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BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER
A solution to D.C. gridlock
By LeRoy Goldman
CharlotteObserver
Special to the Observer
Special to the Observer
Posted: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015
During
the last half of the 20th century the government in Washington worked
reasonably well. Much of that time the power in Washington was
divided between the Democrats and the Republicans, but they found
ways to compromise.
But
now we all know that something has gone terribly wrong in Washington.
The government no longer works. Compromise and capitulation have
become synonyms.
The
year 2016 promises to bring the 5th consecutive presidential election
that reinforces Washington’s self imposed deadlock. How has this
happened, and can anything be done to reverse it?
Presidential
elections since 2000 look like a rerun of the movie “Groundhog
Day.” With the exception of the eight swing states: Florida, North
Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada,
the other 42 states and the District of Columbia remain solidly in
either the Democratic or Republican column.
States
like Massachusetts, New York, and California vote Democratic. States
like Alabama, Texas, and Kansas vote Republican. There’s nothing
wrong with that except that, thanks to the Electoral College, all the
Republican votes in states like Massachusetts and all the Democratic
votes in states like Alabama count for nothing!
The
Electoral College’s winner-take-all system is perverse and acts as
a powerful incentive to keep voters in 42 states and the District of
Columbia away from the polls. When the Electoral College system is
analyzed in the context of the growing polarization of the American
electorate it becomes obvious that it’s the voters in the eight
swing states who determine who wins. Not only does that not make
sense. It’s undemocratic.
President
Obama won all eight of the swing states in 2008, and seven of them in
2012.
In
the 2000 and 2004 elections the pattern was the same except that it
was the Republican, George W. Bush, who won seven of those same eight
swing states in both elections.
Following
9/11, President Bush and the Republican Congress preemptively
attacked Iraq and massively increased the national debt. When the
economy imploded in 2008 the GOP was driven from office.
President
Obama began his term with a Democratic Congress. Rather than a
laser-like focus on the plunging economy, he made health care reform
his top priority. Even with an administration full of policy makers
from the Clinton Administration he ignored the cruel lessons of how
Hillarycare went nowhere in 1993 and enabled the GOP to capture the
House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. That unforced error
paralyzed the Clinton Administration.
For
Obama the result has been similar, predictable and devastating. In
2010 the Republicans recaptured the House, based in large measure on
voter anger directed at Obamacare. Last November the GOP took control
of the Senate. The President, neutered by his own stubborn naivete,
had to resort to saying, “I’ve got a pen and a phone.”
Without
structural reform punishing gridlock will continue. Two reforms are
urgently required. The Electoral College needs to be abolished by
constitutional amendment. Give the voters in all states equal power
in determining the outcome of presidential elections.
In
addition it is urgently necessary to end the process which has
resulted in the gerrymandering of most congressional districts. These
gerrymandered districts allow only one party to win them. Even worse,
gerrymandering enhances the likelihood that the winners are
uncompromising zealots of either the Right or the Left.
The
way to bring reform would be through a legal challenge decided by the
Supreme Court that struck down majority-minority congressional
districts as an impermissible racial gerrymander and, thus, an
unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th
Amendment.
The
Court almost reached such a decision in three cases decided between
1993 and 2001 regarding North Carolina’s 12th district. However, in
the third and deciding case, a 5-4 decision in Easley v. Cromartie in
2001, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding vote that
upheld the constitutionality of districts like NC-12.
But
the Court’s ruling in Shelby v. Holder in 2013 suggests that
today’s Court might very well reach the opposite conclusion. And,
if it did, not only would dozens of racially contrived
majority-minority districts be doomed, their unspooling would ripple
into and doom many of the gerrymandered Republican districts
throughout the nation too.
The
Electoral College and gerrymandering are two of the most pernicious
and undemocratic forces that have destroyed the national government.
Either we reform them, or be suffocated by them.
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