Between Hell and High Water

Can We Tame Gerry’s Salamander?

By Mike Koetting February 27, 2022

My first trip to Europe was in 1971. I was surprised at how many Europeans spoke English and how much more they knew about America than I knew about their countries. One of my more vivid memories was a conversation with a Norwegian family on the train from Bergen to Oslo. They were asking a bunch of questions about how exactly our federalist system worked and somewhere in there I mentioned gerrymandering. They had never heard the term. When I explained, they were simply incredulous. “Why would you do that? It’s so anti-democratic.”

Whatever gerrymandering I was alluding to in 1971 was child’s play compared to what we have now. With big computers, advanced geocoding and the ability to integrate large data sets, it’s become science. Maybe now’s a good time for a recap of what’s going on.

Hmm. What Now?

By Mike Koetting February 8, 2022

I’m back. Sort of.

It has been a struggle for me to come back to the keyboard. Going into the holidays, it had been my plan to continue my series on what it takes to sustain democracy. But I’ve been unable to generate sufficient enthusiasm for an abstract analysis of what sustains democracy when all around me it seems that the actual battle to sustain our democracy is raging—and the results are much too uncertain. And I am totally frustrated by how much seems out of my hands.

How Deep Is the Popular Support for American Democracy?

By Mike Koetting December 9, 2021

In my last post, I asserted that democracy needed two things to be sustained: deep popular support for the idea of democracy and an appropriate governing vehicle to make it work. Today’s post considers the status of popular support for democracy in America.

By support for the idea of democracy, I mean something that’s both simple and complicated. It starts with some understanding that democracy is inherently imperfect. Since it is fundamentally a system for mediating a series of compromises among different values and solutions, there will always be plenty of reasons to be unhappy. Supporting democracy, then, is simply accepting that your side doesn’t always win and that you will, more or less happily, go along with the majority—even if that means accepting some limits on your individual preferences from time to time.

What It Takes to Sustain Democracy

Mike Koetting November 23, 2021

What It Takes for Democracy

The ongoing news has me feeling like a passenger on a plane that has been hijacked—unable to really control the outcome, but with the strong sense this is going to end badly.

But who are these hijackers?

For many of us, the immediate response is “the Republicans.” Fair enough. But I don’t think that is a sufficient or complete answer.

What Swing Voters Might Be Thinking

By Mike Koetting November 14, 2021

In the old days—back when there was ticket-splitting and public health and infrastructure were bipartisan issues—swing voters were generally conceived of as people whose political ideology was explicitly centrist and who would consider the circumstances of a particular election and make a calculated choice. I am not sure that’s a particularly illuminating description of today’s “swing voters”. Nevertheless, they remain as important as ever—maybe more important.

As we all know, the country is bitterly polarized and this polarization is not even from place to place. Some places are securely red and some resolutely blue. When it comes to Senate seats and electoral votes, there are not that many places likely to in fact “swing.” California and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere. Given the evenness in the split of givens (by our political architecture not the population), the small number of places that are fluid become exponentially more important, and within those places, the relatively small number of swing-voters will control the outcome.

This is Democracy at work….or not

By Mike Koetting October 31, 2021

I am infuriated with the barrage of media comments about Democrats “in disarray” or “being divided”. Hello, boys and girls! This is democracy. People stake out different policy positions, argue about them, and make compromises. It doesn’t happen overnight and hardly anyone winds up totally happy. The issues in the infrastructure package are of mind-boggling complexity and in degree they are all interrelated.

This is what all the people who have been clamoring for “bipartisan” legislation have wanted: debate and measured compromises around policies to make them a better reflection of the varied will and needs of the populace.

Okay, it’s true this is all within what’s nominally one party—although, as the debates have made clear, these poles represent a very large spectrum of American political thought. In that sense, it is the closest to “bipartisan” that America can now get because the Republican Party has simply opted out of policy discussions. They automatically oppose anything that Democrats support and have ceased making policy proposals of their own. Waiting for a meaningful proposal to come from Republicans is waiting to hear the sound of one hand clapping.

We Need Something Different to Face Pending Environmental Crisis

By Mike Koetting October 17, 2021

Upcoming news will no doubt be full of the imminent big deal Glasgow Climate Summit. But that’s just the political deal. The real deal was the UN report on climate change that was issued in August. It wouldn’t be totally surprising if you don’t remember it since it seems there is a new UN report on climate every couple of weeks that are all variations of the same theme. But suppose you really took note back then. What do you hope for?

Most fundamentally, we should all hope that the 234 scientists who participated in this report got it substantially wrong. They would all admit there are certain margins for error and they would be relieved to be found out wrong.

But maybe you’ve got kids and grandkids and you are worried the reports’ authors might be substantially right about the speed of the trajectory. What then do you hope for?

“Affordability” of Infrastructure Bills Is a Smokescreen

By Mike Koetting September 29, 2021

I assume all readers of this blog are familiar with the current state of play in the massive infrastructure expenditures proposed by the Biden administration. In very short, the Senate agreed on a bi-partisan “hard” infrastructure bill with the idea, among Democrats at least, that a larger ($3.5T at proposal) “softer” infrastructure bill be adopted by House Democrats and be passed by reconciliation in the Senate to avoid a filibuster.

At present, both are stalled in the House over the size and contents of the total package and, as really a subsidiary issue, the process for moving forward. The stall in the House is caused primarily by a small group of centrist Democrats, reinforced by the specific threats of Senators Manchin and Sinema to not support a reconciliation bill that is $3.5T should it get to the Senate. Their argument, made by Joe Manchin in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, is that we can’t afford this much infrastructure.

While I’m reluctant to make iron-clad pronouncements about the future, I think the odds are pretty good that they are just wrong. Also, since it doesn’t require as much future gazing, I think the odds are even better they are not being precisely honest about their motivations, perhaps to themselves as well as the voters.

The Vaccine Story Shows How Unmoored Governance Has Become from Concept

By Mike Koetting September 19, 2021

Among other things, the ongoing controversy over the public health response to Covid serves as a kind of political x-ray machine illuminating the gap between our mental image of how our government works and how it actually works, something that can get lost in the trivia of day-to-day politics.

Can We Control Covid Without Controlling Capitalism?

By Mike Koetting September 2, 2021

With the announcement that a third shot (or second for J & J recipients) may be desirable as a booster—arguably running ahead of the science on the issue–many Americans are already jockeying to get one. Understandable. I expect I will get one soon myself. We all want to avoid Covid and the delta variant is scary.

But, at the same time, we also need to consider context. And the key contextual fact is this: unless the virus is brought under control on a global basis, there will continue to be waves of deadly variants. There will be some regardless. The only absolute is the lack of absolutes. But we are talking about speed, size and odds, things that make a big difference in how world-wide reality plays out.