Majority Rules
Right on cue for the second anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, the U.S. House of Representatives staged their own production of Groundhog Day with 13 votes over four days that failed to achieve the majority required to elect a Speaker. This dysfunction is not as dramatic as the attack in 2021, but all Americans should be concerned that our leaders in Washington, DC seem to have been caught off guard once again.
The root cause is systemic and bipartisan. It has nothing to do with Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and everything to do with rules that have made the Congress incapable of governing. Majority rule, which is quite simple and can be used fairly to resolve minor disputes, has become a dangerous weapon in their hands because it is being used for partisan power at the expense of public interest.
The Rules committee is actually designed to facilitate absolute authority over the House agenda by the Speaker. As we now know, these days the Speaker is elected not by the entire House but by the majority party alone. About 20 Freedom Caucus GOP members are denying McCarthy votes to obtain leverage in the 118th Congress. There is little doubt their intent is to do more of the same — avoid compromise with anyone. Under these circumstances, concessions made to buy their votes would deliver a Pyrrhic victory. Given the division of leadership between the House and Senate, expectations for progress were low, anyway. At this point, our best hope may be to limit long term damage.
Once upon a time, our so-called two party system worked well enough because not all votes were along party lines. Voters as well as Members of Congress associated with a party as an expression of general sentiment. Today, evidently, party membership is considered by its leaders as loyalty to a warring tribe. More and more voters are identifying as Independents, despite the disadvantages of doing so in many states. But instead of reading the room and updating election laws to accommodate the plurality of voters who do not belong to either party, Democrats and Republicans are doubling down on rules that maximize power for the winner of a race between their own members.
Quite simply, they lack imagination and incentive to change. We have a two party system only because two dominant parties have the power to make viable competition impossible. This starts with our plurality method of counting votes, which according to Duverger’s Law will produce a two party system. That would be acceptable if, once elected, members could actually work together, one issue at a time. But both parties have poisoned that well by assuming mandates for party control where they are not justified and certainly not in all voters’ interests.
American democracy will survive one way or another. If Congress can get its act together and relax rules that give superpowers to the slimmest of majorities, Democrats and Republicans may rule for another generation or two. If not, voters will be forced to reconsider our winner-take-all culture that led to this insanity. That would lead to reforms that incentivize coalition building, such as nonpartisan registration, open primaries, ranked choice voting, multi-member districts, and proportional allocation of Electoral College votes.
