Despite the Trump Administration’s massive upheavals in political and policy discourse, whether you like the changes or not, it’s reasonable to say that issues are still contested on the same bilateral, bipolar, battlefield of recent decades. It seems likely, then, that this configuration will continue, which suggests that the trenches of our political warfare will only deepen.
This prospect is truly dangerous for America, as divisions coagulate into separate identities that feel less and less reconcilable. If they go too far, if two brands of Americans come to believe that the differences outweigh any shared tenets, then our nation, founded on a principle rather than ethnic or traditional identities, will lose its founding premise.
A primary problem for our discourse is that our partisan political duopoly takes the air out of the room of public discourse. You are either brand X or brand Y. Any issue will be subsumed in the standoff. Neither camp can afford to leave the other as the only voice on anything, and no one on either side can afford to agree with the other. If one party says the sky is blue, the other feels compelled to demand recognition of sunset, clouds, and night.
Is there any way for anyone to get a thought in edgewise? Any person interested in political affairs has to choose one or the other, or live in no-man’s land, accomplishing nothing. If you face a local issue, the two parties have now organized down to town committees and coffee klatches. States and localities were once viewed as a place for ideas to percolate, but between social media and already hardening social divisions, location allows little diversity of politics. Everyone will, sooner rather than later, have to establish their bona fides with “our side” as opposed to “theirs.”
Is there any way just to image a way for a different voice to get a toe-hold on the national stage? It may be time in America for some exercises of imagination.
So – are there not constituencies, not inherently aligned with the two party doctrines, that are too scattered to win a district election but have real weight? Is there a chance that any of them could muster, say, two percent of a nationwide poll?
If so, perhaps a single change to the Constitution could make a difference. In a recent panel on American Civic Culture, AEI’s Yuval Levin noted that sometimes institutional change can move the grassroots, let’s say at least to re-arrange the dialogue.
Imagine a Constitutional amendment, to elect half the Senate on a nationwide basis. The proposal, and its working rationales, go like this: Each American voter now participates in the election of two Senators, both on statewide ballots. What if each state elected one Senator as we do now, with the other seat becoming one of 50 at-large seats? Voting would be by party, one vote per voter, with each party presenting a rank-ordered list of candidates. Any party winning two percent of the national vote would get a seat. Any party winning four percent would get a second seat. And so on. The goal would be to ensure a national voice for any constituency that can garner two percent of a national electorate. The duopoly parties might suffer, but anyone opposing this idea would display their cravenness.
True, few existing third parties have even polled two percent in a nationwide race. But those have all been presidential contests, in which all voters face a zero-sum fear that the “bad guy” will win that singularly powerful office. For one of fifty Senate seats, the decision would be different, and oft-vilified third party voters need not fear that they “waste their vote” or worse.
True also, any number of ephemeral candidates might benefit – a musician just completing a smash hit tour might become a Senator, if the timing is right. On the other hand, any eccentrics looking to make a political splash need not trim their sails to fit one of the two conglomerated lines; they would be able to try new, however odd, ideas in their quest. More diversity of thought might emerge. Some ideas might even be useful.
Of course, large groups with large budgets will flood cyberspace with ads. But, first, social media has shown that it can spawn and sustain outliers – witness the meme stock phenomenon, starting with GameStop. Second, groups with strong convictions can mobilize without huge budgets. The Libertarian party, as one case, did garner 1.7% of the vote in the 2016 election, and that group already has some heft to its identity.
Any proposal for a Constitutional amendment should be as compact as possible, with the fewest divergences from existing terms, to avoid dilution in the weeds. But one more twist to this idea might bear consideration. Since this vote would be conducted by a federal election commission, perhaps the elections for these seats could occur biannually, in odd numbered years. Half the Senate would adjust to ongoing trends in political sentiment, and other elections for federal seats would not have a cross-cutting effect. Turnouts might well be lower than in Presidential election years, but that would favor smaller parties pursuing a toehold. That said, the simplest possible proposal is more likely to gain traction.
Overall, parties that gain momentum could grow to offer wider platforms and policy themes they might organize. There will also be specific constituencies with clear priorities, like, say, Germany’s old Free Democrats. In any case coalition politics, as we see in parliamentary systems, might take hold. This would force all parties to show their priorities more openly. Issues that might not fit today’s bipolar standoff would have more of a chance to garner national attention and action. As another effect, parties that win seats may become popular enough to start winning seats in legislative districts, nationwide. This is a mind experiment at best, but it suggests a prospect to brake our deepening alienation.
Common Conviction 