done in return. What we want him to do, given that he can't just make the Senate pass things, is cave on the tax cuts, in exchange for something good. Nothing he has yet said/done indicates that he doesn't get that fundamental dynamic, whereas much of what is said at Huffington Post and even, now, DailyKos does not get that fundamental dynamic. If he gives the tax cuts away for nothing, get back to me, and I'll start agreeing with you.

Filibusters

Mitch McConnell has just announced a blanket filibuster of everything and anything until and unless, one assumes, the Bush tax cuts are extended vote rich people. And he is going to have 47 Senators in his caucus come January, which means that he can lose a whole 6 Republicans and still block anything and everything. And he's been doing pretty damn well of late in an environment where he can lose a whole 0 Republicans and still succeed. So I think it's fair to say that he and his ilk have made it eminently clear that absolutely nothing Obama wants done will get done over the next two years.

Think about it. What do Republicans want? Health-care reform repealed. They can't get that, because Democrats control the Senate and Obama is still President. But what in the world is stopping them from saying, okay, until you repeal health-care reform, literally nothing will get done in the Senate. No substantive votes will be taken. Nothing. No confirmations, no treaties, no resolutions, no legislation, nothing. There is nothing stopping them from saying this, and there is no reason why they won't, given their current behavior.

Which makes things interesting. Jeff Merkley has a proposal to reform the filibuster, and it sounds good to me. He would ban filibusters on motions to begin debate, since, after all, the supposed point of the filibuster is to promote debate. And he wouldn't allow filibusters of amendments, since a robust and vigorous amendment process is also part of open debate. And he would also eliminate the practice of virtual filibusters, requiring an actual floor debate with at least 5 objecting members for the first day of the filibuster, 10 for the second say, and 20 from then on.

I have to say, I think this is brilliant. The point is that you cannot object to this as a power grab, since it would still be true that 41 Senators could block anything if at least 20 of them were just plain more committed than the majority, and you can't object to it in the grounds of turning the Senate into the House, abolishing the tradition of grand debates in the "world's greatest legislative chamber." In fact, the proposal would enhance (read: restore) that tradition by making the filibusterers actually debate. The only way to object is that Republicans don't actually want to stand up and filibuster things, because it would make them look somewhat bad, but they do want to still be able to defeat the will of 59, now 58, soon to be 53 Senators with only 41, now 42, soon to be 47 votes. So the only way to object to this is if what you want is for no one to be able to get anything done in the Senate as long as 41 people are opposed to it, and you don't want those 41 objectors to have to, you know, put in effort making it happen.

Needless to say, every Republican will oppose it. But the 53 Democrats? Might they realize that their chamber is quite simply deceased if they don't do something? Here's hoping.

UPDATE: This is also a good way to reconcile the behavior of the Democrats during the Bush years, when we filibustered some stuff, with opposition to the Republican practice under Obama, when they filibuster everything. The desired reconciliation is a filibuster rule that allows filibusters occasionally, on Big Important Things, when the minority party really really thinks that the majority party is overreaching/being unconstitutional/doing things so unpopular that it's worth obstructing it, but wouldn't allow routine obstruction of everything. This proposal would create an automatic institutional rule making that happen, since it would ultimately require something well over 20 Senators to be willing to actually, you know, filibuster in order to block something. It's a brilliant strategy.

The Game Theory of the Tea Party

Historically, party discipline is orders of magnitude stronger in Britain than in the United States. My theory is that the totality of the reason why this is so is that in Britain, the parties have plenary control over their nomination process (the central party just says who its candidates are in each constituency), while in the United States, we actually have open primaries in which voters can choose. The result is that it is possible for a candidate to win a primary without establishment support, and so legislators can worry a little bit less about maintaining the absolute support of their party's establishment.

Of course, this develops a self-perpetuating culture. Because everyone knows that in Britain party discipline is roughly-speaking absolute, in that the parties can simply refuse to renominate any MP they tire of, the voters know that they are not really voting for so-and-so, MP; they are voting for the party. Conversely, in the United States the party establishments realize that voters are actually voting for legislators, not parties, and that therefore they can win in unlikely places by nominating (which establishment support can often accomplish) a "maverick." So in the United States, we have a self-perpetuating political culture in which our Congressmen know that they can theoretically win re-election without establishment support and the establishment knows it has something to gain by supporting idiosyncratic candidates in unfavorable territory, and so we have "big tent" parties that often don't vote particularly cohesively. Of course, establishment support is usually essential to nomination (though not always), so in fact the parties' knowledge of the advantages of this 50-state-style strategy is what keeps our parties ideologically diverse.

But two recent developments on the Republican side are changing the game. The first is that the party has become convinced that its best strategy for future success is total opposition to the Obama Administration. The calculation is pretty simple: they think that they have enough power in the Congress to inflict substantial policy failures, especially economic ones, on the Obama Administration, and that the result of these policy failures, especially the continuing poor economy, will hurt Obama more than the appearance of obstructionism will hurt the Republicans. Given that Mitch McConnell only has 41 Republicans to work with (now 42), and needs 41 Republicans to be able to block Democratic policies, that means his caucus can't be very ideologically diverse and still make this strategy work. He can't lose a vote. A single vote. One, that's all it takes. And there are plenty of Republicans with incentives to be moderate in the Senate: Snowe, Collins, Brown, to start with, plus the retiring-and-usually-sensible Voinovich. And the number of Republicans who would naturally vote for, say, cap-&-trade, or a Romney-style health care bill, is much larger; they are, after all, Republican policies. So Mitch McConnell, if he wants to sustain his strategy of total opposition, needs really scary levels of party discipline. And I said earlier that massive party discipline requires establishment control of the nomination process, right?

Well, the second development is, of course, that the Republicans have lost control of their nomination process. To wit: in the 37 U.S. Senate elections, 8 featured a Republican nominee who was not the establishment choice, including two defeated incumbent Republican Senators. And only a handful of other Republican Senate primaries featured actual challenges to the establishment choice. And we can add in Arlen Specter, who was forced out of the party (!) by the threat of a successful primary challenge from an insurgent type. Of course, he was out of the party early enough that Pat Toomey became the establishment candidate long before the primary itself approached. So I think it's clear that the party establishment has no control of its nominations process. (By contrast, only two races featured an establishment Senate Democratic candidate losing the primary, Arlen Specter and Alvin Greene's surprise victory in the sleeper race of SC.)

So this ought to mean that McConnell lacks the discipline ability that he needs to pursue total obstruction with only 42 votes, right? After all, the party is completely out of control of its nominations, so Senators have no incentive to follow McConnell's dictates. And I speculated, back when Lady Gaga was trying to convince the Maine Senators to vote to repeal DADT, that in fact McConnell's discipline might be waning. Well, of course, McConnell's discipline of late has been a fearsome thing to behold: once-reasonable Senators like Ms. Snowe are now indistinguishable from Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn in their voting tendencies. Party discipline is in fact absolute. So what gives?

Well, of course, the answer is simple, and you probably already knew what it is. The Republican establishment has lost control of its nominations process to the Tea Party, which is if anything even more committed to total obstruction and zero compromise than the establishment is right now. So McConnell's fearsome discipline right now is really not McConnell's at all: it is the Tea Party's discipline, and it just so happens that the Tea Party and Mitch McConnell have the same interest in disciplining Senate Republicans right now. So for the moment, it looks like they're just running a good old-fashioned three-line whip on every single vote, and succeeding.

But the truth is somewhat different, because in fact the Republicans have lost control of their nomination process and that means that they can't steer their own ship. For now they are making the calculation that everything the Tea Party wants will benefit their party medium-term. But that could change; indeed, it is certain to change. At some point the GOP will have to realize that in a very good election year it is losing non-whites by 50%, and that if non-whites become 35% of the electorate, that makes them uncompetitive. Even before that, it may soon be true that in, for instance, Massachusetts or perhaps Maine, there is no overlap between what a Tea Party primary will nominate and what the general electorate will elect. In that case, forcing Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins to vote strict party-line will simply give us three shiny new Democrats, as Christine O'Donnell gave us a shiny new Democrat out of Delaware this past year. So at some point the Republicans might realize that just allowing the Tea Party to steer for them is no longer going to work.

And at that point, they are screwed. Really, massively screwed. I don't know when this screwedness will manifest itself; I don't know how it will manifest itself; I only know that they are in deep trouble in the long run.

Unfortunately, in the long run...