Category Archives: Elections

What matters: Voters’ view of the world

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The news is about what’s new, but people’s worldviews are about what’s permanent, and that’s one of the things that makes it difficult to run for office as an Arkansas Democrat right now.

I write that sentence after a lot of news lately coming from the White House, where President Trump fired the FBI director investigating his campaign regarding the Russians, threatened that director by implying their conversations were secretly taped, and, according to press reports relying on anonymous sources, supposedly revealed to those Russians highly classified information.

News like that typically would spell trouble for a president, and indeed, the latest Gallup poll, conducted before the report about the classified information, showed Trump’s approval rating at 38 percent, down from 45 percent at the beginning of his term. By comparison, President Obama’s approval rating was 65 percent at this point.

Arkansas Democrats next November will point to these past couple of weeks as they try to reverse their electoral losses of the past eight years. But they’ll still fight a losing battle because all of this is merely news, which is temporary.

Meanwhile, humans construct permanent worldviews to try to make sense of everything, and we will fight to the death to protect them, particularly when presented with challenging information.

Anyone can discount these events by pointing to FBI Director James Comey’s shortcomings or questioning the news reports’ unidentified sources. The temporary news doesn’t change the fact that Trump affirms the permanent worldviews of many Arkansans, much more so than Democrats at the national level. That’s why he won Arkansas with 60 percent of the vote against a Democratic nominee who was the state’s first lady for 12 years. And that’s why the last poll I saw, by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College, showed him maintaining that support, albeit before the events of the past week.

Research is showing that Americans increasingly are voting along party lines (while increasingly claiming to be independent), starting with the presidential race and then moving down the ticket. So it will not be enough for Arkansas Democrats to merely point to Trump, or try to distinguish themselves from the national party, or proclaim their support for issues such as expanding pre-kindergarten classes. Democrats will have to speak to Arkansans’ worldviews while hoping that national candidates do the same.

And that’s the problem, because national Democratic candidates’ worldviews will reflect their own states and the states the party needs more than Arkansas. Americans see the world very differently on issues like guns, which for many Chicagoans are a way to murder people and for many rural Arkansans a way of life. When the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, recently said all Democrats must support abortion rights, or when Hillary Clinton said the fetus has no rights at all, they reflected their own worldviews and the worldviews of people they know best. But such statements make it a lot harder for Democrats to win the votes of pro-life Arkansans.

For Democrats to make major gains in Arkansas any time soon, they’ll need more than just missteps by Trump. They’ll need the national party’s tone to shift. On economic issues, Democrats must reclaim their status as the party of the common man that the billionaire Trump so effectively stole from them last year running against a candidate painted as corporatist, globalist and elitist. Meanwhile, on social issues, Democratic candidates must better straddle the middle between left and right. Not banishing pro-lifers from the party would be a start.

Affirming the worldviews of social liberals and cultural conservatives is extremely difficult, and many Democrats have no desire to do so. Some in the party believe states like Arkansas should just be written off. But the party has built bridges in the past, including with a candidate whose last name was Clinton. Just not the one whose first name was Hillary.

In this highly divided society, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to speak to more than half of Americans. But for Democrats, Republicans and others, an American majority can be found along the path that the free market is good but hardworking people shouldn’t be left behind; that society needs a safety net but not a hammock; that the military must be strong; and that individual rights must be protected but traditional values not forgotten.

Vocally embracing that worldview opens a lot of doors, while still leaving room for differing views on the temporary news of the day.

Can The Centrist Project pioneer a new way?

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Forty-four percent of Americans are independents, according to Gallup, but only 2 percent of United States senators are, and one of those is Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s really a Democrat. Could a few more independents form a decisive voting bloc that would force Republicans and Democrats to solve problems?

That’s a question Joel Searby and the other founders of The Centrist Project are trying to answer.

Searby ran the 2016 independent presidential campaign of Evan McMullen, a former Republican congressional staff member and ex-CIA officer who won 21 percent of the vote in Utah and 1 percent in Arkansas.

Now, Searby and others with The Centrist Project are trying to recruit and strategically fund credible independent candidates in 2018, with one focus being the U.S. Senate where they could make the most difference.

Congress, you may have noticed, is a partisan mess where the focus is more on scoring political points than solving problems. In the past, the two parties were each a diverse mix of conservatives, liberals and moderates who could work across party lines. But Republicans have moved right while Democrats have moved left, with few left in the center to bridge the gap.

The Centrist Project is trying to step in and find a few states where the climate is best-suited to electing independents to the Senate and elsewhere who are fiscally responsible, practical minded, problem solving, environmentally responsible and socially tolerant.

What does all that mean? Searby said it’s more about an approach to government than a set of ideological beliefs. Regarding being “socially tolerant,” he says he’s a pro-life, pro-family conservative, but the centrist approach means not vilifying the other side or holding other issues hostage.

“That’s how (parties) frame every issue is around enemies and friends, and so we’re just really trying to overcome that,” he said.

Three to five independents in the U.S. Senate could control the balance of power by voting with one party or the other based on the issue, forcing Republicans and Democrats out of their us-versus-them comfort zone. The new independents could work with current independent Sen. Angus King of Maine along with Republicans and Democrats who have independent streaks, including Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia.

Searby said the Project is looking for attractive candidates with the ability to self-fund or attract a potential network of supporters – like McMullin or Greg Orman, the Kansas businessman who ran a strong but ultimately losing campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2014. It is talking with potential Senate candidates in eight states where an independent might have success because of a state’s political climate and size – a small, cheap state like Maine being preferable to a big, expensive one like California. Meanwhile, it’s also targeting other races in an effort to get wins wherever it can.

Arkansas does not have a Senate race in 2018 is not a target, anyway. The state’s rapid transformation from a conservative Democratic state to a Trump-Republican stronghold makes it less likely an independent could emerge here, Searby said.

It’s going to be an uphill climb. Most Americans who tell pollsters they are independents aren’t really. The reality is, whether they admit it or not, most are reliably voting for one party or the other. Moreover, congressional gerrymandering (drawing lines to benefit a party) and Americans’ self-sorting personal decisions have made most districts reliably Republican or Democrat. In other words, we typically live amongst people who vote like us in states that are either red or blue. Meanwhile, the parties have huge, well-funded infrastructures and have written election laws to favor themselves. The system strongly encourages voters to choose one party over the other, even if it’s just to pick the lesser of two evils.

After running McMullin’s long-shot campaign, Searby believes that independents eventually will break through. He said political professionals who are fed up with the two parties seemed open to different kinds of candidates. Members of the media seemed ready to tell a new story.

“The bottom line is, we know we’re pushing against decades of trends and beliefs and partisan work and money, and it’s going to be hard, but just because something’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing, and just because something’s hard doesn’t mean that it’s not going to come,” he said. “We really believe that we are pioneering a new way in American politics.”

Uncivil discourse

Sen. Tom Cotton, center, and Rep. French Hill at the town hall.

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

There’s regular intelligence, and there’s emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize and control your own emotions and to influence the emotions of others. If you’re a member of Congress, you need both, but if you’re a member of Congress participating in a town hall, and you can only be blessed with one, it’d better be emotional intelligence.

I write that paragraph after attending Monday’s 2 p.m. raucous town hall hosted by Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. French Hill, where it didn’t matter what kind of intellectual arguments they made because they weren’t going to change many minds among the 750 attendees – some of whom totally supported them and many of whom were totally opposed. All that mattered was that they kept their cool amongst the booing, jeering, shouted interruptions and personal attacks, and they did.

This is one odd way we do political discourse these days. A Republican congressman – just as Democrats did in 2009 – hosts a town hall for some reason. Advocates alert the like-minded to converge and attack. The member of Congress stands on a stage before a mostly hostile room where audience members take their turns asking questions – most pointed, some insulting, and some better than the ones asked by journalists. Many in the audience cheer. The member of Congress answers – sometimes well, sometimes lamely. Many boo regardless.

That was the case Monday. When Hill said Congress must repeal Obamacare, the crowd reacted with a mixture of loud boos and cheers. Asked if Congress would subpoena President Trump’s tax returns, Cotton said Trump is still being audited, that he has completed a statement of financial interest, and that everyone knows where he does business because he attaches his name to his buildings. Few were convinced. At one point, some audience members chanted, “Lock him up” regarding Trump, an echo of the “Lock her up” chant in the 2016 campaign that Republican politicians unfortunately did little to tame.

The frustration expressed by many in the audience is explainable. All of us have a vision for how this country should look, but, in a democracy of 300 million people, none of us will get our way. Average Americans of all persuasions feel silenced in comparison to big money donors. The system is beset by partisan bickering and is unable to solve problems, even when compromise should be possible. Elected officials inflame the uncivil climate with their own rhetoric. If a politician uses the word “liberal” as an insult, then it should not be surprising that his liberal constituents feel insulted.

Town halls can be useful. They let members of a political minority express themselves in solidarity with kindred spirits. They remind elected officials, who tend to focus on their base of supporters, that some of their constituents feel intensely differently. At their best, they may even expose a member of Congress to new information. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the town halls, but Cotton’s rhetoric on health care has become more balanced after years of his merely criticizing Obamacare. Certainly, I would rather live in a country where average citizens loudly express their disapproval with the authorities than one where such behavior is not tolerated.

But we’ve all learned certain rules for dealing with other people, and those rules shouldn’t change in a town hall setting. Interrupting, shouting insults, putting people on the defensive, speaking without listening – these are not the most effective communication tools. Elected officials, especially polarizing ones like Cotton, know some of their constituents disagree with them, but for every person jeering at them in a town hall, there are hundreds at home or work whose votes cancel theirs out. Some make the calculation that it’s worth being yelled at for an hour or two in order to look like they’re representing everyone. Playing the martyr may even form the basis for a fundraising letter somewhere down the road.

If I were to design these meetings, I’d keep the disagreement and some of the passion, but I’d add a lot more civility to the discourse. I’d have less yelling and jeering, and more shows of hand – importantly, with the expectation that they might actually affect a congressman’s thinking. And I’d have more town halls, period, at accessible times of day.

But then, while all of us have a vision for how this country should look, none of us will get our way. I’ll try to keep my cool about it.

British States of America

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In 1776, the United States declared its independence from the British monarchy. In 2017, the United States government looks like the British Parliament.

In Britain’s parliamentary system, there aren’t really separate legislative and executive branches, and partisanship is designed into the system. Voters elect members of Parliament (MPs) based largely on the MP’s party affiliation. The party winning a majority (or leading a majority coalition, because there are more than two) forms a government. The party’s leading MP becomes prime minister – currently Theresa May, who represents the town of Maidenhead. Other leading MPs administer parts of the government, much like our Cabinet. The other ruling party members, known as “backbenchers,” go along with their leaders on important matters unless they feel compelled to engage in a “backbench rebellion” – enough of which can bring down the government. The minority party, meanwhile, functions as a loyal opposition with limited power as it awaits the next election.

That sounds a lot like how we do things here, now. Last Friday, Justice Neil Gorsuch became the Supreme Court’s latest member based on the wishes of the ruling party, the Republicans. They pushed his nomination through the Senate over the objections of the minority party, the Democrats, who never had any intention but to oppose him. Democrats tried to use one of the minority party’s last remaining tools, the filibuster, where debate continues indefinitely unless ended with a 60-vote majority. In response, Republicans changed the rules to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, a move Democrats had done for lower courts and Cabinet officials in 2013. The changes are permanent.

A couple of weeks earlier in the House of Representatives, the majority party leaders, Speaker Paul Ryan and his lieutenants along with President Donald Trump, attempted to replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with their own concoction, the American Health Care Act. The AHCA was created with little involvement from many rank-and-file Republicans and with absolutely no input from the minority Democrats. It failed as a result of a backbench rebellion when various Republicans said no.

In the past, the next step in the American political system might have been for Republican leaders to work with Democrats to write a bill that could win majority support from the centers of both parties while the wings on the right and left were left out. But we’re a British system now. Such bipartisan cooperation happens less often these days because the centers of the two parties are now far apart and pitted against each other. If Republicans go back to the drawing board, it will be to create something to appease their own backbenchers.

This is happening because of evolving political norms and larger societal forces. The United States is no longer so united. The country whose motto once was the Latin phrase “E pluribus unum” – “out of many, one” – increasingly might be better described by “E unum pluribus.” As a result, American voters, once cussedly independent, increasingly are becoming straight-ticket voters who pull the lever based on the “R” or the “D” by the candidates’ names.

Acting like a parliamentary system would be acceptable if it matched the designs of the Constitution. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The Constitution doesn’t even mention parties, and George Washington warned against them in his farewell address. The struggle for power is supposed to be between the three branches of government, not two political parties. Members of Congress are elected not to follow their party leadership but to serve their own constituents and states.

The United States government can at least function as a parliamentary system when one party controls both the presidency and Congress, as Republicans do now. However, American voters commonly elect one party to control one branch and the other party to control all or part of the other, which can’t happen in Britain. When that happens, as it did from 2011-16, the result is gridlock and, potentially, abuse of power by one of the branches, probably the executive.

In short, American democracy’s informal habits reflect a British system without that system’s formal structure. Either the structure needs to change, or the habits. I’m not sure which would be easier, or even if either would be possible.

Could Democrats become states’ rights party?

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

People tend to think about how things work in relation to how well they’re working for them. That’s why some Democrats, who’ve won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in two of the last five elections, want to get rid of the Electoral College, while many Republicans say it’s a pillar of democracy. If the results had been reversed, so would have been the arguments.

Which leads us to the 10th Amendment, sometimes known as federalism or states’ rights.

The 10th Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” As the national government has grown in recent years, it has been the most ignored amendment outside of the 18th, the one that prohibited the sale of alcohol, which was repealed by the 21st.

Some conservatives have called for bringing back the 10th Amendment, particularly during the last eight years when they didn’t like what the federal government was doing. They say states have different cultures, economies and histories and should be able to enact policies that fit themselves. Moreover, states should have the freedom to be laboratories of democracy, where ideas are subject to experimentation and then can be copied, modified or rejected by other states and the federal government.

Democrats have looked skeptically at returning power to the states, largely because the idea of “states’ rights” has been used to justify racial and other types of discrimination, including in Arkansas. Moreover, moving power to the states would make it harder to enact sweeping programs at the federal level, such as Obamacare.

But now here’s what Democrats, particularly in blue states, are facing. President Trump occupies the White House and leads the executive branch, and he has already nominated a Supreme Court justice who will give conservatives a 5-4 majority. Among the four “liberal” justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 and Stephen Breyer is 78, while the sometimes swing voter, Anthony Kennedy, is 80. By the time Trump leaves office, the Court could have a conservative tilt for decades to come.

Republicans also control the House and the Senate. True, Democrats could take back the Senate in 2018, but they would have to overcome two challenges. First, Republicans tend to do better in midterm elections because their older, more conservative voters vote more often. And second, Democrats have more to lose next year. Of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs, eight are held by Republicans and 23 are held by Democrats, while the other two seats are held by independents who vote with Democrats. Ten Democratic senators are running for re-election in states carried by Trump in 2016.

Democrats also face another problem with the national map: where they live. Democrats tend to cluster in big cities while Republicans are spread across the country, which is why Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million people but lost the election, and why there are more red states than blue ones. Demographic changes – an increasingly more diverse population in many parts of the country – have been expected to counteract this, but they obviously didn’t in 2016.

The result of all this is that some blue states, particularly California, are really getting the short end of the stick, and will continue to do so. With more than 39 million people, California’s population is almost as large as the 22 smallest states combined, including Arkansas. The people of those states have 44 U.S. senators between them, while Californians have two. It’s no wonder California is a donor state, meaning it sends more money to Washington, D.C., then it gets back. And it’s no wonder that there’s a growing movement among Californians to try to secede from the union. In fact, blue states tend to be donor states across the board, while red states tend to be receivers.

So could Democrats, particularly in big blue states like California, embrace returning some power to the states? If states had more power, President Trump would be less important, his secretary of education couldn’t tell people how to run their schools, and blue staters could keep more of their tax dollars.

So we’ll close with two questions. First, will Democrats give the 10th Amendment a try, now that they aren’t in charge of any part of the federal government?

And second, will Republicans turn their backs on the 10th Amendment, now that they are in charge of all of it?