Congress and the True Supermajority
If moderates from both political parties got together we’d have a government that could actually get things done
The tail is wagging the dog in each political party these days. The so-called “squad,” those committed, sometimes in-your-face members of Congress that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib (with additions Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman more recently) have an outsize influence among Democrats in the House of Representatives, while former president Donald Trump continues to hold sway over large swaths of the Republican Party in both chambers.
Yet these are tail ends of a normal distribution, i.e., the Bell Curve, and this should not be happening. In the case of AOC and company, their influence exists because they function like a minor third party in a parliamentary system, not an historically two-party system such as in America. Despite their small numbers they effectively hold a veto power over policy going forward; if you want their support you must give them what they want or lose their critical support.
In the case of Trump it may seem harder to argue that he’s on the fringe of his party, but go back to 2016 and it becomes clear. He won the Republican nod to be that party’s standard bearer in what Barack Obama rightly called a “circular firing squad.” While all the other candidates were busy shooting each other down he survived. But he was nothing more than a real estate mogul and TV reality show host.
Of course, it may be argued that on both the Left and Right these two tails simply are more in tune with larger segments of the electorate than other elected leaders. Surveys certainly show that the public’s approval ratings of Congress hovers at around 30 percent or less. (See Gallup poll historical trends here.) Think how many cars Toyota would sell if only 30 percent of consumers thought their cars were any good.
But this does not change the fact that the Bell Curve usually holds in life, from average height to rolling the dice, and deviation from a normal distribution often signals a failure in the system, such as when a carmaker’s transmissions begin breaking down faster than expected. Most people in Congress, then, still should be in the middle (supporting a rational health care plan; committed to reducing national debt; closing tax loopholes; protecting our borders; combating climate change – these are not simply my personal preferences but represent a veritable mix of reasonable Liberal and Conservative policies). Being in the middle does not mean dead center but only that they should be within the first standard deviation, which is 68 percent. So, some legislators would still be left-of-center and some would be-right-of-center. But, statistically speaking, they would be in the middle.
And this is 68 Senators and 295 Representatives who should be in the middle. That strong middle could pass any legislation it desired while truly representing the will of most Americans. It would be true bipartisanship; it would be a true coalition.
Why don’t we see such a coalition in action, though? It’s debatable, but I see the political parties themselves getting in the way, including arcane rules that give people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi far too much power. Party affiliation is becoming as useless in identifying the quality of our leaders as skin color is in determining the character of a human being, or gender in deciding who’s qualified for this or that job. All most Americans want is for their elected representatives to vote in the people’s interest.
Now, it may be the case that we just don’t have a normal distribution in Congress. Things do fall apart. It’s easier to argue that most Democratic legislators are not as far Left as “the squad” than it is to argue that most Republicans are not merely afraid of Donald Trump, but may sincerely believe in him.
If so – if an expected and normal distribution does not hold in Congress – then maybe we really are in deep doo-doo.
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