Democracy and the Republican party

Donald Trump is on his way to losing the Presidential election by about six million votes. That means the Republican Party has won the popular vote for President only one time since 1988. With that number of losses you would think that the Party would want to re-look at its agenda and consider reforms to rebuild and expand its coalition. After all, Parties want to win, and to do so they need to listen to the electorate and adapt their messages accordingly. Yet that will not happen with the Republican Party. They can keep their agenda and meet their goals even while losing the majority of voters. They have no incentive to change. Let’s look at why this is the case.

The framers of our Constitution built into the document some undemocratic principles in order to protect minority rights. These principles have created incentives for Republicans to reject change. They can win the Presidency despite getting fewer votes. They can also win the Senate while receiving fewer votes nationally. The same is true of the House, and they can control the balance of state legislatures despite getting fewer votes.

Over the past few decades our politics has become sharply divided by density. Democrats dominate the cities, and Republicans dominate rural areas. That has given the Republicans an electoral advantage and they have used that advantage to stack the rules in their favor. Take the Electoral College as an example. Andrew Prokof has noted that a roughly 50,000 vote swing in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin would have given Donald Trump a second term despite losing the popular vote by about six million votes. To reliably win the Electoral College, Democrats must win the popular vote by at least 3-4 percentage points.

The same is true in the Senate. It is likely, when all the votes are counted, that Democrats will win more Senate votes in the last three Senate cycles but never control the Chamber. If Democrats lose the two Senate run-off seats in Georgia, they will again be in the minority but will represent approximately 20 million more people than the Senate Republican majority. Democrats need to win at least 6-7% more votes than Republicans in order to reliably control this Chamber.

The Senate Republican majority can use the filibuster to thwart any Democratic initiatives. Their Senate majority also allows them to approve federal judges who ignore voting rights issues. The Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to intervene in extreme gerrymandering cases, citing those as State issues. They have also struck down key parts of the 1963 Voting Rights Act. This has resulted in extreme voter suppression during recent elections.

The Republicans have apparently retained control of many of the same state legislatures that they controlled in 2010. This will allow them to re-draw congressional districts during the 2020 redistricting process. The result will be numerous congressional seats that will be gerrymandered to favor Republican candidates even in states where Democrats are in the majority.

Donald Trump is not in the White House, refusing to accept the results of the election, because he won the popular vote in 2016. He is there because he won the Electoral College. Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader because he resides over an extremely undemocratic body. Yet both have been and continue to be at the center of our political life.

In some ways it is understandable why Republicans are reluctant to change. Change means disappointing their loyal base which is brutally hard. So why go through that trauma if the electoral system protects you from the pain of electoral loss? Republicans can still win even if they cannot win the majority of voters.

These perverse electoral incentives have profoundly dangerous consequences for democracy and for America. A party that needs to win a voter majority would not nominate a Donald Trump and back his erratic, outrageous, and incompetent style of governance. They also would not be backing his outrageous claims of voter fraud. A party that needs to win national majorities to control the House and Senate would not keep trying to take away health care from millions of Americans while giving tax cuts to the rich.

The Republican Party has adopted these extreme candidates, dangerous strategies, and unpopular agendas because they can win without the majority of voters. For the future, this probably means gridlock where the minority will block action on important issues like the pandemic, health care, climate change, income inequality, and economic recovery just to name a few. None of this bodes well for our democracy and democratic governance.

R. Tom Deloe is a resident of Cumberland Township.