Backfire: Keeping Trump off the Ballot and Impeaching Biden May Get you Something Worse

 

            Don’t wish for something, it might happen. When it comes to American politics in 2024, that might be the warning for Democrats seeking to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in Minnesota or Colorado or for Republicans trying to impeach Joe Biden.  For every political action there is an opposite reaction and for both parties what they might get is a backfire  that could do the opposite of what they want.

            Consider the state of contemporary politics.  It is a polarized winner-take-all-environment.  There are maybe five states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that are in play.  Within those states, only a handful of swing voters in a handful of swing precincts will decide the race to 270 electoral votes  to win the presidency.  The US House and Senate are closely divided, with  perhaps no more than 20 suburban House seats and six Senate seats in play that will determine partisan control. Trump and Biden are tied in the national polls. 

Nearly forty states have partisan trifectas, giving  one party complete control of the legislative process.  These trifectas show the importance of winner-take-all politics  versus split government gridlock.

Now consider the current strategies.  Democrats in Colorado and Minnesota and perhaps in other states want to use the insurrection clause of  Section Three of the  Fourteenth Amendment to keep Trump off the ballot in those states.  Using a clause designed to remedy post-Civil War concerns regarding the  1866 election to keep former Confederates from serving in office and of which many legal historians question its applicability today, the strategy is to have election officials or state courts declare Trump and insurrectionist and therefore ineligible to appear on the ballot.

Keeping Trump off the Ballot in Minnesota

            Let’s consider the possibility of this in a quadfecta  state such as Minnesota where Democrats control both houses of the legislature, the governorship, the state supreme court, and even the secretary of state as the top election official.

The attraction or lure is great.  Exclude Trump from the ballot in Minnesota and one is guaranteed ten electoral votes without much work.  The resources can then be shifted to Wisconsin or another swing state.  Never mind no Republican has won statewide office since 2006 and no Republican presidential candidate since 1972.

But there are powerful downsides to this strategy.  One, if there is not even the semblance of a competitive presidential race in  Minnesota, it may be hard to motivate Democrats to come out to vote. Trump draws out Democrats to vote.  Without a competitive presidential race, down ballot races may be impacted.

Two,  if a 6-1 Democratic Party majority on the Minnesota Supreme Court throws Trump off the ballot it will only further add fuel to  the national claim of rigged elections. Minnesota will become the rallying cry to motivate Republican voters to come out in record numbers to support their guy.

Three, even if the Minnesota Supreme Court does not remove Trump from the ballot, the damage may already be done.  Even the hint of doing this raises the  stolen election fear both in the state and nationally, thereby propelling Republicans to the ballot.

Finally, now  consider one more issue—abortion.  The US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and abortion rights was a blessing for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.  It is still a salient issue. But in 2023 Democrats in Minnesota  went beyond codifying Roe, enacting legislation arguably going beyond what most of the state’s public opinion supports.  Republicans already plan to use the phrase “abortion on demand” to motivate their base in 2024, including a highly motivated pro-life anti-abortion constituency.

Rumor has it that the Democrats  want to go beyond codification of abortion rights and put it in a constitutional amendment and on the ballot in 2024.  In part the reasoning is to motivate their base.

Yet Democrats need to remember 2012 when a Republican legislature thought  a voter ID and marriage amendment would  juice up their base  and win them the elections. The result backfired and Democrats took over the legislature and single-party control of the state.

 

Impeaching Biden

            Biden enjoys tepid support among Democrats going into 2024.  He has low approval ratings among the general public and he does not garner enthusiasm among Democrats.  He is vulnerable in part because Democrats may not come out for him.

            The best thing Biden has going for him so far going into the 2024 election is Trump may be his opponent and that the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans.  He gets to run against both next year.  But that still may not be enough to save him.

            Enter impeachment.

            The Republican House will likely impeach Biden later this year or in 2024.  The validity of the impeachment grounds do not matter.  Impeach Biden is meant to handicap him while running for re-election.  It is political tit-for-tat.  Trump was impeached, impeach Biden.  Trump has legal problems, divert attention from them and his trials by impeaching Biden and forcing a Senate trial on to television and into the social media.  It levels the legal playing field between Trump and Biden, and it serves as a way to motivate Republican donors and voters.

            Except perhaps not. There is no way a Democratic Party-controlled Senate will convict Biden.  There is even no guarantee it will hold a trial.  But much in the same way the Trump’s first impeachment motivated his voters  (and had it not been for Covid and his mishandling of it  he might have won him the 2020 election) after the 2018 midterm elections, a failed impeachment of Biden might simply be the thing Democrats need to rally their voters around Biden and bring them to the polls in 2024.

            The lesson is don’t wish for something because if you get it, it may backfire on you.

A Tale of Two Saint Pauls

 It was the best of times in Saint Paul, it was the worst of times, it was the age of affluence, it was the

age of poverty, it was the epoch of opportunity it was the epoch of squandered chances, it was the season of progress, it was the season of the status quo, it was the spring of competence, it was the winter of partisan incompetence, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

Saint Paul is a challenged city that has made a lot of mistakes.  It has overused Tax Increment Financing (TIF), rendering it fiscally poor and unable to perform basic city services such as snow plowing, filling potholes, or reconstructing and repaving streets.  The TIF also impacts the City’s schools, impacting their taxing capacity to fund programs.

In addition, stretching over several administrations and city councils, there just does not seem to be a priority or interest in addressing core city services.  For years I used to argue that one could get elected to local office anywhere in the US by running on core services such as streets, sidewalks, parks, fire, and policing.  But that no longer seems to be the case, at least in Paul.

In part due to the polarization and nationalization of American politics that extends down to the local level, voters seem less interested in these issues than before and candidates for local office run on national or global issues such as world peace or climate change.  Public officials in St. Paul seem uninterested in local issues, unwilling or uninterested in the nitty gritty of what local government is supposed to be about.  Single party rule, where there is no chance that come November this year when city council faces re-election, renders the threat of losing less than a viable check to force officials to focus on what is important as opposed to what is needed or essential.  Partisan and interest group capture have corrupted the decision making process.

But St. Paul officials also seem bent on simply making choices in the absence of evidence. This is the case now where the City and Planning Commission are preparing to eliminate single-family zoning.  

There is a fashionable belief among planners now that elimination of single family zoning will decrease residential segregation and housing costs. There is no evidence that densification will do that.  We already know in Minneapolis and from larger macro studies across the US that densification has not improved housing affordability and it has done little to increase overall supply.  Moreover, we see signs in Minneapolis that the elimination of single family zoning has led to venture capital buying up undervalued property in undervalued neighborhoods (mostly populated by people of color).  Eventually the new unit produced will be for more affluent users  because developers will build those units which are most profitable, and not necessarily those that are the most needed or affordable.

Think of the elimination of single family zoning as government-sponsored property flipping.  It is a new version of redlining that will foster gentrification in St. Paul.  The neighborhoods that will be most affected by the elimination of single family zoning will be Midway, Frogtown, Rondo, and perhaps the Payne and Arcade areas of the city.  Some of these neighborhoods have already experienced the largest property tax increases in the city; again an early city of gentrification.

But there are other reasons to question the elimination of single-family zoning. Jane Jacobs, whose Death and Life of Great American Cities is perhaps the best book ever written on planning and cities, points out, cities are generators of diversity.  They thrive on diversity in all forms, including architecture, design, and lifestyles.  Cities need many different types of neighborhoods and housing to be successful.

Years ago I consulted with one local city.  We realized they had a problem.    They were a bedroom suburb that had only one type of housing.  What they lacked is housing for everyone and for the cycles of our lives.  Cities need housing for singles, young couples, families, empty nesters, and then older people.   If one does not provide this diversity of housing people leave.

Cities need to retain all types of residents, including middle class individuals who wish to own their own home. There are all kinds of reasons to encourage home ownership, ranging from wealth building, producing neighborhood stability, to maximizing lifestyle choices.

In moving to eliminate single family zoning, St. Paul will do little to rectify the intense economic and racial residential segregation that exists.  Instead, it will only exacerbate existing gentrification and development patterns characteristic of the city for the last generation or so. What is needed is a change in policy and in how the City is run, but this decision is not an example of what positive change should be.  It is another sign of uniquely the problems St. Paul confronts.

Alas, all well-run cities are alike; each badly run city is badly run in its own way. 

The Minnesota Legislative Process: Still Crazy After All These Years

 Watching the Minnesota budget process is like living in Groundhog Day.

The 2021 regular session of the Minnesota Legislature limps to an end without a budget deal. No news here, it was entirely predictable. Not since 1999–the first year of Jesse Ventura’s term as governor–has a budget session of the Minnesota Legislature ended on time without a special session, partial governmental shutdown, or a controversial ending such as in 2009 when Pawlenty used his unallotment power (subsequently declared illegal by the Minnesota Supreme Court) to balance the budget.

 I first wrote this blog on May 21, 2011–exactly ten years ago.  Nothing has changed in a decade.

 What has emerged is the New Normal for Minnesota politics. The New Normal is that the completion of the budget does not occur by the constitutionally-mandated deadline in May but instead July 1–the commencement of the new budget year. That seems to be the new deadline. But even then, that date, like October 1, for the federal government, appears more suggestive than drop dead. A threatened partial shutdown in 2003 and then a real one in 2007 and 2011 too eased the stigma of missing July 1, in Minnesota.

 Why the New Normal?

 The question becomes why? Why has the New Normal emerged?   Nothing has changed from a decade ago when I first wrote about the New Normal, but in ten years it has only grew worse.

Why does it seem impossible to reach budget agreement? One answer is divided government, yet even back to the days when Perpich was governor and the DFL controlled the legislature there were special sessions to address the budget such as in 1985. Under Carlson and then Ventura they became more frequent and then under Pawlenty and Dayton they emerged as the new normal.   With Walz, the same pattern. No; divided government is only a partial answer.

 There are two causes explaining the rise of the new normal. The first is a growing ideological divide over the nature of government. The second is structural, questioning the efficacy of the current budget process.

 Why Government?

The governor and the split legislature are as far apart today as they were in January regarding all the essentials over the budget.   It is about dollar and taxes yes, but it is also about other fundamental divides in America, of which Minnesota is a perfect microcosm as the only partisanly divided legislature in the nation where one party holds control of one chamber, another party control of the other.

At the heart of the dispute is a basic difference in their rival views of the government versus the market. The GOP generally seems to see government and taxes as bad, an intruding upon the wisdom and functioning of markets. Let markets act and they will generate jobs prosperity and solve the basic problems of society.

For Walz and the Democrats, while market solutions and the private sector are the preferred places to produce jobs and make decisions, they recognize markets fail. Markets fail to address needs of equity. They produce inequities in wealth and income distribution, they fail to address core problems of education funding and disparities, they fail to address problems in infrastructure investment.

No, it does not look like the GOP wants no government. Many still find it necessary to hire police and enforce basic laws, and apparently to enact laws to prevent same-sex couples from marrying and women from terminating pregnancies or give tax breaks to the wealthy. The real difference between the GOP and Walz and the DFL is over how much government and what government should do in our society. It is a debate between rivaling views-government versus the market, the individual versus society.

We live in a society new where everything is a partisan divide—yes or no, no in between.  Police reform, facemasks, vaccines, marijuana; you name it, there is a divide an no incentive to compromise.  With there barely 10% of the State House and Senate seats truly swing, most are in firm partisan control of one party and there is no incentive to compromise. Conversely, compromise means facing a primary opponent from the left or right.  One cannot give in—it is a sign of weakness. 

 The debate over “why government” is ideological. Arising simultaneously are two other phenomena aggravating the debate over why government–the triumph of ideology over pragmatism and party polarization.

 Thus, as part of the New Normal is that no negotiations can take place in public.  Dating back at least to Dayton all compromise is behind closed doors, often out of session, involving the governor and chamber leaders.  New Normal means less transparency and open government.

 Combine politically polarized parties with a take no prisoners ideological divide over the role of government and what do you get?

 A Flawed Budget Process

 But the polarization is only one problem. The second is the flawed budget process in Minnesota. I have been arguing this point for nearly 20 years.

 It is a budget process built for the horse and buggy days trying to operate in the 21st century. Government is so much more complex, the budget numbers so much larger, the functions more diverse, that it is perhaps impossible to reach consensus and make decisions between the beginning of January and the State Constitution forbids the legislature to meet in regular session after the first Monday following the third Saturday in May in any year. There simply may not be enough time to do the budget by law.

 But think also how flawed the current budget process is right now. The old governor makes the initial budget. New governor is elected and needs to update it to reflect his priorities and the fiscal forecast in November. The Legislature comes to work in early January and then it waits until late January or so for the governor to release the budget. Then they all wait until late February for the updated fiscal forecast.

 Thus, it is not until late February or March that the work on the budget commences. And even then, there are separate hearings in the House and Senate, forcing conference committees to act. The budget also is really ten separate bills, with spending distinct from taxation, and no real work gets done until there are agreements on the different spending targets for each of the areas such as HHS, K-12, and so on.

 Sound confusing? It is. It is also inefficient. At least two months are wasted at the beginning of every budget cycle waiting for the governor’s budget, the fiscal forecast, and then agreement on budget targets. Now add more wrinkle–budgets are created right after state elections when often many new legislators or constitutional officers are elected. They are green, often learning on the job while creating a new budget. In a distant past when life and budgets were less complicated (and smaller), perhaps it was possible to do all this with a part-time citizen legislature. But those days have passed. A new budget process is needed, with new time lines and ways to move the work along.

 A decade or more algo I proposed solutions to the process.  Change the timing of events.  Move the budget to the second year of the session to allow new legislators to learn their job.  Adopt as they have in Wisconsin an automatic continuing resolution to extend the current budget into the next fiscal year to prevent shutdowns. There are other reform ideas too, but no will to change.

 Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.  Politically this is what we are doing in Minnesota for more than 20 years.  If this is not politically insane or crazy, I do not know what is.

Republicans are Not Wannabe Democrats: What polarization really means

Republicans are not closet Democrats.  Slowly Governor Walz and the Minnesota DFL may or may not be learning this point.  What is the case is that what polarization means is that the two parties disagree not only on policy issues, but perhaps more fundamentally on the goals and purposes of government, with such difference not easy to bridge.
Too often Democrats seem to lament or exasperate to the effect of “When will Republicans come around and recognize the need to spend more on education, health care, or infrastructure?”   Or recently one Democrat opined “I will give Republicans one more chance to go along with spending more on roads and schools.”  Both of these sentiments naively assume that Republicans  share the same basic values, priorities, or view of government and eventually they will come along to the views held by Democrats or else.  Or else what?  What will compel them to agree with Democrats?  This is the problem Governor Walz and the DFL House is facing now.  “We won, we have the majority, you know we are right, you have to or will eventually go along with us at some point.  It’s inevitable.”
Such a belief is like waiting for Godot.  It may never happen.  Such a sentiment is premised on the idea that there is a basic consensus on certain things when in reality what polarization has come to mean is a breakdown on this agreement.
What does polarization mean?  Think of political consensus along five dimensions at least.  When James Madison and our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution they were interested in a first-order question–Why government?  This is a question about the necessity of government and its most fundamental role in our lives.
A second-order question investigates the specific functions of government, asking not “Why government?” but “What should government’s do?”  This question looks to specific functions or tasks to be performed by the government. A third-level question is about ideology, querying “What values or interests should a government promote?” This level  looks to how majority preferences are translated into public policy or how the public interest is defined.  Finally, there are fourth and fifth levels the former investigating “What public administrators should do?” and the latter asking questions such as “How can public organizations or policies perform more efficiently?” 
Perhaps two generations ago there was broad consensus on the first and second-order questions.  In a Cold War era there was basic consensus supporting the welfare state and fighting communism.  There was arguably even significant overlapping consensus on third-order questions regarding what interests government should promote or what constitutes the public interest.  During this time the Republican and Democratic parties were ideologically diverse, with both containing  liberals, moderates and conservatives.  At one point in Minnesota a pro-life Democrat Rudy Perpich  and a pro-choice Republican Arne Carlson could be governors.  Those days are gone.
Where we are now is little consensus on third-order issues and increasing even on second and first-order views on government.  Partisan differences on the validity or legitimacy of the Electoral College attest to the depth of the partisan disagreement in the US, going to the very structures of how our political system is designed.
Republicans and Democrats are exasperated with one another and know the US is polarized.  Look to every major poll on the president, social issues, taxes, and other matters and the partisan split is significant.  Yet both sides seem convinced they are correct, the other side wrong, and if the other party simply came to its senses it would see their folly and the wisdom of the other side.
Slowly, but not quite yet, this is where Walz and the DFL are now in Minnesota.  It was entirely foreseeable after last November’ election Minnesota was headed to the stalemate they are in now.  Republican and Democratic Party priorities are far apart and there is little incentive for either side to compromise.  In fact, the polarization in Minnesota–like so much of the US–is geographic, and there are few regions or voters who swing.  Political attitudes have hardened and so have the constituencies and interest groups that support them.  US and Minnesota political institutions were premised on a belief of shared values across many levels, with legislation only possible with consensus or worse now, one party dominance in a winner-take-all approach to governing.
This is what polarization is really about now.

The Politics of 1968 and 2018: Parallels and Divergences, Tragedy and Farce

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

It was an ugly election, marred by a partisanly-divided nation torn by generational divides and broader undercurrents of world politics.  Overt appeals to racism were made  to play on the insecurities, anxieties, fear, and perhaps hatred of a group of people sensing that their world was crumbling and that a new Weltanschauung was emerging. They were looking for a scapegoat, someone to blame.  It was an election where leading up to it demonstrations, often violent, had torn the country, and where violence itself defined the election up to the closing days.  It was an election everyone knew or sensed would be significant, and one where no matter what happened the country would remain divided.

Was that election 1968 or 2018?  The parallels are powerful and eerie. Much of what is taking place in the 2018 US midterm elections recall parallel conditions found in 1968. While there is no official presidential election this year, in reality the only issue is Trump–it is a referendum on him. Both 1968 and 2018 were or are critical elections that will have lasting impact on US and perhaps world  politics, and both represent clashes of generations and ideas at a scale one only sees perhaps at epochal points in history as we see now.  But despite the parallels, there are also profound differences.

1968 and 2018 unfold with contrasting esprit du temps.  1968 was a clenched fist by Black athletes, 2018 was a clenched fist by a white president.  1968 was the spirit of the French Revolution played out, a forward-looking revolutionary moment precipitated by what historian Alex  de Tocqueville contended in L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution a drive for liberty and equality.  1968 was about global movements for freedom–be in the Paris demonstrations, the Prague Spring, or the civil rights and antiwar demonstrations in the United States.  It was a revolutionary moment about  rising expectations clamped down, with a dam finally bursting that lead to a violent clash of forces. If part of 1968 was the revolutionary moment, it also had its Thermidor–the crushing of the Paris demonstrations, the Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia, and the election of Richard Nixon.

Contrarily, the esprit of 2018 is not emancipatory but reactionary.  It is born not of the rising expectations frustrated, but of ressentiment as social critics Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler.  It is a resentment by a white, often rural, older, and Christian cohorts, seeing a world they once controlled pass to others of a different age, skin color, ethnicity, religion (or none) or nationality.  Marian Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump are the figure heads for this new reactionary movement that is nativist, racist, and increasingly violent.

For so long I wanted to argue that  the current US political climate was no where near as polarized as the 1960s when leading up to the  American presidential elections one witnessed in a matter of a few years a president assassinated along with his brother (too a presidential candidate) and a civil rights leader.  But Charlottesville last year, the pipebombs mailed to Democrats, the killings at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and two African-Americans killed by in Krogers last week show that the path in the 1960s from partisanship to anger, to hate, and to violence may be repeating itself.

Another parallel is race.  Strangely, 1968 was less about gender than race, but 2018 is about  both race and gender. 2018 will be decided by women, by MeToo, by Brett Kavanaugh and Susan Ford.  But if in 1903 W.E. Du Bois was correct in arguing that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line,” the 1960s was ground zero for that line.

The 1960s was the decade of race, the riots of 1966 and the burning of  American central cities.  But it was also the candidacy of George Wallace for US president, running on a white supremacist platform of  “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” that was inspired by a 1962 speech he had given when he resisted the integration of Alabama schools.  Wallace ran an overt racist campaign.  Trump is doing the same.

Some will say 2018 is the most openly racist election since the 1988 Willie Horton ads, but by comparison the latter was no where near as dominated by race as 1968 or 2018.  (2016 was the most sexist since 1984 when in the latter Geraldine Ferraro ran as vice-president).  Yes all three juxtaposed race, law and order, and class insecurities, but the degree to which Trump has overtly and explicitly exploited the three eclipses 1988 to rival  1968.  Wallace’s overt racial appeals, along with Nixon’s implicit ones, torn America as the Democrat Party divided between the Humphrey and McCarthy (and RFK) people  failed to must a majority to win the presidency.  Again in 2018 America est omnis divisa in partes tres–with a strong unified Trump base, a fractured Democratic Party unable to articulate a clear response to him, and a torn shell of a former Republican Party unable to resist the president.  For the  201 elections, alea iacta est, and cast it is with Trump making it about him, law and order, and race.

2018 is both a repeat and a rejection of 1968.  It is the final gasp to fight the battles that one might have thought were won in 1968.  2018 is an election that will have implications perhaps for years much like 1968 did.  Depending on what happens, it may not only be a tragedy as we have seen in terms of the violence and racism, but also a farce in terms of its results.

Postscript: Less literary and poetic, the final days of the 2018 election come down to the themes of Trump, race, gender, and law and order and whether the Democrats or the Trump supporters will be more mobilized and show up at the polls.  As of now the battle is over mostly moving suburban women in affluent suburbs to vote, with secondarily whether young people and people of color (especially Hispanic) show up.  If the latter three do then it will be a good year for Democrats. If I were making a prediction, the Third Congressional District in Minnesota is ground zero for American politics.  If Dean Phillips wins then Democrats take the US House, if Paulsen wins, Republicans retain control.  That race is nearly a perfect picture of the divides of US party politics now and how and why educated suburban women will control the fate of American politics.

“It could have been worse.” Assessing the Trump Presidency One Year Later

“It could have been worse.”  That may be the nicest thing to say about the first year of the
Trump presidency, but that’s much of a compliment.  A year into Trump, America is hardly better off now than it was a year ago, with the damage he has wrought domestically and internationally mostly encapsulated in three words–polarizing,  incompetent, and transformative.
Donald Trump may be the most polarizing president since Abraham Lincoln.  A new ABC public opinion polls place his overall approval at barely 36%–a record low for any president at this point in office– and approximately half think he is mentally unstable.  But dive deeper, this and other polls show that barely 5% of Democrats approve of his performance while 80%+ Republicans approve.  On a range of issues from the economy, health care, the Russian investigation, and even the government shutdown, polarization is the word of the day.  Trump both reflects and exacerbated the cultural and political divides in the United States that have been growing since the 1970s that have so far produced 12 partial government shutdowns, two presidential elections with a split between the Electoral College and popular vote winner, and divided control of the presidency and Congress that now makes straight-party line votes the norm and not the exception.
Nationally Trump’s America has a clear map.  One sees a country divided by race, age, gender, religion, and location.  Trump’s America is older, whiter, poorer, more Christian and religious, more likely to hold only a high school degree, and it hates immigrants.  It watches Fox national news, embraces alternative facts, still believes Obama was born in Kenya, and it hates Obamacare while being the prime beneficiary of it.  They also hate the federal government and taxes yet live in regions that disproportionally benefit from federal largesse.    These people voted for Trump but a year into his office he and the Republicans have done little to help them. While Wall Street is at record highs and unemployment at record lows, it is hard to say Trump is responsible for either alone or that the legislative and political agenda that he has pursued will do much for them or America in general.  And throw into that his divisive rhetoric about just about anybody and any country and polarizing is who Trump is.
Before Trump took office, I argued that those who support or loath him will realize much to their hopes or fears, that he would be a far weaker president than expected.  There are these things called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that contain principles such as checks and balances and separation of powers that will domestically constrain Trump.  That has mostly been the case.  His travel bans and DACA actions are bogged down in court, he has been unable to move much legislation or persuade even members of his own party to act.  Trump criticized Obama for being the executive order president but has resorted to that tactic far more than his predecessor.   Trump came to Washington with no government experience and appointed the same, leaving a power and competency vacuum yet to be filled one year later.
But as the Supreme Court has declared, presidential power is different domestically versus internationally, and the Constitution does not constrain him the same one when operating outside of US borders.  This is where Trump has been freer to do more damage due to incompetence.  A year later relations with almost all nations except where there are other authoritarian strongmen (North Korea the exception) are worse.    A year later the US is no better off in Syria and the Middle East than before, the moving of the US embassy in Israel will have longer-term corrosive impact on peace and America’s standing, and relations with the closest allies are worse than before (and relations with enemies no better).  Pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Paris Accords renders the US a weaker nation, and the failure to stand up for human rights and assume a more closed-borders  isolationist stance across the world renders democracy less safe and a world that less reflects the American century that past presidents created and nourished. 
The polarizing “us versus them” attitude  that has divided America internally and applied externally, along with the basic incompetence of Trump have helped produce the final word describing his presidency–transformative.  Scholars such as James MacGregor Burns describe as transformative individuals who redefine the presidency both to alter the power of the institution and change the direction of American politics.  Examples include Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.    Trump is transformative but in a different way.  He is not enlarging but diminishing  presidential power–it may be hard to call what Trump is occupying is what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. labeled an imperial presidency. 
But more powerfully Trump is using the presidency to alter America is horrible ways.  It is  his overt appeals to race, fear, and prejudice that will do lasting damage.  It is his disregard for freedom of the press.  It is his disregard for basic protocols of diplomacy.  All this will have a lasting corrosive effect.  But finally, Trump has changed the informal presidency.  The swamp he planned to drain is deeper and murkier than before because of his and his family’s (and appointees’) business conflicts of interests.  His Twitter use and consistent lying has damaged truth, and his use offensive language and swear words had done horrible damage informally to both the office of the presidency, American society, and the world such that the office that he exits someday will look very different  from the one he entered.

Postscript on the shutdown: Minnesota and the United States government seem woven together in  polarization.  Both have had multiple partial government shutdowns over the last few years.  The shutdowns and polarizations represent intense ideological partisan divides where finding room to negotiate is hard.
This federal shutdown may last a while.  Both sides are still in the finger-pointing stage.  Both are dug in ideologically and their political bases may make it hard to negotiate less than look weak.  Members of Congress thus have their eyes on not only the 2018 elections that impact the shutdown, but also maintaining their political bases.  How do you compromise when you have made  it an all-or-nothing negotiation with the devil?

Trump. LL Bean, and American Politics in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The politicization of LL Bean is only the latest in the ongoing culture war in the United States.
Here, because of contributions by an heir and one of the board members to LL Bean who has supported Trump have  been attributed to the company itself, it has led to a boycott against the company among some who dislike Trump.  It did not help that Trump tweeted endorsement for LL Bean and encouraged consumers to support it. Earlier in the week it was the Golden Globes and Meryl Streep v. Streep.   Both instances point to the politicization and polarization of practically everything in American society.  How did this happen?  The simple answer lies in how our culture has been stripped of its independence and captured by economics.  This is exactly what Walter Benjamin predicted and described.
Walter Benjamin was a pre-World War II social and political critic who was part of the German Critical School.   One of the most influential essays he ever wrote–and well known to many in the arts and cultural theory–was his “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”  Here he argued that t he capacity to mass reproduce original art changed it.    Market reproduction and sale of art would strip the original “aura” or context of an object and art, placing it within a new context and thereby change its meaning also.  Context for art, means everything.  The recently deceased John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is classic in pointing to this, and much of Andy Warhol’s  art–such as with Campbells Soup cans–also articulates how stripping objects out of their original context can convey new meanings.
But Benjamin’s essay asks if mass reproduction of art has striped art of its aura, what has replaced it?  Politics.  He saw in fascism the merger of politics and aesthetics.  But Benjamin’s arguments about art’s reproducability is not simply about art.  His deeper critique is also about the power of market forces to transform the world.  It was Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto who declared of the power of capitalism to render “ All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”  For Marx the commodification of all of life–work, home, family, and the arts–is what made for part of the class war.  Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks noted the same phenomena–the use of cultural landmarks as lines in the hegemonic  political wars over class struggles. Capitalization would eviscerate the walls the distinguished what Daniel Bell argued in the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism  once described as the three distinct spheres of culture–politics, economics, and civil society.  Everything would be commodified, everything politicized.  If as political theorist Michael Walzer once argued that the essence of modern society was the art of separation–ensuring that we draw limits on various activities and institutions–we no longer see that separation.
The politicization of everything as it plays out in the United States seems less class-based  and more partisan.  It was brought on by the failure of our society, in part, to put firm fire walls in place that separate the economic marketplace from the political marketplace.  Allowing for personal  wealth to translate into political influence, letting corporations make political expenditures, and permitting businesses and corporations to speak as if they were real persons, all have contributed to this. But the same is true in letting pop culture and its icons make political statements or use art for political purposes.  Of course the First Amendment protects that right but the side effect is that everything has become or potentially could become a political statement.
Thus, there is nothing now that is not politicized along partisan lines.  Driving Suburu cars versus snow mobiles, shopping at Whole Foods versus eating at Cracker Barrel, watching Duck Dynasty v. Modern Family, all of the are predictors of partisanship as much as registering or voting Democrat or Republican.  In many cases, these fights are side shows, diversions for more fundamental issues that actually should be fought and addressed; yet people become so consumed with the sideshow they ignore the deeper problems of poverty, racism, sexism, and unequal divisions of political and economic power that are the real sources of division in America today.

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.

The End of Bipartisanship (and why that may be good)

    Legislative partisanship is gone and that may be good.  It was probably overrated.
    The holy grail of politics for many is bipartisanship. Good public policy is only possible if the two parties compromise, work together, and enact laws with the aim of furthering the public good.  Such a belief suggests truth lies in the middle and that compromise is the essence of good government.  But that is not always so.
    Some lament that the 2013 Minnesota legislative session was anything but bipartisan.  Significant evidence supports this.  Consider legislation creating the health care exchanges for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); 99% of DFLers voted for it, 98.8% of Republicans voted against it.  Similar partisan divides existed with legalization of same-sex marriage with 95.5% of Democrats voting yes, 94.4% of Republicans voting no.  Or the House and Senate tax bills with 92% DFL yes and 98.8% GOP no.  Finally, 92% of DFLers voted for the  legislation authorizing day-care workers to unionize, no Republicans supported it.  For these four bills,  94.6% of votes cast by Democrats were yes, while 98% of the GOP votes cast were  no.  Had there been floor votes on minimum wage and the anti-bullying legislation one probably would have found similar percentages. 
    Are Democrats guilty of single-party rule?  Perhaps, but  Republicans are not innocent.  Look back to the 2011-12 legislative session at two of the biggest bills–the votes authorizing the constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and requiring photo ID when voting.  For the marriage amendment, 96.2% of Republicans votes yes, 96.5% of Democrats voted no.  With the elections amendment, 99% of Republicans voted yes, 100% of Democrats voted no.  Overall, 97.7% of DFL votes cast on these amendments were no, while for Republicans 98.3% were yes.  When the GOP were in the majority, the two parties were polarized.  Straight-party line votes are becoming more the norm of Minnesota politics, paralleling a similar trend in Congress over the last 30 years.  Why?  There are four major reasons.
    First, the end of the Cold War meant that the forces to drive compromise at the congressional level ended.  The battle against communism forged a foreign policy consensus and compromise that translated often into agreement on domestic policy, even at the state level.  Second, political scientists talk of the declining marginals–the disappearance of competitive swing districts that could shift control from one party to another.  This is due to gerrymandering but more importantly to a geographic sorting of where we live.  We hear of blue and red states but increasingly households and neighborhoods are politically sorting themselves out.  In Congress there may be less than 50 swing seats,  in the 2014 Minnesota House of Representative races, maybe 15 seats are competitive.  The rest are solidly partisan, creating little incentive to compromise,
    Third, American political party composition has changed.  Historically American parties were less ideological than at present.  One could point to both major parties having a mixture of conservatives, moderates, and liberals.  Such coalitions made bipartisanship possible.  But American political parties are more ideological now–with clear divides on social and  and economic issues.
    Fourth, the transformation into ideological parties is fueled by increasingly  large differences over the simple question “Why government?”  Republicans and Democrats have developed rival views on the role of government in the economy, the value of taxes and public spending, and on a range of social issues about reproductive rights and same-sex marriage.  When there is a basic disagreement over “Why government?” it is hard to compromise.  At the end of the day, there is no compromise on the right of same-sex couples to marry–you support it or not.
    These four trends have also driven politics in Minnesota to make it less bipartisan.  But additionally, Minnesota politics further polarized after the Wellstone plane crash in 2002.  His death and the events in the last few days before the 2002 Senate race–including the memorial service–exacerbated the forces already at play in Minnesota to reinforce the polarization.
    This is where we are now.  The structural forces that once drove bipartisanship are gone and the new reality is one of partisan rule in Minnesota and across many states that are legislating depending on which party is in power.  Just compare Minnesota to Wisconsin. 
    Should we worry about this?  Not necessarily.  Agreement for agreement sake is not good if it passes bad policy.   Sequestration was the product of compromise.  Minnesota Democrats and Republicans  agreed on a new campaign finance law this session that increases contribution and spending limits, weakens disclosure, and enhances the ability of lobbyists to leverage political influence.  Both were bad laws, the product of bipartisanship.
    Regardless of the desirability of bipartisanship, it is over.  Voters need to accommodate to a world of partisan rule or bipartisan gridlock.  They have to decide whose politics they like better and vote for it–giving them what appears to be real policy choices and options at elections.

Election 2012: Politics in the Age of Division (And final predictions)

    Note:  This blog is based on my November 2, 2012 talk to the Minneapolis Rotary Club.  I have spoken to them many times in the past and they have always been a warm and gracious club to address.

     The polls perhaps say it all.  We have a closely divided race nationally for the presidential race.  In fact, go back six months ago and Obama and Romney were essentially tied at about the same place they are now.  Except for one month between the Democrat National Convention and a period after the first debate, the polls have been stable, revealing a stable yet clearly split electorate.
    I see other signs of division in the scores of individuals who come up to me and express fear that the country faces ruin if Obama is elected, or is it Romney?  The political ads make it seem like the end of the world or Armageddon is near. Facebook postings seem almost like rants and raves and if you are like me, I have seen one too many posts about politics or candidates that border on the lunatic, referencing or posting information whose veracity is at best questionable.
    People ask me if this is the most divided politics has ever been. No, think Civil War.  Additionally, the 19th century was meaner.  We often look at the past through halcyonic or rose-colored glasses thinking the past was more kind and gentle than it is now.   But despite that, politics does seem more divided, nasty and conflicted than in recent memory. Why?  Several factors point to the divide that we see this year and this division has implications for the election.

The transformation of American party politics.  The is some truth about a red and blue America and it starts with the change in traditional party structures.  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 in the 1960s my governor was Republican Nelson Rockefeller.  One Senator was Republican Jacob Javits, the other was Democrat Bobby Kennedy.  The lost liberal?  Javits.  The most conservative, Kennedy. 
    The Democrat and Republican parties had liberals, moderates, and conservatives in them.  Minnesota once had a pro-choice republican Governor in Arne Carlson and a pro-life DFL governor in Rudy Perpich.  Neither of those individuals could secure their party nomination today.   The two main parties in Minnesota and across the country have become more ideological and national, much more like European style political parties.  We see a disappearance of moderates in the two parties.  There is a rise of straight party line votes in the Congress, and a rise of straight party line votes in the MN legislature.  Both parties have moved to the right, the Republicans more so.  They have moved from the party of Eisenhower to that of Rockefeller, Nixon, Reagan, and now the Tea Party.  There are no more Hubert Humphreys and Paul Wellstones in the Democrat Party.  As a result, the two parties are further to the right and further apart than ever.

Party Membership and generational divide.  The Democrats and Republicans are a tale of two parties The GOP 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.


Political Geography.  Politics and geography now overlay and intersect.  It is not just red and blue states but red and blue neighborhoods.   There is a political sorting of living space by 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, and 25 or so competitive seats in MN Legislature.  The remainder are certainties for either of the two major parties.  Partisan districts create less incentive to compromise, reinforcing  polarization.

Evidence of political polarization by public.   The public is polarized.  In Minnesota support for the marriage and elections amendments divides almost perfectly by party.  Two sides have their own versions of truth.  But the division goes to our consumption habits .  Each party has its own network to watch–MSNBC and Fox News–giving each side its own version of the truth.  The produces we consume reveal our political preferences.  Our geography reveal our political preferences.  Thus, combine target marketing data, GPS, and politics and we see in 2012 the use of very specific marketing to seel candidates. 

Implications for 2012
Overall, the polarization, if not as great or significant as the Civil War, is still significant.  How does it affect the 2012 presidential?  First, the choice of Obama and Romney is not great and neither seems to have a clue about what to do with the economy.  But the polarization makes it impossible for third party candidates such as Gary Johnson and Jill Stein to gain any attention or momentum.  Fear of voting for one’s hopes and it electing one’s last choice dooms alternative politics.

Having said that, for months the race for the presidency was simply a set of three numbers: 10/10/270.  Ten percent of the voters (the undecideds)  in ten states would determine who gets 270 electoral votes and win the presidency.  Now the race is 5/7/270.  Five percent of the voters in seven states will decide who wins the presidency.

The original ten swing states were:
Colorado
Florida
Iowa
Nevada
New Hampshire
North Carolina
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Wisconsin

In those 10 swing states, the Associated Press has argued that it is up to about 106 battle ground counties. How many voters are we talking about that might influence the election of president?
Assume 5% undecided in those ten swing states and the number is 1,835,599 voters.
Assume 8% undecided voters in those ten swing states and the number is 2,936,958 voters.

Now assume North Carolina and Nevada are no longer swinging, we have eight swing states.  In the remaining swing states on average 4.9% undecided according to polls in Real Clear Politics on October 25.  My estimate then is that between 1.500,000 and 1.835.599 voters will decide the election, with the focus being on about 11 counties across the country where the battles are really taking place.  These counties in my estimate are:

Arapahoe County, Colorado
Bremer County, Iowa (Waverly)
Chester County, PA  (some have told me this is not swinging this year, though).
Hamilton County, Ohio
Hillsborough County, NH
Hillsborough County, FL (Tampa)
Jefferson County, Colorado
Pinellas County, FL
Prince William County, Virginia
Racine County, WI
Winnebago County, WI

Finally, now assume in 2012 that the estimated eligible voter population is 222,000,000.  In 2010 it was 217,000,000, and in 2008 it was approximately 212,000,000 with about a 63% (131 million voters) turnout.  Assume again about 63% voter turnout this year due to high interest and intensity in the race.   The average of 1.500,000 and 1.835.599 voters (total number of undeceived swing voters in the swing states) is approximately 1,650,000.  Divide that number by the estimated eligible voting population in 2012 (222,000,000) and this means that approximately 0.74% of the eligible voting population will decide the presidential election.

In fact, if I wanted to pick one county where the race for the presidency comes down to, it is look to what happens in Hamilton County, Ohio.  Whoever wins it wins Ohio and then the presidency.  This shows the polarization we face in this country when such a small number decides who wins.

Final Predictions
Presidency:  Back in March I said Obama would win with 272 electoral votes. He still wins but with 290-305 electoral votes.  He also will get around 50.5% of the popular vote.

US Senate: Democrats retain control with 51 seats.
US House: Republicans retain control but with a slightly narrower margin.

Minnesota Congressional Delegation: No change.  Nolan and Cravaack is too close to call but a slight nod to the incumbent.

Minnesota House: DFL or GOP control by one seat for either and a real chance of 67-67.
Minnesota Senate: Republicans retain close control.

Marriage and Elections Amendments: Both pass.