More thoughts on Government Shutdown
So, the shutdown continues. And my life continues to be mostly unaffected. Two exceptions: (1) the BEA shut down its website, which is inconvenient for research and teaching purposes. (2) I'm having to ignore more of my Twitter Timeline (and, to a lesser degree, Facebook News Feed) because it has turned into political drivel that really shouldn't be compressed to the appropriate lengths for those media. (Don't many of us complain about politics being reduced to slogans? Yet, we still feel fine making political tweets that are limited to 140 characters...)
As far as I'm concerned, I think my original conclusion still stands: the Tea Party is not some "sliver" of the Republican Party that everyone else hates. It's a sizeable force that can actually change policy.
I'd add to it my wife's cynical conclusion as well: the Democrats are going to let the shut down continue as long as they can, because the Republicans are taking the blame for it. (I was convinced by this article, which shows how the Democrats plus a small handful of Republicans could force through a clean CR without Boehner or the Tea Party folks having to give any ground whatsoever.)
One thing I find remarkably distressing, though, are the awful analogies that I'm seeing Democrats throw around. Let me offer two:
(1) Pelosi and "hostages":
""They took hostages by shutting down the government," she [Pelosi] said on the House floor. "Now they're releasing one hostage at a time." Tonight, the House was hoping to pass bills funding national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Washington DC government, and send them to the Senate.
But several Democrats surmised that Republicans were feeling pressure about the shutdown today, and trying to fund key parts of the government to relieve that pressure. But Pelosi and others said Democrats should vote against it." [Emphasis added]
Ummm... I'm pretty sure that's not how hostage negotiation works. Unfortunately, the expert in hostage negotiation whose office is catty-corner from mine isn't in, so I can't ask her. But, I'm pretty sure she'd tell me that partial release of hostages is something you accept. So, NEVER let Pelosi do hostage negotiations. NEVER.
(2) Putting out fires.
GOP: Let's negotiate
Dems: After we put out this fire
GOP: No, before
Dems: No
GOP: How about put out parts of the fire?
Dems: You're crazy
- Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 7, 2013
Wait... So, it's crazy to start fighting a fire by putting out parts of it? I'm no firefighter, but that kind of feels like the obvious way to start. Actually, it sounds like the obvious way to start ANY large-scale endeavor. You handle small parts of the problem. So, why not take off the table all the things we agree on? That's basically what the Cruz plan calls for. "We all agree parks will be funded, so let's go ahead and do that. Let's only hold up the things that one side or the other has reservations about."
The question, then, is why are the Democrats saying that this is a bad idea? I think it's obvious. They know that Obamacare's popularity is waning (57% now oppose the law, according to the Christian Science Monitor). So, the Democrats want to pull the typical political trick of taking something the public dislikes (Obamacare), tying it inextricably to something the public likes (National Parks, etc.), and forcing Congress to decide on the whole thing.
The really, truly fascinating thing is that no one is asking the big question: Why aren't politicians who have to win popular votes to get/keep their jobs bothering to do things that are popular? 60% of Americans say it's more important to end the shutdown than to modify Obamacare. Why aren't Republicans doing that? Nearly 60% of Americans want to see changes in Obamacare. Why aren't the Democrats allowing for a 1 year delay in the individual mandate to hammer out something more popular? (Being the latest Republican offer I've heard of.)
The answer. (Hat-tip to @sahilkapur on Twitter) The members of the parties each support their own party - and don't want it to compromise.
In our current primary-based system, there's a weird filtering process you have to go through. First, you have to appease your party members in the primaries, and then you have to appease the US in the general election. If you don't appease your Party, you don't even get to run in the general election. And the reality is that neither Democrats NOR Republicans want their own party to give any ground - by a significant margin. So, we are at an impasse.
Is the US more polarized than it used to be? Is that why this is a growing problem? Research actually suggests that the answer is no - weirdly. The proportion of self-identifying "conservatives", "moderates", and "liberals" is about what it has always been. What has happened recently, though, is that the mix of these people in the political parties has changed. It used to be that both Republican and Democrat parties were basically microcosms of the US - they both had basically the same split of conservative/moderate/liberal party members. In recent years, though, there has been a shift where conservatives are abandoning the Democrats and joining the Republicans while liberals are moving the other way and moderates are (to some degree) abandoning both. So, while the US is no more divided or ideological, the parties are more divided and ideological.
This raises all kinds of big questions, apart from the simple, most pressing, one ("How can we get the government shut down dealt with?").
How can we restructure our system to avoid such partisanship in the future? (Given the reality that the "Republic" form of our government has become largely fictional, would we be better off with proportional representation and coalition-building like much of Europe does?)
Will (or can) a third "moderate" party arise? (Independents are a larger group than either Republicans or Democrats.)
Personally, I doubt that either of these will happen - but it's not entirely clear how else (apart from secession) the deep divisions in the US can be resolved.
As far as I'm concerned, I think my original conclusion still stands: the Tea Party is not some "sliver" of the Republican Party that everyone else hates. It's a sizeable force that can actually change policy.
I'd add to it my wife's cynical conclusion as well: the Democrats are going to let the shut down continue as long as they can, because the Republicans are taking the blame for it. (I was convinced by this article, which shows how the Democrats plus a small handful of Republicans could force through a clean CR without Boehner or the Tea Party folks having to give any ground whatsoever.)
One thing I find remarkably distressing, though, are the awful analogies that I'm seeing Democrats throw around. Let me offer two:
(1) Pelosi and "hostages":
""They took hostages by shutting down the government," she [Pelosi] said on the House floor. "Now they're releasing one hostage at a time." Tonight, the House was hoping to pass bills funding national parks, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Washington DC government, and send them to the Senate.
But several Democrats surmised that Republicans were feeling pressure about the shutdown today, and trying to fund key parts of the government to relieve that pressure. But Pelosi and others said Democrats should vote against it." [Emphasis added]
Ummm... I'm pretty sure that's not how hostage negotiation works. Unfortunately, the expert in hostage negotiation whose office is catty-corner from mine isn't in, so I can't ask her. But, I'm pretty sure she'd tell me that partial release of hostages is something you accept. So, NEVER let Pelosi do hostage negotiations. NEVER.
(2) Putting out fires.
GOP: Let's negotiate
Dems: After we put out this fire
GOP: No, before
Dems: No
GOP: How about put out parts of the fire?
Dems: You're crazy
- Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 7, 2013
Wait... So, it's crazy to start fighting a fire by putting out parts of it? I'm no firefighter, but that kind of feels like the obvious way to start. Actually, it sounds like the obvious way to start ANY large-scale endeavor. You handle small parts of the problem. So, why not take off the table all the things we agree on? That's basically what the Cruz plan calls for. "We all agree parks will be funded, so let's go ahead and do that. Let's only hold up the things that one side or the other has reservations about."
The question, then, is why are the Democrats saying that this is a bad idea? I think it's obvious. They know that Obamacare's popularity is waning (57% now oppose the law, according to the Christian Science Monitor). So, the Democrats want to pull the typical political trick of taking something the public dislikes (Obamacare), tying it inextricably to something the public likes (National Parks, etc.), and forcing Congress to decide on the whole thing.
The really, truly fascinating thing is that no one is asking the big question: Why aren't politicians who have to win popular votes to get/keep their jobs bothering to do things that are popular? 60% of Americans say it's more important to end the shutdown than to modify Obamacare. Why aren't Republicans doing that? Nearly 60% of Americans want to see changes in Obamacare. Why aren't the Democrats allowing for a 1 year delay in the individual mandate to hammer out something more popular? (Being the latest Republican offer I've heard of.)
The answer. (Hat-tip to @sahilkapur on Twitter) The members of the parties each support their own party - and don't want it to compromise.
In our current primary-based system, there's a weird filtering process you have to go through. First, you have to appease your party members in the primaries, and then you have to appease the US in the general election. If you don't appease your Party, you don't even get to run in the general election. And the reality is that neither Democrats NOR Republicans want their own party to give any ground - by a significant margin. So, we are at an impasse.
Is the US more polarized than it used to be? Is that why this is a growing problem? Research actually suggests that the answer is no - weirdly. The proportion of self-identifying "conservatives", "moderates", and "liberals" is about what it has always been. What has happened recently, though, is that the mix of these people in the political parties has changed. It used to be that both Republican and Democrat parties were basically microcosms of the US - they both had basically the same split of conservative/moderate/liberal party members. In recent years, though, there has been a shift where conservatives are abandoning the Democrats and joining the Republicans while liberals are moving the other way and moderates are (to some degree) abandoning both. So, while the US is no more divided or ideological, the parties are more divided and ideological.
This raises all kinds of big questions, apart from the simple, most pressing, one ("How can we get the government shut down dealt with?").
How can we restructure our system to avoid such partisanship in the future? (Given the reality that the "Republic" form of our government has become largely fictional, would we be better off with proportional representation and coalition-building like much of Europe does?)
Will (or can) a third "moderate" party arise? (Independents are a larger group than either Republicans or Democrats.)
Personally, I doubt that either of these will happen - but it's not entirely clear how else (apart from secession) the deep divisions in the US can be resolved.