Beyond Red & Blue

Mass. likely to lose House seat, but it has no population sinkholes

The Electoral Map has a good rundown of the fastest-growing and fastest-shrinking congressional districts in the US. The upshot is that the Republicans are likely to make short-term gains after redistricting in 2012, thanks to new seats in red states like Texas, but the long-term picture may be different:

Democrats moving to states like Texas and Arizona might make those states more competitive and give [the Democratic Party] more seats at the state level. 

Of note to Massachusetts is that none of the 25 "big shrinkage" districts are here, though most of our industrial-state rivals in the North have at least one district that's lost tens of thousands of people so far this decade. Illinois has five, and Michigan and Pennsylvania have four each.

Maybe we'll catch a break and not lose another seat in 2020?

Dynasty seats actually disappearing from US Senate -- and from New England

FiveThirtyEight's Tom Schaller provides some historical perspective on the phenomenon of US Senate seats being passed from family member to family member -- a hot topic in Massachusetts now, given speculation about nephew Joe Kennedy or widow Vicki Kennedy as candidates to succeed the late US Sen. Edward Kennedy.

According to Schaller, "nepotism in the Senate is today at historical lows in American history." His data show that "dynasty seats" made up more than 60 percent of the Senate circa 1800 (when senators were appointed by legislatures, not elected by citizens) but are now less than 10 percent.

New England has historically had a large share of dynastic senators, but New Hampshire ousted one last year (John Sununu, son of a governor) and will see another retire next year (Judd Gregg, another son of a governor). Rhode Island kicked another one out in 2006 (Lincoln Chafee, son of a senator), and Connecticut's Chris Dodd (son of a senator) is thought to be in serious jeopardy in next year's election. 

If a non-Kennedy is elected senator from Massachusetts next year, the region will have gone from five dynasty seats (out of 12) to just one in less than four years.

Even LBJ wasn't as powerful as "LBJ"

Ed Kilgore has a timely reminder that no president has been able to get major legislation passed without being a "sellout" to his base. Not even the famously bossy Lyndon Johnson:

...the myth of LBJ as the driven president demanding and securing progressive legislation against the grain of party, congressional prerogatives, and even public opinion, is an exaggeration, to put it mildly. LBJ showed great courage and resolution on civil rights, but he was riding almost a century of momentum, and he certainly didn't reject bipartisanship in his effort to get the job done. The landmark health care initiatives of Medicare and Medicaid were "betrayals" of the long-established progressive goal of national health insurance--certainly far more so than, say, the substitution of a health care cooperatives for a "public option" in a system of universal health coverage.

Obama vs. congressional Republicans: no comparison

I think that Matthew Ygelsias may be overstating President Obama's political strength vs. Congress, as supposedly evidenced by this chart:

Ygelsias suggests:

If I’m in White House Legislative Affairs and I’m talking to a nervous member of congress, I’m showing them that chart and arguing that the progressive president is more popular than the somewhat dawdling congressional Democrats and way more popular than the obstructionist Republicans.

The problem for Obama is that people don't vote for "congressional Democrats" or "congressional Republicans," they vote for individual candidates, usually incumbents. I'm sure that every member of Congress would claim to be more popular back home than his or her own party, and there are plenty of polls to support this. (This 2005 ABC News poll showed that 43 percent of Americans approved of Congress but 65 percent approved of their own congressman.) 

Further, a surefire way to build support at home is to loudly and repeatedly proclaim your independence from, well, everybody and everything -- including your own party, the president, the media, special interest groups, ideological groups, and whichever mentors have helped your political career. (If you're a married man, however, it's mandatory for you to joke that your wife makes all the important decisions.)

I just don't see how waving around charts about the generic approval ratings for Congress will help Obama win votes for legislation. It's a different story with congressmen and senators who face serious primary or general election opponents next year -- when Obama can promise to campaign for an incumbent or stay out of the race, depending on the district -- but there aren't likely to be more than a handful of such cases.

Will the Senate kill health care reform? Will it let anything live?

Matt Yglesias thinks that the US Senate will stymie President Obama in any attempt to enact health care reform because -- well, because that's what the US Senate does:

The fact of the matter is that the Senate is what it is—to wit, an institution with an enormous status quo bias, that’s also biased in favor of conservative areas. On top of that, the entire structure of the US Congress with its bicameralism and multiple overlapping committees is biased toward making it easy for concentrated interests to block reform. Between them, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand, Bill Nelson, Dick Durbin, Roland Burris, Arlen Specter, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Carl Levin, Amy Klobuchar, Kay Hagan, Bob Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Evan Bayh represent 50 percent of the country’s population. But that only adds up to 22 Senators—you need thirty-eight more to pass a bill.

There's a codfish hanging in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Maybe there should be a scorpion watching over the US Senate.

The case for a dynastic US Senate

Matthew Yglesias is pretty brutal on the senators who voted for a parliamentary procedure, sponsored by Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, that makes it more difficult to pass "climate change legislation involving a cap and trade system":

This is good for Republicans, since it helps them achieve their goal of destroying the planet. And it’s good for Democrats, since it helps them achieve their goal of pretending to try to avoid the destruction of the planet while ensuring that, in practice, the planet is destroyed. And Senators Johanns was born in 1950, so he’ll almost surely be dead by 2050 (along with countless residents of flood-prone areas of the developing world) so it’s basically all good.

The solution is obvious: Allow all current senators to pass their seats on to their children, and then to their children, etc. but only as long as the US -- and their particular states -- continue to exist. That gives the current crew an incentive to make sure they're actually bequeathing something of value. In particular, the senators from low sea-level states like Florida and Louisiana would suddenly become much more worried about climate change.

Under this system, an inherited Senate seat would not be subject to the estate tax, even if it is an "[indubitably] valuable thing."

Better know a district, through Google Maps

See my post on CW Unbound about using Google Maps to see where your congressman (actually, his or her staff) hangs out in the district.

Has the filibuster become socially acceptable?

Yesterday's Washington Post had a story headlined "Senate Lacks Votes to Pass Stimulus." I'm pretty sure, but not certain, that this was shorthand for "Senate Lacks Votes to End Filibuster Against Stimulus." The strongest clue comes in the sixth paragraph:

For now, the Senate bill remains a work in progress. "We're trying to find a way to reach 60" votes, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate's chief vote counter, told reporters. "A number of Democrats have said they want to see changes to the bill before they can vote for it."

When I learned about the filibuster in high school, it was a last-resort parliamentary procedure to block laws that had majority support. There was political risk involved, since the party or individuals who used the procedure came off as obstructionists -- and often looked ridiculous, as they wasted time making nonsense speeches in order to stop the Senate from taking a roll call vote. (These days, senators can hold up legislation simply by declaring their willingness to filibuster.) And filibustering senators usually felt it necessary to make an argument as to why the action of a majority would not be legitimate -- most notoriously, when Southerners argued that civil rights legislation impinged on states' rights. (The film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington also makes a fairly persuasive case for using the filibuster when another senator is trying to frame you for graft.)

But the media coverage of the current debate over President Obama's stimulus legislation seems to take for granted that there will be a filibuster against it, and that opponents need not justify the raising of the hurdle from 50 percent to 60 percent of the Senate.

My guess is that political reporters don't want to seem naive or ill-informed by overlooking the possibility of a filibuster, so they treat it as a natural, commonplace procedure. But that can be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

UPDATE: Brendan Nyhan has a good post on how Obama's call for bipartisanship may have been taken too literally by the press and how he's now trying to get out of that box. It's significant that, beyond breaking a filibuster, 60 votes for the stimulus package would also mean that at least one Republican voted for it.

Why the Democrats are not the reform party

The New York Times explains the "Tomnibus," a bill in the US Senate that's merely an agglomeration of all the bills that Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn is single-handedly blocking. But Times reporter Carl Hulse doesn't seem to think much of this attempt to embarrass Coburn, a conservative Republican, into releasing his death grip on the Protect Our Children Act and dozens of other proposals. What gives Coburn so much power?

In the Senate, Mr. Coburn has continued down his singular path, driving Democrats and some Republicans to distraction with his prolific use of the “hold” — the ability of a single senator to object to moving ahead on a measure without a debate. He currently has holds on nearly 80 bills, the most of any senator.

Mr. Coburn’s approach is problematic when it comes to the mechanics of the Senate because most of the chamber’s work gets done by what is known as unanimous consent, an agreement among all parties to let a bill pass without a fight since full debate and votes on even the simplest matter can consume days.

One subtext of the story is that Democrats seem completely uninterested in trying to get rid of the patently undemocratic "hold," presumably because they like to use it too. (Any anger at Coburn is probably related to the fear that his excesses might lead to a serious attempt to get rid of the practice.) This is consistent with the Democratic Party's lack of interest in getting rid of the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College. Does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid really have any philosophical differences with Coburn on Senate procedures?

FreeGov responds

Foy Savas from FreeGovernment.com responds to my skeptical post from yesterday on his group's attempt to elect a congressperson who is "no more than proxy for our district by voting on bills only as do online verified voters":

I get the feeling you think we're going for direct democracy. If you read through the FAQs on the site you will learn otherwise.

Ha, you're completely right about people not ever going to spend enough time to research bills, but honestly we've actually designed FreeGov for citizens not to have to do that, as they can opt to select advisers.

The adviser concept we use on the site, mimics representative government with a few major benefits: 1) real-time accountability, 2) personal representation, 3) the opportunity to choose multiple advisers, and 4) the ability to override how they vote whenever you want.

You seem like a guy keen on following politics, so I hope that despite your initial criticism, you now better understand what FreeGov is actually going for. No, it's not town-meetings or direct democracy, but instead the idea of citizens being able to participate at any time in a convenient way.

I am keen to learn what FreeGovernment is all about, but I'm still confused. The FAQs page on the group's national website says the following:

If a candidate gets into office, how will their votes in Congress be decided?

Each candidate we choose to endorse will sign a contract with us vowing only to vote in Congress as do their constituents on the site, that is, as do the majority of votes from constituents when enough votes have been cast.

That still sounds like an attempt to take away a US Representative's perogative to substitute his or her greater knowledge of a particular bill for the knee-jerk reaction of a majority of his or her constituents. Savas points out that a constituent can delegate his or her voting responsibility to "advisers" -- who are not actually elected by anybody but who would still have the power, as a group, to dictate how a US Representative votes in Congress. In that case, maybe the analogy to Town Meeting isn't perfect. Now it sounds as if FreeGovernment wants party-machine politics, in which unelected FreeGovernment bigwigs completely control the people they install in Congress. (My prediction is that most constituents who did not vote for the FreeGovernment candidate would not participate in online polls, but instead work toward defeating the "proxy" in the next election.)

I like the idea of making US Representatives more accountable to constituents and applaud FreeGovenment's attempts to run candidates against incumbents who would otherwise be unopposed, but I still don't get how the proxy contract would work.