Only Full Measures Will Do

If Democrats want to save our democracy they need to act boldly, not look for half-measures.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.

I’ll be Zoom Chatting tomorrow at 12:30 to talk midterms, midterms, midterms! See ya then.

I got a few anguished responses from readers about Tuesday’s piece on America’s woefully ill-informed electorate, including this one from reader Art Bobruff:

“Takeaways: the voting public is uneducated and not very bright, voters are responsible for the disturbing election results, the press is not responsible because many of them are not knowledgeable and they’re impotent anyway. Solutions: none.”

I wish I had a pithy solution-oriented response to this comment, but alas, I do not. Like I said Tuesday, I call this newsletter Truth and Consequences for a reason — and I'm not going to sugarcoat the issues for clicks.

We have a major problem in this country: one of our two political parties is deeply reactionary, ideologically siloed, hostile to our multicultural future, no longer interested in representative democracy, and, at least for the time being, controlled by a raving lunatic. The Republican Party is hopelessly broken, and it's a genuine threat to the future of democracy in this country and the well-being of the American people.

There is one imperfect antidote to the problem: elect more Democrats. I don't say this because Democrats are right about everything, or they have the solution to all of America's problems, but unlike Republicans, they have not collectively fallen off the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down. They surpass the bare minimum of acceptability in a modern representative democracy, and, for now, that is good enough. Until the Republican Party is soundly defeated on the federal level — and forced against its will to moderate its politics — not much will change. And to be sure, there is far less reason for hope on a state level. Red state Republicans will have no incentive to change course — and they won't. Increasingly, we are moving toward a future of two American nations. The Red one will be poorer, less democratic, and more intolerant. The blue one will be relatively prosperous, freer, and defined by greater economic and social opportunity. Blue and red-state America have been on these differing trajectories for some time, and I expect it will only get worse.

There is one thing Democrats could have done to reverse America's downward trajectory. I wrote about it in October 2020:

The only course of action for Democrats is clear: a full-measure approach.

That means doing away with the Senate filibuster so the GOP can’t obstruct the Democratic agenda. It means passing legislation that has already made it through the Democratic-controlled House to expand voting rights. It means making the District of Columbia and possibly Puerto Rico states — and increasing the Democratic advantage in the Senate by as many as four seats. And it means expanding district and circuit courts and adding at least four new seats to the Supreme Court so Democrats can create a liberal majority.

These are hardball moves. They represent a break with notions of bipartisanship that some congressional Democrats still cling to, despite all that’s happened in recent years. But hoping that Republicans will suddenly return to a more traditional, measured politics is a fool’s errand — which is why Democrats should push through all these changes on day one, creating an immediate and fundamental change in the way the American government operates.

In the current feast-or-famine world of American politics, half-measures will not do. Incremental steps and chipping around the edges won't solve America's problems. The country needs major institutional changes.

To be clear, my suggestions above are, in some respects, half measures because there are bigger necessary changes that aren't simply aren't possible to enact — like the abolishment of the Electoral College and the Senate. But these will do for now. For example, making DC and Puerto Rico states would, potentially, add four Democratic Senate seats. In an already narrowly divided polity, such a move would likely solidify Democratic control of the Senate for years to come. It also might be the only way to convince Republicans that if they are to win in blue and purple states — and get back in the Senate majority — that they will need to moderate their policy views.

Expanding the Supreme Court would prevent the current conservative bloc from continuing its ideological assault on fundamental civil rights and democratic institutions. These measures could have been enacted in the first weeks after President Biden's inauguration — and while Republicans would have lost their minds, so what? As I wrote two years ago:

By and large, voters don’t care about, or much understand, process issues. And because the country is so intensely polarized, support for these measures will generally fall along partisan lines. Democrats will think they are great, Republicans will be apoplectic, and swing voters — to the extent they are paying attention — likely won’t care. And if these changes do roil the waters, that’s all the more reason to make them all at once in January 2021, so that by the time voters go to the polls in November 2022, the shock value will have worn off.

Of course, that didn’t happen then, and, quite likely, in ten days, Democrats will lose the legislative opportunity to make these fundamental changes (though theoretically, they could do it in a lame duck session, but obviously won’t). Even if by some longshot Democrats maintain control of the House and expand their numbers in the Senate, they probably won’t act boldly (though abolishment of the filibuster and expanding voting access would likely be on the table).

Congressional Democrats, by and large, don’t appreciate the existential crisis we are facing as a nation and the necessary steps to protect American democracy for future generations. In today’s deeply polarized political environment in which one party fundamentally rejects the nation’s bedrock democratic norms and traditions, political power must be wielded aggressively and without sentiment.

Until Democrats realize the need for fundamental political change and that only they can bring it, I fear we will continue to muddle through — or even worse, Republicans will take control and enact their own institutional changes. If that happens, we’re in even bigger trouble.

Where does that leave all of us? I completely understand the motivation to want to throw up one’s hands and walk away from this mess. But that is no solution. America is in a bad place, and, more than ever, it needs patriots willing to do the hard work necessary to protect our democracy from those working to destroy it. If we truly care about this country, we must remain engaged in the battle to save it.

Midterm Update

I honestly don’t know what to make of this, but over the past few days generic congressional ballot polls have been very positive for Democrats:

FiveThirtyEight