A solution to D.C. gridlock

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BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER

A solution to D.C. gridlock

By LeRoy Goldman

CharlotteObserver
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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