Coalitions

In a parliamentary form of democratic government, the party in power names the prime minister, making getting legislation passed infinitely easier. In cases where no one party wins a majority, the leader of the strongest party often negotiates with a secondary party to create a coalition between those forces to create enough votes to seat the prime minister and pass “mutually acceptable” legislation. When these coalitions collapse over disputed policies, a new election is called. Clearly, a majority will almost always form in a basic two-party system, but most parliamentary governments have more than two political parties.

In the United States, we have a very different form of democracy, a bicameral legislature that has relied for centuries on the ability of opponents in a two party system, where the nation’s chief executive does not come from the legislature, to negotiate a compromise. And while our two party system has come to loggerheads before, the last time such a sustained Congressional discord remained so bitter for so long, proponents and opponents fought out their differences on the battlefield in the Civil War. Listening to gun advocates justifying their big-magazine-assault-weapons on the grounds that the Second Amendment gives them the right to overthrow a government that “oppresses” their view of what the government can and cannot do sends chills down my back… and not in a good way.

The badly Gerrymandered Congressional redistricting – and remember each party does this when they are in power – has given the GOP strong majorities in the House and in a majority of state legislatures. But they just got slammed in the last election, and so many of their elected representatives are committed to reverse the results of that Presidential loss that the notion of compromise appears to be a mere relic of the past. Even ignoring the fiscal cliff debacle, the numbers needed to generate the kind of legislative compromise to allow the government to function in the next two years just don’t exist. The 113^th Congress is no more likely to function effectively than the 112^th.

Nate Silver looked at the numbers for the going forward House in a December 21^st New York Times: “Of the 233 Republicans, 51 will be members of the Tea Party Caucus, give or take a few depending on which first-term members of Congress join the coalition. The other 182 are what I will call Establishment Republicans… [I]t seems clear that Mr. Boehner lacks the confidence of roughly three dozen Republican members of the House, and possibly more. Erick Erickson, of the blog RedState, identified 34 Republicans who he said opposed Mr. Boehner’s bill and another 12 whom he identified as being on the fence.

“Say that Mr. Boehner cannot count on the support of 34 of his Republicans when it comes to passing major fiscal policy legislation. That means he would need to identify 18 Democrats who would vote along with the Republicans who remained with him… Here’s the problem: it might be hard to round up those 18 Democrats.” Since appropriations bills, by Constitutional mandate, must originate in the House (not the Senate), we have clear battle lines drawn between one group that has sworn never to raise taxes and are firmly committed to cut spending on social programs while increasing spending on the military, folks in the party that created the deficit by fighting wars while cutting taxes which they now believe gives them the justification to reduce the government the way they want to reduce the government, and an equally committed group dedicated to leveling the socio-economic playing field and giving Americans in the middle and at the bottom social programs that the rich don’t want to pay for.

In short, the party that won the presidency and controls the Senate cannot pass anything without the party that lost the presidency and doesn’t control the Senate because they control the House. We are only going to see more of the same, which global credit-rating agencies see as the justification to reduce our national rating even more. This impasse-driven Congress creates precisely the kind of instability that will put serious restraints on any semblance of an economic recovery. Unemployment is unlikely to improve much in this environment.

What’s worse, as the “as American as white folks eating apple pie” sectors of our economy become increasingly threatened by the minorities-becoming-the-majority demographic trends, instead of reaching out to engage and compromise, as the Congressional elections clearly demonstrate, they are digging in their heels to do anything to stop change. Until those districts fall under the new demographics themselves – a longer process because of Gerrymandering – the impasses will continue into the foreseeable future. But the writing is on the wall, and if the GOP continues to ignore their falling stature, their long term prognosis is not particularly enviable. According to a December CNN/ORC poll released on December 20^th, 53% of Americans, including 22 % of Republicans, believe the GOP’s views and policies have pushed them too far outside of the mainstream. In 2010, less than 40% thought the party was too extreme.

Nevertheless, the diehards don’t care. They will do what they can to hold the line, and with districts drawn the way they are, even in the 2014 mid-term elections, this condition is extremely likely to continue. When this “bastion of traditional America” becomes the consistently outvoted minority – a virtual certainty given that the birthrates in this part of America are below replacement levels – what will this exceptionally well-armed “minority” populace do? Will their children be the ones building the new social bridges we desperately need to continue as a viable nation… or will we fracture and polarize ourselves out of the United States of America, a land that may die for lack of a coalition.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am deeply concerned for our national future.