Steve Kerr on another mass slaughter and the Senate's refusal to act (via the Bleacher Report, May 24, 2022).
I'm not going to talk about basketball. Nothing's happened with our team in the last six hours. We're going to start the same way tonight. Any basketball questions don't matter. Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed 400 miles from here. And a teacher. In the last 10 days, we've had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we've had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. Now we have children murdered at school. When are we going to do something? I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I'm so tired. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm tired of the moments of silence. Enough! There's 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on HR8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It's been sitting there for two years. And there's a reason they won't vote on it: to hold onto power. . . .
Texas Senator Ted Cruz offered prayers. Shannon Watts and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were unimpressed.
After 16 people were killed in a hot air balloon in Lockhart, Texas, Ted Cruz authored and passed federal legislation improving safety rules. But after the shootings in El Paso and Santa Fe, he blamed mental illness for gun violence.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. -- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Our country's continuing experience with mass shootings in schools, churches, supermarkets, theaters and other entertainment venues is no accident. Powerful political agents have made this possible -- and, not incidentally, made boatloads of money as the death tolls mount year after year like clockwork.
It doesn't matter to them that the semi-auto ban gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. -- April 28, 1995 NRA fundraising letter, emphasizing the angry shift in NRA policy begun in 1977, which has made the NRA a rich organization has made Wayne LaPierre a rich man.
Today the industry is all in on any pro-gun influencer, especially if they spout hateful, racist, or misogynistic rhetoric. People like Ted Nugent and Sebastian Gorka are received as heroes at gun industry trade shows. Instigators like Alex Jones are discussed in hushed tones as if they are deities. Even after fomenting insurrection, Donald Trump is welcomed as the main draw of the NRA convention and most gun companies eagerly line up to court the resulting frenzied masses. Today, there is only one guiding gun industry principle, and it’s found in the NSSF’s marketing material: “always shooting for more.”
The most critical player guaranteeing that gun massacres continue to happen again and again, of course, is not the NRA and not the gun makers, but the Republican Party.
Jonathan Bernstein offers spot-on insights on American politics with every column and his piece last Wednesday was no exception. Though his observations are measured and well-grounded, there is sometimes room for a quibble or two. And, less often, more than a quibble. Let’s take a look at two paragraphs from “Republican Voters Aren’t Trump Zombies.”
So when the Washington Post’s Annie Linskey says that “Trumpism is having a better record than Trump himself tonight,” I’d say that the strain of the party that emerges as Trumpism or Tea Partyism or Gingrichism or Nixonism or McCarthyism — and yes, there are differences among those incarnations of right-wing radicalism but it’s not hard to see continuity as well — is particularly dominant within the party now, but it just doesn’t have all that much to do with Trump. None of which is to dismiss Trump as a major player in Republican politics. His endorsement may not be treated as holy writ, but it doesn’t have to be to make a difference in close primaries. He’s popular among Republican voters. He may well win the party’s presidential nomination in 2024. He’s probably the single Republican most able to focus resentment and grievance. And should he regain the presidency, he remains dangerous to democracy precisely because he’s so bad at normal politics, not to mention unusually contemptuous of the rule of law.
Radicalism over the years
Yes, absolutely, there is great continuity from the 1950s to the present with numerous incarnations of radicalism in the Republican Party. And while it’s jolting to read the assertion that Trumpism – the dominant variant of GOP radicalism circa 2022 – “just doesn’t have all that much to do with Trump,” Bernstein is right. When we look at the trajectory and obsessions of the Republican Party, populated by shameless liars, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, election deniers, and insurrectionists, with agendas inspired by the urge to own the liberals and an eagerness to employ the coercive power of the state against the perceived enemies of the GOP – Trump could be struck dead by a lightning bolt tomorrow and it wouldn’t make all that much difference. Trump has already set things in motion, accelerating the Republican Party in an authoritarian direction.
But then – in the final sentence of the quoted passage – Bernstein says of Trump that “should he regain the presidency, he remains dangerous to democracy precisely because he’s so bad at normal politics, not to mention unusually contemptuous of the rule of law.” While I agree regrading contempt for the rule of law, I have more than a quibble with Bernstein’s "precisely because" assessment regarding Trump’s dearth of political skills. I think this is flatly wrong.
A weak president
Throughout the Trump presidency, a recurring theme for Bernstein (often invoking Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power), was that Trump was a weak president because he was so politically inept. Bernstein (as well as Dan Drezner, David Hopkins, Matt Glassman, and other political scientists) argued that Trump, lacking both the understanding and the skillset to wield power effectively, often failed where more savvy, disciplined leaders would have notched victories.
This was, I believe, obviously true throughout the first year of the Trump presidency. And the second. Perhaps the third. But – at some point – things changed. Trump changed. The party actors changed. The political environment changed. And, while Trump continued to display glaring weaknesses at “normal politics,” he still managed to get what he wanted at times. He compensated for his deficiency with workarounds. And by the last months of his presidency he had become more powerful than the figure we had watched in earlier years.
In May 2020, Ross Douthat (who viewed Trump as a clownish figure, “interested in power only as a means of getting attention”) acknowledged Trump’s weaknesses, but argued that because “real political authority, the power to rule and not just to survive, is something that Donald Trump conspicuously does not seem to want,” that he posed no threat to democracy.
Bernstein disagreed and responded:
Presidential weakness isn’t insurance against harm. The real nature of presidential power, as the political scientist Richard Neustadt explained long ago, is a function of bargaining skill, mastery at gathering and processing information, understanding of the political and other incentives of those a president deals with, and thorough knowledge of the political system. Trump has none of those things. Indeed, that makes his influence minimal. But presidents who can’t manipulate the system to realize their visions of what the country needs try instead to work around the system, even if that means bending or breaking the rules. It usually doesn’t work, but along the way they can do all sorts of damage.
I agree with every word. Douthat is completely off base. And in mid-2020, I accepted the view of Trump as a weak president. But in retrospect, I believe that by that time, it was a mistake to continue to insist on Trump’s weakness. As I noted above, there is evidence that he compensated for his dearth of normal political skills. And – with all his failings – his strength became more evident throughout the final months of his presidency.
By May 2022, Trump had appointed Bill Barr as attorney general and was beginning to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the fall election, so he could dispute the loss – a long term project. In June, he staged a triumphant march across Lafayette Square with General Milley, Attorney General Barr, and others in tow. And Trump inspired (and presided over in absentia) the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Whether normal or not, each of these episodes had implications for normal politics, Trump's political standing, and his dominance of the party.
Since leaving the White House, Trump has convinced most Republicans in the party that he was the legitimate winner of the November 2020 election; has inspired across the country election ‘audits,’ voter suppression legislation, laws to make it easier for Republicans in charge to overturn elections, and scores of GOP candidates (for governor, attorney general, secretary of state … down to local election officials and even volunteers) who are committed to ensure his victory next time; has shown that he can still expect pledges of support from Congressional Republicans even after they have publicly stated that he is unfit to serve; and he continues to have broad support throughout conservative media.
A weak president? Not all that weak.
The obvious rebuttal to my view is that these are not examples of normal politics. This isn’t the stuff analyzed in Presidential Power; Neustadt doesn’t give points for insurrection. We can see this move in the language. Douthat mentions “real presidential authority.” Bernstein references “the real nature of presidential power,” the attempts “to work around the system,” and a few paragraphs later, “true presidential influence” and “the proper use of the political system.”
But a key dimension of presidential power is influence (Neustadt's "ability to persuade.") And Trump's influence -- if we set aside preconceptions about moving legislation or directing foreign policy (neither of much interest to the man) -- along several dimensions is highly significant, especially for someone who lost his reelection bid decisively.
Reagan was an icon. Reaganism became an invocation. We're still living in the economic world that Reagan blessed, which has given us an increasingly greater separation between the top one-tenth of one-percent and the rest of us. Trump has transformed the Republican Party and the country just as fundamentally -- with culture, not the economy, as the battlefield. (Ironically, this shift, by ensuring that race and culture dominate our politics, may actually keep Trickle-down economics in place and protect the billionaires from meaningful blowback.)
If Neustadt had studied the Trump presidency
I’ll venture that if Neustadt had observed the Trump presidency, he would have been willing to add another chapter to his book, broadening his view of presidential power to make sense of what he saw.
But even if not, we should broaden our view.
1. We should concede that Trump’s stumbling moves (even if illegitimate or illegal) sometimes served to boost his reservoir of legitimate presidential power. We should concede that when the political environment shifted; when the fealty of Republicans (in Washington, across the country, in office and out, on Fox News Channel and Facebook) to Trump swelled; when Trump became a huge political figure in spite of his weaknesses; when he retained the GOP crown even after his defeat -- every one of these things increased the man’s political power (as defined by Neustadt). Trump didn't get much smarter, but he succeeded in increasing his clout for good or for ill.
2. But let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that Trump was a weak president and (if he were to return) he would be a weak president in the future. Still, that’s not what makes him dangerous. He has shown that he isn't deferential to democratic norms (inside or outside the rule of law) and may transgress those norms whenever the whim strikes. He has demonstrated repeatedly that he is ready, willing, and able to trample democratic safeguards. We can be certain that we would see more of these transgressions in a second term. Count on it. That's the danger, not whether Trump is or is not skillful at normal politics.
3. Finally, if it were true that Trump is a danger to democracy precisely because he is poor at normal politics, then could we be assured that a more skillful Republican with an itch for authoritarian rule would pose a lesser danger? Not at all.
Consider a Ron DeSantis White House. His political skills appear far sharper than Trump's, but this isn't in the least reassuring. Yes, we could imagine hypothetical situations where DeSantis would act less recklessly than Trump, but in the real world (when we can't choose a hypothetical future), we have no reason to suppose that democracy would be less threatened by President DeSantis than by President Trump.
Compilation by New York Magazine: David A. Grogan/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images (top left); Joe Raedle/Getty Images (top right); Federic J Brown/AFP via Getty Images (middle left); Joe Raedle/Getty Images (middle right); CNN/Youtube (bottom left); Storms Media for Delray Beach Market/MediaPunch/Shutterstock (bottom right).
Donald Trump is bad at normal politics. Yes, his ignorance and fecklessness early on may have prompted transgressions against democracy. But at this stage, that's water under the bridge. I believe we can be grateful that Trump was as feckless as he was for as long as he was. And going forward, we have every reason to fear another Trump term, regardless of his mastery of, or failures to master normal politics.
It turns out he’s flat out wrong. Professor Aaron Tang points out (in the Los Angeles Times) "the glaring historical mistakes that pervade its supposedly originalist analysis." The Alito draft acknowledges that at the time of the nation's founding abortions were permitted before quickening (first notable fetal movement, which occurs at roughly 15-16 weeks of pregnancy), but rejects this as "of little importance" by the time the 14th Amendment was ratified. Alito writes, "By 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime even if it was performed before quickening."
To the contrary, replies Tang:
The best evidence is that only 16 of 37 states banned pre-quickening abortions when the 14th Amendment was ratified. In the other 21 states, abortion remained perfectly lawful through roughly 16 weeks of pregnancy. As one pastor explained in response to a married woman who consulted him about a pre-quickening abortion, such an act was “no crime, because the child was not alive.”
As I have noted repeatedly in this blog, fidelity to the agenda of the Republican Party far better explains the rulings of the Republican majority on the Supreme Court than any appeal to originalism, textualism, or strict constructionism. The Republican justices ignore such principles whenever need be to reach a conclusion that they wish to reach. When they do appeal to originalism, their interpretations are often contentious and unconvincing. (Regarding the First Amendment, for instance , their campaign finance rulings interpret speech in a way that would have baffled the founders, while their recent religious liberty rulings are hardly compatible with a strict or historical reading of the establishment and free exercise clauses.) So Alito’s mistake or misrepresentation in this instance is hardly surprising.
The draft opinion (with virtually all 5-4 and 6-3 SCOTUS opinions with only Republicans comprising the majority) is a results-oriented ruling. Beginning with Richard Nixon, Republican presidents have aimed to remake the federal bench. The catchphrase then was "strict constructionism" (the originalism of the day; in any case, that's ancient history now with this relentlessly activist court). Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the first Bush all nominated at least one authentic, well-qualified conservative jurist whose rulings at some point displeased the right wing of the Republican Party. (Adherence to, or straying from, the Constitution had nothing to do with the displeasure. They strayed from Republican talking points.)
Enter the Federalist Society, which has focused on guaranteeing no surprising rulings that contradict the major tenets of the Republican Party agenda -- especially on abortion. Donald Trump promised to outsource the vetting of Supreme Court nominees to the Federalist Society, which, in turn, chose nominees who would stick to the party line come hell or highwater.
By 2017, when Trump entered office, the Federalist Society had a robust list of names and Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were each regarded, with good reason, as sure things on a cluster of issues important to the party. (Never mind the consternation expressed by Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.) All three Trump appointees, with Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito -- and, yes, even John Roberts, who prefers to overturn major precedents in three steps rather than one -- are members of the Federalist Society.
Powerful Christian Right faction of the GOP
This ruling (when it comes down) will match the agenda (and decades of campaign promises) of the Republican Party and the wishes of a powerful faction of the party's base voters. After the leak of the Alito draft, North Country Public Radio interviewed voters about an anticipated ban on abortion. An advocate for banning abortion, Richard Harris, voiced views consistent with the GOP agenda (as quoted by reporter Emily Russell):
This is a religious view. (One view, hardly a consensus, among many.) I’ll note that if there are any references to abortion in the Bible, they have not come to my attention. Harris appeals to biblical passages that reference blood. I don’t know how he came to believe what he professes to believe, but he speaks with absolute certainty.
Regardless of his politics, his views (as reported) are a perfect match for the Republican party line: state sanctioned enforcement of this religious view must prevail. There is no thought – from a party that makes a fetish of invocations of liberty and touts family values – to preserving a woman's liberty in this matter or offering empathy for struggling families. Not at all. If a woman becomes pregnant, she must be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. Never mind how burdensome, or even, as recent laws require, risky continuing the pregnancy is.
Poverty and severe medical risk
Let’s acknowledge first that most abortions are sought by women who live in poverty and often lack access to adequate medical care. The red states that have refused to expand coverage under ACA are among the hot spots ready to outlaw abortion. Not only does this rob women of agency, in many instances, it poses risks for both the woman and the fetus, and eventually (if all goes well) the mother and her young child. Will Republican governors and legislators act to help these women?
Back at the cafe, Mr. Harris has faith that someone (somewhere, somehow) will step up to help: “I think there are resources and there are people who have been touched by God to love who will care for these children if there’s not a father around to really man up for it."
Again, this is consistent with the GOP agenda: no government handouts for poor women; no state coddling of children, infants or the unborn. And just for spite (as noted above): no Obamacare. The Republican Party line: the state is justified in forcing pregnant women to carry pregnancies for nine months and to give birth, but is committed to refuse assistance for families in need.
Let’s be clear what this means in practice. In the Up First podcast, NPR’s Rachel Martin reports on a Texas woman, Ana (and Scott her fiancé, now husband), who had decided, after an unexpected pregnancy, to have a child. Then, at 19 weeks, her water broke – too soon for the baby to survive. The couple spent the night in the ER agonizing over the heartbreaking news.
Ana’s doctors told her that even with excellent NICCU care, the fetus would not survive, while Ana was at great risk of experiencing septic shock or dying from loss of blood. Furthermore, the complications that Ana risked would have diminished her chances of having a healthy baby in the future.
Standard of care in the United States would offer the option of terminating the pregnancy at this stage, but Texas law prohibited this – unless Ana’s condition worsened so that she was in imminent danger of death. The couple, which could afford a flight out of state at considerable risk to Ana, fled to get an abortion.
The Texas law (which provides no exceptions for rape or incest) and the draconian laws in other red states that will soon be in place, reflect the religious views of Catholic and evangelical voters who comprise a powerful faction of the Republican base. Meanwhile, Republicans have begun discussing a nationwide ban on abortion and even bans on birth control.
The strong arm of the law
An intolerant religious minority is bent on returning to an era when women were subjugated to men. This minority believes that women need to be put back in their places in a traditional gender hierarchy. It is not for women and families to make medical decisions; it is for the state to impose its judgment. This view abets even abortion bans that threaten the welfare of women and children, that harm the future prospects of women and families, and that put women's lives at risk.
This minority is a critical faction of the voting base of the contemporary Republican Party. Simply put, Republicans can't win elections without this faction turning out in force. Focused on gaining and retaining political control, the party is champing at the bit to use the coercive power of the state to enforce bans on abortion.
Don’t count on the Republican majority on the Supreme Court to protect Americans from such assaults by government on our freedom. And don’t think for a moment that this activist court is driven by a faithful reading of the Constitution of the United States.
They note Alito's look back at earlier eras of American history, wherein he fails to find an abiding commitment to abortion rights. He writes, “the inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”
While racial resentment and white grievance have always been front and center politically for Donald Trump, so was gender politics. His boasts about having his way with women, even physically assaulting them, and the many reports of his egregious conduct reveal a man who rejects the equality of women. I often regard the MAGA campaign as invoking 1950s America, when white men ruled without much fear of pushback. Cabrera and Riga look further back, all the way to the 19th century.
Regardless of the inspiration (in nostalgia and myth) for MAGA, it's clear that the Republican Party wishes to move the calendar backwards to a time before the advances of civil rights and women's rights -- experienced in the latter half of the twentieth century -- that clash with the racial and gender hierarchies of the past. The Supreme Court's Republican majority is on board with this backward movement. As I wrote in a previous post:
Neither Amy Coney Barrett, nor the five Republican men on the high court, are committed to preserving a woman's right to choose or advancing maternal healthcare. Instead, they are poised to strip away an array of rights that Americans (and not just women) have regarded as constitutionally protected. This judicial crusade seeks, by taking us backwards, to Make America Great Again. I use that phrase not to denote a special affinity with Donald Trump, but to highlight the commonality of the agenda of the court's majority with the retrograde policy preferences of the contemporary Republican Party and the cultural resentment that motivates the Republican base. These justices are clawing back rights of individuals that the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the executive branch have recognized in decades past.
Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community...in a fundraising email, for herself.
"Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community...in a fundraising email, for herself. Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't. I sat on it for a while wondering why me? Then I realized... I’m the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme. Because you can’t claim that you’re targeting marginalized kids in the name of “parental rights” if another parent is standing up and saying no. So you dehumanize and marginalize ME. You say I’m one of THEM. You say she’s a groomer, she supports pedophilia, she wants children to believe they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they’re white." -- Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow
It's about time someone replied to the vile, vicious lies about pedophilia and grooming that have become mainstream fare among Republicans. Not so long ago, this crazy was confined to QAnon. Pizzagate was a fringe sideshow. No longer.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is onboard of course:
The Democrats are the party of pedophiles. The Democrats are the party of princess predators from Disney. The Democrats are the party of teachers, elementary school teachers trying to transition their elementary school-age children and convince them they’re a different gender. This is the party of their identity, and their identity is the most disgusting, evil, horrible thing happening in our country.
mainstream political media is particularly ill-equipped to grapple with the ways in which the GOP pushes what is in essence eliminationist rhetoric and incitement. Many of us know about the QAnon conspiracy theory world which posits a vast liberal/Democrat conspiracy of sex trafficking and pedophilia which will finally be undone by a violent cleansing of America by Donald Trump. Conventional media seems entirely incapable of grappling with, explaining or describing the way that the “mainstream” GOP has increasingly promoted and mainstreamed these beliefs with a spectrum of indirect to increasingly explicit messaging. We see it in the otherwise quite difficult to explain focus on the sentencing specifics of a few cases overseen by future Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. We see it in what I discussed yesterday as the right-wing appropriation of the pedophile/sexual predation language of “grooming” to indict and discredit any and all support of transgender minors. Conventional journalism simply has a willed incapability to make the connections.
The next day, Marshall cited another press failure: a Mike Allen report on what Marshall characterizes as Texas Governor Greg Abbott's "various stunts in recent weeks to keep the border immigration issue at a boil for his own 2022 reelection campaign" wherein the Axios co-founder reports on another "trucker protest" with nary a nod of acknowledgement about what the guv is up to. Marshall concludes, "These are truly the days of our discontent. The political climate is bleak, elite DC press corruption is pervasive." (While I agree with Marshall that this is an instance of a press failure, I'd lean toward cluelessness, and maybe an indifferent rush to post online, rather than corruption.)
What's more concerning though, than a flatfooted political media, is the failure of Democratic leaders to speak up. What were the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee thinking when they sat on their hands, instead of calling out the perverse smears of Josh Hawley? Why has it taken so long for an elected Democrat to push back straightforwardly against this homophobic dive to the gutter? Republicans are telling lies to eviscerate the advancement of gay rights in recent decades, to claw back their own freedom to disparage the LGBTQ community and its allies, and to besmirch the party of inclusion.
I'm no political strategist. Maybe this isn't an ideal Democratic issue for the 2022 campaign season. But come on. Pushing back against this hateful, dehumanizing rhetoric is the only defensible option.
According to the New York Times Magazine, when Forbes embarked on its first billionaires list in 1982, its reporters discovered the world's richest man, a shipping magnate, was worth $2 billion — that's $5.8 billion adjusted for today's dollars. Let me reiterate: Musk and Bezos are now worth a combined $448 billion. The difference between Musk and the shipping magnate, bumping him to a 2022 adjusted net worth of $5.8 billion, is like comparing someone with $100,000 to someone with $2,157.
And that's what makes the two richest people on Earth blithely discussing how to convert portions of Twitter and Amazon HQ into one-off homeless shelters so cartoonishly offensive. Their imaginations and ambitions shrink infinitesimally smaller when they can't make billions off a product (real and imagined). They would never, will never, seriously confront the inequality challenges that lay before us because they don't care. They can't care. It's antithetical to their existence.
That's from Alex Shultz, "The infuriating insincerity of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos' chat about San Francisco homelessness," who explains the context of the 'chat.' I recommend his commentary, which includes this observation: "The public exchange between Bezos and Musk was a detente of sorts in the cold relations between two fake space cowboys. It was also enraging, as are any conversations between the richest people on Earth about piecemeal solutions to systemic problems that they've only made worse. But most notably, it shows just how untouchable both men truly are, a reality they both seem to understand and relish."
As noted in my previous post, high and growing levels of economic inequality pose a threat to democracy. In no other wealthy country in the world is the gulf between rich and poor as great as in the United States. Well over a half million people in this country are homeless. The two richest men in America (and the world) have found time to make light of this.
Writing in Foreign Affairs just before the 2020 election, two political scientists referenced five historical crises of American democracy: the late 1790s (a mere decade after the Revolution), the lead-up to the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These were episodes when authoritarian impulses threatened democratic principles and, at times, when democratic backsliding occurred.
These crises of democracy did not occur randomly. Rather, they developed in the presence of one or more of four specific threats: political polarization, conflict over who belongs in the political community, high and growing economic inequality, and excessive executive power. When those conditions are absent, democracy tends to flourish. When one or more of them are present, democracy is prone to decay. Today, for the first time in its history, the United States faces all four threats at the same time.
I found the authors' analysis, including the four specific threats, to be helpful in understanding the crisis of our democratic institutions. Anyone familiar with 21st century American politics will recognize the four threats.
▪ Political polarization – and negative polarization make the give and take of everyday politics excruciatingly difficult, especially since our group identities and tribal loyalties have become more closely aligned with our partisan differences. As John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck describe recent developments:
Racial and ethnic minorities were shifting to the Democratic Party and voting for its candidates. Meanwhile, whites’ attitudes toward racial, ethnic, and religious minorities were becoming more aligned with their partisanship. People who expressed favorable attitudes toward blacks, immigrants, and Muslims were increasingly in the Democratic Party. People who expressed less favorable attitudes toward these groups were increasingly in the Republican Party.
What we are fighting over in American politics is group identity and status—fights that express themselves in debates over policy and power but cannot be truly reconciled by either. Health policy is positive-sum, but identity conflict is zero-sum.
▪ Conflict over who belongs. Which groups may legitimately participate in democratic governance? Who has the right to a voice in the public sphere? As suggested by the quotations above, attitudes regarding race, ethnicity, and religion are central to our political divisions.
We see these divisions play out in the inability of Congress to enact immigration reform and in raging controversies regarding the border. We see it as well in the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and in legislation across the country in Republican-controlled states to make voting more difficult and even to make it easier for state legislatures to overturn elections. Republican complaints about “rigged elections” often turn on their conviction that only real Americans, not Democratic constituencies, should cast ballots.
▪Economic inequality. An economic chasm – which continues to grow wider – separates the richest among us from everyone else. This disparity undermines social and political equality.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” (First attributed to Louis D. Brandeis by Edward Keating on October 14, 1941.)
Outsized political clout – including access to decision-makers – is among the resources the rich possess in abundance. The Supreme Court has opened the door to unlimited dark money campaign spending. Furthermore, congressmen who do the bidding of the rich may expect to have cushy, lucrative opportunities after Congress. That counts for something. The Republican tax cuts, the foremost legislative accomplishment during Trump’s four years in the White House, were hardly driven by populist politics. Too often public policies fail to address the concerns of the majority.
Wealth inequality leads to stagnant mobility, inequality of educational opportunities and of career prospects, all of which stifle economic growth. As social segregation becomes more pronounced, the poor are relegated to unsafe neighborhoods, with increased risks to health and higher mortality rates. None of this is good for democracy.
▪Excessive executive power that resists constitutional limits. Attention to the Imperial Presidency is hardly new, but neither has the problem diminished in recent decades. We have seen executive overreach in administrations of both parties. We might cheer the executive actions of the presidents of our party, but that doesn’t lessen the threat to democracy. During the Trump years – which brought us epic norm-busting, legal violations, and open contempt for the rule of law – things veered off the rails.
The link to Mettler and Lieberman's piece is found in Thomas B. Edsall's recent review, the title of which dramatizes the stakes, "Trump Poses a Test Democracy Is Failing." Other authors cited by Edsall provide observations that are hardly more sanguine.
Republicans at the turn of the 20th century hurled the charge at Teddy Roosevelt. T.R., the trust-busting leader of the progressive movement, was clearly out of step with Republican ideology. In the ’30s and ’40s, the ‘me-too’ Republicans who went along with FDR’s proposals were also challenged as RINOs. The acronym experienced a resurgence with the election of Bill Clinton (as the Gingrich era was about to bloom) and has been a prominent part of Republican Party skirmishing ever since.
In each of these cases, RINOs were faulted for straying from conservative ideology as popularized (in word, if not in deed) by the Republican Party. In contrast, “Today, in a reflection of the GOP’s murkier ideological grounding in the Trump era, it’s a term reserved almost exclusively for lack of fealty to Trump.”
Almost exclusively. Asserting or acquiescing (and absolutely not contradicting) Trump’s big lie – that he lost to Biden fair and square in 2020 in a safe and secure election – is a requirement for avoiding the RINO accusation. But for ambitious Republican pols with an eye on their leader there’s also a stampede to embrace Trumpier positions than their GOP competitors (and sometimes even Trump himself). It is often jarring to watch this pattern play out.
Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley (with their degrees, respectively, from Harvard and Harvard Law, Princeton and Harvard Law, and Stanford and Yale Law) are not dumb, though in questioning Ketanji Brown Jackson last week, they appeared to be practicing cartoon politics.
Or perhaps not. While it is tempting to say of the three presidential wannabes acting out at a Senate Judiciary hearing to consider a nominee for the Supreme Court that – as Jolly suggested of the Republicans cheering on Putin – they have failed to understand “the gravity of the situation.” Instead, they shouted, interrupted, insulted, demeaned, twisted facts and context, fabricated outright, blew dog whistles, and sounded QAnon themes.
All of this was consistent with extracting outrage from the Republican base. But, while practicing cartoon senatorial civility, cartoon logic, cartoon advice and consent, they were by all intents and purposes practicing savvy intraparty politics. This was political theater, which was appropriate to the moment and beneficial to the republic – so say a couple of political scientists.
Even if you accept everything I’ve written in this post as the reality of the situation, you might not think any of this is normatively desirable. I apologize if I’ve given you that impression. While I’ve mostly written here from a descriptive realist point of view, I also happen to be a fan of political theater. People use that term derisively, but it absolutely has it’s benefits.
This kind of theater can convey some substantive material to the public. Hearings construct a public record to supplement the private deliberations that start as soon as a Supreme Court vacancy is announced. Hearings can also tell us lots of things about what politicians and political parties think is important. They can shine public light on previously obscure topics. Of course, what politicians and parties care about may seem foolish or worse, but that’s not the fault of the hearing process.
Fair enough. Let’s accept this view. The trio of Republicans are each trying to shape a narrative, bolster their own status, and appeal to the Republican base. That’s politics: the stuff of American democracy.
We can, as citizens and voters, make of this theatrical posturing what we will. Whether “foolish or worse,” it certainly tells us much about what these politicians and the Republican Party think is important.
[Editor's note, March 15: Extreme polarization, a factor contributing to our democratic impasse, results in partisans adopting views based on allegiance to their side, rather than on thoughtful consideration of an issue. Klein, in the first four paragraphs of his op-ed, relies on the Blue team falling prey to this phenomenon.]
The opening paragraphs of Ezra Klein’s current op-ed in the New York Times ("The Past and Future Are at Odds in Berkeley") are willfully spurious. In fairness to Klein (if it's 'fair' to excuse him), that beginning is clearly designed as a hook to keep his liberal readers in tow for the actual subject of the piece -- the clash between environmental policies put into place since the 1970s and the urgency of acting to combat climate change today -- which he covers more evenhandedly. (I’ll note that Jonathan Chait highlighted the same issue -- “Will Local Politics Cook the Planet” -- in New York magazine in January.)
I’m on board with Klein (and Chait) regarding climate change, but not regarding the controversy that Klein uses as an intro. Here’s how Klein begins:
There’s a strange story unfolding in Berkeley, Calif., right now. That may present as a tautology, but bear with me. This one provides a window into a problem that endangers us all. An organization called Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, led by a former investment banker, sued the University of California, Berkeley for adding too many students, too quickly, without careful enough consideration of how bad students are for the environment. If the number of students at U.C. Berkeley seems of questionable environmental relevance, well, I’d say you’re right. If this sounds to you like a bunch of homeowners who don’t want more college kids partying nearby, I’d probably agree. But the courts sided with Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods and froze the university’s enrollment at last year’s levels, forcing it to potentially rescind admission to thousands of students and ordering it to conduct a deeper assessment of the harm students could inflict (more trash, more noise, more homelessness and more traffic were all mentioned in the court case, if you’re curious about the specifics). This kind of NIMBYISM is noxious. The way to ease homelessness in Berkeley is to build more homes for everyone, not keep out a bunch of kids looking to better their lives. And if there’s too much trash, maybe nearby homeowners, who’ve seen their property values rise to astonishing levels in large part because of U.C. Berkeley’s gleam, should pay higher property taxes for more frequent pickup. But on its own, it’s hard to get too exercised about this suit. The world has bigger problems than the size of Cal’s incoming class.
Note first that in his later discussion of climate change, Klein doesn’t reveal the professions of the worthy residents of Cape Cod, Amherst, the Hamptons, or the state of Vermont, all of whom could be reviled as NIMBYs. Instead of an ad hominem argument, he focuses on the structural issues that find local residents (and even environmental organizations) employing environmental laws to oppose meaningful actions to alleviate the threat to our planet.
In the second paragraph (quoted above), though, he makes sure to inform us that the leader of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods is a former investment banker. (Editor’s note: I’ll cheerfully agree that we have a bloated financial sector, which is a drag on our economy, but the structural framework of the Berkeley story wouldn’t change one whit if a retired professor led the neighborhood group.) And behold Klein’s sarcastic denigration of an environmental report to assess the impact of population growth as “consideration of how bad students are for the environment.”
Despite the disdain he expresses, Klein doesn't come close to justifying his conclusion that “This kind of NIMBYISM is noxious.”
Contra Klein, any fair minded policy wonk would regard the number of residents (students or not) as unquestionably relevant to the environment of a crowded urban community. Berkeley residents of all stripes need not oppose “college kids partying” to be concerned with the state of their city.
I lived in Berkeley from 1972 to 1991. The population when I left was just over 100,000; there were roughly 30,000 students on campus. Demand for affordable housing far outstripped supply. I don’t know the numbers, but there was a highly visible group of unhoused people. The student population obviously had a significant impact on city services, city streets (many of which were sorely in need of repair), traffic, and – notoriously – parking. The city, during my stay in Berkeley, actively negotiated with the university regarding enrollment to alleviate the impact of university students, faculty, and staff.
Today the city has 124,000 residents and the student population is 45,000. While I no longer live in Berkeley, I’m confident that there is still a dire housing shortage in the community and that many people still live outside and in their cars. I’m betting that many of the streets are still in poor shape.
The quality of life for everyone is affected by high numbers of people and by the lack of affordable housing. That much should be obvious. Add that the University of California is a jewel, that UC Berkeley provides a superb education at an affordable price, and that there are far more well-qualified applicants than spaces available. That’s a problem.
The NYT article that Klein links to in his first sentence notes what has attracted the most attention, and the most powerful political pushback: the thousands of smart California high school students who can’t get admitted to the UC campus of their choice. The piece names Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego as the “marquee campuses” of the UC system.
Prospective students (who are highly qualified) and their parents are outraged! They are angry at being redirected to another of the campuses (there are 5 other UC campuses offering undergraduate degrees), angry that enrollments at the marquee sites aren’t more plentiful, and angry that international and out-of-state students are admitted.
The latter has a special sting for many, in part because the campuses reap out-of-state tuition (roughly $30,000/year) for every non-Californian who attends. Because of budget limitations -- as state support has waned dramatically since the 1970s -- UC campuses have increasingly relied on out-of-state tuition to make ends meet. One letter writer to the Los Angeles Times referenced “the university’s greed in enrolling foreign and out-of-state students.” The president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods pointed in the same direction, suggesting that “nonresident enrollment has displaced large numbers of qualified California residents.”
The debate in Sacramento has reflected this viewpoint without much evidence of a broader perspective or more nuance. As increasing numbers of California college-bound graduates have been turned away from their first-choice campuses, “legislators have exerted relentless political pressure on the university to add in-state students.” If it has occurred to anyone in the state legislature or the governor’s office that students from other states and countries represent an economic boom in California’s future, they’ve held their tongues or been drowned out. Roughly two-thirds of Californians are native-born. California has prospered in part because millions of folks have moved here in decades past -- often to get an education at our superb universities -- and have stayed.
This is a success story, though ironically many of the applicants who can’t get into the UC campus of their choice are the children of these earlier (foreign and domestic) immigrants. But no one in Sacramento was elected by appealing to California’s long-term future, not while tens of thousands of high school graduates are clamoring to get into their first-choice UC campus.
There are nine University of California campuses, 8 of which have undergraduate programs (and 23 campuses in the California State University system). Everyone wants their first choice, but demand is high and space is limited. International students and students from other states and jurisdictions add to diversity and benefit the state economically and culturally. But that’s no consolation for a high school student facing disappointment.
A knee-jerk reaction to this controversy -- based on casual dismissal of the concerns of investment bankers and sympathetic feelings toward the highly diverse group of young people about to begin college -- may draw liberals into Klein's piece. But (the sketch of an) argument Klein offers is specious. The neighborhood opposition to more students without more student housing is not in the least unreasonable.
