Congress, Trump, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Note:  Today's blog also appears in the International Policy Digest.

With Democratic Party control of the US House of Representatives, most of the speculation is about how they will check Donald Trump’s domestic policy or use their investigatory powers to probe executive branch criminality or perhaps impeach the president. Neglected, yet equally important, is how Congress may influence Trump’s foreign policy. While Congress has imposed some limits on Trump in this area such as mandating Russian sanctions and expressing disapproval of the way he handled the Khashoggi murder, for the most part, they have given him a free hand to direct American foreign policy. This hands-off approach potentially will change.

Trump’s foreign policy record is well known. He pulled the US out the Paris Accords, the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Iran Nuclear Agreement. He has withdrawn the US from UN Human Rights Council, moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, sought a Muslim travel ban, tightened up on immigration, restricted political asylum, and continues to demand a wall along the US southern border. He has also announced troop pullouts in Syria and Afghanistan, initially threatened war with North Korea, engaged in tariff and trade wars with China, praised Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un and fought with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron. He rejects liberal democratic interventionism as a guiding principle of US foreign policy, preferring nationalism and has given us the definite impression that he is indifferent to human rights.

US Presidents have significant leeway and authority over foreign policy. They have been given that authority both through the Constitution and congressional legislation. In United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation (299 U.S. 304, 1936,) the US Supreme Court declared that whatever constitutional powers limit presidents domestically, they have more authority to act in foreign affairs.

Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (343 U.S. 579, 1952) also known as the “Steel Seizure” case, may be one of the most influential cases on foreign policy in the Court’s history—at least it has become so. While the Court struck down President Truman’s effort to nationalize the steel industry in order to avert a strike and the interruption of steel production during the Korean War, Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion described a tripartite division of presidential power in foreign affairs depending on whether the chief executive is acting alone or with or against congressional approval.

Presidents from Lyndon Johnson to George Bush cite it to support their military ventures, especially when they can point to congressional resolutions endorsing their actions. It seems to suggest, following Curtiss-Wright, that Congress can augment presidential power in foreign affairs by authorizing the chief executive to act. Finally, in Dames & Moore v. Regan (453 U.S. 654, 1981), the Court upheld President’s Carter’s authority to resolve the Iran hostage crisis and make private claims against the Iranian government. Collectively, these three cases and others suggest that presidents have broad authority over foreign policy.

Yet this power is not unlimited. Textually, Article I of the Constitution gives Congress more foreign policy authority than the president, if they opt to use it. The problem has been that Congress over time has abdicated much of its authority. Trump’s incoherent if not destructive (to many observers) foreign policy decisions gives Congress the occasion to act.

Congress has at least four broad powers it can use to control US foreign policy–budgetary, statutory, investigatory, and advice and consent. The House and the Senate can use the power of the purse to specifically fund or refuse to pay for various Trump foreign policy initiatives. It could refuse to fund covert or military activities, or not fund his wall. Second, Congress could impose statutory obligations on the president to fund or provide certain programs, fill diplomatic posts, withdraw or limit discretion to impose tariffs or sanctions or constrain his ability to affect immigration. Third, congressional investigatory authority can force the president to be more accountable and disclose actions or information he is undertaking. Finally, the Senate’s advice and consent role can check presidential appointments and treaty actions. Many of the powers that Congress has to check the president can be imposed even in the face of a veto or if the Democratic House and Republican Senate do not agree. Particularly, withholding budgetary authority or using its investigatory power can be accomplished unilaterally by the House.

Congress had the authority to check Trump’s international agenda and one can expect that it will. Reigning in this aspect of the Trump presidency has been one of the ignored consequences of the 2018 elections. But control of US foreign policy, specifically over several issues such as China, Korea, trade, immigration, and military matters, will be one the areas where Congress and Trump will clash for the next two years.

Federal Budgeting 101: Making Sense of the Government Shutdown

So why has the United States  federal government shutdown?

The simple answer is that the federal government cannot spend money unless it is appropriated and Congress and the president have not agreed on spending for approximately 25% of the federal government’s functions.  This means that for about one-quarter of the federal government there is no legal authority to spend money and therefore it must close down.

We seem to have a lot of federal government shutdowns in recent years, why?

The federal government process is broken and there is a political polarization over how to spend money.  This is the general answer.  But now, there is a fight between Donald Trump who insists on funding for his Mexican wall and Democrats who refuse to appropriate money for it.  However, to understand why so many shutdowns it is useful to understand something about the history of federal budgeting in the US.

Take us back in time before WW I, there was no federal budget.  If money was needed for something then the president asked for it and Congress simply allocated money for it.  Essentially, when money was needed Congress effectively wrote a check.  Such a process worked okay when the US government did not spend much money.  However, World War I pointed to the need to have a budget so that the government could spend more efficiently.

The 1921 Budget Act was the first effort to create a budget process for the US government.  It created congressional budget committees to centralize budgetary process, and it created the Bureau of the Budget (later the Office of Management and Budget) in the executive branch to bring some order to federal spending.

The Act helped but increased spending starting during the New Deal and then World War II, the Korean War, and then the Vietnam War led to a dramatic explosion of federal spending.    But something else happened while this spending increased, the philosophy and view about the role of the federal government changed.


What do you mean the philosophy and role of the Federal government changed?

There are two parts to this answer.

First, really prior to the New Deal the federal government had a limited role in the economy and in domestic politics.  Fighting wars and providing for the defense were generally accepted as federal government functions, but providing for the retirement benefits (Social Security), welfare, health care, or other social welfare issues were not considered to be federal functions until the 1930s.  The New Deal seemed to change that.  With a new philosophy about what the federal government should do, that meant more federal spending and therefore a need to have a budget to spend this money.

Second, , let’s think about what budgets are.  On one level budgets are simply tools to tell us the sources of federal revenue and how we wish to spend out money.  But budgets are more than that.

Political scientist V.O. Key once argued that budgeting is about the concept of opportunity costs–should we give money to A versus B?  His point was that budgeting is really about an issue of values.  How we spend money reflects normative choices.  Do we want to spend money on defense, health care, roads, or in the case of the current dispute, a wall along the Mexican border, or something else.  Budgetary politics is difficult because it is a fight over values.

But budgeting is also complex because of the multiple purposes attached to budgets.  Budgets are ways to spend money, but they are also tools for planning and measurement.  Budgets are also at the center of interest group politics and varying groups seek spending for their projects or interests.  Finally, for those of us schooled in economics, budgets and federal spending can be tools for economic development.  By that, there is a branch of macroeconomics tracing back to John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s who argued that federal spending can be used to stimulate the economy.  A discussion of Keynesian or social welfare economics is beyond the discussion here, but the point is that there are multiple purposes connected to federal spending.

So why is all this relevant to the present crisis?
By the time Nixon became president in 1969 a major dispute began to emerge, contesting how the federal government should spend money.  The Vietnam War and the Great Society programs of the Johnson presidency came together to create significantly larger federal spending and, with that, disputes over it.  Nixon refused to spend money allocated by Congress, and this led to the passage of the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act.

What did this Act do?
The 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act is the basis of modern US budgeting.  It created the Congressional Budget Office, , it created time dates for budget passage, it required a  presidential budget.  This law took effect in 1976.

In summary, the  President proposes a budget and Congress is supposed to pass it. Congress is supposed to pass an annual budget before October 1, every year.  (On a personal note, I was in college taking a macroeconomics class when this law passed and as required reading we had to read the very first budget of the president submitted to Congress under this law)

The Federal budget is composed of 12 appropriation bills, and different committees in Congress are assigned the task to adopt them, with final votes required of both Houses of Congress and a signature by the president.

If budget not passed, either there is a government shutdown or Congress and president can agree to a continuing resolution to keep government funded.  A continuing resolution simply is a temporary funding mechanism agreed to by Congress and the president to keep the government funded until  they can reach agreement on a budget or another continuing resolution.

However, the government has never really shutdown completely.  By that, approximately 75-80% of the federal budget is composed of legal entitlements or longer term contractual agreements that mandate spending.  Thus, for what is often called mandatory spending the government cannot shutdown because there is legal authority to spend money.  This is the case with Social Security–there is ongoing legal authority to spend for this and therefore grandma should never have to worry that she will not get her check.  The same is true now.

The current fight now is over that 20-25% of the budget which is referred to as discretionary spending.  This is money that Congress and the president have to authorize every year.

How well has the 1974 law worked?
Not well.   A good budget process only works if there is a consensus on values and spending.  But since 1976 the two parties have become more polarized, leading to more and more disagreements over taxing and spending priorities. 

Since 1976, only four budgets passed on time (the last time 1997).

Most of time operating on continuing resolutions.

Since 1976,  there have been 20 budget or funding gaps, some have resulted in government shutdowns, other unnoticed.

Under Reagan three one day funding gaps not noticed.

Under George H.W. Bush a 1990 weekend shutdown.

Under Clinton two shutdowns.  In 1995   for 5 days over budget disputes, and in 1996   for 21 days over budget disputes.

Under Obama there was one shutdown in 2013 that last for 15 days over a fight over the Affordable Care Act.

Under Trump there were two prior shutdowns to this one.  In 2018for two days in January and an overnight funding gap in February.

Are there costs associated with a shutdown?
Yes.  There are costs with the government closing down, laying off people, and then rehiring and starting up again.  In 2013 the shutdown cost the economy and GDP more than $24 billion and it affected the US bond rating.  The current shutdown is affecting confidence on Wall Street, the stock market, and leading to additional economic problems.  Forecasters were already predicting an economic slowdown in later 2019 and 2020 and this shutdown could hasten or worsen the problem.  Simply put, everyone pays for the shutdown.

What do we know about the current shutdown and dispute?
The current dispute is over spending for Trump’s Mexican wall.  Remember, when he ran for president he said he was going to build a wall and Mexico was going to pay for it.  Now he wants taxpayers to pay for it.  Trump has made funding for the wall a non-negotiable item.  Congress, including Democrats, have offered enhanced border security but in a Twitter message on Sunday Trump rejected that compromise. 

In many ways, Trump understands that this may be his last chance to get funding for the wall.  With Democrats taking over the House in January there will be even less of a chance to get this funding  Trump has made the border wall a campaign promise and wants it to appease his base, Democrats oppose it in part to appease their base, but also because less than a majority of Americans support it. 

How long with the partial shutdown last?
It will go until late this week but I could see the current Congress simply passing this problem down the line to the next Congress (and Democrats in the House) to solve.  For the outgoing Republican majority, they have nothing to lose by not resolving the partial shutdown and they can then pass the problem on to the Democrats.  The recipe here is for a long partial shutdown.

Who are the winners and losers?
Federal employees and taxpayers are the clear losers.  Generally the party who is tagged with the responsibility for the shutdown pays politically which is why the blame game now.  Republicans in the House can escape responsibility since they are no longer in the majority in a week.  Trump at one time claimed ownership of the shutdown but now he is trying to blame Democrats, especially in the Senate.   If it lasts till next year, he will blame House Democrats.  In some ways, if Trump does not get the wall he gets to use it as an issue in 2020, but if he does get funding then he loses it as an issue.

Final question, assume the money is appropriated, is the wall feasible?
No.  From an engineering perspective it is impossible to build along rivers and lakes, and it poses environmental problems.  In addition, even in the places where the wall already exists, people dig under it or find ways around it.  The wall will have little impact on immigration.

Don’t count on Congress to settle a close US presidential election

Today's blog originally appeared in The Hill.

The Constitution ultimately vests in Congress the authority to resolve challenges regarding the counting of electoral votes by the individual states in presidential elections. Yet if the 2016 presidential election melts down or if there are major challenges to the electoral votes in any state, don’t necessarily count on Congress to be able to resolve the problem. The reason is that the law that empowers Congress to resolve electoral vote disputes may be unconstitutional.

Given the recent comments that Donald Trump has made about not necessarily accepting the results of the election, or that a disagreement about the election in some state emerges again as it did in Florida in 2000, it is possible that Congress may be called on to resolve any electoral vote disputes. This would not be the first time Congress had to do that.

Congress did it the first time in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr supposedly ran as a president-vice-president ticket, but a flaw in the Constitution led them to receive an equal number of electoral votes, thereby forcing the House of Representatives to select the president and to eventually amend the Constitution.

Then there was the election of 1876 between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden received the most popular votes, but the House of Representatives eventually picked Hayes as the president after disputed elections occurred in Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon.

With no other method to turn to, Congress established a partisan Electoral Commission to award an Electoral College majority to Hayes, and agonized over the creation of a procedural framework for resolving disputed elections for a decade — finally passing the Electoral Count Act in 1887.

The Act prescribed a method of appointing state electors, the form in which votes were to be submitted to Congress, and most importantly, a number of restrictive procedures that both Houses of Congress were required to follow in counting the results.

Among these procedures, one provision requires the House and Senate to meet together to resolve disputes, but fails to specify whether this requirement creates a unique and distinct body or if the two bodies are acting separately.

The Electoral Count Act was consigned to the dustbin of history by everyone except the most astute election law scholars until our country again faced a razor-thin presidential contest in 2000. While scrutiny of the Act by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore largely centered on the timing of certification of state election procedures for it to receive safe harbor deference for its election results, the numerous procedural objections raised by members of Congress during the Electoral College count in Congress in January 2001 gave rise to a number of serious constitutional questions that have somehow evaded lawyers over the past fifteen years.

Among these issues are whether the actual rules that dictate how the votes will be counted by the House and Senate together are themselves constitutional. It may well be that these rules violate other constitutional provisions that make the House of Representatives and Senate the ultimate judge of their own internal procedural rules.

It is possible that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 violates this constitutional provision by forcing the two bodies to act as one and give up their own power to control these rules. 

And even if not unconstitutional, deep partisan disputes and jealousy between the House and Senate could lead to a stalemate during the counting of the votes. Assume for the sake of argument that the Republicans keep the House and the Democrats take the Senate — objections raised by Republican Members of the House might be perfunctorily overruled by Democratic President of the Senate (Vice President) Joe Biden, leading to the Republican House asserting that Vice President Biden’s power to rule on their objections is unconstitutional.

At that point, in a political era of intense partisanship, a mess greater than that experienced in 2000 would be faced by our federal courts. If the Electoral Count Act were constitutionally challenged it could potentially leave Congress without a viable means of resolving a heavily partisan and disputed controversy.

This would send resolution of the 2016 race into uncharted political and constitutional waters that could well take months if not longer to address, much like it did in 1876. 

In an era of division and discord, we can all agree that the rules of the game for presidential elections must be fair, agreed to by all, and most importantly, constitutional.

Quick action should be taken to ensure that our history of disputed results, hanging chads, and uncertain procedures does not continue to linger over this country in future presidential elections.

Schultz and Land are the authors of a recent journal article on this topic entitled “On the Unenforceability of the Electoral Count Act” published in the Rutgers Journal of Law & Public Policy. Schultz is a Professor of Political Science at Hamline University and Land is Deputy Legislative Counsel of the Nevada Legislature.

Why Orlando Will Not Change the Politics on Gun Control (Okay, Maybe a slight chance)

After Representative Giffords was shot they said it would change the politics on gun control in

America.  The same was said after Aurora, Colorado.  Sandy Hook.  Charleston.  And Waco. It’s too unlikely that Orlando will change the politics on gun regulation.  The reason is simple:   The political forces and incentives to change the laws just do not exist as a result of the political geography in the United States.
This year I have already given several dozen talks on the 2016 elections, seeking to make sense of the politics this year.  To do that I have drawn a contrast, examining how American politics  has changed since 1976 compared to today.  My discussion begins with drawing a bell curve.  The curve  represents the distribution of American public opinion in 1976. If one were to look at a series of survey s or polls we would find that the vast majority of public opinion converged toward the center.  Yes there were some far right and left voters, but a large percentage of the public shared a powerful consensus on a range of social, economic, and foreign policy issues.
With the majority of the public sharing similar views, it also made sense for the Republican  and Democratic Parties to nominate centrist candidates.  After all, that it were most voters were and if you want to win nominate candidate centrist candidates.  In many ways, in 1976, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were good examples of that; two candidates who ideologically were not that far apart.
Additionally, we know back in 1976 that both the Democrat and Republican Parties were more coalitional and less ideological than today.  There were liberal Republicans in NY and New England and conservative Democrats in the South.  The two major parties had liberal, moderates, and conservatives among their ranks.  Such ideological diversity made bipartisanship possible and in 1976 the percentage of straight party-line votes was quite small compared to today.  Additionally, in 1976 political scientists estimated that about one-third of the 435 US House of Representative  seats came from swing districts–those where either a Democrat or a Republican could be elected.  It was these swing districts too which helped drive bipartisanship.  Representatives there had an incentive to work across the aisle–become too partisan on one side and you would lose an election to someone on the other side.
But 40 years later politics has changed.  Today the state of public opinion looks more like a camel’s back–a double  hump curve.  The percentage of voters describing themselves as moderate has decreased and the percentage saying they a liberal or conservative has increased (although those who say they are very conservative has increased far more than those who say extremely liberal).   This means that the center of the Republican and Democratic parties is moving apart from one another and that within each party candidates who wish to win their nomination must increasingly appeal to where their shifting bases have moved.
Why the electorate has bifuricated and sorted itself out in such a way that partisanship and ideology overlap is a product of many factors.  These include the embracing of civil rights by the Democrats, social issues such as abortion and LGBT rights, generational shifts, and economics. All this has contributed to a sorting.  But another sorting is occurring–geography.
At the same time that America has become more conservative and liberal it has also become more segregated many ways, including politically.  We now politically sort ourselves out with Democrats choosing to live in the cities and inner-ring suburbs, Republicans in outer-ring suburbs and rural areas.  The Red and Blue states the media describes really are red and blue cities, regions, even streets and blocks.  We wish to live near others who share our political views and avoid those with whom we disagree.
We have created overwhelming Republican and Democratic areas.  Nationally now the best estimates are that barely 20-25 House seats are swing.  Instead 95% are securely one party.  Candidates from these safe seats have no incentive to compromise politically and if they do they will get primaried from the right if a Republican or from the left if a Democrat.  Geography reinforces  and exacerbates partisanship and extremism.
The result is that now there are fewer bipartisan bills and a greater percentage of straight party-line votes than in 1976.  Evidence suggests that the most conservative Democrat now is still more liberal than the most liberal Republican.  Fewer swing districts and more safe seats mean polarization.
One result is that there is a cluster of core issues over which there is manor disagreement.  One example is guns.  There are some regions of the US where there is strong support for gun control and some where there is not.  These are areas where guns are and are not part of its culture.  Representatives from the gun regions in so many ways are actually representing their constituents  interests in the same way were those from the non-gun regions represent their voters.
Simply put, representatives in areas such as the south or rural areas have little political incentive to support gun control.   If they do they face political reprisals from within their party.  On  top of that, the NRA supports these candidates, occupying a powerful interest group role to reinforcing Republican, rural, and outer ring-suburban opposition to gun control.
Those who favor gun control include urban dwellers, people of color, women, and Democrats.  They do not live in the Republican areas or at least in sufficient numbers to matter politically, or they do not vote sufficiently Republican to move Republican voters.
Now consider Orlando.  It is perhaps an issue about LGBT phobia and how someone targeted  a gay night club.  This issue might move some but think about it–how many in the LGBT community  are voting Republican, identify Republican, or even live in Republican areas in sufficient numbers to move Republican Congressional members?  To be blunt: LGBT issues are not the kind that receive support from the Republican community and casting Orlando as such will not change the political debate or vote .  In addition, because the killer was Muslim it implicates another set of wedge issues, terrorism and Islamaphobia, there too is little indication that it will alter the political debate and forces within many pro-gun districts to support ne gun regulations.
Overall, the simple point here is that there is little chance that Orlando will change the debate and politics on gun control.  The one slight chance is that if the LGBT community can unite with other gun regulation forces, creating a powerful bloc of voters to challenge the NRA.  But even them it will require this new bloc to leverage political power in areas where there is little support for LGBT issues and a lot for guns.  Until and unless this happens, do not look to Orlando to change the politics of gun control.

Making Sense of American Politics in the Age of Barack Obama

 Note:  On October 26, I will be flying to Moscow, Russia to teach at the Peoples Friendship University.  I will also be giving a talk at the American Corner, Moscow. This will be my fifth trip to Moscow. At the University I will be giving several lectures.  One of them is the one that I have decided to make as a blog this week.

Picture of me in 2012 in front of Peoples Friendship University with

 Professor Daria Stanis, my host.

A couple of weeks ago the United States was on the edge of a crisis.  Had Republicans and Democrats in Congress not come to agreement with President Obama, the United States would have run out of money and defaulted on its debts, potentially throwing the country and the world economy into a recession.  This crisis would have been a result of the Congress failing give the president to raise the debt ceiling which would have authorized him to borrow money to pay America’s bills.
    But this near missing of a crisis came on top of one that had already occurred.  On October 1, Congress and the president failed to reach agreement on a budget, forcing a partial shutdown of the government.  Even though an agreement was reached, it was only temporary and the United States may be back in the same place in three months.
    Moreover, as one observes the United States over the last five years while Barack Obama has been president, America has faced repeated political disagreement that seems to push the government from one internal crisis to another.
    How did all this happen?  To many Americans the partial governmental shutdown and the near default of the United States was hard to understand.  But no doubt to people around the world, including here in the Russian Federation, it must perplexing.  How could such a big and powerful country such as the United States face problems such as this?   Why is the United States so divided now, and what does it all mean?  How do we make sense of America?
    What I would like to do today is explain American politics to you.  For those of you seeking a better understanding of my country, my talk will try to give you a better picture of how our country operates and how it has changed in the last few years.  In particular, I want to explain to you two things about American politics.
    First, I want to briefly describe what I call the logic of American politics.  By that, I want to  explain how our constitutional framers designed the American political system.  I will argue that the  the design of our political system is meant to break up political power and slow down political change.  By that, there are no real single power centers in American government and that to get anything accomplished a significant amount of political consensus is required.
    Second, unfortunately that consensus has broken down.  This is where I shall discuss political parties in the United States.  My argument here will be that what the United States is presently experiencing is a significant political party polarization that is making it difficult to govern.  This is exactly where the United States is now and it explains so much about why the county seems to be moving from crisis to crisis.

The Logic of American Politics
    American politics was born out of a fear of a strong national government and the potential threat that political power could have upon the individual rights of citizens.  This was a fear from American colonial experiences with King George III of England, as well as a fear of mob rule during the early years after independence.  James Madison, one of the original authors of the American Constitution, once described the task of the American political system the following way.

   "If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed."

The issue then is how to preserve individual liberty and republican government from the threats of majority faction.  This is the core problem of politics that Madison, the Federalist Papers, and the constitutional framers sought to address.  Phrased otherwise, the problem, as Alexis DeTocqueville would later ask, is how can the American republic deal with the threats of the tyranny of the majority?   Another way of stating it: How to balance majority rule with minority rights?  How does one allow for majority opinion to rule, as it should in a popular government, but not let it become destructive, acting impulsively or rashly when threatened?
    Thus, the American political system seeks to preserve individual liberty, or balance majority rule and minority rights, by placing all kinds of checks on political power.  The American political system was meant to make it slow to change, for power to become centralized.  The American political system has many features to break up power.
The government and election system of the United States is unique when compared to the Russian Federation as well as the rest of the world. Much of the formal structure of the government is outlined in the United States Constitution, with additional national, state, and local laws articulating both the structural and electoral systems for the country.
The first two defining characteristics of the United States are that it is a separation of powers government, not parliamentary, and it is also a federal and not a unitary government.  Both of these factors mean that political power in the United States is divided up among three national branches of government and between a national government and 50 states.  The purpose of this division of power is to protect minority rights, respect local decision making, and also to ensure that no one institution has too much political power.  This type of governing system also means that it is difficult to achieve significant political change in a short period of time, thereby encouraging the likelihood that elections will not produce dramatic changes in policy or political direction.
    Unlike a parliamentary system, separation of powers means that the president of the United States is elected separately from Congress.  The president serves both as head of state and head of the government.  Yet in America the president presides only over the executive branch of the government, with the legislative branch (Congress) headed by its own officers.  Because of the separate elections, it is entirely possible for the president to be of one political party, with Congress having a majority controlled by a different party or parties.  This is called divided government in the United States, and such a governing arrangement is not uncommon in the United States.
    Being a federal system means that there is in reality no national election for Congress.  The lower chamber of Congress is the House of Representatives, consisting of 535 members who represent districts spread across the 50 states.  Each district is on the same population.  There are 100 members of the Senate, with each of the states allocated two senators.  House terms are for two years and Senate for six.  In 2012, the entire 535 members of the House of Representatives was up for re-election, while only 33 of the Senators are up for re-election.  Because of the structure of Congress, effectively all of the elections for Congress are really local elections.  Thus, think of 2012 as a situation where there was one national election for president and 568 local elections for Congress.
    There is no proportional representation in Congress.  The United States has a Westminster type of elections—whoever receives the most votes in a congressional election is declared the winner.  Additionally, because of this type of system, third parties generally are not strong and therefore the United States is a two party system where at present Republicans and Democrats are in competition with one another.  Whichever party has the most members in the House or Senate controls that chamber.
    The reason why all this is important is that it is possible to have several variations of party control in the United States.  One could have a situation where the president and both houses of Congress are controlled by the same party.  This was the case when George Bush was president from 2003 to 2007. This occurred again in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president.  But it is also possible to have the president be from one party and Congress controlled by another.  This again occurred under George Bush from 2007 until 2009.  Another scenario is when the president and one legislative chamber are controlled by one party and the other chamber is controlled by another.  This is currently the cases in the United States.
    There are major differences between the two houses of Congress in terms of their constitutional authority and how they operate.  However, in both chambers, it is generally possible for a minority slow down or stop legislation from passing.  Again, in theory the idea for this is to protect individual liberty or ensure political agreement on major issues.
    Finally, in addition to the United States dividing up power at the national level, America is also a federal system where power is divided among 50 subunits of government that we call states.  Within the states there are cities and other local governments.  Overall, political power in America is highly divided and in order to make any significant political change there needs to be basic consensus and agreement.  No one, not even the president, can simply order things to be done.

Party Divide in the United States
    American politics also operates with party competition.  The two major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, while they have historically disagreed on some issues, really shared some basic agreement on the role of government in our society.  Moreover, the two major parties, up until recently, were less ideologically polarized 20 years ago.
     American political parties used to be more coalitional and regional than they are now.  Parties were more likely to be mixed ideologically.  When I grew up in New York in the 1960s my governor was Republican Nelson Rockefeller.  One Senator was Republican Jacob Javits, the other was Democrat Bobby Kennedy.  The most liberal?  Javits.  The most conservative, Kennedy.
    We have seen in the United States a disappearance of moderates in the two parties.  There is a rise of straight party line votes in the Congress.  The Republicans have become more conservative, the Democrats slightly more liberal.  But more importantly, the Republican Party has seen the rise of the Tea Party faction, a group of ultra-conservative people who are pulling the Republicans further to the right.  The Tea Party also is less likely to believe in compromise, and they  do not believe that shutting down the government is necessarily a bad thing. It was the influence of the Tea Party in the House of Representatives that significantly caused the partial governmental shutdown and the near default.
    But the party divide in America is part of a larger social divide in the United States.  The Democrats and Republicans are a tale of two parties The Republicans are older, whiter, male, more Christian, and part of the Silent generation along with some older Boomers.  They vote against gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and favor smaller government.  The Democrats are younger, more female,  less white, less Christian, and they represent the  Millennials and Gen Xers. They favor gay rights, choice, immigration and diversity, and more government.  The two parties represent two generations and world views, and party of the intensity right now is a demographic contest witnessing the passing of power from one generation to another.  It also represents a racial polarization the greatest since 1988, and an identity shift as America moves from a White Christian nation to something else.
    In addition politics and geography now overlay and intersect.  There is a political sorting of living space by politics and geography.  We increasingly have Democrat and Republican neighborhoods.  We are divided politically by rural and urban.  The result is a decline in the number of real marginal or swing districts and such a problem is only accentuated by redistricting in some states (or conversely, even the best redistricting cannot overcome the political sorting we are experiencing).  There are only 50 or so competitive seats in Congress. The remainder are certainties for either of the two major parties.  Partisan districts create less incentive to compromise, reinforcing  polarization.

Conclusion
    So what does this discussion of the American political system and changing party structure mean in terms of understanding the United States?
    The partisan divide and political polarization that has emerged in the United States over the last 20 years has become very serious since Barack Obama was elected president.  America appears to be a politically divided country where there is no real consensus on some core issues about what government should do.  But even if there were consensus, the logic or structure of the American political system is being manipulated by a minority of the population to pursue its goals.
    This is not a problem that James Madison envisioned. He and the others who wrote the American constitution did not anticipate that a minority could be so powerful that it could affect the country the way it does now.  Nor did Madison and the framers envision a country perhaps so divided on some basic political values or issues.
    Barack Obama’s presidency is about generational change and in part the reason why the country is so divided is because we are witnessing a beginning of a significant generational shift in American politics.
    In the near future the United States will continue to face political division.  But over the longer term the changing demographics or population of the United States may resolve this problem.  As one generation dies off and is replaced by another, the United States will see a change values and  perhaps, then, a new consensus will emerge about where the country should go.

News of Michele Bachmann’s Vulnerability are Greatly Exaggerated

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon recently penned that three pending ethics investigations surrounding Congresswoman Bachmann could doom her in the next election.  At least this is the hope of the Democrats and many other observers. Of course this is an interesting thesis but  Democrats are too quick to assume that she is as vulnerable as they think.

No doubt Bachmann has a close scare last year against newcomer Jim Graves. Perhaps had he received more money and better support earlier from the DCCC  maybe he would have won.  Running again in 2014 Graves brings many advantages in terms of name recognition and better campaign skills.  and the ethics accusations surrounding Bachmann add additional cogency to his campaign.

But one should not forget that 2012 was a unique year that will not repeat itself in 2014.  Nationally 2012 was a presidential year with higher turnout.   It featured an incumbent president running against a weak Republican.  Romney was especially weak in MN, having done badly here in the caucuses. Minnesota’s turnout was approximately 75% and it also featured Senator Klobuchar running for reelection.  On the ballot were two controversial constitutional amendments (a ban on same-sex marriage and a Voter ID Amendment) that strongly drove DFL turnout and backlashed against Republicans in Minnesota.  None of this will exist in 2014.

In 2014 there will be a governor’s race and Senator Franken is up again.  Both may draw Democratic attention and away from Bachmann.  Moreover, Democrats nationally will be battling to hold on to the US Senate whereas there seems little chance to regain the House.  These factors may divert money and resources away from a Bachman race.  Furthermore, some believe Representative John Klein is also vulnerable and that race too may divert resources and attention.

 Second, midterm elections generally do not favor the President’s party and in Minnesota and across the country expect a significant downturn in turnout.  Constitutional amendments will not be on the ballot either.  Overall, expect there to be voter turnout in the mid 50s and not 70s in 2014, with such turnout favoring a more Republican voting block.

Moreover, Bachmann will not be unprepared this time.  She has way more in her campaign war chest now than Graves and she has already launched ads attacking Graves.  Her fundraising skills are still excellent with a terrific network of supporters across the country.  While Bachmann did not use it well in 2012, her district is not about plus 6 or 7 GOP, again giving her a real advantage in her district, again especially in the off-year elections.  In 2012 Bachmann’s congressional campaign suffered from her presidential adventures, including spending most of her first year of her term in Iowa.  This will not occur this time.

Finally, for many years her district has been forgiving and even embraced her often controversial and fact-challenged statements and there is no reason to think that they may discount them again in 2014.

Overall, Bachmann may be vulnerable in 2014 and perhaps the patience of her constituents is running out.  Her opponents have gotten it wrong in the last two election cycles against her, overestimating her weakness in 2010 and underestimating it in 2012.  Being burned twice is a note for caution.

Perhaps also the ethics issues will hurt her, but it is also possible by November, 2014  the story has run its course and Bachmann can again assert that it is a liberal media that is driving the attacks. Democrats have mis-estimated her political skills and they again may do they to their misfortune in 2014.  Much like Mark Twain once declaring that news of his death were greatly exaggerated, so too might be news of Michele Bachmann's political career.

The Lessons of Gun Control: It’s Congress Versus the People

Should president Obama have been surprised that the Senate rejected almost all of the gun measures despite the fact that large majorities supported some of the ideas, such as universal background checks?   Not really.  In part rejection of the gun control measures speak to the power of money in politics or  the power of a well organized group to act more effectively than unorganized public opinion.  But more specifically, the gun measure speaks to a broader and more serious problem in Washington–how  Congress has become a counter-majoritarian institution and is now functioning in ways contrary to what and how the Constitutional Framers envisioned the government to operate.

Political scientist Robert Dahl writes in A Preface to Democratic Theory how the fear of majority faction or the tyranny of the majority dominated the concerns of the constitutional framers. According to Madison in Federalist # 10, a faction was:  "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” 

Factions threatened the public good and the rights of minorities.  Madison thought that minority factions–a group of people composing of less than a majority–could be controlled simply by the majority outvoting them.  The real problem was majority faction-the problem of the tyranny of the majority according to Alexis deTocqueville–or balancing majority rule with minority rights, that was the object of constitutional design.  The framers feared how a majority could capture hold of the American political system and use it to threat the public good or rights of others.  The constitutional solution was to break up political power and slow down the winds of political change.  Make it difficult to bring about quick political change.

To accomplish that, the Constitution devised  numerous mechanisms to break up political power.  We know these techniques–checks and balances, separation of powers, bicameralism, and federalism.  These are just the most famous of the institutional mechanisms to thwart majority rule.  But add to add two years terms for the House of Representatives, six year terms for the Senate (with no more than one-third elected every two years), and a four year term for the president and one can see how difficult it is to bring about rapid change in any election.

This is a brilliant design but somewhere along the ay Madison missed something–the power of minority factions.  He ignored or underrated how powerful a small, cohesive group could be, especially if it possessed significant resources.  In effect, a minority faction could effectively capture the government, turning it into a counter-majoritarian institution.  This is exactly what is happening now with Congress.

Public opinion polls demonstrate majority support for universal background checks for guns purchases, higher taxes on the wealthy as part of a deficit reduction solution, and same-sex marriage.  Yet despite this support on these and other issues, Congress, especially the House of Representatives, seems unwilling to act.   All this points to Congress’s counter-majoritarianism,
What is meant by counter-majoritarian? The term goes back to Alexander Bickel. A famous legal scholar from the 1950s and author of  The Least Dangerous Branch (1962).  Bickel’s book was written in reaction to the Earl Warren Supreme Court.  He was witnessing a Court that seemed willing to issue opinions that overturned acts of Congress and state legislatures, ignoring the preferences of the will of the majority in an effort to protect minority rights.  Bickel described this activity as counter-majoritarian.

Over the years Republicans and conservatives took Bickel’s comments as an indictment of judicial activism.  They loathed how the judiciary intervened in matters such as abortion, integration, and criminal due process issues such as the Miranda warnings, search and seizure, and the death penalty. The courts should stay out of what is rightly the task of elections, Congress, and the president to address.

The irony now seems to be a role reversal where Congress has become the counter-majoritarian institution and the Supreme Court the majoritarian one.  Look to the two same-sex marriage cases recently before the Supreme Court.  Despite public opinion now favoring same-sex marriage, the laws of Congress stand in the way.  The Defense of Marriage Act, as several Justices pointed out, is preventing states from changing their laws to reflect new societal conceptions of marriage.  The oral arguments in this and in the California Prop 8 case demonstrated a Court hoping that the political process would act (so that it would not have to) while at the same time recognizing that the majority process–in the case of California a ballot initiative–had broken down and the judiciary needed to act to get it working again.

But it is not simply the matter of same-sex marriage that it highlighting the role reversal for Congress and the Supreme Court.  What is really clear is how Congress was designed to be counter-majoritarian and it had become more so over time.
   
But when Congress is faulted but not reflecting public opinion or what the majority of people want in the United States, the answer is that as an institution it is not a national legislature.  The House represents 435 separate localities across the country, the Senate 50.  Congress is not reflective of national opinion because it is basically a parochial body. If this parochialism is not counter-majoritarianism, it is at least indifferent to national majority preferences.  The best sign of that in 2012 1.4 million more votes were cast for Democratic House candidates than Republican candidates.  Majority rule did not prevail.

But there are many other ways that Congress is counter-majoritarian.  The Senate filibuster allows 41 senators representing as few as 15% of the population to prevent legislation or nominations from being considered.  Individual senators can place holds on some legislation or “blue slip” judicial nominations in their home state.  In the House a single committee can block the entire body form considering legislation, and it is rare that a discharge petition is successful to force bills from committee to the floor.  Partisanship, polarization, and the pull of special interests have only exacerbated these counter-majoritarian tendencies.

Counter-majoritarian is good when it comes to protecting rights.  But the counter-majoritarianism in Congress goes beyond that. It is preventing the federal government from getting any work down, undermining the very functioning of our democracy.  Barely three months into President Obama second term he already seems like a lame duck, and it appears that time is simply being marked until the 2014 elections.  In the meantime, gun and other legislation languishes and this president, like his predecessors, is increasingly turning to executive orders to bypass Congress.  In the same way that the Supreme Court should not make policy, presidents should not be able to self-legislate.

Congress has become an anti-democratic institution incapable of functioning expect in rare circumstances.  It now stands as an impediment to progress and change.  Its anti-majoritarianism has cost it prestige, power, and legitimacy.  It is no wonder that the approval rating for cockroaches is higher than that for Congress.

Sesquestration and Its Discontents

Absent a dramatic turnabout in events, sequestration begins to kick in on March 1.  Once was thought of as the dumbest of all dumb ideas now has the real possibility of coming to fruition and its impact on the economy will not be good since it is essentially an austerity program.  But even without sequestration, US economic policy is already one of sequestration, raising doubts about the medium and longer term prospects for American economic growth.

Let’s first be clear about what sequestration is.  Back in 2011 when Obama and the House Republicans were at logger heads about raising the debt limit the core of the disagreement then was insistence by the Republicans that they would not raise the debt ceiling unless there was a significant effort to cut future US spending.  Obama and Speaker Boehner were close to a grand bargain to cut several trillion dollars in future spending, but the deal was scuttled by GOP refusal to go along with some tax increases. 

In the end, the deal to raise the debt ceiling was postponed to the end of last year–the Fiscal Cliff.  But part of the 2011 deal was also the creation of the mother of all poison pills--sequestration.  The idea behind sequestration was that if the Republicans and Democrats (Obama) could not agree on future spending cuts there would be automatic cuts to military and discretionary spending so severe that the mere threat of these cuts would force each side to reach a deal.  By self-description both sides then described the sequestration cuts as stupid or unwise.  Sequestration was supposed to occur at the end of last December as part of the Fiscal Cliff but it was kicked down the road two months to allow time to deal.  You could have practically predicted what would happen–the day of reckoning is again upon us.

It is looking less and less likely a deal will occur by the end of the month.  Both sides are yelling and accusing the other of bad faith and being unwilling to compromise. 

But the truth be told, both sides are responsible but in very different ways.  The Republicans are responsible for the problem by their refusal to consider any tax increases to go along with the cuts.  Remember this is the same party that when asked of its presidential candidates two years ago would they go along with one dollar of tax increases for nine dollars in spending cuts, none of the contenders said yes.  The GOP also seems to hold to a mythic fairyland belief that all taxes are bad, that the only way to help the economy is by spending less, that government is evil, or that it crowds out the economy.  They essentially lack an economic plan and instead simply have  failed dogma to which they cling.  No surprise here.  For the most part Congress is devoid of members who know much about economics.  One of my favorite books is Paul Gary Wyckoff’s Policy and Evidence in a Partisan Age (2009).  He highlights the lack of understanding in economics among members in Congress, finding few with any formal training and literacy in this field.  He also points out that often what elected officials use as evidence for their ideas are  anecdotal stories—the least reliable types of evidence there is.  Few seem to grasp statistics, regression, or correlations and what they mean.  Effectively, Congress in general and the GOP specifically seem largely ignorant about basic economics.

But Obama too is at fault.  His fault is that he has already conceded the battle.  While he talks a good game about jobs he has largely embraced the austerity agenda.  He is largely committed to spending cuts and seems really to have given up on any major efforts to revitalize the economy and jobs.  We have produced several million new jobs in his first four years but the recovery is still tepid and it will take years if at all to make up the lost ground from the last few years. Obamanomics has not been terrific.

But even if sequestration is avoided, there will be cuts.  The Saturday February 23, 2013 New York Times reports that states are worried about the impact of sequestration on their economies and budgets, but equally worried about the cuts that will happen in the alternative to sequestration.  In either case, we are headed into a longer term austerity plan.  A plan that really does not produce jobs, future investments, or which tries to grow the economy out of its budget problems.  It is austerity similar to what many European countries are doing, and the results for them are not good.

But the other tragedy of sequestration beyond the foolish commitment to austerity and a blind faith in thinking that cutting federal spending and investments are the gateway to economic Nirvana is this idea that somehow gimmicks can solve budget problems.  Sequestration needs to be thrown into the dustbin of failed ideas that include PPBS, the Balanced Budget Amendment, the Gramm-Rudman Act of 1985, and line-item vetoes.  The history of budgeting in America is told of special commissions (Simpson-Bowles) and gimmicks yet none work simply because they are poor substitutes for political will and reasoned and informed judgment.

How Stupid are They? Are You Smarter than Your Congressional Representative?

Are you smarter than your elected member of Congress? You just might be. It appears that by the words Congress uses, they are getting dumber and there also appears to be a partisan basis to this dumbing down.

The non-partisan Sunlight Foundation recently released a great study that examines the words and syntax used by members of Congress in their addresses and speeches. Specifically, these are their official comments as found in the Congressional Record–the official account of the proceedings on Congress. What they found is that current Congress speaks at a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. 

Put this in comparison. The average American reads between an 8th and 9th grade level. Television news is generally at about a 9th or 10 grade level. The King James Bible at 11.0 level, the U.S. Constitution at 17.8, and To Kill a Mockingbird at a 6.0 level. The New York Times is 14 and the Wall Street Journal is at 11.

Historically (1996-2005) Republicans spoke two-tenths of a grade higher than Democrats but the diction of both parties has declined in the last few years with Republicans moving from a 11.6 grade level to a 10.3 grade level and Democrats sliding from 11.4 to 10.6 in 2011.

Perhaps members of Congress are not dumber than before. Maybe the shift in language reflects better communication skills and efforts to use words that their audience will understand. But remember this study does not look at speeches to the public where presumably members of Congress may be speaking to a wide ranging audience of adults and children. Instead they are speaking to one another dumbing down their language to communicate to their peers.

Maybe there is no correlation between language and intelligence. Although research tells us the contrary, and the entire standardized testing industry that includes the SATs would beg to differ. However, looking at the current Congress, it does not appear that there are too many Einsteins there, and instead, given some of the ideas and proposals being cooked up, it increasingly seems more populated by Forrest Gumps.
So how does the Minnesota congressional delegation pan out?

Official	Rank	Party	Speaking Level
Keith Ellison	25	DFL	9.3
Michele Bachmann	44	GOP	9.52
Al Franken	73	DFL	9.98
Tim Walz	76	DFL	10.06
Amy Klobuchar	89	DFL	10.24
Collin Peterson	97	DFL	10.41
John Klein	181	GOP	11.09
Chip Cravaack	197	GOP	11.17
Erik Paulsen	339	GOP	11.93
Betty McCollum	470	DFL	12.71
Minnesota Avg.			10.64

Overall, Minnesota’s delegation speaks at a 10.6 grade-level. In very Lake Wobegonism fashion, we are average for Congress. Representative Ellison comes in at the bottom at a 9.3 grade-level, closely followed by Bachmann at 9.5. They are overall 25th and 44th in Congress (out of 535 members). Both place in the bottom 10th percentile. Conversely, Representative McCollum is at 12.7, ranked 470, locating her near the 90th percentile. Minnesota Democrats came in at 10.45, Republicans at 10.9.

What does all this mean? Perhaps nothing, or perhaps it is indicative of something broader about who is serving in Congress and their intelligence and capacity to address the major problems of the day. You decide whether this tells us if Congress is getting dumb and dumber?

Many years ago when Fritz Hollings was running for re-election to the Senate in South Carolina his opponent took a drug test, released the results, and called up the senator to take a drug test and also release the results. Senator Hollings responded: “I will take a drug test and release the results when my opponent takes an IQ test and releases the results.” I support this idea–individuals running for Congress should be required to disclose their IQ score.

Obama’s Christmas Present

Christmas came early for Barack Obama as Republican prospects to pick up the presidency took a major hit this week. A series of events again demonstrated that Obama cannot win but the Republicans certainly can also lose the presidency.

Miscalculating the Payroll Tax
The most glaring event of the week was the misplaying of the House GOP vote on the extension of the payroll tax. In principle they may have been correct that a one year deal is preferable to a two month extension but they needed to act but did not. Perhaps they thought Obama would again capitulate like he did in August with the debt deal but the politics was very different then as opposed to now. In August failure to reach agreement meant a government shutdown, making Obama look hapless. This time no deal meant tax increases on the middle class and that would have stuck to the Republicans. Moreover, even the Senate Republicans–including Mitch McConnell and John McCain–pressured the House to assent to the deal. The House GOP here simply overplayed their hand and lost.

Obama the Economist Populist
Contributing to the miscalculation is the traction Obama has received in running as an economic populist. He has given two major speeches in the last few months describing himself as a man for the people. The first was his $450 billion jobs speech a few months ago and the other was his recent Osawatomie, Kansas speech. In both he talked of the need to help the middle class. Both were fine speeches, but talk is cheap.

Obama rightly so should be criticized as the Democrat who abandoned the middle class and the poor. He continued the Bush policy of bailing out the banks and he has put more emphasis on stabilizing the financial sector than he did in helping home owners and the working class. While his original stimulus bill did help, I argued after the 2010 elections that his failure has been to appear to side more with the banks than the people. Given how much he took from Wall Street in 2008 to finance his campaign, no surprise here.

But Obama has been lucky. Occupy Wall Street and the “We are the other 99%” campaign have helped him. Both shifted focus to the Republicans in Congress and running for president that there is a clear class divide in America. Previous blogs of mine have attested to this fact and the growing economic divide in America over the last 30 years. Congressional refusal to raise taxes, a Republican presidential debate revealing no candidate willing to raise one dollar in taxes for every ten dollars in spending cuts, and the failure of Congress to enact Obama paltry $450 billion jobs bill all make it clear that they do not care about the American people (had they enacted the bill they could have disarmed the president and still pointed to how they supported the president on all his major economic programs but they still failed).

The point is that Obama can look like an economic populist because of the failures of Congress and the GOP to offer a credible alternative and to play politics in a way that makes them look like they care for anyone besides the top 1%. Obama is winning because of the implosion of the Republicans.

The Dismal Presidential Choices
Obama is also benefitting from a Republican presidential field that is not a varsity or junior varsity but the freshman team. It is a team running increasingly further and further to the right. A team that is further to the right than the Reagan Party–it is the Palin Party still as I wrote about several times t his year. It is a party that has flirted with several conservatives–Bachmann, Perry Cain, Gingrich, and now maybe Paul as the preferred choice over the more moderate but lackluster and passionless Romney. They seem out of touch with America in their talk of tax cuts, privatization, and return to the gold standard.

Now with little more than a week before Iowa, the race is definitely up in the air. Recent polls confirm what I asserted in an interview last week that Paul, Gingrich, and Romney will be the order in Iowa come January 3. But even if Paul does not win, his ascendency is a problem for the Republicans. If he does well in Iowa is libertarianism will play even better in New Hampshire and Romney needs to worry about a relative poor showing there on his part. This year with the Republican primaries and caucuses allocating delegates not by winner-take-all but proportionally, unless there is a quick kill by one candidate in January, look to a long primary and a potential brokered convention.

So What Does All this Mean for Obama?
Obama is now in much better shape in the polls for reelection than he was a few weeks ago. Polls have his approval rating up to 49% and it now exceeds is disapproval rating. He has a 7 point lead over Romney and much larger leads over the other Republican candidates. Congress’s approval is under 10% and public approval of the Tea Party has weakened. There are small signs of economic improvement but certainly no indication of real growth or significant decreases in unemployment in 2012. The economic news and prospects should doom him and the Electoral College road to reelection is complicated, but Obama now has a clear lead in Florida.

But compared to the Republicans running for president and those in Congress, he looks good. Obama can run for reelection on a slogan of “No matter how bad I am look at the alternative.”

Merry Christmas President Obama! Your present came wrapped with Republicans in a box they are building themselves in.

Altered States: GOP Denial and the War Against Reality

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt

Ever wonder what state politicians live in, especially Republicans these days? From the looks of it, it is the state of denial and it is a state where the poor, elderly, students, immigrants, working class, and the future do not live or matter.

Look at the budget process at both the federal and Minnesota state level and it is clear that many in the GOP are engaged in a war against the poor, elderly, students, immigrants, and working class. In Minnesota, the GOP proposed budget cuts that slash higher end spending, they are cutting money for health care for the poor, K-12 is taking hits, and local governments and their services are being targeted. At the federal level the cuts are also hurting the same constituencies, and in Michigan the governor supports legislation cutting back on unemployment benefits by six weeks. Talk about kicking people when they are down!

None of the above even includes the war on public sector unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states, efforts to pass election voter ID laws to address nonexistent fraud, and of course restrictive abortion laws in Arizona, North Dakota, and perhaps Minnesota. Nor does it include the war against the EPA and it ignores global warming. Moreover, the cuts to education and infrastructure investment seem to ignore the need to invest in the future. Actually, except for wanting to protect a few fetuses, there is no regard for the future. Even with the fetuses, once born they are on their own and too ignored and condemned to attend poorly funded schools and drive on bad bridges and roads, unless they happen to be lucky and be born privileged.

It is clear who the constituency of the GOP is. They represent a state of America populated by corporations, the rich, male, and those who hate government. They do not seem to believe that when things get rough we have an obligation to help one another or that perhaps those better off and capable of sheltering the burdens or costs should do that to help out the less fortunate. It is an antisocial philosophy, reflecting the individualism of the marketplace or the community of civil society. It is Ayn Rand’s vision.

They believe that the free market is wonderful and that it can solve all our problems, while ignoring the recent economic crash of 2008, its lasting legacies, and the role government played in forking out taxpayer money to bail them out. They ideologically believe that cutting government, taxes, and regulation will spur on the economy, yet this philosophy is no more than supply-side economics rehashed yet again for the Nth time.

And where is this ideology taking us? At the federal level we have no budget and we flirt again with a government shutdown. In Minnesota, the GOP keep passing cuts and it is clear Dayton will veto them, making a special session if not a July shutdown possible. It is a philosophy of ideological purity, bent on the belief that compromise is bad and that anything short of a 100% win is a loss and a sacrifice of principle. Better to bring down the government than compromise. Better to hurt the least advantaged than make the more affluent help out. Better to assume the market will work at its optimum in theory than think about how it works in practice and in comparison to government in reality.

Academics are often accused of living in an ivory tower. Yet the tower or state that the Republicans are living in seems so much more detached from reality than any university classroom. It is a state of denial–denying the real world implications of their choices and how by simply serving their constituents greedy interests they are hurting society in general and sacrificing the future to the present. This is an unsustainable philosophy yet somehow it persists, partly because the Democrats are too weak, ineffective, or bought off by the same interests to challenge them, the public often too apathetic or ignorant to care or know, or the media often unable or willing to report the story about this reality.


A Note on the Economy

The stock market slowly climbs and corporate profits have rebounded, yet for most Americans there is little real sign of improving economic conditions. Housing prices continued to slide for the sixth month in a row, and there is little indication that banks wish to lend money and individuals want to buy homes for fear that their investment is not worth it. Millions of houses are poised to enter foreclosure and there is no sight that the real estate market is rebounding. But of course the good news is that the federal government made $24 billion on its loans via TARP to prop up banks and other financial institutions.

Additionally, consumer confidence again slipped last month and while payroll has increased, there is still no sign that businesses are ready to pump money into hiring. Instead, as the Financial Times reports, mergers and acquisitions are dramatically up.

It is now clear what businesses are doing with their money. They are returning to profitability, borrowing at low cost, and using the cash to buy out competitors, such as what AT&T is doing with T-Mobile. They are not investing in jobs or the economy. Welcome to the status quo!

Dodd-Frank, the federal law to restructure the financial markets, was supposed to address some of these problems. Yet it is clear that after the 2008 meltdown and crash little has changed. Banks helped destroy the economy, got bailed out, are again making tons of money and have bonuses to pay their executives, yet they refuse to loan money. Additionally, businesses are not hiring. It seems that the banks, corporations, and the rich are doing well, and the rest of us are being ignored. They got a free lunch in terms of bailouts from the taxpayers and the rest of us continue to pay for their mistakes.

Yes GOP policies are to blame for much of this, but the Democrats seem no better here. They hardly fight and Obama’s surrender on extending the Bush era tax cuts, while perhaps politically savvy, was and remains bad policy that hurts the poor and middle class. Last December Jesse Jackson and Pat Buchanan agreed the tax cuts were bad policy. Buchanan stated the cuts would exacerbate the deficit and Jackson asserted that tax cuts for the rich then would mean service cuts for the poor this year. Both were correct. The economy is marginally better now than in December, and it is clear we have failed to make changes to address the basic problems that 2008 revealed. We seem to have moved onto the future, assuming all is fine, in the state of denial we live in.

My Upcoming Video Chat- Online 'Seats' Available!

Keep Monday night open! I am going to offer an hour-long interactive video/audio chat with the public regarding the 2010 elections and offer predictions for how politics are likely to play out nationally and in Minnesota. The online event will take place Monday, November 15, 2010 from 7-8 p.m.(CST).

I'll be utilizing the latest technology, Elluminate Live!, a web conferencing program and virtual environment to provide a fluid, powerful video chat experience with up to 100 chat participants. I'll respond to questions and comments from those participants while leading a discussion about the 2010 election results locally and nationally. I also plan to address what Minnesota is likely to experience once a new governor is named and how it may differ depending on which candidate claims the spot and when they do so.

I'd love for anyone interested to 'attend' this online event. To join the session, please click here within 30 minutes of the session start time.

To view the hardware and software pre-requisites for Elluminate Live! click here.

Forget Bachmann/Clark, The Real Focus Should be Minnesota's Third District

Political pundits and analysts need to take a new look at Minnesota’s third congressional district race pitting DFL challenger Jim Meffert seeking to unseat first term GOP incumbent Erik Paulsen. Democrats have a far better chance picking up this seat than they do knocking off Michelle Backmann with Tarryl Clark.

The Futile Effort to Beat Bachmann
There is virtually no chance the Democrats will defeat Bachmann. I have argued this for months. Bachmann’s sixth district seat is apportioned approximately six points ahead for Republicans. She is a conservative candidate in a conservative district. She is the Tea Party leader in a Tea Party GOP year. She fits her district well and has already survived several attempts to knock her off in previous years (most recently '08) more favorable to Democrats. Democrats would be better served to wait until 2012, after reapportionment, when new lines may change the Sixth and make it more competitive, or when Bachmann makes the foolish move to run for the senate againt Klobuchar and gets waxed by her.

Yet Democrats cannot resist themselves. Democrats from around the country are pouring millions into this race and yet there is no evidence that Clark is catching up or gaining ground. Yes, Democrats have to challenge her and force her to campaign at home so that she does not travel and fundraise and campaign for others. But from a cost-benefit perspective, pouring millions here makes no sense. Sure there might be a symbolic victory in knocking her off, but with Democrats having to defend so many seats and having to decide where to best spend, resources need to be placed where it makes the most sense. That is why Minnesota’s Third District makes more sense.

Minnesota’s Third District
Minnesota’s Third District is a moderate suburban area mainly encompassing the western suburbs of Minneapolis. For years it was represented by Republican Jim Ramstad who had a reputation as a moderate. In 2008 he did not seek reelection and the seat looked ripe for Democrats to pick up. After all, many of the state seats in that district were occupied by Democrats.

The ideal Democrat I argued was a moderate pro-choice and perhaps female candidate. I thought that State Representative Melissa Hortman or State Senator Terri Bonoff were perfect profile candidates for the district then, but Melissa did not run and Terri’s campaign did not see Ashwin Madia coming. Ashwin did a great job organizing and hunting delegates.

In the end, the Democrats picked Aswin Madia, a political novice, Iraq vet who ran again the war. He challenged Erik Paulsen, a 10-year conservative state legislator. Paulsen won, mostly by hiding his conservative credentials and running as a moderate. Additionally, Madia ran out of steam in October '08, especially when the war as an issue was waning and the economy became the focus. Madia did not do a good job pivoting from war to the economy and he lost his message at a critical time. Finally, the race had a Independence Party candidate who, on election day, took about ten percent of the vote. The result? Paulsen won by eight points.

Since election, Paulsen has spoken moderate but voted right. He has a voting record nearly identical to Bachmann’s, voting with her over 90% of the time. He has no real accomplishments to show, and about the only news about him has been how he appeared to gouge the House franking privilege by sending out hundreds of thousands of dollars in mail to his constituents, at taxpayer expense.

More importantly, for a moderate district, his voting record is way to the right of where most of the voters are.

Too many people have heard me argue that campaigns are won or lost based on how well you capture the swing voter. The most critical swing voter in Minnesota remains the suburban mom with kids–the soccer mom. These women are less and less likely to vote GOP because of its agenda. These women are worried about family issues–early childhood ed, K-12, jobs, and health care for their children. Minnesota’s Third District is soccer mom heaven. It is heavily dominated by soccer moms in the suburbs, and they are ready to swing.

Some analysis and polls suggest Paulsen’s agenda is way out of line with voters here. Less than half have a favorable view of him, with many outright unwilling to vote for him again were there a choice. This is where Jim Meffert comes in.

Who is Jim Meffert?
Jim Meffert is a terrific candidate for the third district, if only he could get the attention of the media, Democrats, and the voters. He is a St. Olaf grad, serving there as the president of the college Republicans. He became a Democrat because, like the soccer moms of his district, he saw the GOP moving in a direction he did not like. Jim has worked with the PTA and on education issues, he comes from peace and justice wing of the religious community, and he talks of government and business working together to solve problems. All of these are perfect themes for this district.

Final Thoughts
Yet so far his race has not received the attention it deserves. Democrats are too preoccupied with Bachmann, in part because she is a fundraising tool. She is the bogey(wo)man they can use to raise money. Keith Olbermann and MSMBC give her too much attention, in large part to hype their own ratings. Too much media attention is focused on Clark and Bachmann, like the train wreck we cannot resist watching. Or it reminds me of that old commercial–“I have fallen and can’t get up.” Here, the media and Democrats cannot resist covering or giving money in this race. They seem foolishly fixed on the race. Yes it may be sexy to cover or think about it. But if the real goal of Democrats is to win races, the right mix of money, media, and luck could make this a real race and seat they could win.