Opinion

CARTER: Politics In One Lesson

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

James Carter Contributor
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Votes are the lifeblood of American politics. Secure enough of them and almost anything is possible. Developments over recent decades have reshaped the political life of our nation and have led to the seeming dysfunction of our system today.

First, America’s political parties are increasingly polarized. The historical overlap that found liberals in the GOP and conservatives in the Democratic Party has all but vanished.

Today’s Democratic Party is not the same party that twice put Bill Clinton into the White House. According to Gallup, just 25% of Democrats self-identified as “liberal” in 1994 while “moderates” accounted for almost a majority.

Since the 1990s, the liberal wing has grown steadily, and now encompasses 51% of all Democrats.

As the conservative and moderate wings of the Democratic Party shriveled, the Republican Party became more conservative. In 1994, 58% of Republicans described themselves as conservative. Now, three-fourths of them do. The liberal wing of the Republican Party, which has been shrinking since the Ford-Reagan primary battle in 1976, continued to get smaller, now constituting a mere four percent of the party.

Second, combine these ideological shifts with the natural self-sorting of the population (e.g., Democrats clustering in urban areas) and the willingness of both political parties to employ precision gerrymandering, and it’s no surprise that the number of competitive congressional districts has been cut by more than half since the late 1990s.

Of the country’s 435 congressional districts, 164 were considered “swings” in 1997, meaning nearly 40% could conceivably be won by a candidate from either party. By 2009, that number dropped to 103. Today, it’s 78, and likely to be even smaller after the new lines following the decennial census are implemented for 2022.

Swing districts have been replaced by “landslide” districts. Last year, 82.8% of winning House candidates won with a margin of victory of at least 10 points. And nearly 30% won with a margin or 40 points or more!

As shown in The Cook Report, “The most striking House statistic of the last 25 years maybe [sic] the decline of competitive districts, places where members have the greatest political incentives to work on a bipartisan basis.”

Third, the ideological polarization of the major political parties is a mirror-image of the decline of crossover voting, with Democrats increasingly unwilling to vote for Republicans and vice-versa. In fact, as the ideological gap between the parties has grown, partisans have become increasingly hostile towards each other.

According to Pew, the percentage of Republicans with a “very unfavorable” view of Democrats grew to 58% in 2016, up from 21% in 1994. Similarly, the percentage of Democrats holding the same dismal view of Republicans increased to 55% from 17% over the same period.

Given the decline of swing districts and the rise of partisan acrimony, House incumbents in all but a relative handful of congressional districts put themselves at risk for a primary challenge if they are seen as working too closely with the other party. Only eight House incumbents lost their primaries last year, but the fear of a stiff primary fight incentivizes incumbents in deep “red” and “blue” districts to play to their party’s activists.

Fourth, majority control of the U.S. House and Senate currently hinges on less than a handful of votes. Indeed, the Democratic margin in the House is the smallest enjoyed by a first-year Democratic president since Grover Cleveland in 1885 and, thanks to a few vacancies, a shift of just three votes could take down Nancy Pelosi’s speakership.

With so little wiggle room, small groups of congressmen (and women) in the majority party can, and often do, play political hardball, pushing the party to accede to their demands. Speakers Boehner and Ryan knew this painfully well when they dealt with the “Freedom Caucus.” Speaker Pelosi is experiencing this now as “The Squad” attempts to radicalize House legislation in the opposite direction.

Whatever comes out of the House must be approved by the Senate before it can become law. Getting a bill through the Senate is never easy. That is especially true today as the Senate is equally divided — fifty Democrats and fifty Republicans. Nominal control goes to the Democrats only because of Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to break tie votes.

To the extent the progressive members of the Democratic House caucus in the 117th Congress have their way with a given piece of legislation, Senate passage becomes that much more difficult. Just ask the progressive House members how they feel about Sens. Manchin and Sinema.

These narrow margins give the Democratic majority literally no room for error. And because options for advancing legislation in the Senate with fewer than 60 votes — given the legislative filibuster — are limited, Democrats have the appearance of control without actual control. Republicans know all too well from their own experience that this often leads to political gridlock and dejected party activists.

Faced with ideological polarization, the disappearance of competitive House districts, the decline of bipartisanship and historically narrow congressional margins, what are we to do?

The first thing should be to recognize that, rather than creating a logjam blocking legislation from getting through, Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended. They wanted the government to move slowly, especially in the presence of widespread political discord. It only seems dysfunctional due to the outrage and frustration of those — on both the left and the right — who would, but cannot, impose sweeping public policy changes on a divided country. As Thomas Jefferson wisely understood, “Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”

Politics in America entails building consensus and marshalling votes. That’s one lesson we as a country had best not forget.

James Carter serves on the board of BIPAC, a bipartisan organization working to improve the political climate in America. Previously, he served as deputy undersecretary of Labor under President George W. Bush.