David Kaib has a great post on his blog covering the Gilens and Page article from April that concluded there was little connection between what the majority of people want and what economic elites want. He talks about the ideas of democratic inefficiency and oligarchic inevitability, and points out that democratic power won’t come through conventional channels. He also briefly touches on hand-wringing about money in politics, and this last point is something I want to expand upon.
I’ve been reading Fixing Elections by Steven Hill, so this is on my mind right now. Hill does an excellent job showing how the American electoral system lends itself to exactly what Gilens and Page describe – an oligarchy, where entrenched elites their interests advanced at the cost of the American people. Hill also makes a point of showing that campaign finance reform is not a solution to the overall problem by using the example of the NRA to demonstrate that organization and having one issue people care about whose votes do actually matter are more important than a big purse:
The simple fact is that the NRA’s money has power because there is a small but critical mass of passionate anti-gun control voters out there who are disproportionately swing voters. They often are classic Reagan Democrats, including some union members, who fear infringement on gun ownership… although most voters back gun control, their support doesn’t move them to the polls… But what gives the NRA maximum bang for its buck and its votes is that its members and supporters seem to live disproportionately in swing districts and swing states… a 4 to 5 percent swing of voters in a closer race can spell the difference between victory and defeat, and this demographic reality of Winner Take All has allowed the NRA to game the system for advantage… The dynamics of Winner Take All allow gun control opponents to form a single-issue voting bloc that far outweighs their minority status. The NRA’s influence has come from its capacity to move a relatively small number of swing voters in swing states and in swing districts – with fear and alarmist campaign messages more than its money.
In truth, only a small number of votes actually matter in the United States, from Presidential elections on down. The vast majority of the billions of dollars spent during campaign season is directed towards these people – many of whom are only vaguely interested in politics. In federal politics, outside interest groups are able to, as Hill says “divide and conquer the House geographic districts like squares on a checkerboard.” And because the other side will inevitably retreat so as not to lose voters, there’s no other electoral alternative (outside of the third parties, which are simply wasted votes in the current system) for a given divisive swing issue.
While there’s empirical evidence that shows the value of dollars spent on elections and popular, door-to-door get out the vote campaigns, I suspect the value of campaign spending to generating votes is fairly low on the margin. Koch money matters, but does it really make a significant difference whether they spend $N billion versus $N+5 billion – and does it matter without a mobilizing issue? As with any advertising, most campaign spending is probably pure waste: television ads during early morning infomercials, radio ads on an AM station no one hears, mailers that go straight into recycling. Big campaign purses hardly matter when the options of what to spend the money on are extremely limited.
To get to this post’s title, the current system reminds me of a game of Starcraft in which both players have infinite resources but are prohibited from building anything but zerglings. A particularly clever or fast-clicking player may gain an upper hand, but such an advantage is inevitably short-lived. There will be ebbs and flows, but ultimately no one will win. Anyone watching the game, even a Starcraft-obsessed person in Korea where the game is a high-profile professional sport, is likely to get up and leave after some time once they come to the conclusion that the game will go on ad infinitum.
So why the rallying call for campaign finance reform, these days most often seen in the guise of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United? For one, it represents today’s counterproductive tendency of liberals to focus on the Supreme Court as an institution of policymaking, an issue Rob Hunter covered masterfully in the latest Jacobin. Second, I think it’s just because “Keep money out of politics!” is a more visceral (and concise) motto than “Rewrite Article I, clause 3 of the Constitution!” That motto probably wouldn’t go over too well with writers for The Daily Show, after all. Everyone can imagine how money in politics creates a plutocratic pseudo-democracy, but seeing how the geographical-based, winner-take-all system is the origin of that very outcome is much more difficult.
My feeling is that this will have to change in the states before it changes in Congress, especially since the state legislatures control how districts are drawn and seats apportioned for Congressional elections. In a state that allows plebiscites, an amendment to the state constitution could conceivably enact proportional representation. This would end the absurd idea of everyone in a given (highly gerrymandered) geography being represented by whoever happens to sit in a given seat – which, as Hill points out, this leads to Twilight Zone-level absurdities like David Duke representing blacks in his district when he was a member of the Louisiana state senate.
Such a change would require a popular movement that brings together a populist coalition from both sides of the political spectrum. After all, it’s not like lamenting the putrid awfulness of the two-party system or the fact that most peoples’ votes simply don’t matter is something that occurs purely on those holding left or right sympathies. The big issue, as with everything, isn’t what the majority of people would prefer, but the entrenched oligarchy. In any state, it’s going to take insurgents in the major parties, and that’s a tough pill to swallow because Democrats and Republicans alike will lose big in such a rearrangement.
One criticism from the status quo mainstream of proportional representation in countries that use it is that it holds coalition governments hostage to small, single-issue zealot parties. Yet the US system is even more beholden to such extremists, albeit in much murkier and more complex ways. While parliamentary democracy is far from perfect and hardly radical, it’s substantially better than the system we have now.
Unfortunately, we’re probably a long ways off from even breaking ground on a movement to make even this fairly mild step towards a true democracy. Until then, it’s exercising democracy by unconventional means… something like finding a way to build a mutalisk in the game of zerglings.
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