The short- and long-term future of Congress

Politics & Elections
1

The breakdown of functionality in Congress kicked off by Gingrich and the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus and brought to fruition by the trump election is reaching its inevitable conclusion. What will the legislative branch look like afterwards?

Gift link This is a long article. I suggest reading the whole thing if you can stomach it. Here are some snippets but they don’t do the article justice.

…
A total of 54 House members, or about one-eighth of the total body, will not be seeking another term this November.

As a matter of sheer numbers, the exodus is not history-making. What is striking are the names on the list. There are rising stars, seasoned legislators and committee chairs. But not a single bomb-thrower.
…

Too late?

Convince me there is reason for optimism. If you can.

2

Far too much quoted for Fair Use, please watch it. I removed most of the quote.

Moderating

3

It is tempting to blame this on the Republican party (and indeed, Gingrich et al deserves a significant portion of the blame) but there is been a broad erosion of public confidence in Congress because members of both parties have become so influenced by wealthy political donors and industry-funded PACs that it is difficult for the average voter to believe that their problems are in any way meaningful. The scammastry that lead to the 2007-8 financial crisis and subsequent consequence-free bailout of banks and corporations while people lost homes, jobs, and retirement funds sealed public confidence in Congress and other government institutions. Congress—and again, under both Republican and Democratic majorities—has essentially made themselves irrelevant by not taking measures to serve their constituents or to shore up public confidence in their integrity. Anybody entering into Congress today with a sincere intent to serve public interest is basically asking to be slapped in the face with a wet trout, notwithstanding what Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission did to undermine even febrile efforts at campaign finance reform.

Stranger

4

Can’t help you. Our government is dysfunctional, perhaps irreparably. The article focuses on the dysfunction, and Stranger elaborates on the why. The people with the authority to restore legitimacy are the ones who enjoy the benefit of all the ratfuckery—power and money. SCOTUS has blessed dark money and deemed gerrymandering a matter that can only be resolved politically.

We’ve painted ourselves into a corner. The dysfunction now thrives by design.

Only some form of vast legislative reform would do the trick, and that ain’t happening. I don’t know, maybe a Reign of Terror?

5

SCOTUS hasn’t just blessed ‘dark money’; certain members have also enjoyed a ‘taste’ of it as well.

Gerrymandering is a complex topic and one in which the court is is only able to make judgement upon in very narrow contexts, but the abrogation of the Supreme Court in upholding key provisions of the Voting Rights Act and limiting onerous restrictions upon voting access tells you everything you need to know about where the conservative majority stands on protecting democracy as a fundamental principle.

Stranger

6

I agree re: SCOTUS, at least some members, reaping the benefit of their decision.

I also think gerrymandering is a form of disenfranchisement, and consequently it requires a judicial remedy, not a political one. The right to vote, and for that vote to be valuable, should be a foundational one. Those who enjoy the benefit of the gerrymandering—i.e., the legislators in power—can’t be the ones responsible for the remedy, not for such a basic right.

7

I would argue that the particular brand of disarray present in today’s Congress is not due to the influence of wealth donors and industry-funded PACs – in fact it’s the relative decline of these elites as powerbrokers that’s led to the most recent contretemps. One of the most impactful changes in Congressional elections over the last couple of decades – particularly on the far right but also on the far left – has been the enormous growth of small-dollar donations funneled through issue-oriented PACs and individual Congresspersons’ PACs.

While the big-dollar donors have an interest in a functional Congress (if only so it can pass legislation to address their particular interests), small-dollar donors are driven to give by dramatic, performative acts that scratch their particular emotional itch. The terrorists of the Freedom Caucus rake in these donors through their antics. Matt Gaetz’ biggest fundraising haul of last year came during his successful attempt to overthrow Kevin McCarthy. AOC gets 2/3 of her campaign funds from small-dollar donors who thrill to her tweets “owning” Republicans. None of this creates an incentive for Congresspersons to make Congress as an institution work.

8

To wit. From the article referenced in the OP:

Mr. Higgins of New York recalled that a formative moment occurred on the House floor in 2009, when a little-known Republican, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech about health care to a joint session of Congress by yelling, “You lie!”

“Joe’s not a bad guy, by any means,” Mr. Higgins said. “But he’ll tell you his fund-raising went through the roof right after that.”

9

As mentioned above, the systemic rot - big money influence, gerrymandering, single member districting and first past the post voting - is so beneficial to those entrenched in the system that few of them will lift a finger to cure it.

Add to that mix a general disinterest from the voting public, beyond a vague feeling that something is rotten, and you’ve suddenly got a stinky brew where millions of voters think a strong man overturning everything and saving us is the only solution.

My despair will only be temporarily alleviated by a sweeping Democratic victory this fall because I don’t see the goddam Democrats doing anything about these problems, either.

10

Although it is possible to point to clear examples of gerrymandering, like districts with ‘continuous boundaries’ which are connected by tenuous strips of land that are only a few tens of feet wide and look like stretched taffy, what does and does not comprise a ‘fairly’ distributed or balanced voting district is often pretty subjective, as does even satisfying basic criteria for what comprises competitive districts within a state with a diverse electorate. And while gerrymandering districts on a national scale has become a new pastime of the GOP, both parties have and continue to do it at more local levels, and in fact it was once highly identified with the Democratic party.

FiveThirtyEight.com did a series called “The Gerrymandering Project” a few years ago that went in depth into the complexities of gerrymandering which is well worth listening to as it explains why it is difficult to legislate ‘fairness’ in redistricting, and for courts to interpret criteria and evaluate whether a specific districting arrangement meets the criteria. Of course, it doesn’t help when a court is transparently biases (as federal district courts and SCOTUS have become), and a look back at historical instances of successive voter disenfranchisement and authoritarian takeover shows that the ‘judicial remedy’ has not really been effective as the judiciary is either co-opted or sidelined.

For democracy to function, participants have to agree to certain behavioral norms which ensure representative balance, competitiveness, and free expression. Ideally, redistricting boards would be nonpartisan (or at least bipartisan) and would come to agreement on what is at least marginally competitive for both major parties but of course that entire setup invites gamifying the decision process when one side in particular no longer adheres to democratic norms.

Voter suppression, on the other hand, is pretty unambiguous, whether it is in the form of voter ID to prevent the virtually non-existent problem of vote fraud, or restricting polling sites and mail-in ballots, or permitting voter intimidation and influencing. And it is clear that the GOP, in both national and state levels, is engaging in an overt campaign of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. That the courts are not vigorously responding to that issue tells you everything you need to know about how much faith you can put in the judiciary to protect democracy.

It was distrust in elected representatives to not use their inside access and legislative authority to sell influence to the corporate and powerful interests that led to this more recent rash of populist support. (And to be clear, many politicians on both sides of the aisle have done this to an egregious degree, all the way up to the chief executive.) While the “big-dollar donors” want a functioning legislature, they want it to function in a way that specifically rewards them for their investment. “Small-dollar donors” don’t have such influence; they’re basically responding to whatever the candidate says they are going to do, and in a polarized political climate that can certainly lead to populists at both poles of the political spectrum saying outrageous things to get attention and contributions. The ideal solution is to get external money (including ‘dark money’ and ‘independent’ campaign support) out of politics, and make the electoral cycle short and publicly funded, but I don’t think there is any hope of real campaign finance reform in the current environment.

Then there is this:

The fact that we can’t trust elected representative to follow an ‘honor code’ with regard to expenses does not speak encouragingly to how much we can trust them to follow ethical principles when there is real money and power involved. But this is scarcely a new problem.

Stranger

11

This is probably not accurate and only poisons the well of the thread, however much it might have been one of the genuine stages of the general progression. But Gingrich didn’t cause Internet echo chambering, vote tally reports, the change in demographics towards older voters, etc.

At the end of the day, the people have all of the power. Politicians don’t break into the Congress building in the middle of the night, set up shop, and announce themselves the successor of the previous holder; they’re elected by the people. Minus the support of those people, they get nothing.

So the real issue is with TLDR. Like, I can explain how everything that any particular partisan person might dream of - universal health care, fair policing, balanced foreign policy, etc. - becomes inaccessible and forever denied, the more that people push for uncompromising warriors of the faith. Likewise, I can explain how it’s easy for the unscrupulous to sell themselves as uncompromising warriors of the faith. And that doesn’t even need to be false! Uncompromising people are very good at talking themselves into the necessities of unscrupulous actions - for the cause. And, likewise, I can explain how unscrupulous warriors of the faith can play a shell game of headline-making grand gestures, push your attention to the immediacy of partisan goals, etc. so that you stop paying attention to the first issue, that the more you back the partisan warriors, the less likely you are to ever get any of what you want.

If that’s all too 4D chess for even the average person on the SDMB then the person on the street is basically doomed.

But, functionally, all it takes to get better politicians is to ignore politics, don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t put political process reform at the top of their to-do list when they’re campaigning, and doesn’t follow through on it when in office.

If they promise to Drain the Swamp and don’t, you can’t trust them and you shouldn’t hire them again. If they promise to stop gerrymandering and then overrule the anti-gerrymandering process, then you can’t trust them and you shouldn’t hire them again.

Ultimately, you can’t win when you have to push a message that’s TLDR. You can, however, convert people by giving them a stern look and pushing them to behave like an adult. We need political process reform. That should be the top of everyone’s list when election season comes around. Hold their feet to the fire, don’t donate money, vote 3rd, 4th, or 5th party, write in names, and do what it takes to make them take you seriously.

If you’re not doing that, if you’re sticking to the party lines, you’re donating money to people who will go out and post some xeets that are totes LOL then that’s why you’re not getting reform.

12

That’s why I said “kicked off.”

13

It was probably kicked off in 1970, when Congress stopped using the voice vote.

It would be like if we stopped using the Australian voting system and went back to public voting.

14

No, but he did make “compromise” a dirty word. He’s the one who said “We have the votes, so I don’t need to deal with the Democrats”.

15

And, as said, Gingrich is one notable entry on the path. Laying it entirely at his feet simply poisons the well and turns the discussion into another shell game of trying to get people disengaged from the things that actually matter.

So long as people can’t keep their eye on the ball, and can’t interject without creating a whole new shell game, it’s going to be a hard fight.