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.

You probably did not think that a key reason why the current Supreme Court is so out of whack with much of America is because of gerrymandering. This is so because the makeup of every Court is determined by the two other gerrymandered branches of government, the executive and legislative.

Twelve of the last fifteen justices have been appointed by Republican presidents, and that is not an accident. With our Constitution, it is virtually impossible not to have partisan Supreme Courts when we choose our presidents and legislators in ways that are mired in a deep gerrymandering pie, or cesspool.

Here’s how it works:

The U.S. Senate is perhaps the most insidious form of gerrymandering that we have. A good working definition of gerrymandering from Merriam-Webster is “the practice of dividing or arranging a territorial unit into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections.” At the time that the American constitution was created, there were no political parties. But there were political interests. The most significant of these interests was what powers would individual states have as opposed to the federal government.

For example, who would be responsible for determining whether a road should be built, or whether it would be legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink whiskey? Who would be able to levy taxes, or even tariffs? At the time that the constitution was being written, there were two key interests within the states that created the groundwork for gerrymandering:

1. The smaller states such as Rhode Island or Delaware did not want to be overpowered at the federal level by larger ones such as New York or Virginia.
2. The states where slavery was legal and was commonly used wanted to have equal power to the states that did not have slavery.

Many of the founding fathers were leery of direct democracy, meaning direct votes by the people. In order to prevent runaway “popular democracy,” the founders created a Senate to go along with the House of Representatives in the Congress. The Senate was undemocratic in two ways, both of which impacted the Supreme Court.

1. Initially, Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not the people. This would be a way of better ensuring that the interests of the states, as opposed to the people, were represented in the Senate. This was clearly undemocratic, and in 1917, the 17^th Amendment was passed, allowing the people to vote for their Senators. But at that time, “the people” were essentially only white males.
2. Each state has two senators. That ensures that there is equal representation among all the states in the Senate. At the same time, it ensures that at least one house of Congress does not include equal representation of the people. For example, California has a population of nearly 40 million people while Wyoming has less than 600 thousand. For each person in Wyoming, there are over 60 in California. What that means in the Senate is that each person in Wyoming has as much power as 60 people in California. That is terribly unfair, and it means that states like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Nebraska, etc. have far more power in the Senate than states like California, Texas and New York. The same is true for southern states such as Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina which are relatively small by population. Additionally, these states are no longer politically competitive. Conservative Republicans win virtually all state-wide elections including for the Senators.

Right now, the U.S. Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Democratic Senators represent nearly 57% of the population, whereas Republican Senators represent around 43%. If the Senate was democratic, the Democrats would have a large majority. But in today’s real world the Democrats will probably lose seats in the 2022 mid-term election and once again be a minority.

We should also point out that the House of Representatives is gerrymandered in a different way. Take Missouri for example. It has eight Congressional seats. Recently, the state has voted between 50% – 60% Republican. Even at 60%, Republicans should get only five of the seats. However, they get six and some tried to get them seven. Why does it come out this way?

It is because in Missouri the districts are drawn by the state legislature. The Missouri General Assembly is currently veto-proof Republican. What the legislature has done is to draw two “minority majority” districts. This means districts in which some minority constitutes a majority of the voters. In Missouri, it is African-Americans. One district is in the eastern part of the state, St. Louis, and the other in the western part, Kansas City. None of the other districts is competitive.

Similar to the legislative branch, the executive (presidency) is deeply influenced by gerrymandering. The way in which the founding fathers took care of that was by creating the Electoral College. The E.C. is not really a college. It is a barely known organization that only exists every four years, when there is a presidential election. The number of representatives that each state has in the E.C. is somewhat based on population, but not entirely. What is important to know is that when the Electoral College works properly, the electors from each state vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in that state. In other words, the electors in Alabama vote for whomever carried the state and the electors in California vote for whomever won that state.

Where it gets undemocratic is let’s suppose that Candidate A carries Alabama by one million votes and loses California by a 400,000 votes. You might think that Candidate A would be ahead at that point, because she has 600,000 more votes than Candidate ‘B.’ But with the Electoral College, Candidate ‘B’ is ahead with 55 Electoral Votes from California as opposed to Candidate ‘B’ who has the 9 Electoral Votes from Alabama.

The fact that a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president through the E.C. is not just hypothetical. It has happened five times in our history. The two most recent are the two most consequential. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote from George Bush by over a half million votes. However, Bush won the Electoral vote when the Supreme Court made a decision that gave Bush Florida’s electoral votes. That would not have mattered if the decision had been made by the popular vote.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by more than three million votes. However, Trump narrowly won “battleground states” such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and that propelled him to an Electoral victory.

It’s possible that two of our worst presidents ever were elected by the Electoral College than the popular vote. These two presidents are also responsible for five of the current six conservatives on the Supreme Court. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito; Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

This is how the Supreme Court became impacted by gerrymandering. Without a gerrymandered presidency and a gerrymandered Senate, the Supreme Court would have been more balanced and reflective of the values of the American people.

To make matters worse, the Supreme Court itself has recently refused to overturn the creation of gerrymandered districts by the states.

The political ramifications of the gerrymandering dynamics is that Republicans are helped in all three branches. Theoretically, the three branches of government are supposed to restrain one another through a system of checks and balances. But that does not work when all three branches are dominated by one party, and that particular party is intent on thoroughly dominating government and extending very few levers of power to minority parties.

How can this change? At the moment, it’s difficult to conceive. Trump Republicans have a number of plans to further a radical right agenda in America. For our government to become more balanced it will require challenging victories by non-Republicans in congressional and presidential races. Stay tuned to see if that happens.

The post The Gerrymandering Virus – It’s Everywhere! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The history of the Republican Party over the past seventy years includes battles between the moderates within the party against the extremists to the right. During most of the second half of the 20^th Century and some of the 21^st Century, the moderates were able to seize the presidential nomination. But the far-right Donald Trump steamroller movement seems to have almost crushed the remaining elements of the moderates.

In 1952, the Republican Party was divided between the moderates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower and the deeply conservative (though barely extremist) element favoring Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Eisenhower won the nomination in 1952 as well as the presidential election. The same thing happened four years later in 1956.

The GOP nomination in 1960 went to Eisenhower’s vice-president, Richard Nixon. At that time in his life, he was actually quite moderate, in part because he was constantly currying the favor of Eisenhower. It was not a certainty that Eisenhower would endorse Nixon until a day before the convention. Nixon was opposed by progressive New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but the former vice-president won the nomination, carrying all eleven states with primaries as well as every other state that did not have a “favorite son” running. Nixon’s ease with winning the nomination did not carry over to the election as he was edged by Democrat John F. Kennedy.

1964 was the first year in which a true right-wing extremist won the Republican nomination. The nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, as he defeated Rockefeller on the strength of his appeal to many voters who were angry about the progressive turns in the Kennedy-Johnson years. Goldwater became famous for uttering in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater wanted to undo much of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as well as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. But he carried very few moderate Republicans and was soundly defeated in November. That election, 1964, was the last time that Democrats won in a landslide.

1968 was one of the strangest and most disconcerting years in American history. Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek renomination. Two other individual seemed to be likely candidates, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York. Kennedy was assassinated right after the California primary in early June. Johnson’s vice-president Hubert Humphrey ran as the “proxy Johnson” candidate. He did not enter any primaries, but with the help of Johnson in garnering support from the “party regulars,” Humphrey was able to win the nomination at the disjointed convention in Chicago where on-going violence was taking place in downtown.

On the Republican side, Richard Nixon was able to make a comeback, in large part because of the support that he had given Republican candidates across the country over the previous six years. He was opposed by newly elected governor of California Ronald Reagan and New York’s long-time governor Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon won ten of the twelve primaries and 61 % of the delegate votes. His politics fell somewhere between the progressive Rockefeller and the conservative Reagan. He won the election against Humphrey and third-party candidate Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Nixon governed moderately for his first several years, but as his anger rose, he became more and more conservative.

Even though the Watergate break-in occurred in 1972, it did not impact Richard Nixon’s reelection that year. He carried every state other than Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He had no opposition in the Republican primary that year, and his election race against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a breeze for him. But he was initially worried that he would have to run against popular Maine Senator Edmund Muskie. The fact that McGovern bested Muskie for the Democratic nomination was due in part to the Nixon “plumbers” who created false and misleading information about Muskie, and they eventually trapped him into appearing very unpresidential in a press conference.

Once Nixon won reelection, his primary focus was on the Watergate cover-up. This brought out a great deal of anger and meanness on his part. It also was consistent with his notion of an “enemies list” and crafting domestic policies to undermine Johnson’s Great Society. By the time that Nixon resigned in August of 1974, his governance was quite conservative.

In 1973, after disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned, Rep. Gerald Ford of Michigan became vice-president. He assumed the presidency upon Nixon’s resignation. He was faced with problems of inflation, recession, and an extended energy crisis. He was considered a moderate, in large part because he did not fervently support the right-wing Republican social agenda on abortion, gay rights, etc. Leading to the 1976 election, Ford was seen as vulnerable. He was challenged by the aforementioned former Governor Ronald Reagan of California. The contest was extremely tight as Ford carried 26 states and Reagan 24. Ford won 1,121 delegates and Reagan 1,078. Ford won the nomination, as a moderate, but Reagan had established himself as a national leader and was poised for 1980.

In the 1976 general election, Ford carried a great deal of Nixon’s baggage, including the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon for “all crimes committed or might have been committed.” Ford lost to energetic Democrat, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Carter had a somewhat sluggish presidency as he faced many of the economic and energy problems that Ford did and he was further burdened by the fact that 51 Americans had been taken hostage by Iran during a califate revolution. The 1980 Republican nomination was going to be a prime plumb and Reagan was poised to secure in on behalf of the conservative wing of the party. He carried 44 states to the six carried by moderate George H.W. Bush, who Reagan accepted as his vice-president. Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide. Four years later, Reagan faced nominal opposition for the nomination and then prevailed in another landslide election, this time against former vice-president Walter Mondale of Minnesota.

The race for the 1988 Republican nomination was largely between two party regulars who fell somewhere between moderation and extremism. Vice-President George H.W. Bush battled Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Extremists to the right were represented by Rev. Pat Robertson of Virginia, but he carried only four states. Dole became quite upset with some of the accusations by Bush, whose campaign was managed by one of the greatest masters of dirty tricks, Lee Atwater. The Bush campaign dispensed of Dole rather early in the primary sweepstakes and went on to carry 42 states.

The Democrats continued a habit of choosing weak presidential nominees, this time former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. Atwater was incredibly skilled in embarrassing Dukakis, portraying Dukakis as being both soft on crime and weak as a military leader. Bush won in the third straight Republican landslide.

When Bush ran for reelection in 1992, he a tougher race. First, Atwater had died the year before from a virulent form of brain cancer, and his Democratic opponent was a strong one, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Bush was also challenged from the right within his own party by former journalist and Nixon speech-writer Pat Buchanan. Bush carried all 50 states and the District of Columbia and easily dispensed of Buchanan to win the Republican nomination.

In 1988, Bush had campaigned on a very conservative plank, “read my lips, no new taxes.” He had been able to fulfill that promise until 1992, reelection year. The federal government was running short on money and new taxes were in order. He walked back his pledge, albeit with sound reasoning. But it hurt him politically. Clinton was a breath of fresh air, particularly in the debates where he came across as much more human and compassionate than Bush. Clinton won the election in a three-way race in which eccentric businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent.

While Clinton had a difficult time getting legislation through Congress, he was still popular among voters. Two veterans of previous presidential races were the top contenders for the GOP nomination in 1996, Kansas Senator Bob Dole and Virginia journalist Pat Buchanan. In this case, the moderate, Dole, achieved an overwhelming victory, carrying delegates from 46 states, this, despite losing New Hampshire to Buchanan early in the cycle. Dole was a legitimate moderate who knew as well as anyone how Congress operated, something that was tough for Clinton to do. But Clinton started his campaign well before Dole won the Republican nomination and he carried 31 states plus DC for a 379 – 159 electoral victory. Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of over eight million votes.

The fight for the 2000 Republican nomination featured moderate Senator John McCain against conservative former Texas Governor George W. Bush. While Bush seemed to many to be too naïve and inexperienced for the job, he had an extremely skilled campaign staff, and he was able to capitalize on the growing conservative movement in the country. In the primaries, he won nearly twice as many votes as McCain and carried 45 states.

In the November general election, Democrat Al Gore of Tennessee, the sitting vice-president won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. The electoral victor depended on the vote from Florida where there was considerable confusion and malfeasance, particularly with the use of “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County. At first it appeared that Gore would carry Florida; then Bush, whereupon Gore conceded. But as the Florida vote tightened up again, Gore rescinded his concession. Virtually all components of the Florida race were thrown into the courts which resulted in numerous precinct recounts. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that resulted in Bush winning the election. It was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later said that she thought that she made a mistake in her vote. But Bush won and what happened in the country was quite different from what would have happened with an Al Gore presidency.

Gore graciously accepted the Supreme Court’s decision, and Bush was inaugurated as president. It remains an open question as to what Bush and the Republicans would have done had the Court ruled in Gore’s favor.

It was on Bush’s watch that nine-eleven occurred. Many scholars believe that had Gore been president, he may well have paid more attention to the CIA’s warning about Al Qaeda during the first eight months of his administration and perhaps would have been able to prevent the attack from happening. Had nine eleven occurred on his watch, it is unlikely that he would have invaded Iraq for specious reasons as Bush did.

In 2004, Bush had the most nominal of opponents in the Republican primary. In the general election, he won the popular vote by over three million votes and the determinative electoral count, 285 – 251.

Most people remember the 2008 election because of Barack Obama’s nomination win over Hillary Clinton, and then his win of the presidency. But Republicans had a very competitive race for their nomination. Eventually Senator John McCain of Arizona won the contest, winning the races in thirty-seven states. But former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won eleven contests and nearly five million popular votes to McClain’s ten million. Both McCain and Romney were seen as moderates.

Two other candidates in the race were former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who was on the far-right of the evangelical wing of the Republican party, and Texas congressman Ron Paul who was more of a libertarian than a Republican. In 2008, the moderates in the GOP clearly carried the day.

2012 was another year in which the moderate wing of the Republican Party prevailed. Romney won going away with 42 states and over 52% of the popular vote. His nearest competitor was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum who was an extreme right-wing religious candidate. Also on the race were Ron Paul again as well as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who in many ways was the father of the modern right-wing Republican Party.

Romney won the nomination but lost the general election to Obama. Even though Obama won reelection, he was being stymied with his legislative agenda, particularly with the obstinance of Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.

Charles Darwin would have liked the 2016 Republican race, as it was clearly an exercise of survival of the fittest. The fittest won the nomination and eventually the election, but as was clear to many when he first announced his candidacy in June of 2015, Donald Trump was not the fittest to govern.

He won the nomination against fifteen other candidates who took the stage on at least one of the televised Republican debates in the 2016 cycle. Most Republicans thought that Trump’s candidacy was a “joke,” but as more and more of the other candidates dropped out of the race, Trump became more of a concern, and then a favorite. The other candidates learned rather quickly that it was not wise for them to cross swords with Trump. He had ways of humiliating others while responding to attacks on him with more vicious rebuttals on his opponents. He dispatched in quick order with some of the previously favored candidates such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Santorum, Paul and Huckabee. Even before the primaries began, well-known Republicans such as former New York governor George Pataki, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Some of those who dropped out were moderate (Kasich and Bush) but most were extreme right-wingers. The last person standing before Trump clinched the nomination was extreme right-winger Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump attacked Cruz by insinuating that his father had been part of a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy, and that his wife was unattractive. When the Republican delegates assembled in Cleveland, Trump had nearly three times as many delegates as Cruz. Trump organized the convention to in many ways be a “hate-fest” as he and his supporters lambasted Republicans who did not agree with him as well as anyone with a ‘D’ (Democrat) after their name.

If the Trump – Clinton race has occurred in virtually any other democracy, Clinton would have won solidly, with nearly three million more popular votes than Trump. But this is the United States, and it has the anachronistic Electoral College. In that arena, Trump prevailed 306 – 225, and thus was declared the next president of the United States.

By 2020, Trump was so popular within the Republican Party that his only opposition was the not-well-known former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, a genuine moderate. In the primaries. Weld won only 2.35 % of the vote while Trump essentially won the rest. Trump won the nomination and then went on to lose the general election to former vice-president and senator Joe Biden of Delaware by seven million popular votes, and in the Electoral College, 306-225, the same margin by which he had won four years previously. However, now, twenty months after the election, Trump still does not understand that he lost, nor do many of his supporters. That in itself exemplifies how far to the radical right the Republican Party currently sits.

The main difference in the 2022 Republican Party is that it’s virtually impossible to find a moderate Republican. Where are the Dwight Eisenhowers, Nelson Rockefellers, Gerald Fords, George H.W. Bushs, Bob Doles, John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the Republican Party? It seems that somewhere between the time that Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination in June of 2015 and the time that he won the nomination in July, 2016, it became virtually impossible to be a moderate in the GOP without getting verbally demolished by Trump.

Following the testimony of White House Chief-of-Staff aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 committee on June 28 of this year, it seems that Trump is not a shoo-in to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But the mostly likely opponents are current “Trumpsters” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, former vice-president Mike Pence of Indiana, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. If there is a well-known moderate in the party, it would be Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney. In reality, her views on most issues are strongly conservative. Where she differs from the others is in her integrity, as show so vividly in her role as vice-chair of the Jan. 6 committee.

As we see from the chart above, Republicans have won eleven of the eighteen races since 1952. Had the winner been based on the popular vote, the split would be nine each. The Republicans have won the popular vote only once in the last eight elections (W. Bush in 2004). Theoretically the Democrats should be on a roll.

But Republican extremists seem to have captured the party, though it was only ten years ago when the party nominated a moderate (Romney in 2012). Under fair and equal rules, the Democrats may have a bright future. However, the conservative Supreme Court is actively undermining democracy, and at the present time, all bets are off.

The post Are moderate Republicans dying with a whimper; or will there be a resurgence? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Our political system is structurally stacked against Democrats. The U.S. Senate gives overweighted power to small states, helping Republicans. The Electoral College is equally advantageous to Republicans.

Republicans have held the White House for sixteen of the 34 years since 1988, yet in only one of those eight elections since then have they won the popular vote (George W. Bush in 2004). There is little that can be done about either of these discriminatory sets of rules, short of constitutional amendments.

There is one area in which Democrats can act alone, and that is how they operate and schedule their presidential primaries. Right now, the Democratic primary / caucus schedule is heavily weighted towards small and predominantly white states. First on the list of contests in Iowa, then usually followed eight days later with the New Hampshire Primary. Both of these contests favor candidates who can attract a lot of early volunteers, because door-to-door canvassing is feasible and effective in such small states with months, even years, of lead time in advance.

For candidates whose predominant appeal is to metropolitan voters in blue states, it is an excruciating wait until primaries occur in such states. By that time, they are often out of the race because (a) they did poorly in Iowa and/or New Hampshire, (b) the media minimizes their chances, and (c) they run out of money.

Democrats could fix this by establishing their own schedule for primaries. One idea that has been suggested is setting up a series of four regional primary days, (a) Northeast, (b) Southeast, (c) Northwest, and (d) Southwest. Or, the regions could be completely different, though it helps to have clearly define geographic areas. Also, the order of the regional primaries could change in each quadrennial election year.

By changing how their party selects its presidential nominees, Democrats would demonstrate to the American people that they truly support democratic processes. It might eventually help in changing the Electoral College and bringing needed reform to the Senate.

Regrettably, when it comes to doing the heavy lifting to modify the Electoral College and the Senate rules, the Democratic Party is the equal to the Republican Party in perpetuating the status quo.

This and other systemic obstacles to Democrats is eloquently stated in Jedediah Britton-Purdy’s recent guest essay in the New York Times.

At a more basic level, today’s Republican Party succeeds only because the Electoral College, the Senate and the Supreme Court all tilt in its favor. That system has handed conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that only one Republican has won the presidential popular vote after 1988.

The Electoral College is like the Senate; it favors small states and is tone deaf to the margins by which candidates win individual states. Wyoming, a Republican state, has equal representation in the Senate to California, a Democratic state. Equal representation, but California has fully fifty-seven times as many people. That means that each person in Wyoming has fifty-seven times as much power in the Senate as individuals in California.

Democrats are nearly as responsible as Republicans for the perpetuation of the antiquated Electoral College. While many rank-and-file Democrats would like to see it abolished, party leaders are radio silent about it. They need to take the lead in either abolishing the Electoral College or passing the National Popular Vote Act in states totaling more than 270 Electoral votes. That act, which has passed 16 states with 195 electoral votes, instructs electors to vote for whomever wins the national popular vote. But that might be dicey now with how Republicans are trying to take power away from the electors and give them to state legislatures in Red States.

So, if Democrats wish to advance democracy without opposition from the Republicans, they may well want to focus on how they plan their primaries. Time is actually short, as plans for the 2024 primaries are already being made.

The post What Dems can actually do without Republicans appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Democrats / liberals have good reason to want to jump all over Howard Schultz. The Starbucks owner and potential independent presidential nominee in 2020 could totally turn over the apple cart as Democrats work hard to oust Donald Trump from the White House, or whomever else that Republicans might run in his place.

Ralph Nader ran as a third-party candidate in 2000. Had he not, in all likelihood, Al Gore would have defeated George W. Bush. Imagine if on September 11, 2001 the United States had a president who wanted to avoid war and who could bring reason to the American response to the terrorists who hijacked those planes and killed nearly 3,000 people. Further, imagine that when Al Gore was elected, he would have paid proper attention to the intelligence warnings, as Bush did not, and the whole debacle could have been avoided.

We often hear terms like “facts matter” and “words matter.” There is no arguing this wisdom, but we can also add “judgment matters.” When we think of 9-11 and its aftermath, there are two key decisions that allowed dysfunction to occur. First, Bush was “elected” (not by the popular vote) and Gore was not. Second, Ralph Nader set the table for all of this to happen.

As brilliant as Nader may have been, his hubris exceeded it. He talked about there not being a dime’s worth of difference between Bush and Gore, and even after 9-11 when it was crystal-clear, he did not acknowledge the deficiencies of his actions.

So, if Howard Schultz wants to run as an independent in 2020, I will beg to differ with other progressives and say that it’s okay, but with a major caveat. That condition is that if he should reach a level of viability that he would pose an electoral threat to the Democratic nominee, he will have to withdraw. And, in fact, he has indicated that he would do that as has possible campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, someone of enormous political acumen (particularly when he is operating as a journalist).

But that’s not all. Schultz could have an opportunity to educate the American people about ways to permit non-Republican and non-Democrat candidates to run for president, without posing a fatal threat to one of the two-party candidates. The key to this is opening the eyes of Americans to two structural changes in the way in which we elect or leaders:

1. Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a direct popular vote. According to PRRI, by roughly a two-to-one margin, Americans say they would prefer if presidential elections were decided by the national popular vote as opposed to the Electoral College. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans believe that presidential elections should be decided based on the national popular vote, while about one-third (32%) believe they should be decided through the Electoral College. The entrenched politicians in each party don’t like abolishing the Electoral College because they have become experts in gaming the undemocratic system that we call the Electoral College.

The way that the system works now, if no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes (270 or more), the election is thrown into the House or Representatives. This happened in 1824 and 1876 and the results were not pretty. So, the question would be, what do we do with a direct popular vote in which no candidate receives a majority.

2. Adopt a very viable alternate system called 1-2-3 voting. This is where each voter gives his or her first, second and third choice for president / vice-president. If a voter’s first preference does not win, then the second choice of the voter is added to that candidate’s tally. The same would be true for third choice, and so on. This system is frequently called ranked choice voting (or instant run-off voting), but those terms are harder to remember than 1-2-3 voting.

Here is an animation of less than two minutes that show how 1-2-3 voting works:

Now we can see how Howard Schultz could play a remarkable role in American politics. His popularity could be potentially high enough so that he could put a scare in a lot of Democrats and Republicans (particularly Democrats). But unlike Ralph Nader and others, Schultz could use his standing to point out how the problems that he created require solutions others than despising the messenger. What is needed is for the Electoral College to be abolished and for a 1-2-3 system of voting to replace it.

Schultz is 65-years old, so this would probably be his final chance to become president. But he would have to be truly out of touch with reality to think that he could win in 2020 as an independent. He has already had a remarkably successful life. He won’t become president, but he could be the person who brings the kind of reform to American politics that have been needed for centuries. That would be a crowning achievement.

The post Let’s not demonize Howard Schultz, rather help him do no damage appeared first on Occasional Planet.

We know that viewership of network news has declined precipitously in recent years, and the intended audience is primarily those who are currently or soon-to-be elderly. The cash-cow business of pharmaceuticals gloms onto this demographic and saturates the NBC, CBS and ABC nightly news programs with legal drugs for sale. Among the biggest pharmaceutical advertisers are Merck, Inc. and Pfizer.

But during political season, which is now becoming almost year-round, political ads also saturate news broadcasts. There is a fundamental difference between the pharmaceutical and political ads. With the drug ads, extensive warnings are provided about the associated risks with the product. This is required by law. With the political ads, no cautionary words are provided, and the danger of mis-use is at least as great as it is with the medications.

It’s a wonder that the medications advertised on TV actually turn a profit. The Food & Drug Administration has established regulations for advertising that require the sponsors to provide disclaimers about the risks involved with the medication. In many cases, this can consume far more time in the commercial than the reasons to ask your physician to prescribe it for you.

For example, below is a commercial for Stelara, a medication to treat the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease. You’ll note that of the 60-seconds in the ad, 32-seconds are devoted to information about associated risks.

This is called Truth in Advertising. It’s worth noting that the Federal Trade Commission has a hand in this, but the FDA has exclusive rights over regulation of prescription medications.  Kudos to progressives in Congress and the White House who spearheaded the establishment of these two important agencies, the Federal Trade Commission in 1914 and the Food and Drug Administration in 1906. They perform essential roles of government, protecting individual citizens from possible excesses by corporations. They work to protect “we the people” from being duped.

But what about the political ads that are almost wall-to-wall during newscasts? There are absolutely no warnings provided about the hazards of purchasing the “product-being-sold” the way there are about pharmaceuticals.

Take a look at this ad for the re-election of Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner running for re-election. It is only thirty-eight seconds long, but there are twelve unsubstantiated charges within it. With the harried voice-over, the viewer cannot catch his/her breath to even think about what is being said. It’s one jab after another, with no fact-checking whatsoever.

Clearly, we need some regulations of these political ads as we have for pharmaceuticals. Here are several reasons why it makes sense to do so:

1. Pharmaceuticals are used to protect our health. We are all aware that mistakes happen. With medications, we are talking about life and death. This is why precautions must be taken to protect us from the risks of certain pharmaceuticals.
2. Key components of the jobs of our political leaders are to protect individual liberties and to promote the “general good” within our society. Just as citizens need honesty in all other forms of advertising, they need it from the political ads to which they are often subjected.
3. More often than not, political ads are characterized by half-truths, actual lies, distortions, innuendos and personal attacks. What is said about the actual candidate running for office is frequently just a sliver of the real truth. The same holds true with how candidates characterize their opponents.

Television ads are one of the most effective ways for political candidates to reach large audiences. The First Amendment guarantees the right to candidates to openly reach out to constituents. But we also have restrictions on distortion. Currently we are not applying them to political advertising.

Placing restrictions on political advertising is something that can be done with greater ease than many other necessary reforms such as abolishing or neutralizing the Electoral College. Cleaning up the ads should be a primary issue for progressives. Let’s see who steps forward.

The post Watching the news: why do we have warnings about prescription ads, but not about political ads appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I remember that Barack Obama, upon leaving office, said that one of his post-presidency goals was to reform our democracy. He seemed to have particular interest in addressing the travesty of gerrymandering and also looking for enforceable ways to reduce or eliminate voter suppression.

In his first race for the presidency, he seemed to thrive off the elongated, cluttered and senseless system by which fifty states and other territories select their delegates to the national convention where nominees are actually chosen. The first state in play, in 2008 and again scheduled in 2020, is Iowa. This is a state with less than one percent of the nation’s population and whose largest metropolitan area (Des Moines) has not much more than a half million people.

Yet the state of Iowa has an inordinate amount of importance in the way in which we select our presidential nominees. This is extremely non-democratic for at least three clear reasons besides its small population:

1. The length of time that the Iowa caucuses are “in play,” in most election cycles for more than two years, or half the presidential cycle.
2. The nature of campaigning in Iowa which stresses trite activities such as mingling with the animals on the farms and later barbecuing them on the grill.
3. The media focuses far more attention on Iowa than virtually any other state because of its unique positioning. Most of what the media covers is the horse race.

Barack Obama thrived in the retail politics of Iowa, a system that allowed him to fully utilize the young volunteers and paid staff who were so quickly attracted to his campaign. He was a media star in Iowa, particularly being a serious African-American candidate in a state that is barely 2.5% black. So, it worked for him, but that does not make it a legitimate part of a democratic process to choose our leaders.

And now here we go again, 1,131 days before the 2020 presidential election and 847 days before the likely date for the Iowa Caucus. A picture from the Washington Post shows Democrat Tim Ryan running through a park / pasture; seemingly not knowing if he’s a human being running for president or one of the livestock who’s exceptionally hungry.

This is not to say that Tim Ryan is a bad guy or could not possibly make a good president of the United States. But what it does say is that we have a demeaning system for entering the presidential sweepstakes each cycle, and it takes a toll.

Iowa is one of the gateways to excessive money coming into politics. Either Tim Ryan had to spend his own personal money to showcase himself in Iowa, or he is taking contributions from others. It is not cheap to run a presidential campaign and the Iowa caucuses cost a disproportionate amount. There are some candidates who have spent nearly 100 nights in Iowa prior to the caucuses. Once they begin campaigning, they splash advertisements throughout the state, mostly through airwaves. The cost per vote in Iowa is generally greater than it is in any other state. Is it worth it if candidates are trying to meet every voter in Iowa rather than doing their day jobs, which often involve being public servants at public expense?

It is possible to end the Iowa madness; in fact, the entire absurdity of our strung-out campaigns. Barack Obama’s credibility within the Democratic Party is still high. He could call the troops together and for a brainstorming session to change the system to make it more democratic and less expensive. In some cases, they could pressure states to change their systems. In other cases, they could refuse to take the bait and place self-limits on spending and time spent in the states.

Let the Tim Ryan photo (whether he is caught in character or out of character) serve as the poster for the absurdity of the current system. It’s time to move on. If Democrats can unite in bringing sanity to the campaign schedule, they will build more credibility to address other important issues like gerrymandering, voter suppression and eventually abolishing the electoral college.

Oh yes, Hillary Clinton could join Barack Obama on this enterprise, as could Bernie Sanders.

The post Iowa, already, really? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’ve just sent the following letter to all 10 of Missouri’s presidential Electors. Missouri is so deep, deep red that I doubt that I’ll convince anyone. But in my letter, I’m trying to appeal to the elector in any way I can. To stop Donald Trump from wrecking everything he and his cronies can, we need 37 electors—nationally—to switch their votes. So even one from Missouri could help. It may be a fool’s errand, a wild-goose chase, a hail Mary, or any other phrase you can use to describe a steep uphill climb like this one. But I would feel terrible if I hadn’t at least tried.

Here’s my letter. Feel free to excerpt, plagiarize or write something totally different. Just do it. Before Dec. 19.

I’m writing to you in hopes of convincing you that your vote in the Electoral College on Dec. 19 could play a role in protecting our democracy. As an engaged, knowledgeable citizen, you have probably already observed Donald Trump’s erratic behavior in the transition period before Inauguration Day. You may even be among the large percentage of American voters who–before the election– deemed Donald Trump to be temperamentally unfit to be President.

You already know that, in Missouri, you are not bound to vote for the candidate who won the state. And, although Donald Trump won Missouri’s popular vote, he did not gain the majority of popular votes nationwide. Many states have already passed a bill that would allocate their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote–if enough other states pass a similar bill. And while National Popular Vote has not yet been passed by enough states, there is clearly a movement in that direction. With that in mind, I would urge you to consider casting your Electoral vote for someone other than Mr. Trump.

Also, it seems to me–based on the appointments he has already made to his Cabinet–that despite his campaign promises to help lower-income people–Mr. Trump’s policies have the strong potential to hurt precisely those people whom he promised to help. In other words, he will be hurting Republicans as well as Democrats, and will end up alienating the very voters who expanded the reach of the Republican party during the 2016 election. Among those policies are the privatization of Medicare and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act–a move that would take away health insurance from 20 million people who previously lived with the precarious, dangerous status of not being insured.

You have in your power the ability to keep our country great by preventing an unqualified, temperamentally unfit man from taking the reins of power and leading us in an unpredictable direction.

I urge you to consider your Electoral vote very carefully, and put our country ahead of party loyalty. Your vote can make the difference. .

The post Here’s my letter to Electors: Now it’s your turn appeared first on Occasional Planet.