You kind of allude to this, I would say it's a synthesis of the section on extremism and bad ideas. Namely, because not much gets done, it incentivizes extremists to come up with unfalsifiable theories (dare I say mythologies). So, regardless of what one may think about the squad, I don't think the squad happens if moderate dem policy goes through when they have a simple majority. Same with freedom caucus types who want to abolish government departments. It allows these folks to run on these items, do nothing of substance about them, festering myths about what's wrong about parties and government.
I'm actually less inclined to think people would repeal moderate-coded extremism (median republican policy), but I think we need to indulge radicals from time to time, just to create norms within parties to disavow the nonsense. IMO that's the big difference between the US system and parliamentary ones. We let our politicians say and encourage the dumbest shit and there's no punishment as party insiders usually don't have to take them seriously.
I didn't even think about that angle of the argument I was making in the piece. If I have you correctly, the some of the more extreme elements in congress arises partially from the inability to pass more moderate policy because those 'radicals' (the squad and freedom caucus certainly count!) represent those who want more things done, typically more radical solutions. But because of the filibuster, their policies always die on arrival--thus "festering the myths" about government itself. Which in turn feeds back into the extreme members in the legislature. Very, very good point.
I think we could expect less corrections on moderate policy, definitely. Parliamentary system has many benefits we don't, but I also like some parts of our system more. Parliament does this specific part much better though, I agree.
Yes, because in a Parliamentary system, these people would just fracture into new parties. The "game" of the presidential system will always disincentivize that. But in our system with a lower bar of passing law, the incentives of leadership to stamp down on radical proposals increase because the probability of passing anything (and that being bad policy or politically toxic) is higher.
Visibility and accountability--that's right! Parliament is in a better position to show voters who's doing what and who's to blame; it's a beautiful thing!
I don't think that's right. A parliamentary system allows party leaders to use their power to slap down upstarts, which means that extremists don't have the kind of outsize power they have in the US today. It also creates a situation where no single person in a party is so powerful they can't be replaced, so the party is led from the middle out rather than top-down or bottom-up.
From what I understand, the UK Parliament for example has coalitions which almost necessarily means some extreme elements are being taken seriously by the moderate faction. I think that means extremists in parliament have more power in a sense, but arguably less power within the framework of the filibuster being in place. Without the filibuster, it would work the same way except everyone would already be on the same "team", not coalescing because they have to.
It's debatable whether there is any difference between extremists forming explicit parties and those parties joining with moderate ones to form coalitions, or our system where they all just form caucuses or informal coalitions within a single political party. I have seen some research that leads me to believe that the parliamentary system does a slightly better job of discouraging extremism, but I'm not sure and you can research it yourself if you are interested. Importantly, when you have lots of different parties you can pick and choose which ones to form a coalition with. Sometimes moderate factions decide to team up, though often it's moderates joining with extremists on their own side of the fence. In our presidential system, however, there is virtually no way two moderate factions on different sides of the fence can team up.
Getting to >50% always means coalescing because you have to. Right-wing libertarians have massive disagreements with evangelicals, yet they join into the same faction because they have to. Same with Democrats, labor and environmentalists are often on opposite sides of an argument. I don't really understand how the filibuster would create incentives for extremists, but given that there are more moderates in each party than extremists, it seems like getting rid of the filibuster would only empower those extremists. If you can't get to >60 in your own party, any vote requires bipartisanship. That didn't stop Congress from passing bills before, so it's the change to bipartisanship that seems like the ultimate problem.
Agreed, but this seems to only be a problem when each side wins Congress by a small margin. When you can only lose 4 votes, the extremists (who always exist, regardless of era) have an extraordinary amount of sway. Additionally, if the other party only needs 4 more votes next election to gain control of Congress, they have little incentive to work with the other side. Obstructionism becomes the name of the game because handing any kind of victory to the other side feels like it prevents you from gaining power next election cycle, even if it's what's best for the country.
I think all this is true, but I still think that the distributed media environment created the high partisanship anger that instituted this situation in the first place.
The incentive would be it only needs a majority, almost forcing legislators to opt for more moderate policy because as you explain the extreme factions have more sway when it comes down to a few votes. Without the three fifths rule, they could simply moderate the policy and forget the extreme faction altogether, or get them on board and not need the moderation. It's a win-win for the majority party from that perspective! But I also agree with you and Joe that all these factors are at play, and I think heightened in the current non-ideal system.
I really like the principle that it's good to try bad ideas. I agree with you that sometimes we just need to try things to see if they work. However, I disagree with the majority of your argument here. The filibuster has been around a very long time, but it was only recently that it prevented bipartisan compromises. Back when representatives could safely cross party lines, getting to 60 votes wasn't such a big deal. It's a big deal today because each party (but especially Republicans) use a combination of establishment coercion and media shaming to keep their moderates from crossing party lines. There are 34 Freedom Caucus members in the House, while there are 215 Democrats. You seriously think it's easier to get 98% of those right-wing Republicans than 15% of all Democrats? It's only in the last few decades that the filibuster became a serious issue precisely because it shouldn't be hard to get people from the other party to buy in if everyone is sincerely trying to find solutions. If they aren't being sincere, then I don't see why letting them pass more party-line bills like this one would be beneficial.
In a broader sense, I think that legislation that has a serious impact on society SHOULD require a high level of buy-in from representatives of the public. If only 51% of the country agrees with a certain course of action, why would we let them implement any significant changes? Considering how often control of Congress has shifted in the last 10 years, I don't think we can say there are a large number of things that "the people" agree on about how our nation should be run. In such a situation, letting things keep running on autopilot is the best solution until a larger consensus emerges. Politics should be the slow boring of hard boards, not moving fast and breaking things.
It is certainly a problem that we can't get Congress to do their most basic job without gimmicks, but I'm not yet convinced that the answer is to make it easier for them to pass party-line bills. It's hard to know if this is a temporary state of affairs that will recede after Trump is gone, or if our modern distributed media combined with popular vote control of primaries and gerrymandering creates and enforces this to be the new normal. If it's the latter, perhaps we do need to simply make it easier to pass bills, but I still think the better solution (if possible) would be to fix whatever stops us from achieving the bipartisan consensus we were able to achieve for over a hundred years since the end of the Civil War.
Also, the contents of this bill are just horrible on the merits. I don't blame them for trying to pass a single omnibus bill, but I certainly do blame them for passing a bill with almost no redeaming qualities. It raises taxes on the poor and middle class, massively increases the deficit and debt, slashes medicare, destroys nuclear and geothermal, and does it's best to destroy the industrial boom that Biden's omnibus bill started. They know that the bond market is about to collapse because of our fiscal irresponsibility but they are going to light a match and toss it in anyway, because....why?
You kind of allude to this, I would say it's a synthesis of the section on extremism and bad ideas. Namely, because not much gets done, it incentivizes extremists to come up with unfalsifiable theories (dare I say mythologies). So, regardless of what one may think about the squad, I don't think the squad happens if moderate dem policy goes through when they have a simple majority. Same with freedom caucus types who want to abolish government departments. It allows these folks to run on these items, do nothing of substance about them, festering myths about what's wrong about parties and government.
I'm actually less inclined to think people would repeal moderate-coded extremism (median republican policy), but I think we need to indulge radicals from time to time, just to create norms within parties to disavow the nonsense. IMO that's the big difference between the US system and parliamentary ones. We let our politicians say and encourage the dumbest shit and there's no punishment as party insiders usually don't have to take them seriously.
I didn't even think about that angle of the argument I was making in the piece. If I have you correctly, the some of the more extreme elements in congress arises partially from the inability to pass more moderate policy because those 'radicals' (the squad and freedom caucus certainly count!) represent those who want more things done, typically more radical solutions. But because of the filibuster, their policies always die on arrival--thus "festering the myths" about government itself. Which in turn feeds back into the extreme members in the legislature. Very, very good point.
I think we could expect less corrections on moderate policy, definitely. Parliamentary system has many benefits we don't, but I also like some parts of our system more. Parliament does this specific part much better though, I agree.
Yes, because in a Parliamentary system, these people would just fracture into new parties. The "game" of the presidential system will always disincentivize that. But in our system with a lower bar of passing law, the incentives of leadership to stamp down on radical proposals increase because the probability of passing anything (and that being bad policy or politically toxic) is higher.
Visibility and accountability--that's right! Parliament is in a better position to show voters who's doing what and who's to blame; it's a beautiful thing!
I don't think that's right. A parliamentary system allows party leaders to use their power to slap down upstarts, which means that extremists don't have the kind of outsize power they have in the US today. It also creates a situation where no single person in a party is so powerful they can't be replaced, so the party is led from the middle out rather than top-down or bottom-up.
From what I understand, the UK Parliament for example has coalitions which almost necessarily means some extreme elements are being taken seriously by the moderate faction. I think that means extremists in parliament have more power in a sense, but arguably less power within the framework of the filibuster being in place. Without the filibuster, it would work the same way except everyone would already be on the same "team", not coalescing because they have to.
It's debatable whether there is any difference between extremists forming explicit parties and those parties joining with moderate ones to form coalitions, or our system where they all just form caucuses or informal coalitions within a single political party. I have seen some research that leads me to believe that the parliamentary system does a slightly better job of discouraging extremism, but I'm not sure and you can research it yourself if you are interested. Importantly, when you have lots of different parties you can pick and choose which ones to form a coalition with. Sometimes moderate factions decide to team up, though often it's moderates joining with extremists on their own side of the fence. In our presidential system, however, there is virtually no way two moderate factions on different sides of the fence can team up.
Getting to >50% always means coalescing because you have to. Right-wing libertarians have massive disagreements with evangelicals, yet they join into the same faction because they have to. Same with Democrats, labor and environmentalists are often on opposite sides of an argument. I don't really understand how the filibuster would create incentives for extremists, but given that there are more moderates in each party than extremists, it seems like getting rid of the filibuster would only empower those extremists. If you can't get to >60 in your own party, any vote requires bipartisanship. That didn't stop Congress from passing bills before, so it's the change to bipartisanship that seems like the ultimate problem.
Agreed, but this seems to only be a problem when each side wins Congress by a small margin. When you can only lose 4 votes, the extremists (who always exist, regardless of era) have an extraordinary amount of sway. Additionally, if the other party only needs 4 more votes next election to gain control of Congress, they have little incentive to work with the other side. Obstructionism becomes the name of the game because handing any kind of victory to the other side feels like it prevents you from gaining power next election cycle, even if it's what's best for the country.
I think all this is true, but I still think that the distributed media environment created the high partisanship anger that instituted this situation in the first place.
I think it’s all of the above, honestly!
The incentive would be it only needs a majority, almost forcing legislators to opt for more moderate policy because as you explain the extreme factions have more sway when it comes down to a few votes. Without the three fifths rule, they could simply moderate the policy and forget the extreme faction altogether, or get them on board and not need the moderation. It's a win-win for the majority party from that perspective! But I also agree with you and Joe that all these factors are at play, and I think heightened in the current non-ideal system.
I really like the principle that it's good to try bad ideas. I agree with you that sometimes we just need to try things to see if they work. However, I disagree with the majority of your argument here. The filibuster has been around a very long time, but it was only recently that it prevented bipartisan compromises. Back when representatives could safely cross party lines, getting to 60 votes wasn't such a big deal. It's a big deal today because each party (but especially Republicans) use a combination of establishment coercion and media shaming to keep their moderates from crossing party lines. There are 34 Freedom Caucus members in the House, while there are 215 Democrats. You seriously think it's easier to get 98% of those right-wing Republicans than 15% of all Democrats? It's only in the last few decades that the filibuster became a serious issue precisely because it shouldn't be hard to get people from the other party to buy in if everyone is sincerely trying to find solutions. If they aren't being sincere, then I don't see why letting them pass more party-line bills like this one would be beneficial.
In a broader sense, I think that legislation that has a serious impact on society SHOULD require a high level of buy-in from representatives of the public. If only 51% of the country agrees with a certain course of action, why would we let them implement any significant changes? Considering how often control of Congress has shifted in the last 10 years, I don't think we can say there are a large number of things that "the people" agree on about how our nation should be run. In such a situation, letting things keep running on autopilot is the best solution until a larger consensus emerges. Politics should be the slow boring of hard boards, not moving fast and breaking things.
It is certainly a problem that we can't get Congress to do their most basic job without gimmicks, but I'm not yet convinced that the answer is to make it easier for them to pass party-line bills. It's hard to know if this is a temporary state of affairs that will recede after Trump is gone, or if our modern distributed media combined with popular vote control of primaries and gerrymandering creates and enforces this to be the new normal. If it's the latter, perhaps we do need to simply make it easier to pass bills, but I still think the better solution (if possible) would be to fix whatever stops us from achieving the bipartisan consensus we were able to achieve for over a hundred years since the end of the Civil War.
I agree with basically everything here!
Also, the contents of this bill are just horrible on the merits. I don't blame them for trying to pass a single omnibus bill, but I certainly do blame them for passing a bill with almost no redeaming qualities. It raises taxes on the poor and middle class, massively increases the deficit and debt, slashes medicare, destroys nuclear and geothermal, and does it's best to destroy the industrial boom that Biden's omnibus bill started. They know that the bond market is about to collapse because of our fiscal irresponsibility but they are going to light a match and toss it in anyway, because....why?