Two-Party System: Third Parties Need Not Apply

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on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, everybody.
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Welcome to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. My name
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is Jon Stewart. I am your host of the podcast.
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We will be enjoying a conversation today concerning... Guys, I'm
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just trying to... So when I come into the podcast,
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I really don't know what level of energy we're talking,
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of course. It's The Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart.
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I'm Jon Stewart. I've got the Uber producer team, Brittany
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Mamedovic and Lauren Walker with me. And We have been
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discussing what is the appropriate level of energy to bring
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to a podcast. On the show, I'm usually shot out
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of a cannon because I got the Biden cocktail. They
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shoot right into my ass or the Trump cocktail to
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make me ramble. But either way, I'm fired up. So today,
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the show is going to air. We're taping it the
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day before, but the show is airing before. It's going
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to be right before the debates, the presidential debates. So
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you may be listening online. to this podcast prior to
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watching debates, or you may be listening to this podcast
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in your disaster bunker after listening to those debates, because
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I'm assuming the bar has been set relatively low. If
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you're watching the news, if both men make it through
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these 90 minutes without either passing away or starting a war,
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we will consider it a grand success for the country
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and for the democracy. But the big controversy, of course,
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is what are the criteria so that a third party
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can't make it in there? Because this election, obviously, people
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talk about as the one where there is real dissatisfaction
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with the choices. The choices are clear. I don't think
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it's a question of whether or not it's clear. The
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two candidates couldn't be more different as individuals. The things
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that they want to do for the country couldn't be
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more different. For instance, if you're interested in any way
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in women's right to choose or these kinds of other issues. Well,
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there's no question. You've got one party that literally talking
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about not letting people have IVF. So the issues are clear.
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The candidates' personalities are clear. Their felony records are clear.
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But there is a great dissatisfaction with that. So RFK Jr.
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is now considered kind of the leading third party candidate
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because he polls quite well. I think, in a majority
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of those things. You've got Jill Stein, you've got Cornel West,
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you've got a Libertarian Party. So there's probably a few
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others out there. But the real question is, why don't
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third parties work? Why don't they really ever get a
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foothold in a country? Is it just because there's always
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a level of dissatisfaction with the two parties and the
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two choices that we have? Is there always a feeling of, oh,
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you know what I'm going to vote for? None of
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the above. So whatever that means, and that feeling doesn't last.
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You know, we've had some real challenges. Ross Perot got
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almost 20% of the vote. George Wallace, people forget about this.
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George Wallace, who was the former governor of Alabama and
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a segregationist, he won five states in 1968 as a
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third party candidate, even though he only got, I think,
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13% of the vote or something along those lines. But
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the point being, why the hell We're a consumerist country. No,
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we expect choice. We have limeridas. I don't even, I'm
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not even sure what a limerida, but we add lime
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to almost everything and pretend that it's a different product.
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It's not. Yeah. It's the same product. So that's going
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to be the point of today's show. Why is it
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so hard in a country that is yearning for more
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choices to get a foothold with a third party in
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Is it a structural problem in our constitution? Is it
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a corruption problem in that the two parties are a
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duopoly working to keep everybody else out? We've got two
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great experts to talk about that. Oh, not to segue
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too abruptly. We also put out, where did we put out, Lauren?
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Yeah, we put a call out asking people for some
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things they'd like us to cover. And Brittany has gathered
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those together for us.
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What do you got?
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What were they saying?
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Well, so first of all, my family wrote in. They
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have a really big issue with saying the word fuck.
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With you saying it?
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Yeah. Really mad at me about it, John.
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For saying fuck?
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For saying fuck.
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So I've worked with Brittany now. How many? We've worked
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together for many years.
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Yeah.
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Potty mouth. On air and off. Lauren is wearing headphones. Yeah.
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Not.
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As a way of equalizing sound as to protect her ears.
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Are you talking to me?
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It's to protect her ears from the vicious sailor, the
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vicious dock worker.
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Totally.
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No, we got some really great answers, honestly. And I
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think they're topics we're really excited about. We have gerrymandering,
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the housing crisis in America, long COVID, education.
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We're going to, we're going to hit all this. You know,
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what would be great too, is to get back into
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wall street fuckery. There's so much wall street fuckering going on.
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I'd love to check back in on like the MMTM
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T T P bump, all that GameStop. I'd love to
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check back in on a payment for order flow, all
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the things that we tried to talk about, uh, prior, uh,
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the long COVID community. That's a really interesting one because, uh,
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there are from what I'm understanding. And I, unfortunately I don't,
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I'm not very well versed in all of it, but
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like millions, we're talking about millions of people that have
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residual effects from getting these infections and have been debilitated.
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I mean, that's, there's no question there.
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I feel like there's been a steady stream of reporting
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on this, but I don't know, there's not like a
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great understanding. So people may have these symptoms and not
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even understand.
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What it is.
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Right.
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And it doesn't seem to be, you know, uh, Progress
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in research, I assume, is glacially slow. And who knows
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if they're even, you know, studying the correct thing. So
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that'll be really interesting to get into.
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John, we had one more question and we feel like
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you're the perfect person to answer this.
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Yes.
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Somebody wrote in and wants to know, why are the
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Hamptons so great?
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Oh, because they're not? Because the Hamptons are basically, you
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know all the people you fucking hate the most in
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Manhattan when you have to go into Manhattan? Imagine them
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in shorts. Imagine them in shorts and Crocs fucking clogging
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up the line at the cappuccino store while you're just
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waiting in there to get a coffee. And meanwhile, it
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took you five hours to get out there and you
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want a bowl of guacamole and it's $ 88. What? Why
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are they so great? Who wrote in they're so great?
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The Jersey Shore is great. Jersey Shore is great. The
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Hamptons are a... a shit show Jersey Shore is soft
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custard and slices and men with tattoos quietly singing Bon
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Jovi to themselves as they try and find their cars
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in the Lifetime Gym parking lot that's what we're talking
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about hey Which brings me to the point, next week
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is July 4th. I hope everybody has a great July 4th.
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We are going to be off. I hope you go
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down the shore. And when I say go down the shore,
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I mean the Jersey Shore. Lauren, are you a shore?
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Do you go Jersey Shore? Where do you lie? Where
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do you stand?
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John, do you see how pale I am?
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No, all right. I feel you. I can't do something.
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Yeah, I'm an indoor kid. All right.
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Well, enough for fumpering. Let's get to the guests in
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talking about our third-party system and why we don't get there. Okay,
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so we're going to get to our guest with us today.
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Very exciting. Professors. We're not fucking around today, people. We
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are bringing you professors, men of knowledge. Max Stearns, law professor,
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University of Maryland Carey School of Law, author of Parliamentary America,
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The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy,
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and author Sam Rosenfeld, also an associate professor of political
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science at Colgate University, and the co-author with Daniel Schlossman
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of The Hollow Parties, The Many Pasts, and disordered present
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of American party politics. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.
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We very much appreciate it. Happy to be here. There
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is no clarion call of the American electorate more profound
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than both choices suck. I'm going to vote for the
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lesser of two evils, but why don't we have better choices?
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America is a consumerist country. We are known for having
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31 different flavors of Coke and only two candidates, yet
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third party candidates almost never get traction in American politics.
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Why is that? Max Stearns, I'll start with you.
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Well, thank you again for having me on.
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So this traces to what I call the third party dilemma.
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We have a two party system. It's not what the
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framers of the Constitution thought they set up. They thought
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that they set up what I call a rock, paper,
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scissors constitution. They thought they were going to be the
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endless rival games among the three branches of government set
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up in the constitution, the legislature.
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They thought the battle in American governance was going to
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be the checks and balance of the Congress, the executive branch,
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and the judicial branch. They were not considering that it
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was going to be a battle of political ideologies.
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Indeed.
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And they thought that the system that they set up,
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and we can add the layer of federalism, would break
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and control what they called the violence of factions.
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They thought that they.
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Had come up with a system to avoid permanently entrenched
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factions or precursors to what we think of today as parties.
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But they set.
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In motion through certain decisions that they made an inevitable
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path toward a two-party system. And I think the really
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important thing for voters to understand is it's not a
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problem of our individual will.
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It's not like we have a.
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Problem because we're not voting for third parties. Our institutions
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do not create space for third parties to play a
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significant beneficial role. Instead, it punishes voters when they vote
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for third parties rather than rewards them. And the question becomes,
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how do we restructure our institutions to change that?
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Sam, why is that? Why are we set up for
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a binary? Is the Electoral College the big villain in
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all this because it's the winner-take-all system, a third party?
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I mean, Ross Perot, with the Reform Party, got, I think,
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20% of the votes. Almost 20%, yeah. Almost 20% of
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the vote. Zero Electoral College votes and disappeared and became
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a not very consequential party.
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Yeah, I mean, the Electoral College catalyzes and exacerbates what
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I believe the institutions.
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Don't, Sam, don't. You know, I'm not a professor. So
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if you're going to start throwing and catalyzing and exacerbating,
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I'm just going to have to leave.
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I withdraw. It makes it worse.
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Objection sustained!
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You know, there's no Electoral College in Congress, in state legislatures, governorships, etc.,
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and yet you still have two-party dominance all across American
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history in those places as well. The core thing, I mean,
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this goes back, there was a political scientist, a Frenchman
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named Maurice Duverger.
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Oh, Duverger. I'm so sick of that guy.
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Mid-20th century, and he put forth what political scientists call
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a law, Duverger's law, that says if you have a
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system of electoral rules in which you have single-member districts,
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so one person occupies... a particular geographical unit, and you
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decide on who that person is by plurality voting, not runoffs,
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not proportionality. It's whoever gets the most votes wins. Well,
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it's whoever gets the most votes wins.
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Right.
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That combination, plurality voting and single-member districts, tends to lead to,
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this is why it's not really a law, it's just
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a kind of a rule of thumb, tends to lead
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to stable two-party systems and makes it very hard for...
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I'll withdraw equilibrium, multi-party systems that can continue to be competitive.
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And it's because of, as Max is alluding to, whoever
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gets the most votes wins and there's only one winner
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immediately makes everybody need to be strategic in their decisions.
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You get afraid that what you're going to do, completely
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logically afraid, that you will end up potentially spoiling the
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race and allowing for your least favorite candidate to win.
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That's what everybody coordinates.
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Isn't that always the big criticism of a third party vote?
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So there is always a clamoring in American politics for
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this other choice. I would call it none of the above.
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And different people represent none of the above. Right now
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it's RFK Jr. or it was Ralph Nader or Jill
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Stein or Cornel West. Somebody is none of the above.
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Sometimes they represent really narrow interests. Sometimes it is Just
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I think in the case of maybe Ross Perot, this
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feeling that the government had no common sense, as Ross
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Perot would say, you know, it doesn't make sense. You
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could take two chickens and put them on a pig's back,
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but that doesn't give you a barn. Like he would
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just say crazy things. But, you know, there's this idea
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that that protest somehow represents something that is missing in
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American politics, whether it be pragmatism or common sense. but
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it never has legs. And even if they got in,
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let's say the protest vote got in, who would they
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govern with? Wouldn't they just have to join with whatever
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the binary is in Congress?
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So that's right.
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The intuition in our politics is that in order to win,
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you have to keep your side intact and fracture the opposition.
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Both sides see that they have to keep their sides intact,
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fracture the opposition. That leads to two teams, which we
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call parties. So that dynamic is really deeply embedded. It's
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the opposite of what the framers thought they did and
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what they intended, but it's hardwired into our system. And
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simply wanting to support a third party doesn't make that
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go away. The problem is that when you vote for
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a third party, if it's to the left of the
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Democrat or to the right of the Republican, it's a spoiler.
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I came up with a term for my book, a randomizer.
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If you've got somebody like RFK Jr., who looks like
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he's going to pull votes from both sides, then it's
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a randomizer. And it renders the choice of president really
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a kind of random outcome because you don't know in
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a three-way race how that's going to play out.
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Play out.
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I have to interrupt very quickly. I think one of
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you is about to be arrested.
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Sorry.
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I'm in the heart of Washington, D.C.
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Here.
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Oh, Sam is about to get hauled away for discussing
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this very delicate thing. But Max, then, if the idea
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is that's what it comes to, why doesn't the two-party
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system then function better? If the idea is that a
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third party is anachronistic for the way that this system
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was designed, even though the framers maybe didn't intend it
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that way. And they were, I don't know if you
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guys know this, gods amongst men. I don't know if
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you know they were infallible. But let's say they didn't
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do that. Well, then why doesn't the two-party system function
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in a way that doesn't entice people to these third-party options?
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Yeah, so I know you're joking when you say God's
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amongst men, but I do want to say, because I
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know you're joking, and I assume most.
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Of you are.
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I am joking.
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No, no, no, I know that.
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I am absolutely joking.
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I know that, but I want to make sure everybody understands.
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One of the things that we have to get over
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is American exceptionalism. The idea that there was a group
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of geniuses who happened to meet at a particular time
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and place who solved all the problems of democracy.
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That's not true. They actually messed up in pretty significant ways.
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The system that they constructed isn't the system that we have,
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or at least the ones that they thought they constructed.
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And so it's really important to recognize that.
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Did they recognize that they had screwed it up?
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They did very early on.
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I mean, you can look at the fact that George
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Washington's farewell address talks about partisanship.
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You can see that Thomas Jefferson.
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They became partisan. I mean, the very people who created
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an anti-party constitution formed the first party system in the
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United States, first two-party party system in the 1790s.
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By the way, my favorite part of it is they
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didn't even wait. No, it was them. Washington gave the
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speech about, don't do this, don't do this. And four
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00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:08.460
years later, they were like, all right, we're going to
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do it.
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00:20:09.569 --> 00:20:12.089
He had already done it. It was like, yeah, anyway.
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Anyway, tell us, what did they already do?
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00:20:16.750 --> 00:20:21.859
His famous speech against partisanship says a lot of prescient things.
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It'll invite, it'll make us vulnerable to foreign powers manipulating
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our democracy, etc. But it was also, it was a
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00:20:31.299 --> 00:20:34.880
partisan speech in disguise. It was Alexander Hamilton kind of
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00:20:35.599 --> 00:20:40.480
turning the shiv, trying to make Jeffersonians sound anti-American and
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opponents of the Constitution.
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Whoa.
368
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Yeah, they were doing it all in the 1790s.
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That's deep. So Washington, in his sort of above-it-all savior
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of the nation, founder of the nation, and by the way,
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all I know about this is from watching Hamilton, so
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everything that I say is from apparently everybody rhymed back
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in the day. But Washington famously... above it all, was
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actually a partisan speech elevating the Federalists. Absolutely.
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Because there was no... In spite of themselves, they became
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party builders because they disagreed with each other about governance.
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And it turned out, as Max was saying, they were
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wrong about.
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00:21:30.609 --> 00:21:34.210
They thought that they could create a system... to avoid
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the mischiefs of faction, to avoid parties.
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And to avoid dictatorships and to avoid libertarians.
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00:21:41.269 --> 00:21:45.170
But in fact, there are no liberal democracies anywhere that
383
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are not, in essential ways, organized by political parties. And
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00:21:50.789 --> 00:21:53.730
they found that that was the case right away. But
385
00:21:54.130 --> 00:21:57.420
there was nothing in the 1790s, there was no legitimacy
386
00:21:57.460 --> 00:22:06.009
around the idea of permanent... partial, conflicting opposition teams in
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00:22:06.309 --> 00:22:08.569
government that would rotate in and out of power. And
388
00:22:08.609 --> 00:22:11.410
so if you make a speech about how bad parties are,
389
00:22:12.250 --> 00:22:13.950
that was in part a way of trying to say
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the people who are opposed to our government are, in fact,
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against the country, against the Constitution. They're enemies of the republic.
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00:22:21.220 --> 00:22:23.569
And one thing I'll just add to that, the first
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implicit acknowledgement that the framers got it wrong in the
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Constitution itself is the 12th Amendment, which for the first
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00:22:30.009 --> 00:22:32.819
time lets a president and vice president run together on
396
00:22:32.839 --> 00:22:33.380
a slate.
397
00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:36.240
Otherwise, you ended up with this weird shotgun marriage where.
398
00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:39.799
You've got a Federalist president, Adams, and a Democratic Republican
399
00:22:39.859 --> 00:22:42.279
vice president, Jefferson, who hate each other until they love
400
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:45.009
each other later on in life, but end up running
401
00:22:45.049 --> 00:22:46.390
against each other. Yeah.
402
00:22:46.809 --> 00:22:49.029
Can I tell you, there is nothing better for me
403
00:22:49.380 --> 00:22:52.039
than watching professors amen each other.
404
00:22:52.259 --> 00:22:54.640
Mm-hmm.
405
00:22:54.660 --> 00:22:56.980
Max is in there like, the first of the 12th Amendment,
406
00:22:57.039 --> 00:22:58.559
and Sam is like, mm.
407
00:22:58.619 --> 00:23:00.680
Yeah, my glasses are fogging up.
408
00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:03.660
I'm so excited. You get them, Max. But also, isn't
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00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:06.559
the first thing that all men are created equal, and
410
00:23:06.619 --> 00:23:09.339
they have a provision where some men are three-fifths of
411
00:23:09.380 --> 00:23:12.680
a man? Like, isn't that also somewhat of acknowledgement of
412
00:23:12.980 --> 00:23:16.559
we're created equal, and then literally the math is different
413
00:23:16.599 --> 00:23:18.339
than that within the Constitution?
414
00:23:19.180 --> 00:23:19.980
Oh, absolutely.
415
00:23:20.029 --> 00:23:23.349
I mean, that's one of three causes that, without mentioning slavery,
416
00:23:23.430 --> 00:23:27.750
condone and institutionalize it. You know, so this idea that
417
00:23:27.769 --> 00:23:30.410
these people were sort of demigods, I mean, it is
418
00:23:30.450 --> 00:23:33.990
deeply troublesome to treat them as though they were carrying
419
00:23:34.049 --> 00:23:35.609
tablets down from Sinai.
420
00:23:35.650 --> 00:23:36.170
They weren't.
421
00:23:36.450 --> 00:23:39.740
They were men drafting a document. They were subject to
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the limitations of knowledge of the day, and they got
423
00:23:41.980 --> 00:23:42.720
things wrong.
424
00:23:43.059 --> 00:23:45.980
There's a way of putting a positive gloss on that. Right.
425
00:23:46.869 --> 00:23:49.200
In part, they were not gods. They were fallible men.
426
00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:54.640
But also, they were victims of being political innovators. Like,
427
00:23:54.700 --> 00:24:00.400
we have the oldest continuing formal democratic constitution in the world.
428
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:04.309
And a lot of what they were developing was kind
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00:24:04.349 --> 00:24:10.130
of sui generis. Things like proportional representation systems hadn't been
430
00:24:10.170 --> 00:24:12.230
invented yet, hadn't been developed.
431
00:24:13.109 --> 00:24:16.359
Why did they decide then... Was there a conversation about
432
00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:19.400
a parliamentary system? Was there a conversation about, you know,
433
00:24:19.420 --> 00:24:23.750
or they just really thought, no, we've devised a system
434
00:24:24.029 --> 00:24:30.230
where the different warring factions are the institutions of government,
435
00:24:30.619 --> 00:24:32.579
not the ideologies of individuals.
436
00:24:33.509 --> 00:24:36.680
There is some possibility that we could have gone closer
437
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:39.099
to a parliamentary system, but the fact is they really
438
00:24:39.160 --> 00:24:42.480
did think that they were going to break this notion
439
00:24:42.500 --> 00:24:45.869
of factions and parties.
440
00:24:46.609 --> 00:24:52.549
Madison, in his Virginia plan, Madison's original proposal involved the
441
00:24:52.609 --> 00:24:55.450
president being selected by Congress. I mean, there's other things
442
00:24:55.779 --> 00:24:58.200
in that scheme as well, but that in and of
443
00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:03.180
itself And it was somewhat– I mean wasn't the election
444
00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:04.640
of Jefferson selected by Congress?
445
00:25:04.680 --> 00:25:05.880
Wasn't that how it went down?
446
00:25:06.119 --> 00:25:09.329
Well, that's because the Electoral College failed for the first
447
00:25:09.369 --> 00:25:13.690
of two times that sent the election to Congress. And
448
00:25:14.329 --> 00:25:16.890
you ended up with this strange result. And here's the
449
00:25:16.930 --> 00:25:21.559
great scene from Hamilton where Alexander Hamilton actually endorses Thomas
450
00:25:22.019 --> 00:25:26.660
Jefferson over Aaron Byrne and supposedly said, it's a great line,
451
00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:28.680
he said, I'd rather have a person with the wrong
452
00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:30.359
principles than a person with no principles.
453
00:25:30.380 --> 00:25:33.940
No principles, right, right. Boom, come on. The room where
454
00:25:34.029 --> 00:25:36.650
it happened. I'm going to try not to do the
455
00:25:36.670 --> 00:25:44.460
song again. All right. We will be right back. Mint Mobile.
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480
00:27:12.259 --> 00:27:15.019
when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot.
481
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Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
482
00:27:21.339 --> 00:27:30.529
I really hope they speed that up. So now that
483
00:27:30.549 --> 00:27:35.650
we're back, they create the system. It immediately devolves into partisanship.
484
00:27:36.109 --> 00:27:40.900
And at that point, it seems like now the parties
485
00:27:41.019 --> 00:27:45.720
are there. Is it that the parties have colluded to
486
00:27:45.940 --> 00:27:50.819
keep this as a binary and to keep out the
487
00:27:50.900 --> 00:27:55.180
ability for reform parties or populist parties or other things
488
00:27:55.559 --> 00:28:00.789
to infiltrate them? Or is the system as designed make
489
00:28:00.869 --> 00:28:05.680
it nearly impossible for us to spread beyond those two parties?
490
00:28:05.819 --> 00:28:07.880
Or is it a combination of both?
491
00:28:08.819 --> 00:28:13.359
I would say there are these, Max will talk about
492
00:28:13.839 --> 00:28:17.490
other kind of formal institutions that bake it in to
493
00:28:17.529 --> 00:28:24.750
a certain extent. The parties do, elected officials, electoral rules
494
00:28:24.789 --> 00:28:27.730
are controlled by states and state legislatures. They control things
495
00:28:27.849 --> 00:28:31.470
like how many signatures you need to get access to
496
00:28:31.490 --> 00:28:34.250
a ballot line. And you can make that more or
497
00:28:34.289 --> 00:28:37.690
less onerous. And certainly, once you have kind of two
498
00:28:37.730 --> 00:28:41.019
major parties, you can see, and it varies state by state,
499
00:28:41.339 --> 00:28:45.460
they make it more easy or harder for others to
500
00:28:45.480 --> 00:28:45.839
break in.
501
00:28:45.980 --> 00:28:48.119
Even now, to even get on the debate stage, you
502
00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:54.180
need 15% in four independent polls, and you need to
503
00:28:54.220 --> 00:28:58.319
be registered so that you could get 270 electoral votes.
504
00:28:58.359 --> 00:29:00.700
It's an incredibly high bar. Absolutely.
505
00:29:00.740 --> 00:29:07.490
And then the flip side, though, is American parties are
506
00:29:07.710 --> 00:29:14.410
an entrenched duopoly, but they are also, as organizations, incredibly permeable.
507
00:29:15.529 --> 00:29:18.720
They change a lot. It's very.
508
00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:22.900
Easy. Sometimes they become a family organization. Exactly. I mean,
509
00:29:22.980 --> 00:29:25.569
you're seeing it right now. You just put your daughter-in-law
510
00:29:25.619 --> 00:29:29.089
in there and it becomes an arm of your real
511
00:29:29.150 --> 00:29:29.769
estate empire.
512
00:29:29.849 --> 00:29:31.880
Then you can see, but lots of people who aren't
513
00:29:31.880 --> 00:29:34.880
in Trump's family kind of acting as if they are uh,
514
00:29:34.930 --> 00:29:38.039
kind of his bodyguards, his, his crew. But it's just
515
00:29:38.059 --> 00:29:42.759
to say the major parties are flexible organizations that, uh,
516
00:29:43.059 --> 00:29:47.029
time and time again across American history have adopted some
517
00:29:47.109 --> 00:29:50.710
of the, uh, priorities, the energies, the movements that had
518
00:29:50.789 --> 00:29:53.579
powered third party movements, um, that.
519
00:29:53.460 --> 00:29:55.079
Keep them- They co-opt them. Yeah, they keep- Or they
520
00:29:55.099 --> 00:29:55.619
subsume them.
521
00:29:55.980 --> 00:29:59.579
Yeah, but they do, it's not a conspiracy to snuff
522
00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:02.500
out all of the actual substance of the third parties.
523
00:30:02.519 --> 00:30:05.559
The third parties have huge substantive effects, even though politically
524
00:30:05.619 --> 00:30:06.839
and electorally they don't last.
525
00:30:07.319 --> 00:30:09.480
But it is, going back to your question though, there
526
00:30:09.539 --> 00:30:12.000
is a kind of, sometimes the parties fight each other
527
00:30:12.059 --> 00:30:16.359
over institutions, but sometimes they agree on institutional outcomes because
528
00:30:16.380 --> 00:30:16.960
they have a sort of.
529
00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:18.579
Symbiotic relationship, right?
530
00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.079
Would they benefit at the expense of third parties? And
531
00:30:23.099 --> 00:30:25.599
we see that in certain Supreme Court cases. I don't
532
00:30:25.619 --> 00:30:27.559
want to bore you with the details of it, but
533
00:30:27.599 --> 00:30:31.369
there are some Supreme Court cases that have really disallowed
534
00:30:31.509 --> 00:30:35.349
third parties to challenge their way into being more effective competitors.
535
00:30:35.690 --> 00:30:37.730
And one sort of central lesson of our history is
536
00:30:38.089 --> 00:30:40.789
the last place to count on for fixing our democracy
537
00:30:40.829 --> 00:30:42.970
is the Supreme Court. That's not going to be the
538
00:30:43.029 --> 00:30:46.609
institution that saves our democracy. We have to go back
539
00:30:46.650 --> 00:30:48.069
to some founding principles.
540
00:30:48.109 --> 00:30:49.670
You know what? That's when I'm going to go preach.
541
00:30:50.579 --> 00:30:53.650
But clearly they're not the institution that's going to save it.
542
00:30:53.839 --> 00:30:57.589
How many of us can afford Supreme Court justices? I mean,
543
00:30:58.130 --> 00:31:00.069
you know, maybe I could get a couple of them, but,
544
00:31:00.109 --> 00:31:00.369
you know.
545
00:31:00.390 --> 00:31:03.589
Well, and on this presidential immunity, I mean, we're going
546
00:31:03.609 --> 00:31:06.869
to find out in the next day just how much
547
00:31:06.890 --> 00:31:07.990
you can count on the Supreme Court.
548
00:31:19.559 --> 00:31:22.849
The idea that the president is a king is the
549
00:31:22.910 --> 00:31:25.650
whole reason we fought that war in the first place.
550
00:31:26.269 --> 00:31:26.509
Yeah.
551
00:31:26.569 --> 00:31:27.369
Well, right.
552
00:31:27.470 --> 00:31:29.730
And one thing that we need to.
553
00:31:29.910 --> 00:31:32.289
Sam talked about the fact that we have the longest
554
00:31:32.369 --> 00:31:36.109
constitution of any nation in the world, which is certainly true.
555
00:31:36.450 --> 00:31:38.369
But one thing I encourage people to think about is
556
00:31:38.430 --> 00:31:42.180
if you're thinking about the brilliance or wisdom of any system,
557
00:31:42.220 --> 00:31:45.519
like an engineering system, business model, musical genre, would you say,
558
00:31:45.559 --> 00:31:48.799
if I can find a single outlier that's lasted longer
559
00:31:48.839 --> 00:31:50.160
than others, that must be the best?
560
00:31:50.220 --> 00:31:51.720
Or would you say... That a.
561
00:31:51.740 --> 00:31:54.940
System that's been replicated again and again and again, benignly
562
00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:58.500
adapted to different situations, that's the test of a really
563
00:31:58.619 --> 00:32:02.059
wise and sound system. On the replication test, which I
564
00:32:02.099 --> 00:32:05.480
think is the one that virtually anybody would pick, our
565
00:32:05.579 --> 00:32:12.190
system absolutely fails. We've exported democracy around the globe, but
566
00:32:12.230 --> 00:32:17.750
we have never once successfully exported two-party presidentialism. That is
567
00:32:17.809 --> 00:32:20.750
a model on which we are alone on the stage
568
00:32:20.950 --> 00:32:25.529
for good reason. Most systems that are considered successful democracies
569
00:32:26.089 --> 00:32:32.079
have proportional representation and coalition governance, multi-party governance in a
570
00:32:32.140 --> 00:32:34.759
proportional representation system.
571
00:32:34.779 --> 00:32:38.099
So you're suggesting that you're talking about, I'm assuming, the
572
00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:41.640
European model or the way that Well, there's more.
573
00:32:41.539 --> 00:32:43.740
Than one model, so we need to be careful about that.
574
00:32:43.759 --> 00:32:48.960
It's not as if parliamentary captures all the nuances across systems.
575
00:32:49.299 --> 00:32:50.420
One of the things I try to do in my
576
00:32:50.460 --> 00:32:53.180
book is take readers on a virtual world tour. I
577
00:32:53.180 --> 00:32:55.970
take them to seven countries, not just limited to Europe.
578
00:32:56.289 --> 00:32:58.890
But the central lesson of that tour, there's two central
579
00:32:58.930 --> 00:33:02.259
lessons of the tour. There are two threats to democracy,
580
00:33:02.480 --> 00:33:07.880
two few parties like the US, too many parties, hyper-fractalized parties.
581
00:33:08.059 --> 00:33:10.809
Too many parties gets you things like Nazi Germany.
582
00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:11.609
Absolutely.
583
00:33:11.769 --> 00:33:14.410
Where a very fringe party with, I don't know, 27%
584
00:33:14.410 --> 00:33:16.829
of the vote can suddenly take over and do all
585
00:33:16.849 --> 00:33:18.049
those things. Or Brexit. Absolutely.
586
00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:19.210
Absolutely.
587
00:33:19.529 --> 00:33:21.549
So you need to come up with what most political
588
00:33:21.569 --> 00:33:24.230
scientists think the sweet spot's somewhere between three to four
589
00:33:24.269 --> 00:33:26.079
at the low end, seven to eight at the high end.
590
00:33:26.089 --> 00:33:28.190
So who's got that? Who would you point to and say,
591
00:33:28.210 --> 00:33:29.009
there's a success?
592
00:33:29.289 --> 00:33:32.000
Germany has a system, although they've adapted it a year
593
00:33:32.059 --> 00:33:35.900
ago to make it a little bit different than it
594
00:33:35.940 --> 00:33:40.880
had been. But really post-World War II Germany is based
595
00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:44.410
on what's called mixed member proportionality. Sorry that it's kind
596
00:33:44.430 --> 00:33:47.710
of a Mixed member- Mixed member proportionality.
597
00:33:47.730 --> 00:33:52.150
I'm sure there's a German word for that. That probably
598
00:33:52.170 --> 00:33:53.829
takes a minute and a half to say.
599
00:33:55.670 --> 00:33:56.990
Exactly, exactly.
600
00:33:57.039 --> 00:34:00.039
But the idea is that, so they have a two
601
00:34:00.099 --> 00:34:03.220
chamber legislature like we do, the Bundesrat's roughly equivalent to
602
00:34:03.259 --> 00:34:07.819
the Senate, the Bundestag's roughly equivalent to the House. And
603
00:34:08.079 --> 00:34:11.199
what you do is when you're voting for the lower chamber,
604
00:34:11.219 --> 00:34:14.550
you cast two ballots, not one. One is what they
605
00:34:14.570 --> 00:34:17.190
call a constituency seat election, which is just like we
606
00:34:17.210 --> 00:34:19.050
have now, our district elections.
607
00:34:19.489 --> 00:34:22.579
And one is by party. So what they do is
608
00:34:22.860 --> 00:34:24.739
they use the party.
609
00:34:24.420 --> 00:34:30.059
Ballots nationally to allocate party proportionality for the nation as
610
00:34:30.099 --> 00:34:33.320
a whole. And the consequence of that party ballot is
611
00:34:33.679 --> 00:34:36.659
no single party is likely to get a majority. And
612
00:34:36.699 --> 00:34:40.460
that means parties have to come together to actually form
613
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:44.179
a government. I'm proposing a simpler system than that, but
614
00:34:44.199 --> 00:34:45.599
a variation on that.
615
00:34:45.619 --> 00:34:45.840
Right.
616
00:34:46.079 --> 00:34:47.719
And I think this is one of the vulnerabilities that
617
00:34:47.739 --> 00:34:50.829
Trump exposed of our democracy is that The democracy is
618
00:34:50.869 --> 00:34:56.210
held together actually by these hundreds and thousands of administration
619
00:34:56.269 --> 00:34:59.630
positions that do things like certify elections, hold elections. And
620
00:34:59.690 --> 00:35:03.539
those positions are held by, I'm going to say partisans,
621
00:35:03.800 --> 00:35:06.980
but not ideologues. And what they're trying to do is
622
00:35:07.380 --> 00:35:12.860
replace a partisan system with an ideologue system so that
623
00:35:13.420 --> 00:35:15.949
it supercharges the kinds of.
624
00:35:17.929 --> 00:35:18.469
Unfair.
625
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:23.139
manipulations of the system to keep yourselves in power. And
626
00:35:23.159 --> 00:35:24.570
the way I look at it in our system, and Sam,
627
00:35:24.590 --> 00:35:27.730
maybe you can talk about this, is, for instance, you
628
00:35:27.750 --> 00:35:29.789
look at certain states, like Arizona, that's like kind of
629
00:35:29.809 --> 00:35:33.070
a purple state. But if you look at their state legislature,
630
00:35:33.269 --> 00:35:39.780
it's supercharged. It's highly, you know, super, super partisan. It's
631
00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:43.420
got a super majority for one party that clearly doesn't
632
00:35:43.480 --> 00:35:47.880
represent what the people are. Like, We've got this two-party
633
00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:51.460
system that has been so, it's been gamed out of
634
00:35:51.539 --> 00:35:58.730
effectiveness and gamed for pure power purpose. Is that a
635
00:35:58.829 --> 00:35:59.769
fair statement, Sam?
636
00:36:00.349 --> 00:36:07.159
I think the polarized extremism, particularly of Republican state party
637
00:36:07.219 --> 00:36:10.659
organizations in a lot of these places, and it's most
638
00:36:10.719 --> 00:36:15.119
dramatic precisely in swing states. In red states, they can
639
00:36:15.179 --> 00:36:17.659
kind of, ease off the gas pedal a little bit,
640
00:36:17.699 --> 00:36:22.199
but it's supercharged in Wisconsin and North Carolina, uh, in Arizona. Um,
641
00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:28.050
it's in part a reflection of the weakness of state
642
00:36:28.090 --> 00:36:32.909
party organizations and the kind of, um, party organizations at
643
00:36:33.090 --> 00:36:36.139
other points in time and in particular places, the United
644
00:36:36.159 --> 00:36:40.599
States have been rooted civic organizations that have a real kind.
645
00:36:40.440 --> 00:36:44.110
Of, um, A foundation of the community. Yeah, exactly.
646
00:36:44.329 --> 00:36:46.869
Both at the state level and then state parties were
647
00:36:46.909 --> 00:36:51.530
big actors, particularly in an era in which they controlled
648
00:36:51.550 --> 00:36:53.820
delegations at conventions and they had kind of clout in
649
00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:57.619
the national level. And as that recedes, as a broader
650
00:36:57.679 --> 00:37:03.380
story of the decline of face-to-face civic organizations entirely, what
651
00:37:03.400 --> 00:37:06.989
you get is party organizations at the state level and
652
00:37:07.289 --> 00:37:10.809
local level that are usually just kind of empty shells.
653
00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:18.989
they become backwaters for local activists, ideologues, these days spun
654
00:37:19.050 --> 00:37:20.690
up around national issues.
655
00:37:20.989 --> 00:37:23.650
So all politics are national. All politics are national. And
656
00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:26.530
the states are the meth labs of democracy. They're no
657
00:37:26.550 --> 00:37:27.800
longer the labs of democracy.
658
00:37:27.900 --> 00:37:31.079
The Arizona Republican Party is a great case in point
659
00:37:31.219 --> 00:37:35.800
how insanely Trumpy it's gotten and kind of personalized around
660
00:37:35.840 --> 00:37:38.590
whatever Trump spun up about. That's what the small number
661
00:37:38.650 --> 00:37:42.309
of local activists who control these state parties these days
662
00:37:43.050 --> 00:37:46.679
care about as well. And, you know, they'll censure elected
663
00:37:46.699 --> 00:37:49.280
officials in their own party if they run afoul of Trump.
664
00:37:49.320 --> 00:37:52.719
Sure, I think Oklahoma censured Lankford, who was their senator,
665
00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:58.940
who was an unbelievably consistent hardline conservative. But because he
666
00:37:58.980 --> 00:38:01.969
had proposed a border bill that Trump didn't want, they
667
00:38:02.010 --> 00:38:04.630
were like, that's it. You're done here.
668
00:38:04.829 --> 00:38:07.630
And it's like part of the problem is in... The
669
00:38:07.710 --> 00:38:13.150
politics nationalizing so much people's identities as political actors being
670
00:38:13.230 --> 00:38:17.619
so caught up in national kind of culture war conflicts
671
00:38:18.360 --> 00:38:21.159
means that there's all these there's subnational issues and policy
672
00:38:21.199 --> 00:38:24.099
conflicts that could give rise to much more flexible and
673
00:38:24.179 --> 00:38:28.260
fluid and have in the past coalitions. But in part,
674
00:38:28.280 --> 00:38:31.869
it's a function of organizational decay at the subnational level
675
00:38:31.909 --> 00:38:33.730
that you get such polarized states.
676
00:38:34.280 --> 00:38:37.349
So basically the ethos is we've got to own people
677
00:38:37.510 --> 00:38:39.829
as opposed to govern. But Max, I want to ask you,
678
00:38:40.269 --> 00:38:43.590
so the two-party system then is not the best methodology.
679
00:38:43.710 --> 00:38:47.269
American exceptionalism is wrong, even when you look at our
680
00:38:47.329 --> 00:38:51.280
political system being the most effective around the world. But
681
00:38:51.449 --> 00:38:55.300
what have we done to that two-party system to make
682
00:38:55.360 --> 00:38:59.920
it even less effective? And how have we hollowed out?
683
00:39:00.280 --> 00:39:03.190
Is it a hollowing out of our the way we
684
00:39:03.409 --> 00:39:06.530
select our delegates and our people? What have we done
685
00:39:06.550 --> 00:39:09.659
to this two-party system that's made it so ineffective for
686
00:39:10.070 --> 00:39:10.940
actual governance?
687
00:39:11.139 --> 00:39:14.719
Yeah, so one thing that's happened, and just a slight
688
00:39:15.019 --> 00:39:18.880
difference with Sam on this, is after Barack Obama's first
689
00:39:18.960 --> 00:39:24.090
election in 2008, Republican operatives figured out that for pennies
690
00:39:24.130 --> 00:39:27.059
on the dollar, they could throw money at below the
691
00:39:27.179 --> 00:39:32.480
radar state races in blue and purple states. And basically,
692
00:39:32.519 --> 00:39:34.880
if they turned enough of those states red, because.
693
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:37.440
You're talking about Secretary of State and- No, no, no.
694
00:39:37.539 --> 00:39:40.280
I'm talking about General Assembly races.
695
00:39:40.860 --> 00:39:45.190
And because they draw the congressional maps for the U.S.
696
00:39:45.210 --> 00:39:50.949
House of Representatives, they could actually turn their delegations red.
697
00:39:51.070 --> 00:39:54.269
And this strategy, which David Daley, he wrote a book
698
00:39:54.289 --> 00:39:57.090
called Rat F'd. It's really fascinating.
699
00:39:57.130 --> 00:39:57.809
How dare he?
700
00:39:57.989 --> 00:40:00.800
That is the title. And he tells the story, this
701
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:05.519
audacious story of a plan called red mapping, where essentially
702
00:40:05.579 --> 00:40:10.019
the idea is to hyper-gerrymander these maps so that you
703
00:40:10.059 --> 00:40:12.179
get entrenched Republican control.
704
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:12.219
Of the House.
705
00:40:12.260 --> 00:40:14.159
They thought they had a lock on it for 30 years.
706
00:40:14.219 --> 00:40:17.119
They didn't. It flipped back in 2019.
707
00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:20.199
But when you combine red mapping and blue mapping, here's
708
00:40:20.219 --> 00:40:22.679
what we can say about the House of Representatives. It
709
00:40:22.760 --> 00:40:25.550
is no longer the case that we are choosing our
710
00:40:25.610 --> 00:40:30.250
representatives through our votes. Our representatives are choosing us through
711
00:40:30.349 --> 00:40:34.829
hyper-gerrymandered districts. And the consequence of that is to push
712
00:40:34.929 --> 00:40:38.829
the centers of the two parties increasingly far apart. And
713
00:40:38.849 --> 00:40:40.889
if you go and if you look at the Pew
714
00:40:40.949 --> 00:40:43.590
Research data, they have a graphic, they actually have it,
715
00:40:43.590 --> 00:40:46.639
and you can actually see it like a cartoon moving.
716
00:40:47.019 --> 00:40:51.329
From 1994 to 2017, you had had the parties with
717
00:40:51.449 --> 00:40:53.690
some degree of significant overlap. If you go back to
718
00:40:53.710 --> 00:40:57.369
the 50s, there was much greater overlap. But the centers
719
00:40:57.409 --> 00:41:01.150
of those two parties have grown further and further apart.
720
00:41:01.849 --> 00:41:06.829
One cause is hyper-partisan gerrymandering. Another cause is the transformation
721
00:41:06.849 --> 00:41:09.289
of the way that we receive news and news-like content
722
00:41:09.309 --> 00:41:12.210
through social media. And this has created this synergistic loop
723
00:41:12.230 --> 00:41:13.110
that is literally- The.
724
00:41:13.070 --> 00:41:17.090
Media is now incentivized for those extremities as well. I mean,
725
00:41:17.110 --> 00:41:21.219
it's incentivized for- engagement and engagement is only possible if
726
00:41:21.239 --> 00:41:24.539
people are scared or angry. But I would ask you guys,
727
00:41:25.199 --> 00:41:28.539
when you talk about red mapping, it doesn't take much
728
00:41:28.579 --> 00:41:31.659
of a push to get there because going back to, again,
729
00:41:32.099 --> 00:41:34.940
bringing us back around to the founders, didn't the way
730
00:41:34.980 --> 00:41:39.780
that they designed this as a compromise for slave owners
731
00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:43.050
in the South who did not have the kinds of populations,
732
00:41:43.289 --> 00:41:46.909
you know, how do you create a democratic system where
733
00:41:46.969 --> 00:41:52.809
people's voices matter? When one side of the country really
734
00:41:52.829 --> 00:41:56.409
doesn't have that many people who are considered people. So
735
00:41:56.449 --> 00:42:01.099
what you do is you overweight their representation. And that
736
00:42:01.139 --> 00:42:03.610
has carried us through. I mean, the Senate, for God's sakes,
737
00:42:03.949 --> 00:42:07.369
is affirmative action. for rural whites. I mean, there's no
738
00:42:07.429 --> 00:42:11.199
question that they're overrepresented in the Senate.
739
00:42:11.219 --> 00:42:11.550
Absolutely true.
740
00:42:11.590 --> 00:42:15.679
The Senate is the single most anti-democratic institution of any
741
00:42:15.739 --> 00:42:18.039
institution in a country that claims.
742
00:42:17.800 --> 00:42:21.000
To be a democracy. If you add up the population of.
743
00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:24.949
The 21 lowest population states, so they get 42% of
744
00:42:24.989 --> 00:42:28.289
the Senate, it equals California, which gets 2%.
745
00:42:27.769 --> 00:42:29.949
Of the Senate. By the way, I think that's the
746
00:42:29.989 --> 00:42:32.090
right call. I don't know if you've I don't know
747
00:42:32.110 --> 00:42:35.269
if you've been out there, but it's probably the right call.
748
00:42:35.289 --> 00:42:37.130
A lot of weed shops. A lot of weed shops.
749
00:42:37.750 --> 00:42:50.309
All right. We will be right back. We are back.
750
00:42:50.550 --> 00:42:53.409
It's egregious. The problem is that fixing the Senate won't
751
00:42:53.489 --> 00:42:54.409
fix our problem.
752
00:42:55.030 --> 00:42:57.289
And the other problem is to even fix any of
753
00:42:57.329 --> 00:43:00.550
those systems, whether it's, you know, there's the direct vote
754
00:43:00.570 --> 00:43:04.429
or there's the changes in the electoral system need 75%
755
00:43:04.429 --> 00:43:07.789
of the states and nobody is going to cede power.
756
00:43:08.030 --> 00:43:11.170
When you have a system that's designed more for minority rule,
757
00:43:11.650 --> 00:43:13.110
who is going to cede that power?
758
00:43:13.550 --> 00:43:15.340
I do just want to kind of point out.
759
00:43:15.659 --> 00:43:18.679
Do we have a professor fight brewing? Are you going
760
00:43:18.699 --> 00:43:21.480
to come? Well, I will say that.
761
00:43:21.539 --> 00:43:24.840
If you look at the United States Senate, it's gerrymandered
762
00:43:24.900 --> 00:43:28.369
for white rural voters. That's correct. But it's also a
763
00:43:28.409 --> 00:43:33.210
polarized chamber. And there is no gerrymandering in the Senate.
764
00:43:33.329 --> 00:43:34.849
You know what I mean? Which is just to say-
765
00:43:34.869 --> 00:43:36.110
But it is.
766
00:43:36.070 --> 00:43:38.349
Not as polarized as the House. It's true. I can
767
00:43:38.389 --> 00:43:40.050
tell you from spending time in the Senate and spending
768
00:43:40.070 --> 00:43:41.969
time in the House, the House is the wild west.
769
00:43:42.150 --> 00:43:42.429
Of course.
770
00:43:42.449 --> 00:43:44.639
You walk into some of those offices and you're just like,
771
00:43:44.969 --> 00:43:47.079
holy shit, that guy's just a bumper sticker.
772
00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:50.000
And Witness Landry, as we were just talking about, he's
773
00:43:50.039 --> 00:43:53.340
now one of his own party. But the same trends of,
774
00:43:53.719 --> 00:43:59.599
there was over the course of the 20th century, very deep,
775
00:43:59.989 --> 00:44:04.050
ideological divisions within the parties, especially in the Democratic Party.
776
00:44:04.110 --> 00:44:08.860
You had the most conservative white supremacists in the country
777
00:44:09.139 --> 00:44:14.199
were a pivotal faction in the New Deal Democratic Party.
778
00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:18.139
And then there were ideological differences in the Republican Party
779
00:44:18.179 --> 00:44:23.010
as well that fostered an era in which people rightly
780
00:44:23.090 --> 00:44:26.389
complained about Tweedledee and Tweedledum. You don't have a clear choice.
781
00:44:27.659 --> 00:44:33.420
and a lot of bipartisan lawmaking, a bipartisan kind of culture.
782
00:44:34.820 --> 00:44:38.480
People complain about that for, I think, good, small-D democratic reasons.
783
00:44:38.500 --> 00:44:41.239
But people now say, we do have a clear choice.
784
00:44:41.800 --> 00:44:46.239
We just don't particularly think either choice represents our interests.
785
00:44:46.260 --> 00:44:49.699
I mean, the two parties could not be more different.
786
00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:56.860
There is no question a clear, well-delineated choice between Not
787
00:44:56.920 --> 00:45:02.960
just party and issues, but personalities. But people still are
788
00:45:03.059 --> 00:45:05.639
dissatisfied with those two choices.
789
00:45:05.969 --> 00:45:07.190
Well, I think that's right.
790
00:45:07.230 --> 00:45:10.690
I mean, I think that underneath these two parties, we
791
00:45:10.750 --> 00:45:14.289
really naturally have roughly five to six parties.
792
00:45:14.840 --> 00:45:16.320
So the Republicans probably.
793
00:45:16.340 --> 00:45:18.199
You're talking about how the, and those are represented like
794
00:45:18.460 --> 00:45:19.280
Freedom Caucus.
795
00:45:19.480 --> 00:45:21.139
Yeah, I mean, well, another way to think of it
796
00:45:21.159 --> 00:45:23.559
is if we actually had the system that I advocate,
797
00:45:23.579 --> 00:45:27.530
which would generate a true multi-party system, the Republicans would
798
00:45:27.570 --> 00:45:32.070
probably fracture to the traditional conservatives or GOP and kind
799
00:45:32.110 --> 00:45:35.909
of the MAGA or America First Party. The Democrats would
800
00:45:35.949 --> 00:45:40.889
split between traditional center-left Democrats and progressives and There probably
801
00:45:40.949 --> 00:45:44.110
is a Green Party. There might be a Libertarian Party.
802
00:45:44.570 --> 00:45:46.190
So we naturally have six parties.
803
00:45:46.210 --> 00:45:49.750
But how do you limit it? Because wouldn't then everybody say, well,
804
00:45:49.869 --> 00:45:53.010
I'm a little bit at odds with the Libertarian Party,
805
00:45:53.110 --> 00:45:56.159
so I'm going to start the Green Libertarians party.
806
00:45:56.449 --> 00:45:59.050
So the way you limit it is to devise a
807
00:45:59.210 --> 00:46:02.969
system that generates neither too few parties like the US
808
00:46:03.030 --> 00:46:07.010
and the UK, nor too many parties. Like, for example,
809
00:46:07.050 --> 00:46:09.010
I know in Sam's book, he talks about the Netherlands,
810
00:46:09.050 --> 00:46:09.949
which is a perfectly.
811
00:46:09.690 --> 00:46:11.670
Good example of that. Brazil is a good example of that.
812
00:46:12.050 --> 00:46:13.300
France is a good example of that.
813
00:46:13.340 --> 00:46:14.780
You're saying too many. Those are too many.
814
00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:16.480
So you've got the risks on both sides. You want
815
00:46:16.519 --> 00:46:18.260
to hit that sweet spot.
816
00:46:18.840 --> 00:46:21.019
And mixed member proportionality does that.
817
00:46:21.099 --> 00:46:22.239
The reason is because.
818
00:46:22.840 --> 00:46:26.900
Explain mixed-member proportionality again so that I understand the sweet spot.
819
00:46:26.920 --> 00:46:31.349
So you vote in a constituency election, one ballot, and
820
00:46:31.389 --> 00:46:35.130
you vote by party. So let's take Washington State. Washington
821
00:46:35.170 --> 00:46:39.309
has 10 seats in the House of Representatives. My scheme
822
00:46:39.369 --> 00:46:42.599
would double it. The House of Representatives double the size,
823
00:46:43.159 --> 00:46:44.820
and we use mixed-member proportionality.
824
00:46:45.880 --> 00:46:47.139
They would get 20 seats.
825
00:46:47.179 --> 00:46:48.199
They would get 20 seats.
826
00:46:48.360 --> 00:46:52.079
So imagine in the district seating, they get five Democrats
827
00:46:52.119 --> 00:46:56.989
and five Republicans. And imagine that in the party proportional votes,
828
00:46:57.630 --> 00:47:01.889
four parties each get 25%. We'll just arbitrarily say progressives,
829
00:47:01.969 --> 00:47:06.090
the Democrats, the Republicans, and America First all get 25%.
830
00:47:06.090 --> 00:47:08.929
Now what happens is the Democrats and Republicans each got
831
00:47:08.969 --> 00:47:12.639
five seats already. That is 25% out of 20, right?
832
00:47:12.989 --> 00:47:15.940
So now the progressives and America First each pick up
833
00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:20.500
five seats. So now Washington State sends to Washington, D.C.,
834
00:47:20.980 --> 00:47:24.440
a delegation with five of each of those parties. And
835
00:47:24.480 --> 00:47:27.699
I propose we do this on a state-by-state basis. That's
836
00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:30.199
the first of my three electoral reform amendments.
837
00:47:30.510 --> 00:47:33.289
How many representatives would we have in Congress?
838
00:47:33.329 --> 00:47:36.360
We would double the size of the House, which is
839
00:47:36.460 --> 00:47:39.179
for political buy-in.
840
00:47:39.179 --> 00:47:40.099
870? 870. This is for.
841
00:47:40.019 --> 00:47:43.699
Political buy-in purposes, which I can explain.
842
00:47:43.719 --> 00:47:45.829
So we need to build a bigger building.
843
00:47:46.210 --> 00:47:51.090
Yeah, if the worst problem the United States faces is
844
00:47:51.150 --> 00:47:53.010
better architecture for the U.S.
845
00:47:53.050 --> 00:47:55.949
Capitol, I'll take it. Right, right, right.
846
00:47:55.969 --> 00:47:57.789
I think we can all agree that, like, let that
847
00:47:57.869 --> 00:47:59.210
be the most serious concern.
848
00:47:59.230 --> 00:48:02.989
Now, Sam, so I would say that's probably not your solution.
849
00:48:03.010 --> 00:48:05.570
So where would you land on how we fix this
850
00:48:05.610 --> 00:48:06.030
kind of thing?
851
00:48:06.110 --> 00:48:09.550
Well, look, I think people should go out and buy
852
00:48:09.690 --> 00:48:11.849
Max's book and read it. They should buy my book.
853
00:48:11.909 --> 00:48:14.719
I'll second that. Because.
854
00:48:14.929 --> 00:48:15.469
I'll third it.
855
00:48:16.210 --> 00:48:20.429
Because precisely on this exceptionalism, it's like Americans just don't
856
00:48:21.159 --> 00:48:26.179
realize that there are democracies that work really well all
857
00:48:26.239 --> 00:48:29.440
over the world. And they have huge variations in how
858
00:48:29.480 --> 00:48:31.619
their systems work. And none of them look like ours.
859
00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:32.940
And people should take a look.
860
00:48:33.619 --> 00:48:34.300
People should read that.
861
00:48:34.860 --> 00:48:38.940
Max is spreading the good news about parliamentary systems. I
862
00:48:39.860 --> 00:48:45.820
don't foresee... the path to this happening anytime soon.
863
00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:48.159
You believe it could be positive, but impossible.
864
00:48:48.469 --> 00:48:52.510
Well, yeah, I mean, and so I do think- You look.
865
00:48:52.389 --> 00:48:55.130
At how to fix or how to ameliorate what we
866
00:48:55.170 --> 00:48:57.570
have now. Okay, so what would you do then within that?
867
00:48:58.869 --> 00:49:01.469
It is in part also by writing books and trying
868
00:49:01.510 --> 00:49:03.809
to spread the good news. In this point about just
869
00:49:03.829 --> 00:49:08.949
like people should recognize that political parties as institutions, which
870
00:49:09.070 --> 00:49:15.280
everyone loves to denigrate, including- the parties themselves are in
871
00:49:15.340 --> 00:49:20.409
fact kind of the essential cornerstone of all democracies everywhere
872
00:49:20.469 --> 00:49:22.380
and always have been. And that what you need to
873
00:49:22.429 --> 00:49:26.000
do is if you are a politically engaged person, if
874
00:49:26.039 --> 00:49:29.739
you want to, if you're motivated to follow politics, to
875
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:33.800
go out and do things, you should conduct your political
876
00:49:33.920 --> 00:49:38.159
activism with a frame of mind of how am I
877
00:49:38.840 --> 00:49:45.130
participating in, in a constructive way, building up effective party organizations.
878
00:49:45.190 --> 00:49:46.429
That usually means.
879
00:49:46.449 --> 00:49:48.969
But that would be, I mean, that is like the
880
00:49:48.989 --> 00:49:51.639
Tea Party. That is, I mean, that is what they did.
881
00:49:51.880 --> 00:49:54.659
I wouldn't necessarily say that was productive for governance, but
882
00:49:54.699 --> 00:49:57.920
it's certainly what you're talking about. But beyond the idea
883
00:49:57.940 --> 00:50:01.739
of us being better people or better citizens, it feels like,
884
00:50:01.780 --> 00:50:03.619
so we come down to the two things, and I
885
00:50:03.639 --> 00:50:08.510
guess we can sort of wrap on this. Our democracy
886
00:50:08.829 --> 00:50:12.929
is fragile right now because the government doesn't feel like
887
00:50:13.070 --> 00:50:17.030
it meets in any way the foundational needs of the people.
888
00:50:17.409 --> 00:50:18.590
And then so you have to look at that in
889
00:50:18.650 --> 00:50:22.599
two ways. Is it corruption within the system that makes
890
00:50:22.659 --> 00:50:25.159
it so that it doesn't meet the needs? Or is
891
00:50:25.219 --> 00:50:29.480
it a structural problem that we cannot overcome that is
892
00:50:29.519 --> 00:50:33.090
being co-opted by two parties seeking power? That would be
893
00:50:34.190 --> 00:50:35.630
the foundational question of this.
894
00:50:36.500 --> 00:50:37.559
So let me say this.
895
00:50:37.780 --> 00:50:41.320
One area where Sam and I have profound agreement, and
896
00:50:41.360 --> 00:50:43.280
a lot of people in this space don't agree with
897
00:50:43.300 --> 00:50:47.260
the two of us. We are both pro-party reformers. We
898
00:50:47.320 --> 00:50:51.300
both believe it is essential to have vital parties in
899
00:50:51.320 --> 00:50:52.059
a democracy.
900
00:50:52.099 --> 00:50:54.199
In fact, I'll even say- And they.
901
00:50:54.119 --> 00:50:58.440
Are not vital right now. They are hollowed out. Correct.
902
00:50:58.460 --> 00:51:02.199
There's only one way to have a country without parties,
903
00:51:02.239 --> 00:51:06.159
and that's to have a dictator declare all other parties illegal.
904
00:51:07.130 --> 00:51:11.309
So really, the antithesis of parties is dictatorship.
905
00:51:12.050 --> 00:51:13.199
And so you have to have parties.
906
00:51:13.219 --> 00:51:15.840
The question is, how do you make parties do the
907
00:51:15.920 --> 00:51:19.699
effective work for the citizenry? And where I think Sam
908
00:51:19.719 --> 00:51:23.469
and I might disagree is this. Of course, amending is
909
00:51:23.530 --> 00:51:28.030
exceedingly difficult. There's no doubt about it. But probably prior
910
00:51:28.070 --> 00:51:30.230
to every amendment, people would have thought that it was
911
00:51:30.289 --> 00:51:33.809
impossible to do because it's always been exceedingly difficult. It's
912
00:51:33.869 --> 00:51:37.429
impossible until it's inevitable. But there are a lot of
913
00:51:37.449 --> 00:51:41.539
reform proposals out there that are anti-party reform proposals, and
914
00:51:41.559 --> 00:51:45.340
they're getting a lot of press. Rank choice voting at large,
915
00:51:45.380 --> 00:51:47.539
multi-member districts, term limits.
916
00:51:47.980 --> 00:51:49.400
These are anti-party.
917
00:51:49.440 --> 00:51:51.219
The whole point of these proposals, get rid of the
918
00:51:51.239 --> 00:51:54.079
people that are in Congress now, replace them with somebody else.
919
00:51:54.539 --> 00:51:55.980
Mine is the only.
920
00:51:55.760 --> 00:51:58.639
Proposal- But it doesn't necessarily address how they would govern then,
921
00:51:59.139 --> 00:51:59.519
does it?
922
00:51:59.980 --> 00:52:03.980
And mine's the only proposal that actually allows every sitting
923
00:52:04.039 --> 00:52:07.090
member of the House and Senate to keep their jobs.
924
00:52:07.610 --> 00:52:09.929
And so when people say, is it realistic to reform?
925
00:52:10.170 --> 00:52:12.969
It is if you can actually compare it to other
926
00:52:13.010 --> 00:52:16.150
proposals and come up with a solution that lets every
927
00:52:16.190 --> 00:52:19.070
sitting member of the House and Senate keep their jobs
928
00:52:19.369 --> 00:52:21.949
and allow them to become the heroes of democracy.
929
00:52:22.269 --> 00:52:23.809
And in my book, I explain.
930
00:52:23.449 --> 00:52:27.090
How that's possible. Yeah, I mean, I've seen those.
931
00:52:27.329 --> 00:52:28.980
But if the alternative is to get rid of.
932
00:52:28.949 --> 00:52:33.610
Them, Right. But Sam, to that point, would you suggest
933
00:52:33.690 --> 00:52:38.170
that the lack of functioning of our democracy for the
934
00:52:38.190 --> 00:52:40.929
needs of the people is a structural issue in the
935
00:52:40.969 --> 00:52:44.409
way that the founders had designed this bicameral legislation, or
936
00:52:44.610 --> 00:52:48.659
it is a capture and a corruption of that system
937
00:52:48.980 --> 00:52:52.300
by bad political actors and money? Where would you come down?
938
00:52:52.699 --> 00:52:55.800
I come down on the former. I do try, particularly
939
00:52:55.820 --> 00:53:00.280
to students, to emphasize that The story here is not
940
00:53:00.480 --> 00:53:05.239
fundamentally a cynical conspiracy. The story is a lot.
941
00:53:05.099 --> 00:53:06.719
Of people- Well, tell RFK Jr.
942
00:53:06.760 --> 00:53:06.900
That.
943
00:53:06.940 --> 00:53:08.070
They're keeping him out of the debate.
944
00:53:08.719 --> 00:53:12.829
A lot of people are, more so now than ever,
945
00:53:12.849 --> 00:53:15.670
because we're in a very ideologically polarized time, people are
946
00:53:15.710 --> 00:53:19.550
sincerely motivated in what they're doing. Most of them think
947
00:53:19.590 --> 00:53:22.130
what they're doing is good for the country. It is
948
00:53:22.389 --> 00:53:26.579
the ill fit between what have become much more ideologically
949
00:53:26.679 --> 00:53:34.050
sordid polarized parties, two of them, and a constitutional system
950
00:53:34.139 --> 00:53:38.550
that we haven't talked about. The other distinction between parliamentary
951
00:53:38.610 --> 00:53:43.230
systems and presidential ones is it's in presidential systems, separation
952
00:53:43.269 --> 00:53:45.570
of power systems, that you get divided government, that you
953
00:53:45.590 --> 00:53:49.619
get chronic gridlock when one party controls. And it's the
954
00:53:49.699 --> 00:53:52.860
ill fit of we have parties that are becoming more
955
00:53:53.119 --> 00:53:58.590
parliamentary-like in some ways in their ideological distinctiveness. but they
956
00:53:58.730 --> 00:54:02.190
can occupy power at the same time. So the one
957
00:54:02.269 --> 00:54:05.369
kind of, I would, I would advocate for people to
958
00:54:05.409 --> 00:54:09.429
be thinking about exactly the big, broad structural arguments that
959
00:54:09.469 --> 00:54:11.760
Max is talking about. I would advocate for people to
960
00:54:11.889 --> 00:54:14.360
think about political parties and what they can do to
961
00:54:14.400 --> 00:54:17.400
constructively improve them. But at a more kind of like
962
00:54:17.880 --> 00:54:23.019
in-between level of reforming institutions, think about elements in the
963
00:54:23.079 --> 00:54:27.320
political system that are amenable to change that, uh, enhance
964
00:54:27.400 --> 00:54:31.280
the capacity for gridlock. So things like the Senate filibuster.
965
00:54:31.960 --> 00:54:37.280
Oh, yeah. That hypercharges the poor design of the Senate,
966
00:54:37.519 --> 00:54:38.059
no question.
967
00:54:38.280 --> 00:54:41.059
And it makes it impossible. Again, talk about an outlier.
968
00:54:41.099 --> 00:54:45.260
There's no country on earth where there's this unbelievably unrepresentative
969
00:54:45.280 --> 00:54:48.059
second chamber that you have to get a super majority
970
00:54:48.179 --> 00:54:51.400
of that second. It gives the opposition party veto power.
971
00:54:51.539 --> 00:54:53.320
It's most important, I think, if I want to have
972
00:54:53.360 --> 00:54:56.449
everybody take something away from this conversation, It would be
973
00:54:56.510 --> 00:54:59.130
that because that what you both brought up, I think
974
00:54:59.409 --> 00:55:03.250
is something I had not thought about at all, which
975
00:55:03.429 --> 00:55:08.409
is our country is an absolute outlier. We consider ourselves
976
00:55:08.449 --> 00:55:12.530
a shining city on a hill of democratic excellence and
977
00:55:12.710 --> 00:55:15.710
a model to the world. And, and what you're saying
978
00:55:15.769 --> 00:55:19.159
is not only are we not that our system is
979
00:55:19.219 --> 00:55:23.300
actually one of the least functional democratic systems. of any
980
00:55:23.320 --> 00:55:24.960
of the others, whether you want to call it a
981
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:27.889
democratic system or a constitutional republic or a constitutional republic
982
00:55:27.909 --> 00:55:31.369
that lays out a democratic system of representation, we're one
983
00:55:31.389 --> 00:55:34.389
of the least functioning and we don't even consider that.
984
00:55:35.400 --> 00:55:38.760
I think that's exactly right. I think if your listeners
985
00:55:38.880 --> 00:55:42.960
or viewers take that lesson and internalize it and just
986
00:55:43.039 --> 00:55:45.280
begin to question, I think one of the hardest things
987
00:55:45.699 --> 00:55:47.300
is to begin questioning.
988
00:55:46.820 --> 00:55:49.519
The things that you were taught as a child. We
989
00:55:49.639 --> 00:55:52.260
all went to school. No, I'm serious about that.
990
00:55:52.280 --> 00:55:54.860
No, man, I totally agree. That's such a great point.
991
00:55:56.699 --> 00:56:01.309
It's that whole nostalgia of America was the best. And
992
00:56:01.329 --> 00:56:03.590
they always name that time when they were seven years old.
993
00:56:03.630 --> 00:56:06.340
And you're like, right. Because that's when you were chasing
994
00:56:06.380 --> 00:56:10.070
the ice cream truck. But it's not real.
995
00:56:10.090 --> 00:56:15.889
The time I cannot allow myself to stay neutral is
996
00:56:15.929 --> 00:56:19.849
when I teach undergrads. I teach a book by Robert
997
00:56:19.869 --> 00:56:23.739
Dahl called How Democratic is the U.S. Constitution. And when
998
00:56:23.780 --> 00:56:26.559
we get to the Senate and just the kind of
999
00:56:26.820 --> 00:56:31.530
justifications for equal representation of states, And it's one student
1000
00:56:31.570 --> 00:56:35.250
after another, whatever their political views, they're just like, well, yeah, well,
1001
00:56:35.269 --> 00:56:39.150
you have the House to represent people. Otherwise, everyone's going
1002
00:56:39.170 --> 00:56:42.329
to gang up on Connecticut or something. And I can't
1003
00:56:42.590 --> 00:56:49.079
stop myself from sputtering, just like breakout in hives. Because people,
1004
00:56:49.500 --> 00:56:52.780
it's just so assumed, so ingrained. And there's a real
1005
00:56:52.820 --> 00:56:54.079
status quo bias to that.
1006
00:56:55.039 --> 00:56:58.400
Well, guys, I so appreciate it. Max Stearns, law professor,
1007
00:56:58.460 --> 00:57:01.960
University of Maryland, Cary School of Law. author of Parliamentary America,
1008
00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:05.659
The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy,
1009
00:57:05.699 --> 00:57:09.130
Sam Rosenfeld, associate professor of political science at Colgate, and
1010
00:57:09.349 --> 00:57:12.130
the co-author with Daniel Slotsman of The Hollow Parties, The
1011
00:57:12.170 --> 00:57:16.010
Many Past and Disordered Present of American Party Politics. I
1012
00:57:16.190 --> 00:57:20.170
urge you to buy both books, and then you have,
1013
00:57:21.210 --> 00:57:24.039
by then, I'm going to say three weeks to fix
1014
00:57:24.320 --> 00:57:29.170
our two-party representative democracy. Get to it. Thank you so
1015
00:57:29.210 --> 00:57:30.829
much for a fascinating conversation.
1016
00:57:31.090 --> 00:57:32.610
Thank you so much for having us.
1017
00:57:32.650 --> 00:57:34.869
Helping me see some things that I really hadn't thought about.
1018
00:57:34.909 --> 00:57:35.510
So thank you guys.
1019
00:57:35.989 --> 00:57:36.550
Thank you.
1020
00:57:40.239 --> 00:57:42.719
Boy, did I enjoy that. I feel like I got
1021
00:57:42.739 --> 00:57:45.159
a real, I don't know what you call it, like
1022
00:57:45.239 --> 00:57:49.659
AP history course on there. But when he said our democracy,
1023
00:57:49.739 --> 00:57:51.780
when he was talking about it being replicated, I thought
1024
00:57:51.820 --> 00:57:54.420
he was going to go, our democracy has been replicated
1025
00:57:54.460 --> 00:57:56.039
all around the world. This is the most successful form
1026
00:57:56.079 --> 00:57:58.619
of government. He's like, nobody's replicated it and nobody wants
1027
00:57:58.659 --> 00:58:01.860
to because it doesn't work. Did you find that shocking?
1028
00:58:02.519 --> 00:58:03.679
I mean, yes and no.
1029
00:58:03.699 --> 00:58:07.429
I've been reading their books, so I kind of knew
1030
00:58:07.469 --> 00:58:11.469
it was coming. But also the point about the nostalgia,
1031
00:58:11.530 --> 00:58:12.849
I think is just so true.
1032
00:58:13.269 --> 00:58:13.489
Right.
1033
00:58:14.409 --> 00:58:15.889
We just can't see ourselves.
1034
00:58:16.250 --> 00:58:16.409
No.
1035
00:58:16.809 --> 00:58:19.079
You mean we're not the best? I don't get it.
1036
00:58:19.300 --> 00:58:21.719
Well, even like he was saying, like, not only are
1037
00:58:21.739 --> 00:58:25.000
we not the best, we're like, I'm not even sure
1038
00:58:25.039 --> 00:58:28.130
we're ranked. Like they're talking about all these, all these
1039
00:58:28.170 --> 00:58:32.510
other systems that are fine, but a fabulous conversation. Those guys, boy,
1040
00:58:32.530 --> 00:58:35.309
they'd be fun to have as professors. So I think
1041
00:58:35.329 --> 00:58:35.590
it was great.
1042
00:58:35.610 --> 00:58:36.389
Students are lucky.
1043
00:58:36.760 --> 00:58:37.420
Very lucky.
1044
00:58:38.199 --> 00:58:41.219
We are off next week. It is July 4th. I
1045
00:58:41.239 --> 00:58:45.039
hope you guys enjoy yourselves. As always, lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer,
1046
00:58:45.059 --> 00:58:49.260
Brittany Mamedovic, The man behind the glass, Rob Vitolo, video
1047
00:58:49.300 --> 00:58:52.260
editor and engineer, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, researcher,
1048
00:58:52.280 --> 00:58:57.860
Catherine Nguyen, and EPs, executive producer for those who are
1049
00:58:58.099 --> 00:59:00.739
Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you guys so much
1050
00:59:01.469 --> 00:59:04.690
for all of it. And keep those comments and stuff
1051
00:59:04.710 --> 00:59:07.670
coming on the socials there, whatever you got.
1052
00:59:08.030 --> 00:59:11.199
We are Weekly Show Pod on Twitter. Weekly Show Podcast
1053
00:59:11.320 --> 00:59:14.940
on Instagram threads and TikTok, and the Weekly Show Podcast
1054
00:59:15.139 --> 00:59:19.010
on YouTube. Follow, like, subscribe.
1055
00:59:19.110 --> 00:59:23.969
Follow, like, subscribe. Oh my God. We're influencers. Very, very nice.
1056
00:59:25.030 --> 00:59:27.750
Take it easy. Have a great week off. Enjoy yourselves.
1057
00:59:28.010 --> 00:59:31.420
When we come back, The first episode back is we're
1058
00:59:31.440 --> 00:59:34.179
going to break down people's tax bills and what it
1059
00:59:34.239 --> 00:59:36.840
goes to and how we could connect that better to
1060
00:59:36.880 --> 00:59:37.570
what people need.
1061
00:59:38.199 --> 00:59:39.190
Woo-hoo!
1062
00:59:39.369 --> 00:59:49.369
Democracy saved. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is
1063
00:59:49.409 --> 00:59:53.210
a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and
1064
00:59:53.309 --> 01:00:08.269
Busboy Productions. Paramount Podcasts.