Like many progressives, I would be delighted to have a Green New Deal as well as a host of other progressive programs that would immediately and directly help the American people. However, this is not going to happen anytime soon. Joe Manchin has shown that he can single-handedly prevent it now; he has in the past. His help from Republicans will grow exponentially if they reclaim one or both houses of Congress this coming November.

All the same, political power in the United States is distributed in a way that gives Republicans far more influence than they are warranted. They hold half the seats in the U.S. Senate despite the fact that their senators represent only 43% of the population, compared to the Democrats 57% In other words, 43% of the American people are represented by the 50 Republican senators; the remaining 57% by the 50 Democrats. That is clearly unfair.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, five million more Americans (3%) voted for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates, and yet the Democrats have only a few more seats than the Republicans. Once again, this is unfair, especially as we will shortly have new elections for the House with hundreds of districts that are gerrymandered.

The Supreme Court is heavily weighted towards Republicans, in a particularly pernicious way since five justices were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. They became presidents only because of the antiquated Electoral College.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were appointed by President George W. Bush who lost the popular election to Al Gore by 500,000 people. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were appointed by Donald Trump who lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton by three million popular votes.

Over half (5 out of 9) of the justices who were appointed by semi-illegitimate presidents. This has been a grave and great injustice and needs to be corrected.

These problems of disproportionate power in the hands of Republicans exists in all three branches of our government. This is why we need a recalibration of how power is distributed in Washington and in our states. Recalibration is different from retribution. Changes should not be designed to make it “the Democrats turn.” Instead, it should be time for “fairness to prevail.”

Here’s how we would do it in three steps:

1. Either abolish the Electoral College or codify the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which the electors in all states are bound to vote for whomever one the national popular vote, not the vote in their state. This would be fair because our presidents would be elected solely on the basis of the vote of the people – the people who he or she represents.
2. Outlaw gerrymandering, the practice of dividing geographic areas into legislative districts in a way that gives one party an advantage over another. By outlawing gerrymandering, the number of seats from each party from each state would come close to reflecting that party’s percentage of voters in the state.
3. Institute some permanent and temporary changes to the Supreme Court:
   1. Permanent: Put term limits on how long a Supreme Court justice can serve, perhaps twenty years.
   2. Temporary: Because the court is currently leaning so far to the right, allow President Joe Biden to nominate three additional justices to the Supreme Court, temporarily constituting the court with ten members. Each of Biden’s nominees would be linked to one of the three Trump appointees. They would leave the Court when that particular Trump appointee no longer serves. The president at that time will then select one nominee to replace the two. When all six of the Trump and Biden appointees (exclusive of Ketanji Jackson Brown) are no longer on the court, it will be back down to nine members.

It is fair to ask how could this come to be. Why would Republicans accept these three changes, all of which would help Democrats, at least in the short run? These would be difficult changes to enact under any circumstances.

Naturally, there is no guarantee that Republicans would accept any of these changes. However, if the American people knew that Democrats were going to take a temporary pass on the most impactful items in their legislative agenda in order to spend several years focusing on recalibrating our democracy, it is possibly that many independents would join Democrats and a few Republicans to get this done. No guarantees, but the idea of advancing and simplifying democracy has a natural appeal to a great many voters. It’s worth a try because Manchin and the Republicans are not going away.

The post Recalibrating our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has taken a lot of flak for the slow sales of his book, Republican Rescue. During its first week in stores, it sold only 2,289 copies.

Even though Christie has been a long-time friend of Donald Trump and assisted him considerably during his campaigns and presidency, Christie generously criticizes Trump and his supporters for their penchant for falsehoods and conspiratorial thinking. He is well aware of the fact that Trump’s assertion that he won the 2020 presidential election, but it was stolen from him is clearly a Big Lie.

Christie believes that the Republican Party needs to separate itself from its right-wing extremists and revert to a conventional conservative platform based on ideas rather than myths, or simple opposition to whatever Democrats advocate.

He says,

“As Republicans, we need to free ourselves from the quicksand of endless grievances. We need to turn our attention to the future and quit wallowing in the past. We need to face the realities of the 2020 election and learn—not hide—from them. We need to discredit the extremists in our midst the way William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan once did. We need to renounce the conspiracy theorists and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts. We need to give our supporters facts that will help them put all those fantasies to rest so everyone can focus with clear minds on the issues that really matter. We need to quit wasting our time.”

Clearly not the word of a loyal Trumpster. Christie is not alone in asking Republicans to abandon Trump, the “Freedom Caucus” or Tucker Carlson and return to its core values of a generation ago. Georgia Lieutenant-Governor Geoff Duncan strongly critiqued his party in his book GOP 2.0. He was at Ground Zero for much of Trump’s efforts to unconstitutionally change the Georgia vote. Duncan is a solid conservative, but he believes that the party has been infected by extremism based on falsehoods tinged with absurd conspiracy theories. He stood by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others who firmly opposed Trump’s efforts to “find nearly 12,000 votes for him” so that he could be declared the winner in Georgia.

In the wake of the poor opening sales of his book, many have said that while Christie’s ideas may be of value, he is seeking an audience that is far smaller than he anticipated. Democrats are not interested in rescuing the Republican Party and Trump supporters am not inclined to support traditional Republicans.

I would recommend Christie’s book for several reasons:

1. It provides further insight into one of the greatest mysteries for people who are not Republicans, and even some who are. I’m talking about the makeup of “the Republican Brain.” This is a phrase that became the title of Washington Post writer Chris Mooney’s 2012 book by the same name, The Republican Brain. The book is quite detailed and nuanced, but among the key points is that Republicans do not have the same level of empathy as others, nor do they engage in critical thinking the same way.
2. It is becoming more apparent that the number one challenge for Americans is preserving our democracy. This means that we should do all that we legally can do to restrain the extreme right. Progressives and other Democrats need to preserve and strengthen the traditional Republican Party, no matter how weak it might be now. Rather than mocking Christie, I think that it would be wise to support him in his party-building efforts, though not with most of his conservative social and economic policies.

Christie is interesting, because while he shows no mercy towards the Biden Administration, he supports numerous progressive ideas on community policing, eliminating debtors’ prisons, making school curricula more relevant, and providing improved and more accessible health care.

If we are going to preserve democracy, we need to be prepared to talk with the Chris Christies of the world.

The post Libs: Chris Christie’s New Book May Be Well Worth Checking Out appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Since August of this year, President Joe Biden’s popularity has been plummeting. The rule of thumb is that a president needs to have an approval rate that is at least ten points higher than his or her disapproval rating in order to stand a good chance of being reelected.

According to 538, in early August Biden was up 52 – 42%. It was that month that the president announced that the United States was initiating a thorough and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, where American troops had been since shortly after Nine-Eleven in 2001.

At the time of Biden’s announcement, MSNBC anchors Nicolle Wallace and Brian Williams jointly said that they speculated that 95% of the American people would support the withdrawal while 95% of the media would oppose it. If it was true that the preponderance of the American people supported the departure, it did not take long for the media to exercise overwhelming influence over the populace. By early September, Biden was underwater (higher disapproval than approval rating), 46%-47%. It wasn’t just Afghanistan; it was the lack of organization and progress with key domestic legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Build Back Better Act (expanding the social safety net).

Biden had formidable members of Congress who preferred gridlock to giving him victory when he really needed it. The so-called “corporate Democratic twins” in the Senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, did and continue to block passage of the Build Back Better Act. If the bill passes at all, it will probably be at a tab that is $1 trillion less than what forty-eight other Democratic senators want.

In the House, the Progressive Caucus fashioned a strategy whereby the infrastructure bill would not be voted upon without a commitment to vote for the Build Back Better bill. They withheld their votes on the infrastructure bill, but fortunately thirteen Republicans voted for it to allow it to pass (nineteen Republicans in the Senate also voted for it earlier in the year). But the lack of unity among the Democrats made Biden look weak to some and contributed significantly to his drop in the polls.

To many, the fact that Joe Biden is such a nice guy and doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body would be reason enough for his popularity to stay well above water. Yes, he has made tactical mistakes with both foreign and domestic policy, but we all make mistakes, don’t we?

The fact that he has been burned for the kind of miscues that anyone might makes causes me to think that maybe the so-called independent voters are more like Republicans than Democrats. Republicans are much less tolerant at giving Democrats a break than Dems are of Republicans. Biden’s good intentions and humane governance is not playing well enough with independents to keep his job approval rating intact.

Is there anything that Biden can do to improve his job approval rating, and encourage citizens to be more positively inclined towards Democrats in general? Molly Jong-Fast of the Atlantic Magazine writes that “Biden Needs an Enemy.” She asserts that demonizing his enemies is what has allowed Donald Trump to stay so popular among his base. Biden needs to play hardball and forego giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt. The reluctance of Republicans to support virtually any proposal from Democrats shows that while the GOP can talk the bi-partisan game, it rarely plays it. One of the most telling incidents was in 2009-2010 when President Barack Obama was bending over backwards to get Republicans to support the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). He had exclusive meetings with Republicans in which he encouraged them to share their thoughts and let his administration know what they wanted in the bill. Of course, this was all premised on the assumption that they cared about improving affordable and effective health care for American citizens. That proved to not be the case.

Iowa Senator Charles Grassley seemed interested in engaging in the dialogue, and Obama repeatedly tried to incorporate some of his suggestions into the bill. But whenever it became time to count noses and see who would approve a compromise version of the bill, no Republicans would indicate support. At the time when the bill was passed exclusively with Democratic votes, Grassley admitted that he never had any intention of supporting the bill. He seemed to simply enjoy jacking around Obama and other Democrats.

Joe Biden has tried to forge bi-partisan alliances for his domestic policies. To a certain extent, it worked for the infrastructure bill. But for the most part, Republicans have shown little interest in collaboration. Those who worked and voted with him on infrastructure are now facing repercussions from party leadership. The bottom line is that there is little point in Biden using valuable time to try to get Republicans to try to change their ways.

But what if Biden adopted a different strategy; one in which he is played hardball and essentially attacked Republicans whenever they engaged in behavior that was outside the bounds of the rational and empathetic thinking that characterizes most Democrats, both in and out of Congress and the White House? Even if it would be a good idea for Biden to do this (and there are ample opportunities for his team to poll the American people on how they would react to this), it really would be an impossibility for one simple fact.

Being nasty and aggressive is not who Joe Biden is. What’s more, he doesn’t seem to have a sarcastic sense of humor, the type that Barack Obama utilized at the White House Correspondents Dinner against Donald Trump in 2011. He himself would likely become a target of mockery if he tried to vitriolically lash out at his opponents.

However, he could be firmer in his deadlines with Republicans. It hurt him that votes on much of his domestic agenda extended beyond the time that he decided to pull the United States out of Afghanistan. Since Republicans have a consistent and proven record of jacking around Democratic presidents, it would serve him well to give them ‘x’ amount of time to contribute to a solution, and if they don’t, then move ahead as best he can without their input. It may be that this will irritate Joe Manchin, but Manchin too is going to have to show that he does not want to make the Democratic Party look tentative and even feeble at time.

Those who criticize Biden for being either too patient or too rash are being unfair to him because neither option is without its negative consequences. What is important to keep in mind is how he is a quantum leap over Donald Trump in how to function as president of the United States. It is not Biden’s fault that Republicans are as strong as they are in the Congress. He has been dealt a difficult hand. Let’s work with him and encourage others to show compassion towards him. We have already gotten half a loaf of what we want from him; hopefully we can up that considerably with passage of a credible form of the Build Back Better Act and then focus on maintaining control of one or both houses of Congress in 2022.

The post Should Biden Play Hardball or Softball? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The American republic is in crisis. Presidents abuse their power with impunity. Congress wallows in its dysfunction. The mechanism established by our Constitution to democratically and collectively address national concerns is collapsing.

Sound like an exaggeration? Good. Sound alarmist? Even better.

This next presidential election may be the most important in American history. The astonishingly corrupt and contentious reign of Donald Trump needs to end. But it needs to be replaced with an administration willing to take drastic action to address our most pressing problem: unrelenting and increasingly polarized politics.

That is why the Democratic candidate for President needs to pick a Republican as a running mate. Moreover, these two individuals need to pledge – if elected – to work together to put nation above either party.

Democrats naturally will hate this idea. They desperately want to wrestle back control of the White House and use executive authority as aggressively as the GOP has. Sharing this opportunity with Republicans will sound absurd. Democrats will demand their pound of flesh. And who can blame them?

But they need to resist this urge.

Everyone can agree that the parties have never been more polarized. Voters and elected representatives have never been further apart. Finding common ground has become increasingly difficult. Compromise has become almost impossible.

But we don’t live in a parliamentary system that regularly allows for “one party at a time” control. Our Constitution establishes a presidential system anchored on checks and balances and separation of powers. The President who enforces law is elected separately from the Congress which makes the law. Divided government (where different parties control different branches) is common.

Here’s why that matters. A system where divided government is common demands bipartisanship and compromise if anything is to get done. Public policy that successfully addresses the nation’s needs requires the recognition of common ground.

A Democratic administration beginning in 2021 will almost certainly be stuck with a Republican controlled Senate. Even if the Democrats pull off a miracle in 2020 and win a majority in the Senate, it won’t be a “filibuster-proof” majority. Divided government will again prevail. Gridlock and dysfunction will again abound.

Our best chance at escaping this nightmare requires the new administration putting nation above party. It involves using the “Bully Pulpit” of the presidency to advance compromise and bipartisan solutions. With a Democratic president working closely with their Republican vice-president, the White House will be able to champion proposals advancing national priorities. One party wouldn’t be able to own the policy since both parties had worked together in its creation.

Compromise would again become possible. The system, in other words, would finally work again as it was designed.

Congress would be compelled to play along and put petty partisanship aside. Representatives and Senators refusing to reach across the aisle would be labeled as obstructionists. But unlike the badge of honor that label now represents, in this new era of executive-led bipartisanship, obstructionists would be risking electoral suicide.

James Madison’s presidential system will never be replaced by a parliamentary system. And our political parties will not become less polarized anytime soon. These two simultaneous realities explain our dysfunction and the republic’s malaise.

A bi-partisan executive administration reminding us of our required need to find common ground gives us our best hope for the future. Short of this, the American experiment will continue to fail under the weight of polarized parties, executive overreach, and Congressional gridlock.

The post Why the Democratic presidential nominee must choose a Republican running mate appeared first on Occasional Planet.

We all know that Donald Trump neither wrote “The Art of the Deal” nor has much of an idea about how to really negotiate. He may know how to bully, but that won’t work when dealing with strong Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

In the current government shutdown standoff, Pelosi seems to be taking the position that Trump and other Republicans must fully concede, and then the Democrats will join Trump and others on negotiations about a “wall” and other immigration-related issues.

Democrats have traditionally been willing to negotiate, recognizing that to gain something you have to give something. You may not want to give anything away, but it is generally the price of reaching an agreement. In the case of negotiating with Donald Trump, it’s possible that they would have to give very little because (a) he is rarely locked into positions, and (b) he is becoming more and more desperate as his popularity falls, now down to 40% and sliding precipitously.

It can be very difficult to make Donald Trump look good to reasonable people, but Nancy Pelosi may be trying to do so. If she portrays the Democrats as the party of intransigence and inflexibility, she is giving Trump a gift that he neither deserves nor could ever earn. Rather than locking herself in a position of “no negotiations until ….,” she could offer something to Trump, just to put negotiations in motion. Suppose that she offered the following:

1. Two billion dollars for a wall, with the proviso that it be made entirely out of recyclable materials.
2. An Immediate re-opening of all government agencies, based on bills passed by the House in 2019 and the Senate in 2018.
3. An agreement to work on comprehensive immigration reform in 2019, with commitments by Senate Majority Leader and Pelosi to permit up-or-down votes in their respective chambers on all provisions of the proposed changes.

Trump may not agree to this, but he would be put on the defensive and it would clearly give her the high ground. He has a weak position to defend and that might wear and tear on him. If he doesn’t budge, what is the big deal of Pelosi changes her sweetener from two billion to three billion, and in return she gets something meaningful in return such as a start to an infrastructure deal.

There are many directions in which to go, but Pelosi is making it seems as though she is locked into only one. She is far wise and savvier than I am about the internal politics of Congress, but that does not mean that she can’t have a brain cramp at a particular moment.

Here’s hoping that she gives peace, er negotiations, a chance.

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Bob Dole did everything that he could to get his ninety-five-year-old war-ravaged body once again to the U.S. Capitol, this time to pay a final tribute to his friend and rival, George H.W. Bush. There once was a moment of testiness, in 1988 when both were running for the presidency at Dole said words to the effect that “I wish that he would stop being so mean.” What Dole really meant was that he wished that HW had not hired the likes of Roger Aisles and Lee Atwater to run his opponents into the gutter.

Bush won the presidency and Dole was Senate Minority Leader for those four years. Dole recently reflected upon those years, saying in an interview with CNN, saying that under Bush’s presidency, “three-fourths of Congress were veterans and we would stick together and work across the aisle. And President Bush was a bipartisan president. So, we got quite a lot done,” he said.

It is interesting how thirty years later in 2018, both parties tout how many veterans they have brought into their ranks and who have been elected to Congress. But to characterize today’s Congress as being bi-partisan would be false, even farcical.

Bush and Dole fought in World War II. They were in different theaters; Bush in the Pacific and Dole in Italy. But they had a common goal; to help the United States defeat fascism. Their purpose and the tenacity of their commitment ultimately resulted in victory for the United States, first in Europe in May 1945 and three months later against Japan. This was the group that became known as “The Greatest Generation” and truly had much of which to be proud. For the moment, we’ll overlook their omissions in areas of civil rights, poverty, and health care, but their signature achievement was far greater than that of any generation since. They had a bond without a swagger. There was a high degree of mutual respect, and that carried over into the U.S. Congress where Democrats and Republicans alike were able to work collaboratively, not always, but when necessary. That is a far cry from today.

The sense of pride in achievement that the likes of H.W. Bush and Dole had is missing among the men and women currently in Congress who have served in the military. Beginning with Vietnam, the United States has not had a war in which it can claim “victory” since World War II (with the possible exception of H.W.’s Desert Storm efforts in the Persian Gulf). Nothing could symbolize this difference than the varying military careers of H.W. and his son W. H.W. flew over fifty missions in the Pacific and did far more than his part in the U.S. effort in the Pacific. His son, W., was in the National Guard, but weaseled out of going to Vietnam or in any way placing himself in harm’s way. Current members of Congress who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan certainly put themselves at risk, but they lack the sense of bond that comes from shared victory or purpose. This may well play a key role in the lack of unity in both the current Congress and the body politic at large.

A possible solution might be a new war similar in nature to World War II. But we all know that is not only impossible, it is absurd to make war the basis for building national unity. However, there are at least two things that we can do to try to restore the civility of the era of H.W. and Bob Dole:

First, let’s not get in any wars that are fruitless and not winnable (see Just War Theory). Second, let’s find a non-combative way of rebuilding national unity. How about something that should be as a-political as possible – rebuilding and refashioning our infrastructure. Not too long after World War II, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated with Congress the Interstate Highway System. Now we need something more diverse and comprehensive and forward-looking in nature. In the spirit of H.W. and Bob Dole, Congress could do the initial planning now, and in the post-Trumpian era, it could be implemented. Not a bad way to learn lessons from H.W. and Bob Dole, and to move on.

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