Power and the Two Parties in American Policy and Politics

By Matt Duell, ITF Founding Member and Electoral Team Co-Lead

“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” — The Dark Knight

“It’s hard to put a leash on a dog once you’ve put a crown on its head.” — Game of Thrones

These are all variations on the same cultural myth — that using power is dangerous. That any attempt to do good risks an inevitable slide towards evil. That we must be literally superhuman to avoid this temptation, and that no real human being can be trusted to govern. It makes for a good story, but the extent to which most of the American public has internalized the message is unhealthy and dangerous — and, as I’ll explain, actually facilitates the drift into corruption that we’re so scared of.

How we got here

First, I want to talk about the structure of power in the United States: what it looks like, how to gain it, how to exercise it. The founders, in a combination of fear of kingly tyranny and the desire to prevent treating Black people like humans, split our government into pieces. The federal government is split into four — the executive, two branches of Congress, and the judiciary. Each branch is carefully structured to make it impossible (or at least incredibly difficult) for one branch to gain total control over the others; each has unique powers, and shares some powers with other branches.

Each branch set up in competition with the others, expected to jealously guard their own power. The entire federal government is also set up to compete with state governments. Each state government is also segmented the same as the federal government (except Nebraska, the only state with a unicameral legislature). In turn, those state governments compete with local governments, which are also split apart. The entire system, top to bottom, is designed to prevent the accumulation and abuse of power by a single individual.

By developing a system where no individual can change policy on their own, we end up requiring large groups of elected officials to work together to change policy. In this system, the power to change policy is granted by bringing enough like-minded voters together — in coalition — to elect a majority of representatives across multiple branches of government. In other words, power is granted by democratic representation. At least, it should be.

There are two fundamentally different forms of power in the US government. The first is the power to pass policy, and the second is the power to prevent policy from being passed. In many other democracies, those powers are the same; holding the majority in government allows you to accomplish either goal. In the United States, however, we fear not only autocratic governance, but democratic governance as well.

Largely in concession to slaveholding southern states, we built our constitution and our political mythology around the idea that a majority of the country driving policy change is a scary thing. We created a series of minority protections:

• The Senate gives less populated states an amplified voice in Congress, and ensures that unpopular governments are difficult to replace on a timely schedule.
• The 3/5 compromise granted states with large populations of slaves more representatives in the House.
• The Electoral College determines the president of the country by using the combined number of House representatives and Senators to determine the number of votes each state gets. This number, of course, is amplified by both the existence of the Senate and the 3/5 compromise.

At the country’s founding, we were thoroughly anti-democratic. Though we’ve had periods of democratic reform, a number of anti-democratic institutions still exist — some intentionally, like political gerrymandering (drawing districts in politically-motivated ways to influence the results), and some unintentionally (the creation of the filibuster was an accident caused by Aaron Burr trying to get rid of redundant rules in the Senate, for example).

Where we are now

The result of these anti-democratic practices is that a relatively small minority of voters can prevent the will of the majority from being enacted. This obstruction often leads not to compromise and moderation, but to no change at all — currently-oppressed communities remain marginalized, new technological advances and businesses continue unregulated, the needs of the country go unmet. This is enough of a problem on its own, but there’s another issue worth discussing — the political parties in the US engage with power in fundamentally different ways.

If Democrats and Republicans both took turns in the majority and the minority, and each tried to use the majority to govern by passing a series of policies and the minority to obstruct just the worst of the opposite party’s ideas, our system might not look as bad. It would have problems, but it wouldn’t seem as completely broken. Unfortunately, that’s not what we have. Instead, only Democrats are interested in the work of running a functional government.

Republicans, on the other hand, have built an entire ideology around dismantling government itself. In this special case, majority and minority power, the power to pass policy and the power to obstruct, now serve the same purpose — to prevent government action. Their ability to seek and hold the majorities necessary to dismantle government services also becomes easier; their message is “the government is terrible — elect us and we’ll get rid of it.” Obstructing progress with minority power first makes their primary election message more palatable.

The way out

Most people don’t assign blame to the minority party for government’s inability to solve problems. All most voters know is that the government is not doing what they want it to. Then they wonder why it exists at all. The policies Republicans do pass with majority power are often anti-democratic reforms — passing voter ID laws, installing friendly judges, requiring ex-felons to pay court fees to vote, attempting to criminalize voter registration drives.

These reforms further cement their ability to rule from the minority, to undermine the entire project of democracy. Further, because they only need a strong majority to gain and hold the power they need to fulfill their project, they have no problem breaking democratic norms around compromise, outreach, and persuasion. They single-mindedly pursue their goals because they no longer need to persuade a majority of voters to win.

The 2020 election presents a real opportunity for Democrats. In a direct rebuke to Trump and Republicans, recent polling suggests that Biden is the favorite to win the presidency. The House is likely to continue being held by Democrats, and even the Senate is within reach. Democrats will be in a position to decide what to do with their regained majority power. One of the most tempting, but ultimately destructive, options is to re-institute the rules and norms broken by Republicans, to attempt to prevent the further abuse of power. One example of this would be re-instating the Senate filibuster for judicial nominations.

Doing so would play directly into the mythology I’ve discussed in this essay, as well as further entrench the anti-democratic changes Republicans have made. That would only make the job of governing harder. Instead, to fight back against an ideology which exists only to obstruct and dismantle one must pursue, unfailingly, a pro-democracy agenda. Doing so requires a mindset that does not flinch at the positive use of majority power. Majority power, instilled by winning free and fair elections, can and should be used for good purposes. The majority voice in any democracy should be empowered.

At the outset, Democrats will need to remove one of the most blatant anti-democratic forces in the US — the legislative filibuster in the Senate. It is also the easiest of these forces to remove, requiring only the strong leadership of the new majority leader. Doing that will give the majority the power they rightfully deserve in a democracy. From there, ensuring free and fair elections in the US must be one of the primary goals of the new administration. HR-1, passed in 2019 by the House Democratic majority, is a good start — the new House and Senate must take it up again. However, it is not enough — further solutions will be needed to solve the decades-long project of Republican sabotage.

The next administration will have a lot to do in the short term, from getting us out of a pandemic and a recession to restoring respect of the US to the world stage. Yet if they lose sight of the long game, every single turn in power will be spent cleaning up Republican messes — until they finally succeed at getting rid of democracy entirely and installing an autocrat. Based on their record with Trump, that future is coming soon, and we need to act now.

All images from unsplash.com