What Minneapolis City Council Got Wrong in Trying to Defund the Police (or Personal Politics in the Age of Ignorance)

On June 7, 2020 nine Minneapolis City Council members at a rally announced their intent to defund the City’s police department. On July 28, 2020 President Donald Trump again promoted hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatment against FDA recommendations.  Both of these actions are simply the latest examples of how politicians make political promises or policy statements for personal gain and in disregard for facts.  Both are examples of failures of leadership, political pandering, and  point to the problems of personal politics in the age of ignorance.

            Years ago I wrote American Politics in the Age of Ignorance:  Why Lawmakers Choose Belief over Research.  It made two points.  One, policy making should be evidence-based.  Good policy should be constructed on the best available evidence, data, or research available.  Two, so much of policy fails to meet this standard, often because lawmakers willfully ignore the evidence and instead choose to act for personal benefit or at the behest of special interests.  The result is that too much policy fails, public money is wasted, and government is far less effective than it could be.   Refusing to enact evidence-based policy also yields public cynicism toward government and sets reform up to fail.

            Political ignorance is not limited to indifference to scientific or social science evidence.  This is what Donald Trump has done consistently when it comes to  the pandemic.  From the beginning of the pandemic he has been in denial of its seriousness, often disregarding  Anthony Fauci and other experts’ advice when it comes to precautions, such as mask wearing.

            There is also a different type of political ignorance.  This is when  public officials ignore the legal constraints on their behavior  or propose policy abandonment and change without considering the consequences or offering alternatives.  Again, Trump is  an example of both.  Consistently he has made policy statements—such as recently that  he can change or postpone federal elections—when clearly the law and the Constitution say the contrary.  He has also endorsed repealing the Affordable Care Act without providing a viable policy alternative.  The US government is full of attorneys and policy analysts whom the president should have consulted prior to making statements or promises.

            But Minneapolis City Council is also guilty of political ignorance.  Whether defunding the police is a good idea is a matter for public debate.  But how Council has advocated this issue has been a failure.  The first mistake was nine Council members standing in front of a crowd announcing their intent to defund the police.  One problem was that such a policy  position possibly violated the Minnesota Open Meetings Law.  Nine council members appeared to arrive at a final decision on a matter of public policy that was not decided upon in an official meeting.  Some might claim at this rally was only speech making, but the fact that Minneapolis City Council fast tracked their idea to get it on the ballot this November and that they continue to advocate this position suggests that by the time this rally occurred nine of them had already made up their minds on the issue, contrary to state law.

            Additionally, when these nine members spoke they did so without consulting the law.  It seemed as if they were unaware of the City Charter mandating both that they have a police force and a minimum funding level for them.   They also seemed unaware when they proposed an alternative to the police that state law governs peace office licensing and training, that there are state laws regarding collective bargaining and labor unions that might apply, and that there was a recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision that might limit their ability.  Had Council members done their job competently and done their homework—which includes consulting their City Attorney whom they are already paying, they might have realized all this.

            In business and for non-profits in Minnesota and across the country there is something called the business judgement rule.  This rule requires board members to act as fiduciaries for their organizations and that they are required to make their decisions based upon the based available evidence or information.  Ignorance is no excuse;  you cannot fail to do your homework.  This is what at least nine Minneapolis City Council members did, and thankfully  the City’s Charter Commission, as it was supposed to do, served as a check on this political ignorance.

            The other major failure of Minneapolis City Council was its inability or dereliction in offering policy alternatives.  If  police are to be defunded what does that really mean?  There is merit to putting more money into social service and education programs, but what was their proposal?  What was and is their plan to address violent crime in the city?    Some point to  Camden, NJ as a successful example of defunding the police and  crime going down, but was that a result of defunding the police, privatizing it,  or a normal consequence of “what goes up (crime rate) must go down” over time?  We do not know.  A case study of one city proves little if anything and, if it does, what was it that worked in Camden?  Doing some policy research before  major policy overhaul would be good and the failure to do so is another mistake.

            Yes, in some cases crises demand immediate action but that is no excuse for acting without knowing what you are doing.  George Floyd’s death was tragic and something needed to be done.  But his killing did not come out of  nowhere.  Minneapolis’ history of police use of force and racial disparities in education, housing, and criminal justice have been known for years, yet this and previous city councils failed to act.  Dereliction of duty is as much a form of political ignorance as is simply doing something for the sake of looking like one is doing something, especially if there is no evidence it will work.

            There is nothing wrong with advocates who want a revolution and who want to change the world.  They should not necessarily be expected to have the solutions.  But there is a difference between being an advocate and a public official. For the latter, as the Beatles once sang:  “You say you got a real solution.  Well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan.”  Public officials who advocate without a  plan or even worse, without consulting  the evidence of gather the information  necessary to make good choices are simply pandering for personal gain.

Trump, Law Enforcement, and the Return of the Agent Provocateur

Today'a blog appeared on July 26, 2020 in  the International Policy Digest.

There are a lot of problems constitutionally and politically with President Trump sending federal
forces into places such as Portland, Oregon, or Chicago, Illinois allegedly to restore order. Overlooked in most stories are how these federal agents represent the return of the agent provocateur as a tool of politics.

Start with the basics. Trump issued an executive order declaring authority to send in federal agents to cities and states in order to restore order. Constitutionally there are numerous problems here. No one will argue that the federal government doesn’t have the authority to protect its facilities such as courthouses. Inherent within Article II of the Constitution–either section one which vests executive power in the president or section three which says the president shall take care that the laws shall be faithfully executed–one can find ample authority to do that.

However, remember that the U.S. Constitution is a power-conferring document. There is no inherent federal or presidential authority–all of it must be traced back ultimately to some text in the Constitution. Among the powers that the U.S. government does not have is general police power. By that, states have broad authority to enact laws to protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people. The police power is also what gives states the general authority to pass criminal laws and take enforcement actions to maintain law and order. Because of this authority states and, when delegated to them, cities can create police departments.

There is no federal equivalent. There is no “Federales” or national police force in the U.S. as there are in many other countries. Not even the Insurrection Act of 1807 allows for that, contrary to what the president asserts. Any federal crimes or law enforcement must trace back to the Commerce or perhaps another constitutional clause. The U.S. government has no general criminal law jurisdiction or authority, especially at the state and local level. On top of that, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the use of federal troops for law enforcement purposes, reinforcing the notion that general policing is an issue for state and local governments according to the Tenth Amendment.

But even though the U.S. government lacks general policing authority, it is possible for them to intervene when requested by states or cities. However, that is not the case with Portland or Chicago. Trump is directing unnamed or marked federal agents to be deployed there, often without the knowledge and certainly against the request of local officials. There is no constitutional authority to do that. Finally, to the extent that these federal agents are simply arresting or roughing up peaceful protesters raises critical First Amendment questions, and if they are questioning them without advising them of their rights, there may also be Fifth Amendment issues. Overall, there are many problems from a legal perspective here.

Of course, Trump’s motives appear not legitimately law enforcement. Post-George Floyd and the riots that occurred, the president is running a redux of the 1968 Richard Nixon law and order campaign, playing on the racial fears and anxieties of whites who saw the race riots of 1967 across the nation. It is also a diversionary tactic to take away attention from his mishandling of the coronavirus and the economy.

But the playbook is even worse. These federal law enforcement personnel are the new agent provocateurs—a person who intentionally encourages people to do something illegal. The term comes from nineteenth-century France and the Soviet Russia period where the government used plains-clothes police to incite the opposition to break the law. This is Trump’s tactic. Take a tense situation such as a Black Lives Matter demonstration and send in plainclothes federal agents to arrest, question, and rough up. Also, do it without local authorities knowing what is going on. The recipe here is to inflame, giving the president a manufactured crisis in which he can show force to appease his base. It is 1968 Chicago, and Mayor Daley all over again, with Trump hoping that the American public will react in the same way and go with the law and order candidate one more time.


Four years ago, Trump declared immigrants to be the enemies from which he would protect us. Now the enemies are internal and like four years ago when he fabricated legitimate immigrants and refugees into caravans of rapists and murders at America’s door, he now is trying to convert legitimate protests into threats on America with agent provocateur.

Trump, the Constitution, and Portland

        There are lots of problems constitutionally and politically with President Trump sending federal forces into places such a Portland, Oregon or Chicago, Illinois allegedly to restore order.  Overlooked in most stories are how these federal agents represent the return of the agent provocateur as a tool of politics.

            Start with the basics.  Trump issued an executive order declaring authority to send in federal agents to cities and states in order to restore order.  Constitutionally there are numerous problems here.  No one will argue that the federal government has the authority to use its authority to protect its facilities such as courthouses.   Inherent within Article II of the Constitution–either section one which vests executive power in the president or section three which says the president shall take care that the laws shall be faithfully executed–one can find ample authority to do that.

            However, remember that the US Constitution is a power-conferring document.  There is no inherent federal or presidential authority–all of it must be traced back ultimately to some text in the Constitution.  Among the powers that the US government does not have is general police power.  By that, states have broad authority to enact laws to protect the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people.  The police power is also what gives states the general authority to pass criminal laws and take enforcement actions to maintain law and order.  Because of this authority states and, when delegated to them, cities can create police departments.

            There is no federal equivalent.  There is no “Federales" or national police force in the US as there are in many other countries.  Not even the Insurrection Act of 1807 allows for that, contrary to what the president asserts. Any federal crimes or law enforcement must trace back to the Commerce or perhaps another constitutional clause.  The US government has no general criminal law jurisdiction or authority, especially at the state and local level.  On top of that, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the US of federal troops for law enforcement purposes, reinforcing the notion that general policing is an issue for state and local governments according to the Tenth Amendment.

            But even though the US government lacks general policing authority, it is possible for them to intervene when requested by states or cities.  However, that is not the case with Portland or Chicago.  Trump is directing unnamed or marked federal agents to be deployed there, often without the knowledge and certainly against the request of local officials.  There is no constitutional authority to do that.  Finally, to the extent that these federal agents are simply arresting or roughing up peaceful protestors raises critical First Amendment questions, and if they are questioning them without advising them of their rights, there may also be Fifth Amendment issues. Overall, there are many  problems from a legal perspective here

Of course, Trump’s motives appear not legitimately law enforcement.  Post-George Floyd and the riots that occurred, the president is running a redux of the 1968 Richard Nixon law and order campaign, playing on the racial fears and anxieties of whites who saw the race riots of 1967 across the nation.   It is also a diversionary tactic to take away attention from his mishandling of the coronavirus and the economy.

            But the play book is even worse.  These federal law enforcement personnel are the new agent provocateurs—a person who intentionally encourages people to do something illegal.  The  term comes from nineteenth century France and the Soviet Russia period where the government used plains-clothes police to incite the opposition to break the law.  This is Trump’s tactic.  Take a tense situation  such as a  Black Lives Matter demonstration and send in plain clothes federal agents to arrest, question, and rough up. Also do it without local authorities knowing what is going on.  The recipe here is to inflame, giving the president a manufactured crisis in which he can show force to appease his base.  It is 1968, Chicago, and Mayor Daley all over again, with Trump hoping that the American public will react in the same way and go with the law and order candidate one more time.

            Four years ago, Trump declared immigrants to be the enemies from which he would protect us.  Now the enemies are internal and like four years ago when he fabricated legitimate immigrants and refugees into caravans of rapists and murders at America’s door, he now is trying to convert legitimate protests into threats on America with agent provocateur.

Young Man Trump: Or the Portrait of a President as a Young Man

Effective presidencies are all alike; ineffective presidencies are ineffective in their own ways. Recounting and explaining why the Trump presidency is ineffective has become a cottage industry.  Two recent books, John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened and Mary Trump’s  Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man  are the latest of a collection of expose books on Donald Trump that describe a dysfunctional presidency and why. While Bolton describes the ways the Trump presidency is ineffective dysfunctional, Mary Trump offers the reader a psychological portrait of a president as a young person, locating the roots of a troubled presidency in a troubled upbringing where the worst of Donald Trump’s behavior which is presently reinforced by his staff was originally imprinted upon him by his family, and especially his complicated relationship with his father

            Biographies of effective presidents tell the same story.  James MacGregor Burns, perhaps the best scholar on presidents ever tells in Leadership that the mark of all great leaders is a set of skills that include selflessness, an ethical vision, and an understanding of needs and beliefs of their followers.  Simply put:  Leaders put themselves second, the people they serve first, and they exercise power guided by principle.  Others, such as Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power, locate the core of presidential authority in the power to persuade, with a cluster of similar factors determining effectiveness and greatness in a presidency.  Stephen Skowronek echoes  much of what Burns and Neustadt argue, while also emphasizing historical context  as key to what makes for a great president.  The lessons of history tell us what matters in determining what are the attributes and traits of an effective presidency.

            Yet while effective presidencies share common traits, as Leo Tolstoy nicely stated in Anna Karenina’s opening line “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Among the worst presidents, James Buchannan, Andrew Johnson, and Richard Nixon there was a unique Hamlet like fatal flaw that doomed them, with the source of their problems located in their personalities and characters.  Erik Erickson’s Young Man Luther was the first in a line of powerful psychobiographies that located adult behavior and struggles in family upbringing  and lessons learned as adolescents.  James David Barber’s Presidential Character applies psychobiography to the study of upbringing to explain presidential behavior.  All presidents have the same constitutional powers, yet some perform better than others and we can locate in family upbringing the source of  why some do what they do and whether they learn the skills needed to be good leaders.

            This is potentially why Mary Trump’s book is so interesting.  She is the president’s niece but she is also a Ph.D. in psychology.   Her book is part psychoanalysis, biography, and yes even self-revelatory.  There is no question she has issues with her uncle and she is part of the larger dysfunctional family she describes in her book.  Her uncle is not her patient and therefore American Psychological Association ethics rules preclude her from offering a diagnosis of him and, even if she did, it would be colored by the conflicts of interest of being related to him.  Yet nonetheless her book offers a psychological and biographical context for understanding the Trump presidency.

            John Bolton is  not the first to tell us that Donald Trump is a self-absorbed narcissist. Trump does not read his intelligence briefings, he makes hasty emotional judgments, ignores advice, and simply is lazy and disinclined to accept advice, criticism, or lean anything about what his job entails.  Had he any work ethic his presidency would have lived up to what his supporters wished and his distractors feared.    Bolton’s book offers no new accounts of the problems within the Trump presidency.

            Mary Trump tells us why.  Reading her book,  we learn two major points.  One,  as quoted numerous times in this essay, Leo Tolstoy’s comment about unhappy families is true—they are unhappy in unique ways. The Trump family into which Donald was born was  unhappy and dysfunctional.  It was a family with an overbearing father Fred who coddled Donald.  It was Donald who learned quickly how to play off people’s weaknesses, how to self-promote and self-indulge, and  lie to achieve what he wanted.  His family reinforced this.  As did first the New York City social and financial circles.  Then  the national media, then the cult he created with the Apprentice.  The message of her book is that father son and sibling rivalries  of Donald Trump’s youth produced the person he is today.  Trump is narcissistic and insecure because of his family.  Had Mary Trump been a Freudian, she could have located Donald’s neurosis in some masculine  competition and insecurity regarding penis size, as evidenced by his famous 2016 debate statement  about his private parts and his need to conquer women.    Stormy Daniels’ calling Donald Trump “tiny” was the comment that most got the president’s goat in the last four years.

            The other major point we learn about Donald Trump is inspired by a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Rich Boy where he said “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”    To which the critic Mary Colum said yes, they are different, “they have more money.”  Mary Trump’s book describes a family of privilege.  Donald, or rather his father Fred, buys his way into schools by hiring exam takers.  He buys his way out of the draft with questionable bone spurs. His father buys chips to buoy Donald’s sinking casinos.  Trump uses money—rarely his own—to buy access, image, and anything else he wants.  Combine a dysfunctional family with economic privilege and what do you get?  As Mary Trump stated in a recent interview, the dysfunctionalism of the Trump presidency is an  outgrowth of the same in the Trump family.   

What Bolton and others describe in the White House is  explained by  Mary Trump’s book.  Donald Trump is James Joyce’s  Stephen Dedalus  or J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield gone malignant  and elected to the presidency.

 

If the US Presidential Election Were Held Today

If the US presidential election were held today polls suggest Joe Biden would be elected.  Not only would it be a landslide popular vote victory but he would win a clear electoral college decision.  Right now the Economist gives  Joe Biden a 93% chance of winning.

            But the election is not today.  It is still nearly four months out.   Surveys or polls are not predictions, they are snapshots in time and are no guarantee of the future.  Additionally, national polls are worthless when it comes to presidential elections.  It is not that they are usually wrong—they did predict Hillary Clinton would win by about two percentage points in 2016 and she did.  But instead the road to the White House is through the electoral college and the only polls that really matter if at all are the ones in the critical swing states they will decide the election.  What happens in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is a lot more important than what happens in California, New York, or Alabama.  Despite how much Democrats are salivating, realistically Georgia and Texas, while competitive, are not swing states. At best, forcing Trump to defend these states means less resources for the states really in play.  For Democrats, don’t repeat the mistakes of 2016 and campaign where there is no realistic prospect of winning. 

A lot can happen between now and election days, with it then either being November 3, 2020 (actual election day) or in the case of some states such as Minnesota, when as early as September 19, 2020 early voting  takes place.  Approximately 38 states allow some absentee or early voting, complicating predictions because ballots are being cast over a period of many days or weeks.

Political scientists develop models to predict presidential elections.  Central to the models are presidential approval and national economic performance several months before the election.  Based on these variables Donald Trump should lose.  But these models too are flawed in that they overlook the finery of the swing states and the electoral college and they also seem to ignore the fact that campaigns really matter.   Hillary Clinton should have won  four years ago but ran a lousy  campaign.  In 1988 Michael Dukakis at one time had a 17-point lead over George Bush but lost because of bad campaigning, complacency, and race-baiting  (remember Willie Horton) by the latter.

The point is that four months until November 3, is an eternity.  Four months ago, was mid-March, just before the pandemic  kicked in.  The US economy was at 4.4% unemployment for March, up from 3.5% in February.  Joe Biden was struggling to shake off Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination and it still looked like Trump was favored to win re-election.  The major issue—beyond Trump himself—was the fallout from the Senate trial and failed impeachment.

Since then everything and nothing has changed.  By that, this election was always going to be about Trump.  Unlike in 2016 where the election was a referendum on Hillary Clinton and she lost because people did not like her, in 2018 and now in 2020 the election is a referendum on Trump.  The pandemic and the economy have and have not changed that.  Yes, they have changed  the election  in that they are now issues and voters are judging Trump on how he is handling both. Evidence suggests his mishandling of them are impacting some support among his base. But they have changed nothing in the sense they both issues are merely surrogates for how voters think or feel about  Trump.

Think about it.  It has taken double-digit unemployment, a record crash of the economy, and 3,500,000 infections and 138,000 deaths to change the political dynamics of the 2020 presidential election.  Without the pandemic and the collateral damage, it has impacted on the economy, Biden might have had little chance of winning. Even  now, while the models say Trump will certainly lose, variables such as  changes in the economy, a lull in the pandemic, a horrible Biden campaign, or a ramped-up on steroids racial appeal by Trump that makes Willie Horton look tame.  And Democratic Party control of the Senate is not certain.

It takes a lot to defeat a sitting president.  Bush lost in 1992 because of a three-way split in the vote with Ross Perot running as a strong third-party candidate.  Prior to that, Jimmy Carter in 1980 lost to Ronald Reagan and in 1976 Carter defeated Gerald Ford.  In both those cases sitting incumbents lost because of extraordinary circumstances (1980 it was  the Iran Hostage crisis and oil embargo and in 1976 the Watergate backlash the pardoning of Richard Nixon). Prior to that it was in 1932 the last time a sitting presidential lost in a general election and that was when the Great Depression brought down Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt.  Only five incumbents have failed to win a second term.

            Trump is highly vulnerable but this is an extraordinary election.  Partisanship or polarization is so high it is, as noted, taking a national emergency a catastrophe to even begin to melt his base.  Voting in the age of Covid-19 might produce  distorted results that could change the election.  Already the litigation and court fights over early voting or voting rights portend how fragile franchise rights are and how the Supreme Court may impact how the 2020 elections are held.

            If the 2020 presidential election were held today arguably Joe Biden would win.  But it is not being held today and if history tells  us anything, a lot can still change, especially at the electoral college level, between now and November 3.

Requiem for a Special Session: Why It Never Had a Chance to Succeed and the Next One will probably Fail too

Why did the Minnesota Legislative Special session fail to produce police reform, a bonding bill,

a Covid-19 bill, and more? That is the wrong question to ask.  Instead of the surprise of why it was a failed session one should ask was there any chance it would succeed?  The answer is no, and the reasons it failed will be the same for a future Special Session later this year if called.
The first reason for failure was that the regular session set the grounds for the failure of the special session.  Consider where the Minnesota politics was when the regular legislative session ended in May.  Politically the legislature and the governor were divided.  With the only state in the country with partisan control of the legislature split, Democrats and Republicans were fissured here along lines that mirrored national divisions.  There was a clear divide geographically in the state between urban, suburban, and rural that reinforced the partisan-ideological differences. 
In Minnesota, the Republican Senate and DFL House were divided over the governor’s use of peacetime emergency powers to close part of the economy.  This division spilled into other issues, such as over the amount of the bonding bill and whether Republicans would provide the critical votes for it.   Some of these disagreements were substantive policy differences, some tactical, some part of the way the 2020 elections were an overlay or backdrop to the session.  Better, according to some, not to negotiate and pass legislation and instead use the issues to run on this November than reach a boring compromise.  This is where the legislative session ended on May 18.  The politics of the regular session simply carried over into the special session.
Initially there were two major reasons why the governor wanted or had to call a special session.  One was to get the bonding bill passed to help stimulate the economy.  Two, Governor Walz had to convene a special session no later than June 12, according to state law, if he planned to extend his peacetime emergency orders another 30 days.  He had to do that to give the Legislature a chance to override his orders.
Two, between then and June 10, when the governor called the special session, or June 12, when it started, nothing and everything changed.  Nothing changed in that neither the governor nor the legislative leadership of both parties did much to change the incentive structures or politics of the regular session from impacting the special session.  Between May 18, and June 10, it does not appear that there were any negotiations among the leadership to reach compromises or deals.  That needed to occur.
Going back at two generations to when Rudy Perpich was governor there was a basic political rule that one does not call a special session until all the details for it are worked out. Only governor’s can call special sessions but once the legislature is back,  legislators decide what will be discussed and when to adjourn.  To address the specter of aimless, unproductive special sessions the rule was negotiate in advance, get agreement on major issues and targets if not even the actual legislation before calling starting a special session.  This did not happen here.
There was no agreement on the scope or dollar amount of the bonding bill.  There was partisan disagreement over the governor’s authority to respond to the pandemic.  None of this had been resolved.  Lacking negotiations and agreement going into the special session why anyone would have thought it would have produced a different result that the regular session is naive.
But everything did change since the end of the regular session–George Floyd’s death, the demonstrations, the destruction, and the demand for police reform. When the governor on June 10, called for a special session he sent confusing messages.  It was now about police reform.  Yet police reform as a salient political issue decreases in importance in Minnesota the farther one gets away from Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  For Twin Cities legislators and their constituents it is a major issue, not so much for those at the four corners of the state and in greater Minnesota.  However unjust and wrong the killing of George Floyd was and however racist policing may or may not be, protests and anger in Minneapolis and Saint Paul were not going to change much the political calculus on police reform outside of those two cities.  Not understanding this was another reason why the special session was destined to fail.
But the special session failed also because of confusion over its purpose.  It was now about police reform but also about the bonding bill, other unfinished business, and to extend his peacetime emergency orders.  There was too much to do, with too little focus and preparation for all of this in a promptly called special session when little had been done to prepare for it.  This confusion and lack of preparation are other reasons why the special session failed.
Finally, the special session was almost a month later than the end of the regular session.  It was one month closer to the November elections; one month closer to being firmly captured by politics of 2020 where it made perverse sense to grandstand, not reach agreement, and then run on these issues in the campaigns.
Given the above there was no chance for a successful special session.
Going forward there are rumors of another special session.  The governor probably wants to extend his peacetime emergency orders, necessitating such a session.  Unless he and the legislative leadership prepare for the special session it will again fail.  The bonding bill, police reform, Covid-19 relief, and the peacetime emergency orders are entangled together and it will take a larger compromise across all of them to get anything done.  Whether the incentives to compromise will have changed or hardened is yet to be seen.

George Floyd and the Final Fracturing of the Democratic Party, Labor, and Civil Rights Coalition

            George Floyd being killed by a police officer in Minneapolis is not simply about the death of one Black man. His death also killed  an historic but uneasy alliance among the Democratic Party, labor unions, and the civil rights movement.  The reaction to his death is ending the last vestiges of the historic New Deal coalition that defined progressive politics in American for at least 50 years, ushering in an era where it now appears that the Democratic Party and the civil rights community are at odds with labor and unions.

            Historically, the New Deal coalition from the 1930s that defined the Democratic Party was composed of labor unions, farmers, working class, and increasing people of color.  It was a coalitional party weaving together a variety of interests, primarily focused on economic and class issues. From the 1930s to 1960s it fought mostly for minimum wages, workplace safety, and collective bargaining issues.  The coalition produced significant gains improving the economic lot of its members and Americans in general, helping shrink, as Thomas Piketty noted, the rich-poor gap in America.  This was the Old Left–class and economic focused.

            Yet a valid criticism of this progressivism was the blind eye it cast on race.  Many New Deal programs such as minimum wage laws excluded southern Black sharecroppers, or unions were criticized for excluding Blacks.  The Democratic Party in the South, which dominated that region from the Civil War to the 1960s, was notorious for the White Primary Supreme Court cases where the former fought hard to exclude Blacks.

            Yet many labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, and A. Philip Randolph, who led an AFL-CIO member union, were there in 1963 with Martin Luther King, Jr at the historic march on Washington, D.C.  With labor’s support, the civil rights movement produced the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and other major legislation.

            But this embracing of civil rights also fragmented the Democratic Party and progressive politics.  Democrats, as President Johnson foretold when signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, would lose the South and they did.  First Barry Goldwater,  then George Wallace, and finally Richard Nixon exploited white racial anxieties regarding the civil rights movement the summer 1967 riots.  Nixon profited from this backlash, producing what the Edsalls called a chain reaction that led to the exit of white working-class America out of the Democratic Party.  Ronald Reagan continued to exploit the race card, and the adoption of civil rights, or identity politics to its critics, by the Democratic Party at the exclusion of class further contributed to the split among the Democratic Party, labor, and the civil rights community.  The emergence of the New Left in the 1960s—focused on racial, gender, and LGBTQ  issues—is often seen as a critical facture point.

            Progressive Democratic Party politics succeeded when it held together labor unions and civil rights.  In Minnesota, the birth of the modern Democratic Party came in 1944 when Hubert Humphrey among others brought the Democratic ad Farmer-Labor parties together.  Together the DFL advanced, especially in Minneapolis, a progressive economic agenda but it did  not put as much emphasis on race, not surprising for a state and city overwhelmingly White until recently.  The DFL often gave lip service to civil rights issues, but Minnesota is a state  with among the worst racial disparities in the nation for education, economics, and criminal justice.  But with a rapidly diversifying population and a growing Black population,  Minnesota but especially Minneapolis was changing.

           Minneapolis became the picture of contemporary Democratic Party politics today.  It is socially liberal, headed by a Millennial Democratic mayor and a 12-person city council, 11 of whom are Democrats one a Green.  But the DFL of Minneapolis and Minnesota is not the party it was.  Farmers have left for the Republican Party, and even before Floyd’s death  in many parts of the state labor too has left.  For those who are white, well-educated, and at least middle class, it is a wonderful place to live.  But despite the progressive rhetoric,  Minneapolis was a tale of two cities, with the one for the poor and people of color not so wonderful.

Floyd’s alleged murder by a white Minneapolis police officer turned the city into the center of the “defund the police,” with nine of its councilmembers supporting this proposal.  Floyd’s death is about the hypocrisy on race in America, even with Democrats. But equally fascinating is how a Democratic Party city is going after the police union whom it blames for a history of officer shootings and use of excessive force against African-Americans.  Minneapolis’ police chief announced he would no longer negotiate with the union.  Minnesota’s Democratic Governor also locates much of the blame with the union.  Former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybek sees the union as an obstacle to reform, and even other labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO are calling for the current head of the police union to resign.   In Minneapolis and across the country police unions are seen by members of the civil rights community as hostile to civil rights reform.

               George Floyd’s death is perhaps the final fracturing of the Democratic Party,  labor, and the civil rights supporters.    Maybe this split needed to happen.  But as it does it bodes a dramatic turn in  party politics that complicates the electoral map for Democrats and progressive politics going forward.  Smart politicians such as Donald Trump see this opportunity and will surely exploit it in the 2020 election.