The Two-Party System and the Violence of Faction

It was late in the morning on July 10, 2011, and I was on a bottomless mimosa brunch date on U Street in DC. We were sitting at a counter against the restaurant's front window, watching people outside enjoying a sunny, 86-degree day. The TVs behind us were showing the US women's soccer team’s World Cup quarterfinal match against Brazil. When Team USA won in penalties after Abby Wambach’s legendary game-tying goal in the final minute of extra time, whoops and cheers rippled through the attentive patrons at tables behind us.

But I was pouting. I had just checked the Washington Post app and seen that John Boehner had broken off negotiations with President Obama on a deal to raise the debt ceiling and reduce the deficit because it had leaked that the plan they were working on would include new taxes. The approaching debt ceiling had caused respected political observers like Mark Halperin to predict that the President and Congress would strike a "Grand Bargain," and that the US Government would begin to wind down the long term deficit that politicians my whole life had told me was an existential threat and done nothing about.

A few swipes on my iPhone 4, and all such hopes were set back further than they had ever been. For several minutes, I tried to convey my anger at politics to my date via a profane stream of incoherent consciousness. She nodded along politely, and said kind words of sympathy. She probably thought I was really weird.

Four years later, I remember this as the moment I relinquished hope that Congress could function in our two-party system. The uncompromising partisan forces that caused the Grand Bargain to fall apart, and the system that allows them to exist the way they do, are still in place. If we’re ever going to have a deficit-reducing compromise — and at some point, our national livelihood will depend on it — we need to do something fundamental to address the role that the most extreme political actors play in our system of government.

Today’s two-party system gives extremist factions more power in the policymaking process than their level of public support indicates they should have. Each party’s most vocal and dedicated supporters tend to have the most extreme right- or left-wing opinions on issues. Congressional leaders must remain in good standing with these extreme factions, or risk losing the stream of money and volunteer hours that keep the party afloat and the leaders in their jobs. This can prevent Congress from acting on critical issues, even when a clear majority of the public agrees on what Congress should do. It happens all the time.

The brunch-ruining episode from 2011 is the best (worst?) example. The date by which Congress needed to either pass legislation raising the US Treasury’s debt limit or allow the nation to default on its obligations was rapidly approaching. A week after Boehner broke off negotiations with the President on the beautiful Sunday, the two sides came together to try again, and after a meeting at the White House on July 17th, they had a tentative agreement: $1.4 trillion in spending cuts with $800 billion in new revenues, most of which would have to come from closing loopholes and deductions in the tax code, not from higher tax rates. In fact, under this agreement, the top income tax rate would go down a few points. All things considered, it was a pretty sweet deal for Republicans. Boehner agreed in principle, polls showed that a majority of Americans supported their general approach, and if the bill had been allowed a vote in the House, it wouldn’t have been a landslide vote, but it would have passed.

But since Obama’s election, the long-documented rightward movement of the Republican Party accelerated, and the conservative wing of the GOP came to equate any compromise with Democrats with total defeat. After Boehner and Obama’s breakthrough negotiating session, partisan forces intervened. Democrats in Congress were upset at the unbalanced ratio of spending cuts to tax increases, so the President hesitated for a few days. Meanwhile, House conservatives made it clear they opposed any bill to reduce the deficit except by spending cuts alone. If Boehner opposed them openly, it would likely have cost him his job. So by the time Obama called Boehner to finalize their initial agreement, Boehner told him it wasn’t going to happen. Legislation that would have made progress towards solving what is arguably the country’s most dire long-term problem died because of the opposition of an uncompromising factions that dictated terms to party leadership. It didn’t matter that most Americans, and most of their elected representatives, understood that deficit reduction would have to happen through compromise.

The United States would have a much better chance at solving its most entrenched, long-term problems if relative moderates on the right and left — people who have firm convictions, but who recognize that meeting their opponents halfway is the only way to govern — could hold office without subjecting their agendas or behavior to factions for whom ideological purity is paramount. This could only happen if extremists left the Democrats and Republicans and formed their own parties — ending the two-party system that we’ve had since our founding.

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People talk all the time about ending the two-party system. Occasionally, a third party will win a significant portion of the population in a presidential election. Yet they always quickly dissolve.

That’s because a two-party system is baked into our political DNA by our first-past-the-post election system. In a first-past-the-post system, representatives for a deliberative body (like the House of Representatives or the Electoral College) are determined by which candidate achieves the greatest number of votes in a geographic area.

This system limits voters' choices by forcing them to choose only from candidates that they think can win in their area. If you are extremely liberal, you may feel that the Socialist Party reflects your values better than any other, but you know that only a Democrat or a Republican has any chance of winning a plurality of votes in your district. You want your vote to impact the election, and you know that if you don’t vote for the Democrat, it increases the likelihood that the Republican (who you really hate) will win. Because of this calculation, many extreme voters end up casting ballots for Democrats or Republicans only because they are the "lesser of two evils.”

In a system of proportional representation (what France has), each party ranks their candidates for office in a list. Voters cast ballots for a party list, not for an individual candidate. When the votes are counted, representatives are selected from the party lists in proportion to the percentage of the vote each party received. This eliminates the “lesser of two evils” calculation because voters know that whichever party they support has a strong chance of being represented even if that party doesn’t get more than 50% in any geographic area. (watch this video on for a much clearer and more entertaining description)

If proportional representation were implemented in the United States, fringe parties like the Socialists, the Greens, the Libertarians, and the Conservatives would receive much more public support than they do today because of this simple change in the ballot-box decision making.

Over time, the most extreme liberals or conservatives, or those whose views don’t fit on either side of the left/right divide, would grow tired of trying to influence the agenda of the mainstream parties through insurgent primary campaigns or twelve-hour filibusters and start to look at the growing legitimacy of newly empowered fringe parties with envy. I bet most would see the appeal of grouping up with those who are more aligned with their political philosophies. Extremists like Ted Cruz have said that the problem with unpopular Republicans of the last fifteen years like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney was that they weren’t authentically conservative enough, and that if the GOP would nominate a “true believer” like Cruz himself, his ideological stridency would inspire some “silent majority” of true conservatives to rise up from obscurity and take the presidency. I bet Cruz and others like him would be interested in testing this presumption by running on a platform of purity with a slate of like-minded conservative radicals. Other leaders who would likely move to fringe parties include avowed socialists like Bernie Sanders and dedicated libertarians like Gary Johnson.

The Democratic and Republican parties would remain full of those politicians who have opposing views and firm convictions, who want to get the best deal possible, but recognize that compromise is better than inaction. They could set their agendas and vote as they please without worrying about being “primaried” by the ideologues who aren’t in the same party anymore.

Might not these empowered fringe parties win more votes than both Democrats and Republicans, continuing the reign of extreme factions as the agenda-setting forces in American politics? It’s a fair question to ask. A purely conservative party would get a lot of public support.

But I think that Democrats and Republicans, without the uncompromising fringe activists pushing them to the right or the left, would become even more popular.  The culture of gridlock that exists today hurts both parties; by 53% to 25%, American adults believe that lawmakers should compromise rather than stick to principles, according to a Gallup poll conducted in September of 2013.  In June of 2011, a month before House Republicans wouldn’t support a deficit reduction plan because it included some tax increases, 59% of American adults said that deficit reduction must come from a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, rather than one or the other.

Meanwhile, a proportional system could boost overall voting turnout, to the benefit of moderate parties. The embarrassingly low rate at which American adults participate in elections is related to polarization. The most polarized citizens are still politically active: according to the Pew Center’s 2014 study on polarization, 78% of consistent conservatives and 58% of consistent liberals always vote. It’s the moderates who aren’t showing up: only 43% of “mostly liberal” citizens and 39% of those with “mixed” positions vote regularly.

Perhaps if those who want their leaders to compromise felt they had someone to vote for who shared their disposition, they would vote at higher rates. And if they did vote more, they would become a growing base of power for the more ideologically flexible versions of Democrats and Republicans that could exist under a proportional election system.

Great Britain has been a two-party state for most of its democratic history, but in recent years has seen more radical parties like the SNP and UKIP grow in prominence. Their recent election is a plausible scenario for what may happen if we end the two-party system in the US. In the run-up to the vote, the Washington Post predicted that chaos would reign in Parliament, as the rising popularity of these erstwhile fringe factions undermined public support for Labour and the Conservatives. But Tory leader David Cameron, who has hewn close to a moderate path in both policy and rhetoric since his ascension to the premiership in 2010, won a more decisive majority in Parliament than he had five years ago. Despite rising polarization and a fracturing of traditional coalitions, a moderate platform and message is still what most voters in the UK wanted leading their government.

A proportional system would give every kind of voter the hope of authentic representation. In doing so, it would empower voters and politicians who support compromise — the essence of a democratic system.

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A proportional system in the US would overhaul how we elect presidents and members of the House of Representatives. Members of the Electoral College would be apportioned state-by-state— so if the Green Party won 10% of the presidential vote in a 10-elector state like Wisconsin, one of the electors sent to the college would be committed to vote for the Green Party’s presidential nominee. But this would put minority parties at a disadvantage in states with only three electoral votes, as they would have to achieve 33% or higher to be apportioned a single elector. To correct for this problem, we could increase the total size of the electoral college tenfold.

Members of the House of Representatives could be apportioned nationally, eliminating congressional districts. All parties could still hold primaries to determine which candidates make it onto the party lists, and at what rank. Parties could structure those primaries so that every region of every state in the country is represented by at least one person on each ranked list.

The Senate would have to remain unchanged. The upper chamber was explicitly created to give small jurisdictions a forum where they have as much power as large ones, which works directly against the principles underlying proportional representation. At first, only Democrats and Republicans would populate the Senate.

That’s ok, because in our current governing crisis, the Senate isn’t the problem. Senators are, by virtue of representing entire states over six year terms, more accommodating and flexible than members of the House. It was the Senate that passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013 (just like they did back in 2006). And even if the Senate were still comprised only of Democrats and Republicans, the ability to elect presidents and House members will allow minor parties to attract national followings, build organizations, and have a hand in governing. Over time, one of the erstwhile minor parties could contemplate winning a plurality in a Senate race.

I recognize that the amendments required to enact proportional representation would reshape the Constitution more fundamentally than voters are comfortable with. Selecting someone to represent a geographic area's unique perspective is central to most Americans’ understanding of democracy. But the political forces that encouraged consensus in government for most of our history have faded away in the last few decades: every issue stance taken by a politician places her on one side of the national Red/Blue culture war; regional issues that used to supersede the national debate matter less than they ever have; and changes in our lifestyles and how we consume the news allow people to insulate themselves from different perspectives. In a proportional system, voters could still have their local communities be represented in state government, which is the logical venue for discussion of unique local issues, anyway.

There is philosophical precedent for redesigning our political system to blunt the influence of extreme groups. James Madison wrote in Federalist #10 that “among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” Two hundred and some years later, the violence of our factions is choking off our essential democratic functions. I don’t want those few days before I checked my phone at brunch to be the closest America ever gets to solving the debt crisis. To ensure healthy democracy for the next two hundred, we should be open to fundamental changes in how we practice it.

Grandmother In Chief: A New Presidential Model

Almost everything Hillary Clinton has done since launching her campaign has tried to portray her as someone that Americans of a wealth and social status approaching “typical” can connect with. Everyone knows that Hillary probably hasn’t driven her own car in twenty-five years and until recently made hundreds of thousands of dollars giving speeches to banks and other wealthy institutions. So the Chipotle visits and the small-room get-togethers with average citizens only make it easier for people to remember how few times in her life she’s been to a Chipotle or sat in a small room with average citizens.

But she has repeatedly referenced one new aspect of her life in a way that comes off as an authentic expression that most Americans can relate to, and that might lead voters to regard her more warmly than they ever have: her new status as a grandmother.

In the popular American mind, grandmothers are calm and wise. They’ve seen it all, so they understand what is worth getting upset about and what isn't. They might not participate directly in the day-to-day drama of getting kids from school to baseball practice while working a full-time job and putting dinner on the table, but they will be there at the key moments to lend a hand and provide comfort and perspective. Kids love spending time with their grandmothers, but if someone swings a bat in the house and breaks the good china, a grandmother won’t hesitate to be direct and firm in response. And everyone gathers around grandmother's table on Thanksgiving.

This is a caricature of how we imagine grandmothers, not a description of anyone real. But caricatures can influence how voters perceive candidates. After a 2015 and 2016 that will see six or seven credible Republican candidates clash in unbecoming ways, Americans may be ready for a president with a grandmother’s dignity and confidence. In February, when Republicans were somehow turning the measles vaccine into a divisive political issue, Hillary tweeted her support of medical science with the hashtag, “#GrandMotherKnowsBest.” This moment played well for her, and she should look for opportunities for similar moments over the next two years.

After her “baking cookies” comment, Hillary was never able to use her status as a working mother to her advantage. But in 2016, her family role could be key to her moving on from the rigid and calculating image she has projected since she entered national politics.

Ted Cruz Got Game

As Nate Cohn wrote this week, Ted Cruz has almost no chance of winning the Republican nomination for president. But his first few weeks as a candidate have shown that he will be a formidable disruption for other candidates who need movement conservative support. His campaign announcement came in three phases: first, his people said that he would be giving a big speech the following Monday. Then, he preempted his own speech by tweeting his announcement that Sunday night. Finally, on Monday afternoon, he spoke in the round to thousands of assembled Liberty University students.

By breaking his announcement into three separate news events, Cruz put himself at the center of the political universe for a solid 36-48 hours. When he finally spoke, the mere fact that “Ted Cruz is running for president” was old news, leading to deeper coverage of his speech’s content, where he asked listeners to “imagine” an America where every conservative priority has been enacted, leading to a utopia of job-creation and adherence to wholesome values.

The conservative talkers and writers who spend their days dreaming up such fantasies ate it right up, broadcasting their fawning approval of Cruz’s ideological vision to their millions of dedicated listeners. Movement conservatives love thinking of themselves as beleaguered populists who the elites are always conspiring to bring down, so it only helped Cruz when mainstream commentators responded to his speech by saying that he has no chance of becoming president.

Then, it came out that Cruz raised $4 million for his campaign committee in the first eight days after his announcement, and that four super PACs aligned with him had raised $31 million.

Using this money and his legal status as the only candidate officially in the race, Cruz bought ads that ran during Easter weekend’s spate of Jesus-oriented programming on Fox News and NBC. For many of the traditionalist voters Cruz wants to unify, these highly rated programs are appointment viewing.

Keeping score, the Cruz campaign has shown:

1) an ability to manipulate events to get the best possible press coverage for appealing to base conservatives

2) an ability to raise serious money

3) the knowledge of where and how to use that money to boost awareness and enthusiasm among the voters he really needs

If Cruz becomes the unified choice of movement conservatives, elites will rally around Jeb as the best way to stop him, and mainstream alternatives will be snuffed out. These developments should be worrisome for Scott Walker and Marco Rubio.

How A Bill Doesn't Become A Law

If Democrats in the Senate filibuster the House’s health care bill this week, it will be a case study in how polarization is slowly choking American government. This bill is a rare bird: John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and a majority of their respective caucuses have all agreed to it. Among other things, this legislation would:

1) make Medicare more solvent by charging higher premiums from wealthier beneficiaries

2) extend a successful children’s health insurance program

3) end the inane annual scramble to prevent massive cuts to doctors giving care under Medicare known as the “doc fix"

The bill contains language known as the “Hyde Amendment” that prohibits community clinics receiving funds from using the money to pay for abortion procedures. Predictably, pro-choice groups are outraged.

But the Hyde language isn’t as big a deal as it seems, because of numerous other restrictions on funding for abortion that exist in federal law (including Barack Obama’s executive order prohibiting funding for abortion under Obamacare, which was key to the compromise underlying the ACA’s passage five years ago).

This hasn’t stopped the pro-choice groups from pressuring Senate Democrats to vote “no” on the whole package. Now Senate Democrats, led by the erstwhile noble Harry Reid, are threatening to filibuster this rarest of compromises out of existence.

Let’s take a second to reflect here. House Democrats have cut a deal with House Republicans — the same people who shut down part or all of the federal government on two separate occasions in the last three years — to make reforms that will have substantive, if not transformative, impact on entitlement spending and health care for children. Democrats in the Senate may kill all of that because they are facing ideological pressure about a tangential amendment that doesn’t have any practical impact anyway. Once again, the culture wars, with their emotional proclamations of ideology, are obstructing progress on core economic issues.

I don’t exactly blame the pro-choice groups for applying the pressure — it’s their job to defend abortion rights. It’s not their job to make sure Medicare is solvent. But it represents a systemic problem when people whose job it is to only care about one or two social issues can successfully block substantive reform on other things.

The New York Times wrote that “the conflict represents a new dynamic in Congress, in which Senate Democrats are assuming the role played for years by House Republicans — waging an ideological fight from a disadvantaged position — and Republicans are eager to prove themselves good stewards of government.”

Will it ever again be possible for both parties to want to prove themselves good stewards of government? Will we ever get voters and interest groups to reward them for that?

Thoughts on Incrementalism and Polarization

Americans used to accept that political change was slow and difficult. In a constitutional system requiring three branches of government to agree, this was a good thing. Over the last forty years, America has polarized, and we are reaching the point where government can’t function. It’s mostly because voters and politicians stopped believing in incremental change. In his book Landslide, Jonathan Darman tells a compelling story about Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, the  first American presidents to promise that the swift and total adoption of their programs would bring about an end to America’s problems. Ever since then, more and more liberals and conservatives have adopted a black-and-white worldview, eschewing compromise while waiting impatiently for the swift and total adoption of whatever they believe in.

Darman is right, and he made me think about features of America’s past that laid the groundwork for this transition.

The first is World War II and its aftermath. The modern world’s defining war was the closest we’ll ever come to a real, all-out conflict with evil in which compromise is an unacceptable defeat. It’s easy to see how, in the aftermath of such an all-consuming conflict, this zero-sum way of thinking permeated the American political mind.

After 1945, many conservatives transferred this good vs. evil mentality onto the Soviet Union. The Dulles brothers, founders of America’s ignominious Cold War policies of covert intervention, believed the Soviet Union to be as evil and untrustworthy as Nazi Germany (in fact, in the case of John Foster Dulles, as more evil than the Nazis). Uncompromising antipathy towards communism fed the uncompromising antipathy towards government spending that defined the emerging conservative movement: communism is evil; taxes and redistributive programs represent a slippery slope to collectivization; any policy that acquiesces to such programs is itself an endorsement of those programs, and effectively equivalent to socialism.

America’s religious devotion and Calvinist heritage had prepared many voters for ideological fantasy. This belief system predisposes its fervent practitioners to see the universe as a zero-sum struggle between Christ and the Devil, and therefore to view compromise on moral issues as equivalent to defeat. These voters make up a significant portion of the conservative movement, and helps explain why Republicans have been so unwilling to compromise as to let the US government default on its debt or shut down entirely pending the repeal of Obamacare.

Fast-forwarding to 2015, the media and technology landscape is threatening to make incrementalism extinct. It’s a confusing world out there; the Web can expose things that had once been private. In politics, we find seeming contradictions and outright hypocrisy in places we couldn’t see before. And it’s not like we can choose to avoid it; it’s always there, right on our news feed, assaulting any sense of hope or optimism we want to have (and Obama’s first campaign proved we do want it).

People have been reacting in two ways: 1) withdrawing from politics entirely, because it’s just too frustrating and difficult, which is what most Millennials are doing, and 2) take refuge in whichever of the two ideological fantasies is most culturally comfortable based on where they live and who they are friends with.

Is there still room for incrementalists of all stripes? For the sake of democracy, I hope so.

The Iran Letter: Offensively Warm & Fuzzy

It wasn't “treasonous" of those 47 Republican Senators to send a letter to the Iranian government in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration’s nuclear talks, as some liberals asserted. Treason is an extraordinary crime, and Republicans using any means at their disposal to stop this president from achieving his goals is very ordinary. But the letter is short-sighted. We have a consensus that the executive conducts foreign policy because our culture has wisely judged that, on average, things will be worse for America if, instead of using our commander-in-chief as our agent to the world, we presented the dis-unified hoard of egos that is our Congress. The letter encourages the notion that foreign governments must double-check with Congress before believing that the United States is negotiating in good faith. Republicans don’t have to respect it when Obama tries to make domestic policy unilaterally, but weakening the executive’s primacy in foreign policy will in the long run hurt America in ways we can’t see. Supposedly eminent foreign policy “experts” like John McCain should have known this.

Moreover, the letter’s tone was offensively improper; it reads like the Republicans are trying to help the Iranian negotiators, by “enriching” their knowledge of “our constitutional system.” If there is anything treacherous about the letter, this helpful tone is it.

I'm in favor of negotiating with Iran for a better future.  But they did violate international principle in an unprecedented way when they took innocent diplomats hostage. They continue to support terrorism and oppress women and say unconscionable things about Israel, our vulnerable blood-brother of an ally. We shouldn't be forgetting these facts any more than Iran forgets about the CIA deposing their democratically-elected government in 1953 -- which is to say, not at all. We negotiate with them for a safer planet as suspicious rivals, not as friends.

However it was intended, that the GOP  took a cozy tone with the mullahs in such a public way made me recoil. That’s what those 47 Senators should be most ashamed of.

Baseball Done Right

As my mother, father, and I pulled into the Washington Nationals spring training complex in Viera, Florida last weekend to watch the Nats play an exhibition game against the Cardinals, I couldn't help but notice how quaint and approachable their practice facilities were. It had nothing more than two simple diamonds and a small square building next to a little stadium. I’m not sure what I expected, but I've seen high school facilities that were more extravagant. I’ve been a baseball fan since I started forming memories, and this was baseball paradise. From when we started walking from our car, joining a stream of red-clad Nats fans, everything I saw made me feel warm and fuzzy. “Welcome home, Nats!” read a sign posted against the fence of the practice fields. A cool breeze cut through the moist air.

A couple of cheery old ladies in Nats gear took our tickets at the ballpark gate. I imagined they were retirees from DC who live nearby and pick up a little extra money every March helping staff Nats games. Pretty sweet life.

Our seats were thirty or so rows behind home plate. The stadium seated about 6,000 people and there were no outfield bleachers. As I sipped a cool Yuengling and watched the Cardinals take batting practice, the rhythm of the crack of the bat followed by the ball jumping out into the sky was hypnotizing.

After a few minutes we wandered over and joined the small crowd forming on the platform overlooking the bullpen, where Stephen Strasburg was going to be warming up in thirty minutes. We passed the time chatting with surrounding fans about the upcoming season. Everyone was cheerful, and everyone knew a lot about the Nats. It felt like a family gathering of Nats fans, far beyond what you can experience at Nationals Park up in DC during the regular season, where all manner of casual observers and out-of-towners are in attendance.

Soon we saw Bryce Harper walk over to the batting cage wearing big shiny gold headphones, and laughed together that it was as if Lil Wayne played on our baseball team. Then Wilson Ramos come through the door underneath the platform and jogged out into the outfield to stretch his hamstrings. We fans hoped aloud that he wouldn’t re-injure them. Ramos is a huge human being -- we were so close to him that I got that feeling you get at the zoo where you see a tiger up close and realize just how big they are in person.

The game began a little later. After a scoreless first, Strasburg got into trouble in the second, walking three and failing to get an out on a ground ball to Ryan Zimmerman because he failed to cover first base. All the other fans in the section grumbled about his fragile ego. A few of them yelled. But nobody really cared, because the sun was starting to shine, it was 66 degrees, and the game didn’t count, anyway. We didn’t come to spring training to be upset; we came to hang out in the sun and enjoy the game.

Some people a few rows in front of us saw friends of theirs on the walkway below, and yelled for them to come up to our section and sit for a while. As they did, I thought about all the ushers at real big league parks who are always telling people that they can't stand right there and preventing them from going into sections where they don’t have tickets.

Major League Baseball is great, but like so many nice things in mainstream American life, it’s been corporatized. There are rules about everything, and it’s expensive. People go there to be seen or because it’s a cool thing to do. Spring training only had people who love the game and love their team and that’s it.

As I write this, I’m thinking about that sign that said, “Welcome Home, Nats!” Today was about enjoying spring weather chatting about covering first base and making good throws and other nonsense, watching a bunch of overgrown boys hang out and play ball on an unpretentious patch of grass and dirt. And I’m thinking, maybe this is home. Maybe this is where the true spirit and practice of baseball is nurtured, only to be exported to major cities from April to October.

I've heard this before, and now I'll say it myself: any true baseball fan needs to come to spring training. I’m definitely coming back.

Watch Out For Marco Rubio

Since last December, Jeb Bush has tried to scare off second-tier challengers for the presidential nomination by uniting the GOP's fundraising establishment behind his candidacy. But despite his best efforts and commitments from Henry Kravis and Woody Johnson, the Washington Post reported today that Marco Rubio has a few deep-pocketed fanboys who will fund his presidential campaign with just a handful of eight-figure contributions.

Leaving aside the travesty that allows small groups of rich men to choose and sponsor pet presidential candidates, this show of strength from Rubio is disappointing. That's because Jeb is the best thing that can happen to Democrats in 2016. Rubio is the worst.

A single party has been elected to three consecutive presidential terms only one out of the six times it could have happened since World War II. After eight years, America's political mind gets tired of hearing the same ideas and rhetoric all the time and is easily persuaded to take a new course. As well-funded and well-known as Hillary is, and as favorable to Democrats the electoral map and likely voter demographics are in presidential years, as a household name since 1992 she is especially vulnerable to the charge that she is just more of the same.

As Mike Allen recently wrote, Jeb looks a lot like his brother, talks a lot like his brother, and appears to want to make policy a lot like his brother. If the Republicans nominate him to challenge Hillary, they will give away their biggest advantage. Hillary will win, Obama's legacy will be preserved, and I will be able to die happy.

Alas, Rubio. He is obviously smart, substantive, handsome, and Latino. He is politically talented enough to refuse to say he believes in evolution without sounding like a nutjob. If he wins the right to face Hillary, the contrast between his profile and Hillary's baggage will double the GOP's built-in 2016 messaging advantage. There will never be a "Republican Obama," but Rubio would be as close as it gets.

In recent weeks I'd been hoping that Jeb's financial show of force would choke off financing to Rubio and keep him from running a national campaign. It looks like we're not that lucky.

And in case I still thought I was lucky, it looks like Hillary might be launching her campaign while under investigation.

Fired up! Ready to go! (sigh).

Hillary Decides Against Boneheaded Summer Announcement Idea

The best political news I read this morning is that Hillary’s “campaign” is giving out job offers, with start dates for the end of March. This means she’s planning to officially announce her campaign in early April.

That had been the plan all along until a couple of months ago, when sources said she was considering postponing an announcement until summer. With no serious challengers, the thinking went, why bother campaign?

Hillary’s biggest weakness is that she is seen as being too calculating. It’s clear that she is running for president; she can only claim to be undecided for so long before she starts to look silly. She can claim to be evaluating her options for the next month or so while the Republican field takes shape. But if by Memorial Day she is still claiming to be unsure as to whether she wants to win the White House, nobody will believe her. Meanwhile, the Republicans, all of whom will have declared by then, will find ways to mock her for trying to be a candidate without officially being a candidate.

Most of Hillary’s attempts to be authentic end up being criticized as cynical ploys to seem like an everyday person that Americans can relate to, when it is obvious to everyone that she isn’t. The last thing she needed was to have the biggest moment of her early campaign be born of overt political expediency.

Love her or hate her, Hillary is our only hope for maintaining and building on any of Obama’s second-term achievements. That’s a scary fact given how hard of a time she has connecting with average voters. I’m glad to see that she at least isn’t going to blow her announcement.

What Did Nemtsov Know?

The most interesting thing to me about the aftermath of Boris Nemtsov’s murder in Russia is Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s assertion that Nemtsov was about to “reveal persuasive evidence about the involvement of Russian armed forces in Ukraine.” The Washington Post barely mentioned this and the New York Times overlooked it entirely, but if it has any credibility, it increases the likelihood that the Kremlin had Nemtsov killed.

Putin’s denial of Russian military involvement in Ukraine is the most important part of his foreign policy right now, because it allows him to accomplish the territorial expansion he wants while avoiding unified international isolation.

Right now, only Western Europe and America really care about what Putin is doing in Ukraine. By conquering his neighbor using hired thugs instead of military personnel, Putin can continue to claim that the people of eastern Ukraine are independently revolting against their national government. This gives much of the international community cover to keep going about their business despite the frightening-early-20th-century-outrage level of Putin's actions.

An official invasion, with tanks rolling in under Russian flags, would draw resounding global condemnation, including from countries who would rather not take the side of the United States in a conflict. We learned from Iraq that the world community really doesn't like it when big, powerful countries invade little ones. Russia would be truly isolated.

Without proof that Russian troops and equipment are in Ukraine, the West’s ability to marshal diplomatic and economic pressure on Putin is limited. If Nemtsov really was going to reveal such proof, it would have put Putin’s whole Ukraine project in jeopardy.

I hope that the Post and the Times will look into this further, but it’s doubtful it would matter, since government investigators were seen at Nemtsov’s residence hours after his death, removing papers and hard drives. It looks like Putin has been able to end this latest threat using his favorite demonstrated method: hiring nameless thugs and denying involvement.

It’s a little sad that, despite a global consensus that imperialism is a bad thing, an authoritarian power can still conquer small neighbors so long as it doesn’t use real soldiers.

How American Government Can Get Unstuck

Democracies legislate. A body of equal citizens, coming together from time to time to make decisions, is a defining feature of every government in history that can call itself a democracy. That’s why it is so troubling that the 113th Congress was able to produce fewer laws than any in history. Wonkish journalists have published many blog posts lamenting the causes of the polarization that has shot down so many compromises, like the 2011 “ grand bargain," which would have gone a long way towards solving our fiscal crisis had it not fallen apart over opposition from an ideological minority. But nobody can say what to do about it. After all, we can’t reduce polarization without convincing the most insistent ideological voters to soften their opinions. This isn’t going to happen. So how can we mitigate their impact on our democratic functions?

One idea: amend the Constitution and move from a “first-past-the-post” system of apportioning representatives in the House and electors in the Electoral College to a "proportional representation" system. Over time, this would empower moderates while regulating extreme voters to the fringe of decision-making, where they belong.

In a first-past-the-post system (what we have), representatives for a deliberative body (like the House of Representatives or the Electoral College) are determined by which candidate achieves the greatest number of votes in a geographic area. In a system of proportional representation (what France has), each political party ranks their candidates for office in a list. Each voter casts a ballot for a party list, not for an individual candidate. When the votes are counted, representatives are selected for the deliberative body from the party lists in proportion to the percentage of the vote each party received at the ballot box. (watch this video from CGP Grey's blog for a much clearer and more entertaining description).

A proportional system in the US would overhaul how we elect presidents and members of the House of Representatives. Members of the Electoral College would be apportioned state-by-state— so if the Green Party won 10% of the presidential vote in a 10-elector state like Wisconsin, one of the electors sent to the college would be committed to vote for the Green Party’s presidential nominee. A proportional system wouldn’t work well in states with only three electoral votes, as minority parties would have to achieve 33% or higher to be apportioned a single elector. So we could increase the total number of electors in the college tenfold, allowing minority parties to impact the apportionment of electors in small states.

Congressman could be apportioned nationally, eliminating Congressional districts, which in their current gerrymandered state don’t hold much significance anyway. All parties could still hold primaries to determine which candidates make it onto the party lists, and at what rank. Those primaries could be held locally, to ensure that all regions are still represented. But in choosing which candidates actually get seats in Congress, geography would be irrelevant.

The idea of eliminating Congressional districts will sound crazy to most Americans, but we should pay attention to how our first-past-the-post system limits voter choice. For example, if you are extremely liberal, you may feel that the Socialist Party reflects your values better than any other, but you know that only a Democrat or a Republican has any chance of winning a plurality of votes in your district. You want your vote to impact the election, and you know that if you don’t vote for the Democrat, it increases the likelihood that the Republican (who you really hate) will win. Because of this calculation, many extreme voters end up casting ballots for Democrats or Republicans only because they are the "lesser of two evils."

The percentage of Americans who are hungry for a third party is at 60%, an all-time high. Many voters wish they could vote for someone more liberal than the Democrats or conservative than the Republicans; many others wish they could vote for someone who wasn’t beholden to either camp. A proportional system would give all voters the choices they want. Everyone who ever wanted to vote Socialist could do so without worrying that they were empowering the Republicans. With each voter’s voting decision changed in this way, all fringe parties — the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and many others — would get a lot more votes than they do today.

With more public support, fringe parties could draw extreme politicians away from Democrats and Republicans. Many liberals and conservatives would prefer to leave the mainstream parties if they thought they could win elections without them. Liberals who think any deal to reduce the debt that includes spending cuts is a giveaway to corporate interests could leave the Democratic Party and win seats in Congress as Greens or Socialists; the conservatives who would rather shut down the government than continue funding Obamacare could break off from Republicans and win elections as members of the Constitution Party. Ideological voters of the far left and right could have their platforms of purity.

Without the extreme elements that shoot down compromise, the two mainstream parties could reform into broad organizations that agree on general principles without having to agree on exactly how those principles are applied to every issue — like they used to be for most of the last hundred years. Politicians who favor progress over perfection would finally have a home in 21st century politics.

A Congress comprising two centrist parties and several others representing the most ideological voters would be more able to compromise, and therefore legislate. Without liberal activists to answer to, Democrats could occasionally vote for Medicare cuts; without the Tea Party, Republicans could occasionally vote for tax increases. This kind of Congress would also have the potential for interesting new coalitions. Democrats and Libertarians could agree to reduce mandatory-minimum penalties in drug sentencing; Republicans and Libertarians could fight to reduce taxes. The elusive “grand bargain” of debt reduction, including both spending cuts and tax increases, would have become law by now in a proportional system.

With so many representatives and voters associated with fringe parties, it would still be difficult for compromisers to cobble together a legislative majority. But the newly moderate Democratic and Republican parties would draw support from the large mass of American voters that actually agree on what needs to be done about the deficit, immigration reform, and other issues. Today, many of these voters, who care about America’s problems but aren’t as sure what the solutions are as liberal and conservative activists, are starting to reject politics entirely. Millennials especially have only ever seen acrimony and gridlock in Washington; with each failed compromise, they are less likely to vote and seek careers in public service.

A proportional system would give every kind of voter the hope of authentic representation. In doing so, it would empower voters and politicians who support compromise — the essence of a democratic system.

Extreme voices have an important place in a democracy. They push the boundaries of debate and introduce ideas that compromisers would never have thought of. But they shouldn’t be empowered to hold governance hostage pending the total adoption of their ideological vision.

You may have noticed that I haven’t said anything about the Senate. That’s because, other than eliminating the filibuster (which doesn’t require a Constitutional amendment), I think the Senate could remain unchanged. The “upper chamber" was created, explicitly, to give small jurisdictions a forum where they have as much power as large ones, which works directly against the principles underlying proportional representation. It’s likely that the Senate would remain, by-and-large, made up of only Democrats and Republicans.

I’m ok with that for two reasons: 1) Senators are, by virtue of representing entire states over six year terms, more accommodating and flexible than members of the House. It was the Senate that passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013 (just like they did back in 2006). 2) Even if the Senate were still comprised only of Democrats and Republicans, the ability to elect presidents and House members will still allow minor parties to attract national followings, build organizations, and have a hand in governing. This, in turn, would lead to the possibility that one of the erstwhile minor parties could contemplate winning a plurality in Senate race.

I recognize that the amendments required to enact proportional representation would reshape the Constitution more fundamentally than most voters would be comfortable with. Selecting someone to represent your area’s unique perspective is central to most Americans' understanding of democracy. But so much has changed in politics in the last few decades: regional issues matter less than they ever have; it has become impossible for a politician speak without placing herself on one side of the national Red/Blue culture war; and changes in our lifestyles and in the media culture allow people to insulate themselves from different opinions. Voters could still have their local communities be represented in state government, which is the natural venue for discussion of local issues, anyway.

In Federalist #10, James Madison wrote that “among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” Two hundred and some years later, the violence of our factions are choking off our essential democratic functions. To ensure healthy democracy for the next two hundred, we should be open to radical changes in how we practice it.

This is Good News, People: Obama's Finally Here

One of my favorite scenes in “The West Wing” is a flashback from early in Season 2. Jed Bartlet, then a long-shot presidential candidate, asks Leo McGarry, his campaign manager, why he is trying so hard to get him elected.

"Because I’m tired of it,”, Leo answers. “Year after year after year, of having to choose between the lesser of, ‘who cares?’ Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly look at it."

After Clinton’s impeachment and the failed campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, many liberals shared Leo’s frustration. Democrats had low standards; many who had grown up with Roosevelt and Kennedy as recent memories worried that no candidates with such inspiring vision could ever get elected in the twenty-first century’s cynical political culture.

Barack Obama was the candidate we had been looking for. Here was a man who wanted to inspire the nation to achieve big things. He was tolerant, principled, and devoted to reason. He saw the best in everyone, even those that hated him. He had a sense of history, but also understood the Internet and rap music.

Obama won a landslide victory after a campaign that appealed to our best selves, and I dared to believe that a strong majority of Americans could be united around a common agenda. The Great Recession disrupted this inspiring moment and robbed Obama of his honeymoon period.

All presidents must respond to events as they happen, but no president had the start of his term in office coincide with the beginning of economic catastrophe. He achieved a lot in his first six years, but amid historic levels of economic anxiety, the public was no longer in the mood to be inspired. His popularity suffered, and he had to spend the first six years of his time in office apologizing for circumstances what were not of his making while waiting for the economy to make up lost ground. Cynicism reasserted itself over politics.

That’s why it felt so good to watch Obama deliver the State of the Union address last Tuesday. For the first time, he told the nation that the economy is improving, unequivocally. He didn't try to explain why bad times weren’t his fault or to inspire hope for the future despite the present. Reeling off a series of positive data points, he was able to say honestly, credibly, and for the first time in his presidency, that everything is going to be okay. The speech’s punchline was, “the shadow of crisis has past.” In other words, “situation normal.”

As economic optimism and consumer confidence skyrocket, public anxiety is lifting, and Obama’s approval ratings are on the rise. Perhaps now Obama will have his honeymoon. It’s like he has finally arrived, six years later (albeit with Republican majorities in Congress, but I’ll take what I can get).

This is a good sign for Democrats in 2016; as Dana Milbank pointed out in a column last week, an incumbent President’s approval ratings are highly correlated with the likelihood of his party to win the next election. If Obama can use newfound popularity in his final two years to help Hillary Clinton become President, he will leave his ongoing initiatives on immigration, climate, and conservation in safe hands. It would be his ultimate vindication.

It’s been difficult to watch my dream president take such a beating for the last six years. I’ve been waiting for this moment in Obama’s presidency since I first saw that scene in The West Wing. I can’t wait to see what the next two years will bring.

Opening Eyes with Color

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is deeply admired the world over, yet he cannot travel outside his home country. Despite having designed Beijing’s iconic National Stadium (the “Bird’s Nest” of 2008 Olympic fame), he has spent scattered months and years in prison and under house arrest for speaking out against the Communist Party. But his subversive wit  and poignant installations have made him something of a superstar to Western political science students, foreign policy enthusiasts, and human rights activists.

Though I respect his achievements, I don’t quite swoon for him in the way others seem to. I’m ashamed to admit that for the last few years, my attitude about the plight of dissidents around the world, Ai included, has been one of ambivalence, with just a dash of sympathy.

My excuses are lame, but I’ll give them anyway: there’s something about dissidents that is hopelessly sad, particularly in China, where the rule of the Communist Party is virtually unquestioned and its ability to silence opposition unmatched possibly in world history. Sure, it sucks that this man, along with many others, has been imprisoned and abused for voicing his opinions, but I think, "what the hell am I supposed to do about it?” and hide.

I’ve also noticed that among many Ai-admirers I’ve spoken to, the story with China begins and ends with its human rights record; many speak of China almost exclusively in negative terms. I find this deeply unfair. Compared to much of the world, China is an open and progressive society. When I lived in Shanghai from 2004-2007, I experienced a culture more alive with hope and ambition than any I’d seen before. Hundreds of millions of people have been elevated from poverty in recent decades; relative progress is relevant, even though absolute democratic values are also important. It’s really hard to experience China in the way I did and not have warm feelings about how far they’ve come.

When Western observers speak in abjectly negative terms about China’s government and culture because of how these dissidents are treated, I get defensive. And I think I haven’t been as interested in Ai Weiwei as a result; he gets plenty of attention, so I like to focus on happy China thoughts.

So I wasn’t really sure what I would feel when I went out to Alcatraz a month ago to see @Large, Ai’s new series of installations on Alcatraz Island just off San Francisco. But I’m glad that I went. Through the intricacy, color, and vibrancy of his art, Ai brought my conscience about dissent just a little bit out of hiding.

The exhibit’s first installation — a traditional Chinese dragon kite —  was so intricate, so colorful, and so alive that I could only walk around it, staring into its complex face, and examining each one of its panels, for about twenty minutes. Having been so enraptured, my thoughts turned to the meaning behind the masterpiece; and in so doing, I couldn’t avoid facing my own feelings about the rights to self expression that I enjoy, and the people who have suffered in the struggle for it.

Have a look for yourself:

In traditional Chinese culture, dragons symbolize boldness, heroism, and perseverance; and when I look at this dragon head, it evokes thoughts of power, even dominance. Irrespective of Chinese culture, dragons are probably the most awesome creatures in (non)existence.

The kite hangs from the ceiling, and winds its way from one end of a huge open space to the other; standing at the dragon’s head, the tail is so far away you can’t even see it. This has the effect of making the installation look never-ending, the panels continuing off into the distance.

On every tenth panel or so was painted a quotation from a dissident, some of which I recognized, like Nelson Mandela, but most of which I didn’t.

It seems weird to portray dissent with a colorful dragon. There have been thousands of dissidents over course of history, but we haven’t heard of most of them, because most of them have been imprisoned and silenced. Most of the ones we have heard of were those who somehow escaped and at least partially succeeded, like Mandela, and Dr. King. But the vast majority are out of view, forgotten. Their existence is not colorful; it’s hardly vibrant. They don’t seem that powerful. Certainly not as colorful, vibrant, and powerful as this dragon Ai has made to represent them.

But they are bold. They are heroes, without the sacrifices of which many more of people across human history would still live without self-determination and freedom of expression. They are persevering, and, one should hope, much like the illusory never-ending appearance of the dragon kite, there will never be an end to their protest.

Having spent twenty minutes looking at the dragon and absorbing what meaning I could, I was much more prepared for the second installation of Ai’s exhibit: the faces of imprisoned dissidents from around the world, represented in huge panels made of Legos lying on the floor:

Without having seen the dragon, I might have walked in, though, “wow, cool he used Legos to build all that,” and moved on. After the dragon, I spent time studying these faces with a kind of subdued reverence.

The presence of Edward Snowden’s face in the first series of panels is a reminder that dissent is everywhere, even in the places where protection of free expression is greatest.

@Large is on exhibition at a time when free expression is increasingly threatened around the world. As I’ve said, Ai is something of a hero among liberal political science students and activist-types, but in China he and his struggle just aren't that well known or sympathized with. Authoritarianism is on the rise globally, led by a recalcitrant China and a provocative Russia, and the image of the US and Europe, and by extension the liberal values they represent, have had their effectiveness at facilitating social harmony and prosperity questioned. Many think China will become the next global power, while Turkey’s government is restricting dissent, and the Prime Minister of Hungary says he believes in "illiberal democracy," as if to suggest that accountability to the people and protection of civil liberties are niceties that serious countries can't afford. The US, post-Bush, is in no position to credibly preach self-determination and free expression.

Is it hopeless, then? Is Ai’s message about dissent futile? Maybe.

It’s hard to see a path forward. When it comes to politics, I am pragmatic. I don’t believe we should genuinely threaten China’s economic relations with the US unless we are prepared to threaten our economic ties with every other authoritarian nation, which we cannot do. The US cannot ensure everyone’s freedom around the world. There are too many dictators, kings, sheikhs, and oligarchies for us to take a stand. But the only thing worse than letting these dissidents live in silent suffering would be to forget about them entirely. So long as Ai is making such beautiful art, one thing is for sure: we will remember.

A Response To My Errant Midterm Prediction

Back in July, I wrote that Democrats would hold their Senate majority. I acknowledged that voters were frustrated with the Obama administration, that the electorate in midterm years tends to be more demographically Republican than in presidential cycles, and that voters tend to look at midterm elections as a chance to register their opinion of the national status-quo, rather than as a unique local choice. But Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu, the incumbent Democrats in bright-red Arkansas and Louisiana, had independent identities and many cycles of experience beating back conservative challenges, and I thought Republicans would have a hard time portraying them as “Obama Democrats.” Meanwhile, Democratic candidates in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina were polling ahead of their opponents in mid-summer, and I thought that Democrats would be able to hold those leads through November by mounting a Fall campaign around falling unemployment and Republican extremism. I was wrong.

I overestimated the extent to which voters in all the contested Senate seats, and especially in Arkansas and Louisiana, would view each election as a local choice between two candidates, rather than as a chance to express their feelings about President Obama. Members of both Senators’ immediate families were longtime officeholders in their respective states, and both of them ran campaigns that could hardly be construed as liberal: Landrieu by embracing the oil industry, and Pryor by talking about his Baptist faith. Landrieu won re-election to the Senate twice since first winning her seat in 1996, including in 2002, an election that Republicans won decisively. Mark Pryor first won his seat in 2002.

But disapproval of — and outright disdain for — President Obama was too intense for Pryor and Landrieu to be able to win against the odds yet again. In 2002, Pryor and Landrieu didn’t have a deeply unpopular liberal president weighing them down. Arkansas supported Mitt Romney by 24 points, and Louisiana by 17; there were simply too many Romney voters for Landrieu and Pryor to convince that they were different than the president. And the state of public opinion is such that conservative voters are much more motivated to vote against President Obama than liberal voters are to vote for him. This affected turnout for Democrats across all of the contested Senate campaigns.

Indeed, largely due to the economic pessimism that pervades the national psyche in 2014, liberals and conservatives alike are disappointed with President Obama’s tenure. Most voters’ approval of the President tends to be tied to their approval of the federal government’s performance more generally, and with stagnant wages around the country and only gridlock in the nation’s capital, a sense that the government is unable to address our protracted national problems cuts across party lines.

I thought Democrats would be able to fight against this malaise with a campaign that emphasized falling unemployment and Republican extremism. But the twin megastories of Ebola’s arrival in the United States and the growing power of ISIS precluded any possibility of a “good news” October.

Instead, both stories reinforced the sense that the federal government, under President Obama’s leadership, was helpless to address the problems of an apparently chaotic world. Both Ebola and ISIS seemed to take the administration by surprise. Ebola was particularly horrifying because it’s a deadly plague; by forcing American intervention in Iraq just a couple years after the withdrawal of US forces, ISIS’s advance represented a significant regression in a key area of US foreign policy. In addition, the widespread exposure of Americans to videos of our citizens’ heads being cut off by scary men in masks could only add the to the national climate of anxiety and decline.

In my opinion, the US response to both Ebola and ISIS were about as good as could have been expected of any administration, but there was no way to spin it to make it look like the President and his team had a grip on these horrifying threats. This accentuated Democratic supporters’ sense of hopelessness, and Republican voters’ sense of anger. Hopeless citizens don’t much vote, and angry ones do. This, I believe explains more than anything else why Mark Udall and Kay Hagan, who had been leading in the polls heading into October, ended up losing re-election in Colorado and North Carolina.

My biggest takeaway from watching this election play out is that, absent immediate and extenuating circumstances, the historical data on midterms, where the President’s party loses seats in midterm elections, is hard to defy. This means that so long as we’re electing Presidents, we will probably elect opposition Congresses. Back in the day when an opposition Congress could make a deal with a president, this state of affairs didn’t present an inherent challenge to our government’s efficacy. But in this polarized era, a conservative Congress and a moderate president don’t seem capable of agreeing on anything at all. Instead, we have gridlock, gridlock, and more gridlock, with no end in sight.

Social Welfare in a Data-Driven World: A Reflection on "Who Owns the Future?" by Jaron Lanier

Most mornings I sleep as late as possible, but on the first Friday each month for the last 5 years up through last summer I have awakened when it’s still dark outside. Despite the early hour, timid excitement would pull me from slumber, and I would roll over, grab my phone from from my bedside table, and peer through blurry eyes at my latest push notifications, hoping to see one from the Washington Post about the previous month’s unemployment rate, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since the Great Recession began, the media portrayed joblessness as the worst symptom of a bad economy, which in turn was dragging down President Barack Obama’s political fortunes. As an Obama believer, each of those mornings I hoped that a falling unemployment rate would increase President Obama’s popularity. Last summer unemployment fell below 6%, the midterm elections showed us that the president remains unpopular. Economic anxiety, the media now says, has more to do with stagnant wages than the rate of employment. Nobody is happy who is locked into a job with little opportunity for financial advancement; nobody is happy who is working a lower paying job than they used to without much hope for returning to their previous standard of living.

I've been determined to understand why an economy that is growing at 5% in the last quarter is failing to increase living standards for most of its people. I am tired of listening to mainstream liberals and conservatives blame each other for every economic problem; neither camp understands what's happening in society or what to do about it. But Jaron Lanier, a "digital idealist," describes what's causing these trends more accurately than most, if not all, of our political and cultural leaders.

In his 2013 book Who Owns the Future?, Lanier shows how the growing use of algorithm-driven software by businesses and institutions to collect and analyze huge amounts of personal data for commercial means, and nascent innovations in automation and robotics, are making it harder for people of average wealth and education levels to find good jobs. As should be expected when trying to predict the future, Lanier's ideas are theoretical and sometimes farfetched. But they are worth keeping in mind as we move into a highly networked and automated future, where information, rather than labor, is the "primary object" through which money is made.

Who Owns the Future? reaches further than can be analyzed in one blog piece; what follows constitutes a distillation of what I found to be his most compelling narrative.

Before the Internet, businesses and other institutions relied on human workers to record, analyze, and transmit information. Since the rise of the Web and rapid decline in computing costs, many industries have been "disrupted" by new companies who primarily rely on computers to collect, process, and transmit information through software. What we are seeing, according to Lanier, is a slow change from an economy that relies on human labor to one that relies on human information.

This phenomenon is long underway and should be evident to an urban millennial. Many of our favorite companies are built around their use of computers to absorb and process huge amounts of data (data users very often give over freely). Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Travelocity, and Spotify are just a tiny fraction of such companies. Think about it: our favorite Internet-based companies may look like they perform different functions based on the variety of products and services they sell, but fundamentally all they are doing is analyzing as much information as possible and using it to deliver you a product or service.

We, everyday citizens with everyday problems to deal with, are enamored with these new services and the level of convenience they offer. Many things that used to truly be a pain in the ass have become relatively painless in just the last couple of years because of these companies. This scale of data processing is only something a huge group of computers can do. Companies, and whole industries, that come from the old world --- where only humans knew how to analyze and transmit data --- can't possibly find a way to gather, process, and use information on this level. We citizens, self-interested economic actors that we are, start viewing old world companies who rely more on humans to analyze and communicate information as slow and inefficient by comparison. The companies whose modes of operation rely on humans start to fail. Once the power of software starts to fulfill core functions, entire industries shed hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The travel industry is a great example. It used to be that if you wanted to find housing and transportation in a foreign country where you had no friends or relatives, you'd have to call a travel agent. The travel agent maintained a network of hotels and car services, and knew how to get the best deal for her clients. Online services like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia maintain all that information on the Web. It makes no sense for airlines and hotels to pay travel agents to find customers when their users can just hop on a computer, browse options, and book their choice in the space of a few minutes. Today there is little need for travel agents. The services that replaced them -- Travelocity, et al --- employ a few thousand people to maintain their computers, build updates and fixes into their algorithms, and market the services to new users. But they don't employ nearly as many people as the hundreds of thousands of travel agents they've put out of work.

The music industry is another example. Brick-and-mortar record stores and the staff to support them are largely unnecessary since users can buy whatever songs they want from iTunes, or stream them on Spotify. Meanwhile, these services provide artists and record companies far less in royalties than album sales once did, further reducing the revenue available to support a recording industry. Sure, Apple employs people on its iTunes team, and Spotify has employees too, but not as many as the record industry they have gutted.

Lanier's demonstration of how Amazon out-competes retailers who used to have a geographical advantage as local sellers is so spot-on that I'll just quote it directly:

"A 'bot' program in the Amazon cloud monitors the price of books you sell everywhere else in the world; it automatically makes sure Amazon is never undersold. There is no longer a local intelligence advantage for piercing by small local sellers. This leaders to bizarre outcomes, such as books being priced for free through Amazon simply because they are being given away as part of a promotion elsewhere. Therefore promotions for ordinary, small sellers become more expensive or riskier than they otherwise would be. Information supremacy for one company becomes, as a matter of course, a form of behavior modification of the rest of the world."

One could argue that laid-off travel agents and  studio technicians can find jobs elsewhere, and that they themselves benefit from these great services that caused the elimination of their jobs and the jobs of others like them. That's true.

Here's the problem, though: the jobs that are getting eliminated usually came with relatively high guaranteed pay and health benefits, but unless the laid-off travel agents know how to code, most of the new jobs available to them tend to be low-level service jobs in fast food, retail, or home care, which pay close to minimum wage and often don't offer health insurance or other benefits. So as more and more of the companies that are delivering the leading services and products in our economy rely on digital networks and automation, our middle class, average people who "work hard and play by the rules," as Bill Clinton would say, is slowly moving from obsolete jobs that at least paid reasonably well to crappier jobs that make it much harder to support a family and have some time left over to enjoy life.

This is why Obama’s approval rating has remained so stubbornly low. The more industries that are disrupted by software, the fewer decent-paying jobs there are overall.

Growing use of software and algorithms throughout the economy will go hand-in-hand with ongoing advances in robotic automation to further undermine jobs and industries that have always relied on human labor. The process of automation is underway, but less visible to the average citizen for the time being (though this will likely change very soon). You may have heard that many companies that outsourced manufacturing jobs overseas in the last decade of the 20th century have been moving manufacturing operations back to the US. That's true, but the jobs aren't coming back with those manufacturing operations. That's because developments in robotics have enabled the automation of many assembly line functions that humans fulfilled only recently. This process has been going on for a long time, but it has increased in recent years. And it's about to get truly crazy.

Self-driving cars seem impossible, but they are already licensed to drive on public roads in many states, and their introduction to the mainstream will come much sooner than people thought even just a couple of years ago. Their economic impact will be significant. As Lanier points out, "a giant portion of the global middle classes works behind a wheel…a traditional entry ramp into economic sustenance for fresh arrivals to big cities like New York would be gone." We think the taxi drivers are upset about car-sharing services--imagine how they'll react when they learn that nobody will ever need their services again.

Health care is another industry whose (slightly more distant) future will also probably lie in automation, according to Lanier. He claims that, in Japan, robots are "already able to handle delicate tasks, like certain surgical subroutines," and as advances proceed, they will legitimately disincentivize the hiring of human nurses and other caregivers. Of course, any medical robot's operating system, like the software algorithms that are in such heavy use today, "will be utterly dependent on cloud software that in turn will be dependent on observing millions of situations and outcomes."

You wouldn't be alone if, on reading this, you think Lanier sounds like some kind of paranoid combination technophile-socialist. He certainly didn’t do his credibility many favors with his writing style, which is often, if not the majority of the time, quite vague and "out there," with a lot of extended metaphors, some of which work well but many of which seem entirely too farfetched. His concepts stretch across so much different subject matter that it's hard to follow him as he zips from ancient Athens to your computer screen, using futuristic words to make sure his meaning holds together logically, but still leaving behind the careful reader. The book is also just too long, and at times tedious to work through.

But Lanier’s knowledge of technology and understanding of the trends therein runs deep, and we shouldn’t dismiss his ideas out of hand just because he needed more editing. We also shouldn’t blame him for sounding a little crazy when trying to predict the future. The value of his work lies in the way he re-frames common understandings of how societies develop, and his recognition of how information technology is bringing about what renowned urbanist Richard Florida has called "a tectonic shift to a fundamentally new economic order: the shift from an industrial economy to an idea-driven creative economy." Lanier's worldview, wherein digital networks and automation will fundamentally reshape human life in a way that will outdo the Industrial Revolution, is closer to the truth than our polarized national discourse reflects, and is too little understood by most of our leaders in politics and culture.

If information technology is harming prosperity, then what can we do about it?

Perhaps an update to our understanding of the requirements for economic success, and a corresponding upgrade to our education system to ensure widespread intellectual creativity and technical skill, will suffice to ensure that most people have a well-paying job. In an economy where menial labor is exchanged for wages, and wages exchanged for consumable goods, people have only needed basic literacy and work ethic to achieve financial security. Now that is clearly not enough. Our material-based economy is built around the idea that only a small minority of workers gets to have a say in what physical goods are made, and how; the rest of us are meant to follow instructions, take home our paychecks, and consume.

What if all people were empowered to be creative in their work, or to exercise high technical skill or leadership? What if creativity could be humanity’s competitive advantage? If our education system could be upgraded so that all citizens were equipped, and expected, to utilize their creativity to come up with new ideas, products, and applications that made even better use of the computing algorithms and machine technologies that are developing, then perhaps everybody could achieve financial security. If this took place, we would become a society of creators and thinkers, much happier and more psychologically fulfilled than a society of mere consumers.

150 years ago, some contemporary thinkers were gravely worried about the future of human labor during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy; what they didn't realize was that the new economy would be so robust that it would, through geographic re-organization and a change to worker skills and lifestyle, provide opportunities for former farm workers to find employment and enjoy a better life. Maybe society could similarly reinvent itself in the 21st century. To me, this is the best-case scenario for the human experience.

But if we accept Lanier's theory in totality, simple update to our notion of labor to require creativity may not go far enough in addressing the fundamental problem. According to this line of thinking, there will come a day when all human labor will be made obsolete by machines running algorithms based on personal data gathered from humanity. Lanier’s solution is to compensate people financially every time some of their personal data is used to make money. To accomplish this, he suggests that every citizen be given a unique online "identity" to track their activity, not unlike how one uses Facebook to log into many online services, but for all online activity, across all applications and platforms. This would establish data "provenance" for every citizen, and enable the tracking of every bit of personal data from collection all the way through use in an algorithm. Micropayments would be given to the original user in proportion to how much money was made using each tidbit of personal data. This idea, if implemented fully, should lead to economic security for most humans. But it will present a monumental technical and cultural challenge to get society to accept that the era of exchanging labor for wages has passed. And if they aren’t working in some fashion, what will people do with their time?

Figuring all of this out is not within the scope of this blog post; it will take the hard work of multiple generations. But the sooner we begin the debate, the better, and we need to urge the rise of political and cultural leaders who can grasp the full extent of the transition that our society is undergoing. Nobody among our current leadership seems to get it; both main ideological camps, liberal and conservative, seem only interested in trying to return us to some version of the past. In the face of this, Lanier is one of the first thinkers I've come across who is looking for a solution to our social stratification and anxious malaise that takes into account the fundamental ways that recent technological developments are reshaping our world. He should be applauded for being among the first to grapple with what, if anything, humanity can do to ensure widespread social welfare in an economy where information, rather than labor, is the "primary object.”

Do I sound crazy? Please challenge me. I want to debate this topic; I want other people to be thinking about it. The Internet is enabling things we never thought possible and can conceivably impact every aspect of life. We need to be thinking about how the fundamental advances in information collection, processing, and transmission will affect our society in the arc of history.

A Big Win for Iraqi Democracy

With its country in peril, the Iraqi government has nonetheless passed a significant milestone: a bloodless transfer of power according without armed American supervision.

A peaceful transfer of power is the main factor separating real democracies, where the will of the people is the source of political influence, from fake democracies, where controlling interests manipulate elections to legitimize their authoritarian behavior.

The Bush Administration empowered Nouri al-Maliki to lead Iraq’s permanent government after the fall of the Baath regime, but from the start he showed a worrisome authoritarian streak.Shrewd analysts thought it likely that, after American withdrawal, he would consolidate power and run the country as yet another strongman. And that's pretty much what he has done for the last few years, even as the Islamic State has conquered much of the country and his authority has come into question.

If the Iranians, the Iraqi military, and the police had continued to obey Maliki in the last several weeks, he could have used force to repress his opponents. The Islamic State might have continued its ruthless conquest with little serious challenge, while Maliki maintained dominion over a shrinking zone of influence.

Fortunately, this nightmare may not play out. With the support of Sunni Arab and Kurdish leaders, Iran, and the military, Iraq’s president chose Haider al-Abadi to serve as the Prime Minister of a new unity government. Any number of things could derail the process of forming a unity government in the coming weeks, but for now, it looks like the forces of reason in Iraq’s government have pulled together to defend the nation against those who would break it apart.

I can’t really understate how big of a deal this is for a new democracy — that its most powerful institutions would choose to favor the interests of the nation as a whole over their tribal loyalties.

According to Stanford scholar Francis Fukuyama, writing in his 2011 book The Origins of Political Order, the defining feature of a modern state is the establishment of impersonalized power that is not subject to nepotism or other tribal practices. With Maliki's hold on power challenged, the tribal thing for the military and Shiite parties to do would have been to back him at all costs. But they decided that it was worth more  to keep Iraq whole and free of terrorism than it was to defend a leader whose regime had pointedly excluded Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Deferring to constitutional order, Maliki has submitted to the rule of law. The overarching goal of the politically powerful in Iraq has become, at least temporarily, to keep the country whole and unified, rather than to reward one's ethnic group.

A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have thought this would take place. Iraq looked to be on a path to becoming yet another sectionally fragmented regime, held together only by the force of a dictatorship that was perhaps less maniacally cruel than that of Saddam Hussein, but hardly worth all the blood and treasure lost in years of war.

And this may yet happen. Iraq has a terrible track record of inclusive governance. But it has taken a huge step that we should not overlook. The Islamic State may have accidentally done Iraqi democracy a huge favor by instigating leap forward for its political society. Let’s hope this holds.

CaliFuture: Notes on a Song About My Life

Comin' out to California; gonna make somethin of myself.

These are the opening lyrics to Claude VonStroke's newest single, "CaliFuture." They were inspired by his own experience of moving to California and "starting at the bottom selling fake perfume out of the the trunk of his car," but they resonate with the experience of many a confused youth who moved to and around California trying to find their future. I am one of them. I knew only one person when I transferred to a college near LA in 2009; I didn't have a job or a consistent place to stay when I moved up to San Francisco in 2013. I was nervous, but I had an overriding deep sense of hope that I would make it someday.

California is a special place. Compared to everywhere else I've lived, California's culture is optimistic and easygoing.That doesn't mean people don't get nervous, work hard, or have a sense of decorum; there's just a permeating feeling of hopeful tolerance that undergirds daily life and reverberates through human interactions. Non-conformance to expectations is seen in a slightly more positive light than anywhere I've been; people want to see new things, to experience life outside their prior understanding of it. Different is "cool," rather than just "unfamiliar," because people have a sense that no matter how weird things get, everything's gonna be alright. Not everyone's experience is the same, but I know I'm not the only one. The phrase, "California is not a place, it's a state of mind," has to come from somewhere, after all. I felt it from the moment arrived at LAX for the first time in 2006, and I felt it again when I visited Claremont in 2009. From then on, I knew I had to make something of myself in California, because that was the only place I could be.

Drivin’ in my car, got the top down, got no money 

Sunshine beamin'

This song takes me back to those moments of arriving in a new city in California, without a long-term plan and unsure of how things would turn out, but with the sun shining, I was somehow more excited and confident than I'd ever been.

The lyrics are accompanied by, as the album's promo lit describes it, "an obese acid groove that thunders unrelentingly." The repetitive noise doesn't stay in key; it changes, it's weird. It doesn't put you at ease; it doesn't go those familiar places that music goes, making you feel warm, or relaxed, or pumped up, or melancholy, or whatever. It's a plucky twang that differs from what normally constitute music. And it makes you want to shake your hips, and forget your troubles.

And it's a perfect sound to describe that "California state of mind" that I'm talking about. That high-pitched beginning to the phrase is piercing like a siren; it almost makes me turn around to look for the fire truck. But instead of staying up there in that off-putting, attention-grabbing space, it melodically twists down into a low bass tone. The siren is the off-putting part that takes me somewhere new; the repeated reversion to the bass is what lets me know that I'm still on earth, that I'm going to be ok.

Comin’ out to California, gonna make it happen on my own, yeah

Ain’t nobody stopping’ me

Let’s get to work

Hard work, indeed. It wasn't easy up and moving someplace where I had no family or longstanding friends

But as this song reminds me, being in California, it wasn't that bad. It mostly takes me back to those distilled moments of anticipation, whether when sitting on the tarmac in Boston thinking about landing in LA and visiting my friend Evan in 2009, or when driving up to SF to try to find a job, with my shades on, looking at the beautiful Pacific Ocean from the 101.

It's great when a song hits you in that unique way that makes you appreciate your individuality while still feeling like a part of something bigger. I hope that fellow Californians can appreciate the spirit, and that others can hear the call. Listen to the track, and see what I mean:

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The Path to Credibility is Digital

Better use of technology could bolster support for activist government in the 21st century

Americans’ trust in government is rapidly declining; major spectacles like the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the perception of government inaction in response to the 2008 financial collapse, and the debt-ceiling debacle of the summer of 2011 have created a public relations crisis for government at all levels. According to Gallup, in the 4 years leading up to September 2013, the average proportion of Americans responding that they have "a fair amount" or "great deal" of trust in the federal government to solve domestic problems was 43%, down from an average of 54% in the preceding decade. Believing government to be ineffective, most Americans seem to prefer that government just stop trying; "since Obama became president," writes Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik this past week in a piece for Politico Magazine, "the number of Americans who want to expand the role of the federal government has decreased sharply."

I worry about how this trend is affecting the long term view of government and politics taken by my generation --- "millennials," as we are known. A majority of millennials generally supports an activist government, but we are withdrawn from the political process. We've grown up without knowing what it means for government to be effective; to many of us, the word “politics” means some combination of "boring," "pointless," or ”corrupt.” According to the Pew Research Center's "Political Typology" report, millennials make up a plurality of the two most disengagedtypology groups in our culture today. But if the generations that are on the rise continue to disengage from the political process, the political environment will never be ripe for action on issues like climate change and income inequality. Advocates of government action need millennials to get in the game. What can be done?

The disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov last October cemented the belief of many young people that the government is inherently incompetent compared to the private sector. After all, no legitimate business would try to launch a complex web application without load-testing it first. But this sorry episode also offers a path forward for government to start winning back its credibility among millennials: it must close the information technology gap between the government and the private sector.

Millennials don't just trust technology more than any other age cohort; they consider the use of technology in routine processes to be a dire necessity. But the federal government’s adoption of technology make it look like a relic of the 1950s compared to today's agile businesses.

As an example, skim this Washington Post profile of an underground complex in rural Pennsylvania where all federal retirement papers are processed by hand. The average time it takes to process a federal employee’s retirement is more than three months.In an era where almost all business data is stored on the web, accessible via an easy interface from any location, and updated in real-time for use by workers, it's a shame that federal employees are still tied to a system devised in the 1970s.

Other examples of processes done on paper that could be accomplished much faster and more accurately using software abound; the Census Bureau recently reverted to paper after a failed experiment with hand-held computers, and the VA once accumulated so much paper in one office while trying to move to an online system that the floor was in danger of collapsing.

By replacing laborious, paper-based processes with processes based in software, the government could deliver services faster, more efficiently, and more accurately than it ever has. Politically, this would be meaningful to many voters my age who believe that government should act, if only it had the ability. If government agencies used software half as well as the best web businesses do, many more young people would actually believe Democrats and other advocates of activist government when they promise that state-sponsored programs will  improve citizens’ lives.

If the government is going to adopt good software, it would be helpful if its workforce knew how to use it; right now, only 9% of the civil service is under the age of 30. This is because the government's hiring and compensation systems were designed for a bygone era, and it does not bode well for the future of technology in government.  Millennials expect to have careers where good performance, not just seniority, will be rewarded with higher pay and opportunities for advancement. Right now, pay for federal workers is tied to a series of 15 complex classifications which are difficult to change. Promises of long-term financial security aren’t that appealing to us, because we don’t expect to be provided for in our old age. We'd rather be in a place where we have a chance to do well without having to commit to twenty years with the same organization. To pull millennials into public service, the government could update its recruitment and compensation procedures for civil servants to be more competitive with the private sector. By allowing individual agencies and offices to budget compensation under a firm cap, managers could have flexibility to reward good performance, unlike today. This, and other reforms, would go a long way towards attracting talented young people who are deciding between a job in public service or a job at a tech start-up.

Integrating software into the administration of public programs and reforming the civil service will not by themselves end the federal government's crisis of credibility. They certainly would not have prevented some of the crises in recent years that have undermined trust in government to begin with. But looking forward: even if ideological gridlock in Congress is broken and some sense of sanity restored, millennials will still never trust government to function effectively if its worldview and processes remain stuck in the 20th century.

Successive generations will demand the use of technology even more than millennials do, so technological adoption in government is inevitable. Beginning this process sooner rather than later offers a path for the the government to dig itself out of its crisis of trust, and become the more effective, agile, and competitive force for good that we need.

Democrats Will Hold the Line and Keep The Senate

The conventional wisdom of the day is that Democrats will probably lose their majority in the US Senate in the elections this fall. I can understand why so many people think so — certain historical factors would seem to stack the deck in favor of the GOP. But I think Democrats are going to keep the Senate this November. The political environment isn’t meaningfully different from in 2012, and Democratic candidates in key races are running strong. It won’t be by much, but in January of 2015, Harry Reid will remain the Majority Leader.

First, let’s acknowledge the environmental factors that are working for the Republican side. Democratic retirements in Montana, West Virginia, and South Dakota have made those three seats near-certain pickups for the GOP. This means that Republicans only need to net three more seats from among Democrat-held Colorado, Iowa, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and North Carolina, while not losing either Georgia or Kentucky. These are red-leaning states where Mitt Romney won handily in 2012 or swing states where Barack Obama won by only a little.

Meanwhile, presidential approval ratings are usually a pretty good harbinger of electoral outcomes for members of his party; the President’s approval rating is currently in the low 40s.

Voters continue to report that the economy is by far their most important political issue. The President, and Democrats in Congress, continually attain low ratings from the public on their ability to deal with the economic issues.

Take all these indisputable facts, and Vegas will tell you that based on all the elections that have taken place before, the odds that Democrats will keep the majority are slim. But this election hasn’t taken place before, and Democratic candidates have some factors working in their favor too.

The Democrats running in Arkansas and Louisiana (Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu, respectively) are longtime incumbent Senators whose entire careers have been built on winning narrow victories in their red states. They also come from political families with strong independent name identification, and are hard to portray as “just another Obama Democrat.”  Mark Udall, running in a close race in Colorado, also has an independent identity in his state, and not a bad reputation.

Non-partisan polling that has come out this cycle has been sporadic and inconsistent. However, the data so far do not show that any of the five incumbent Democrats in these races are in dire peril. Landrieu has led in several non-partisan surveys, and in the Rasmussen poll, which usually overstates Republican support. The last two non-partisan polls that have come out in Arkansas have alternately shown Pryor to be up 11 points or down 7. Udall is showing a narrow advantage, and Colorado polling has underestimated Democratic support there in the last several cycles.

Even the incumbent Kay Hagan in North Carolina, who does not have the benefit of name recognition and seasoned re-election experience that Pryor and Landrieu have, has a lead in both partisan and non-partisan polling against her opponent, Thom Tillis.

Bruce Braley, the Democratic challenger for the open seat in Iowa, is a respected incumbent congressman from the eastern part of the state with a strong base of support. The three most recent polls in Iowa indicate that he has a slight lead over his Republican opponent, Joni Ernst. In Alaska, whether or not Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is leading against his chief opponent depends on which party conducted the poll. Taking polls in The Last Frontier is notoriously difficult, anyway. But it would be wrong to conclude that he's running behind.

Democrats certainly can lose any of these races -- but where polling is tight and unpredictable, the power of incumbency and fundraising hold weight. And on these measures, Democratic candidates are punching heavy.

Congressional Democrats’ relatively low approval ratings, like the approval ratings of the President, are due to general dissatisfaction with the state of the country and the economy. Moreover, they do not signal  any great inclination to support Republicans, whose ratings are even lower, on the economy and other issues.

There also isn’t some kind of single defining issue or vote that any of the Democrats have taken that would disqualify them in the eyes of general election voters the way, say, a vote in favor of TARP might threaten a Republican in a primary. Republicans will cry out and say that all these incumbent Democrats voted for ObamaCare, and voters hate ObamaCare, so they’ll vote against these Democrats. But polling doesn’t really bear out that voters really care about ObamaCare that much, especially compared to how much they care about the economy.

Indeed, Republicans seem certain that dissatisfaction with Obama alone will be enough to push them over the top in these close races.

But remember — Obama himself won re-election when his own approval ratings on the economy were under water, because he still was seen as caring about ordinary people, and because Mitt Romney wasn’t able to articulate a clear case for why he would be able to improve the economic outlook of average people. If Republican Senate candidates can’t do better, Democrats will hold the line.

Two other factors are important here:

First, the contests in Kentucky and Georgia. I don’t think Democrats will actually win in Kentucky or Georgia, but polling is close enough in both races for their candidates to have a shot.

Finally — and this is a real wild card — if the economy improves in these next three months at the same pace it did in the previous three, it could provide Democrats with something positive to campaign on heading into the Fall.

Barring gaffes and other individual mistakes, Democrats will pull out most of these toss-up races.

I think that the national lay of the land reflects a fairly immoveable status quo: polarized, dissatisfied, with most voters thinking Democrats are not effective, but that Republicans aren’t much, either.

If this were a Presidential year, I would predict that Democrats would sweep the toss-ups, like they did in 2012. With an older, whiter electorate than in a Presidential year, Republicans will win one or two of the six vulnerable toss-up Democratic seats. But especially with the possibility that Republicans will lose in Kentucky or Georgia, I don't think they're going to get to 51. As in the last two Senate cycles, Republicans will fail to capitalize on a great opportunity to seize the majority.

Popularity in Context: Presidential Job Approval Ratings vs. Confidence in Institutions

Much was written in the press a few weeks ago when President Obama’s job approval rating in the Gallup poll sunk back into the low 40s. Analysis indicated that his popularity, and influence, are at a low ebb. This spate of articles was consistent with the journalistic trend of the last year, where piece after piece have come out associating Obama’s second-term decline in popularity with that of his predecessor, the near-universally reviled George W. Bush. Few serious analysts have come out and said that Obama is now just as unpopular as Bush was, but many take the tone that even if Obama isn’t quite as reviled as Bush, their unpopular second-terms are somewhere in the same category of public esteem. The latest of these headlines came on Wednesday, when Chris Cilizza reported that "Most Americans Say Obama Is the Worst President Since World War II."

Avid Obama supporter that I am, I can’t let this slide.Fortunately, polls don’t just ask about Presidential approval ratings; each year, Gallup also takes a measure of Americans’ level of confidence in 15 public institutions, ranging from Congress and SCOTUS, to public schools and the police force, to big business.* Right now, Americans’ confidence in each and every one of these institutions is at or near a record low.

To get a better understanding of Obama’s popularity relative to these institutions, I averaged the public’s confidence in institutions for each year that there was data (the Gallup started asking these questions in 1973). Then I averaged each president’s job approval rating for each year that Gallup had institutions data, and looked at the difference each year between the individual president’s approval rating, and citizens’ collective confidence in America’s major institutions as a whole.

After looking at the data, two things became clear:

1) Americans' trust in our society's shaping institutions is at an all-time low.

2) Relative to society's other major institutions, President Obama is reasonably popular as compared the preceding seven US presidents.

See the graph below for detail. The further above a dot is from the line, the more popular that year's president relative to major public institutions.

Obama's approval rating has, on average, been 14 percentage points higher than Americans' confidence in major institutions. This compares favorably to Bill Clinton (15%), George W. Bush, (10%), and Ronald Reagan (10%).  Obama has maintained solid-to-good popularity, even as we head into the last quarter of his time in office. We don't have a lot of data on Americans' confidence in institutions during the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, and Carter, but they were all considerably less popular than their successors by this measure.

With Americans' trust in institutions sinking to historic lows, I posit that we are entering an era of politics akin to the "dead ball era" of Major League Baseball in the early 20th century, when the balls were so heavy and mucked up that it was almost impossible for even the best hitters to hit many home runs. Similarly, so long as our confidence in our institutions remains so low, or continues to sink, presidents will struggle to keep their job approval ratings above water for more than a few months at a time.

The fact that Obama has retained an approval rating hovering in the low to mid 40s, while almost every other public institution has the confidence of only around 30% of the public, is a testament to the regard with which most Americans still hold him. I would go so far as to say that, even many of poll respondents who say that they disapprove of his job performance said so because they understand that he has been unable to achieve his goals in the face of really difficult circumstances, not because they don’t like him personally, or what he was trying to do in the first place.

Obama’s unpopularity has been a major story for pundits in the last year. I think the bigger story is the personal popularity the President has retained in what is a toxic political environment for all of society’s major institutions.

Meaningful comparisons should assume a level playing field. Obama's public is way more prone to be suspicious of society's big, shaping institutions than the public faced by any of the last eight presidents. Analysts should consider this fact when comparing Obama's popularity against history.

*To aggregate Americans' confidence in public institutions, I have included their level of confidence in each of the following for the years data was available: Church / Religion, the Military, the Supreme Court, Banks, Public Schools, Newspapers, Congress, TV News, Organized Labor, the Presidency, the police, the Medical System, the Criminal Justice System, and Big Business.