Jonathan Alter: Poof Goes the Purple Dream
[For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also freelanced articles for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, Slate and The New York Times. A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. Besides "The Defining Moment" (Simon and Schuster), widely praised by critics, he is coauthor of "Selecting a President" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) and the coeditor of "Inside the System" (Prentice Hall).]
... The big question is: even if [Republicans] think the stimulus is a rotten piece of sausage, why wouldn't more of them want to help their ailing constituents? Why not team up with a honeymooning president whose popularity is three times that of his predecessor?
Part of the answer is baldly political. Republicans hope to break the new president's momentum—make him "fail," as de facto GOP chairman Rush Limbaugh urged—so they can say "I told you so" in November 2010.
Part of the answer is principled. As Obama said at his press conference last Monday, some are just philosophically opposed. He was too gentlemanly to add that they are also economically and historically ignorant. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even claimed that government spending didn't get us out of the Great Depression. What does he think did? Tax cuts? New Deal programs reduced unemployment nearly in half (if you include government jobs) and the Depression ended when the government intervened heavily in the economy at the onset of WWII.
And a big part of the answer is structural. The underlying explanation for the failure of bipartisanship is our flawed primary system. It sounds strange, but few Republicans fear being beaten by a Democrat; they come mostly from deeply red areas and have high odds of surviving a general election. The real fear is an upset in a Republican primary, as conservative Utah Rep. Chris Cannon suffered last year when he ventured too close to the center on immigration.
The American primary system, now about 100 years old, is disturbingly antidemocratic. It disenfranchises independents, who make up about a third of the electorate and aren't allowed to vote in most party primaries. It pushes candidates in both parties to the extremes, which polarizes the debate in ways that don't reflect the centrist views of the vast majority of Americans. And it allows a tiny handful of activist voters to determine who runs the country.
How tiny? In 35 states, the presidential primaries are now held on an earlier date than those for governor, House, Senate and legislative seats. This greatly depresses turnout in the state and local races. Even in the civic-minded states of Iowa and New Hampshire, nonpresidential primary turnout was about 9 percent of registered voters (OK, they were burned out from their intense presidential contests). In Connecticut, it was 14 percent. South Carolina got up to 17 percent and California, 28 percent. That's pathetic. And if you consider eligible voters, the numbers shrink further. All told, only about a seventh of adult citizens vote in nonpresidential primaries, which means that our representative democracy is not, well, representative.
Merely allowing independents to vote in party primaries hasn't done much to address the problem. The best remedy is a truly open primary, where the top two vote getters square off in the general election, even if they are both from the same party. This sounds radical, but it is no more so than other expansions of democracy like the direct election of U.S. senators (until the early 20th century, they were mostly chosen by state legislatures), women's suffrage and lowering the voting age....
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... The big question is: even if [Republicans] think the stimulus is a rotten piece of sausage, why wouldn't more of them want to help their ailing constituents? Why not team up with a honeymooning president whose popularity is three times that of his predecessor?
Part of the answer is baldly political. Republicans hope to break the new president's momentum—make him "fail," as de facto GOP chairman Rush Limbaugh urged—so they can say "I told you so" in November 2010.
Part of the answer is principled. As Obama said at his press conference last Monday, some are just philosophically opposed. He was too gentlemanly to add that they are also economically and historically ignorant. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even claimed that government spending didn't get us out of the Great Depression. What does he think did? Tax cuts? New Deal programs reduced unemployment nearly in half (if you include government jobs) and the Depression ended when the government intervened heavily in the economy at the onset of WWII.
And a big part of the answer is structural. The underlying explanation for the failure of bipartisanship is our flawed primary system. It sounds strange, but few Republicans fear being beaten by a Democrat; they come mostly from deeply red areas and have high odds of surviving a general election. The real fear is an upset in a Republican primary, as conservative Utah Rep. Chris Cannon suffered last year when he ventured too close to the center on immigration.
The American primary system, now about 100 years old, is disturbingly antidemocratic. It disenfranchises independents, who make up about a third of the electorate and aren't allowed to vote in most party primaries. It pushes candidates in both parties to the extremes, which polarizes the debate in ways that don't reflect the centrist views of the vast majority of Americans. And it allows a tiny handful of activist voters to determine who runs the country.
How tiny? In 35 states, the presidential primaries are now held on an earlier date than those for governor, House, Senate and legislative seats. This greatly depresses turnout in the state and local races. Even in the civic-minded states of Iowa and New Hampshire, nonpresidential primary turnout was about 9 percent of registered voters (OK, they were burned out from their intense presidential contests). In Connecticut, it was 14 percent. South Carolina got up to 17 percent and California, 28 percent. That's pathetic. And if you consider eligible voters, the numbers shrink further. All told, only about a seventh of adult citizens vote in nonpresidential primaries, which means that our representative democracy is not, well, representative.
Merely allowing independents to vote in party primaries hasn't done much to address the problem. The best remedy is a truly open primary, where the top two vote getters square off in the general election, even if they are both from the same party. This sounds radical, but it is no more so than other expansions of democracy like the direct election of U.S. senators (until the early 20th century, they were mostly chosen by state legislatures), women's suffrage and lowering the voting age....