History and
current polling both
tell us that the House of Representatives
will likely slip
over to Republican control
in the November midterms.
What happens then?
Actual governance
will come to a standstill.
There will be a flurry of investigations
on everything
from the Justice Department
to Hunter Biden to the border crisis
The January six committee
will almost certainly be disbanded.
And it is not implausible
to imagine
that President Biden will be impeached.
How did we get here?
There are, of course, many reasons,
but the central facilitating factor
is surely the way
that American politics has over
the last few decades
increasingly empowered
the extremes of political parties
at the expense of the mainstream.
The primary system
used by American parties
to choose their candidates
is extremely unusual.
No other major democracy has won
quite like it.
Primaries
ensured that candidates
chosen are selected
by a sliver of the party
around 20% of voters,
and the selection is not
at all representative.
These are the most intense
agitated activists, often
far more extreme in their views
than run of the mill
registered Republicans or Democrats.
Add to this decades
of sophisticated computer
enabled gerrymandering,
and you get extreme candidates
who run in safe districts
where the only threat to them
is a primary candidate
who is even more extreme.
The Washington Post has analyzed
Republicans running for Senate, House
and certain statewide offices
and found that a majority
could be classified as election deniers.
People who have in some way questioned,
challenged or refused
to accept
the outcome of the 2020
presidential election.
Of these 291 candidates,
171 are running in safe
Republican districts.
So what began as a fringe theory
promoted by Donald Trump,
but initially rejected
by most of the Republican Party's
leaders, has now become the majority
view of the party.
Election
denial is not a majority view
in the United States.
In an NBC poll, 57% of those asked said
they would be less likely to vote
for someone
who claims Trump won
the 2020 election, while only 21% said
they would be more likely
to support an election denial.
But between
primaries and gerrymandering,
the majority view gets drowned out.
Catering to the right wing base
also means constantly ratcheting up
the rhetoric.
Nancy Pelosi is a would be dictator.
Biden is a communist.
Democrats are pro criminals.
Marjorie Taylor Greene has said, quote,
Democrats want Republicans dead
and they have already started
the killings, unquote.
The alternative system of candidates
election used in America
before the age of primaries
and in most other major democracies,
is what is often called
a smoke filled room,
a pejorative description.
Even before we knew
that smoking killed you
in this system,
candidates are selected by party bosses.
But consider who
these bosses have traditionally been
aldermen, mayors,
governors and legislators at all levels.
These are people who have won
general elections
by appealing to the entire electorate.
People who have a feel
for the broader public.
No group of party
elders, for
example, would ever choose
a candidate like Herschel Walker.
Primaries, by contrast,
entrust candidates
election to the most radical section
of the party,
and social media
has added fuel to the fire
by amplifying the noisiest
and angriest voices within the party.
Who are themselves an even smaller group
than primary voters.
While the problem is far worse
and much more dangerous
on the Republican side,
this pressures do also affect Democrats.
Many of the issues
where Joe Biden is constrained
in his actions,
in particular immigration and energy
are ones
where the activist base of the party
has much more extreme views
than the mainstream.
And pivoting to the center
as Pennsylvania
Senate candidate
John Fetterman did on
fracking in recent months
is increasingly difficult
in today's world,
where you can instantly and easily
play old clips of a politician.
Before he changed his mind.
In a recent piece
in The New York Times, Max
Fisher describes
how the recent dysfunctions
of British politics
can be attributed to the two main parties
choosing over the last two decades
to adopt more of a primary type system
to select their leader.
The Labor Party ended up with the
totally unelectable far left leader
like Jeremy Corbyn
and rejected a charismatic moderate
like David Miliband.
The recent Conservative
Party travails illustrate
the problem
perfectly mistrusts with her
totally impractical warmed
over Thatcherism.
Almost always came
third in votes
from elected members of parliament.
The old system of party bosses.
But she was the darling of the broader
party membership,
which is highly unrepresentative
of the British public.
And they were the ones
who made the final decision.
It is not an accident
that Germany and France
have both been run largely
by solid centrists in a time of populism.
They have chosen to keep
to the old system of democracy
based on the principle of majority rule
in America and to an extent in Britain.
Democracy has actually become
a minority rule,
and the minority holding power
is unrepresentative.
Angry and increasingly radical.