“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again,” it says in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing new under the sun.” It means that the human experience is essentially constant, and we should keep our powder dry. This is usually true, but not in the United States right now: there is dirty work afoot. We have a pretty big problem.
I am not talking about the attempt last weekend to assassinate former President Donald Trump. No individual’s actions, however impactful, can teach us very much (other than that randomness governs the universe). Rather, I mean a combination of extreme polarization with shocking distortions, debilitating dysfunction and systemic paralysis that are driving the more productive parts of the country to insulate themselves from national politics—if not from the nation.
One symptom of the polarization is Trump’s selection Monday as his running mate of 39-year-old Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a populist conservative who opposes gay marriage and has suggested support for a federal abortion ban. If Trump were inclined to try to heal the country, he would have picked one of several centrist alternatives.
But the problems bedeviling the Republic go far beyond quotidian events, and have more to do with the distortions, dysfunction and paralysis. And much of it has to do with an excessive focus on the states. That’s what led to the fundamentally anti-majoritarian reality of the U.S. system—which both creates the distortions and blocks change.
The most important government body other than the executive is the Senate, which must approve all legislation and most major appointments, including Supreme Court justices, and has the sole power to remove the president. In this body, each of the 50 states has two representatives, which means that (in the most egregious contrast) every voter in Wyoming has about 70 times more impact than a voter in California, because that’s the relative proportion of the two states’ populations.
Overall, the 25 least populous of the 50 states have about 16 percent of the population, which means a sixth of the country can dominate the Senate. And it is not a random 16 percent, which would make it politically irrelevant; despite exceptions like Vermont, the overwhelming majority of the small states, being rural, are conservative and Republican-leaning—so the reality is that the Republicans are guaranteed to win most of the Senate seats they need, perhaps 40 of the needed 51, with even a small fraction of the national vote.
The “Founding Fathers” wanted the rural states not to be ignored, but they never intended the current situation, when the two largest states, California and New York, with almost a fifth of the overall population, can basically be ignored instead.
The Electoral College system used to choose the president is the second antimajoritarian element. Though less egregious than the Senate, it, too, disproportionately amplifies the influence of smaller states and diminishes the impact of larger states, since each receives a number of electors based on its total number of senators and representatives, which means less populous states get more electoral votes per capita than more populous ones.
That’s the main reason why a candidate can win the presidency without securing the national popular vote, and that it happens so often. There are distortions and problems in every political system, but this one, in the U.S., has been elevated to an outrageous level by the way in which the population has dispersed in the past century or so—with half the states having small conservative-leaning populations.
That is why of the last three elections won by a Republican, in 2000, 2004 and 2016, two were cases in which the winner actually lost the popular vote. The last election, in which a Republican did not win, was even more instructive: President Joe Biden won by over 7 million votes nationwide in 2020, but a change of fewer than 50,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin would have been enough to alter the Electoral College outcome in favor of Trump.
This is not just a matter of party politics—I would hardly care about that. It is about the resulting policies. Strong American majorities want stronger gun control (certainly a resumption of the assault weapons ban), more robust health care guarantees, to preserve abortion rights, and a tax regime that lowers as opposed to worsens the developed world’s highest level of income and wealth inequality. The Republicans oppose all these things, and on abortion they have caused incredible damage in recent years. They can do this without much fear of retribution because of the system.
Indeed, the Republicans can nominate a presidential candidate who is manifestly unfit—not only a proven liar and convicted criminal, but a person who boasts he could shoot someone on the street without losing votes—and they know they will be competitive regardless.
The result is not just a series of wildly unpopular policies or dangerous candidates. It creates a level of despair about politics—a sense that it simply doesn’t matter what most people want because the system is rigged in favor of a minority. It creates despondency about the country itself.
Which brings us to the main problem. In most other democracies, this level of systemic breakdown would lead to calls for reform. Indeed, reform is usually (though not always) considered progress. But in America, reform on important issues is well-nigh impossible because of the process for amending the constitution, which would be needed to address the problems.
For starters, an amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of state legislatures. After that, the amendment must be “ratified” by three-quarters of the states(38 of them) by either a ratification in the legislature or via conventions.
Consider that only about a half-dozen states are genuinely in play in any given election—the others all lean strongly one way or the other— so there is no realistic chance of getting two-thirds or three quarters of the states to go along with a process that dismantles the Republicans’ built-in advantage.
That is why we cannot fix the Electoral College, and indeed why just last year we finally gave up, incredibly and shamefully, on efforts to pass an amendment guaranteeing women equal rights. It was too hard a slog in the Red states.
The defense of this nonsensical situation generally rests with the idea that the founders’ vision cannot be tinkered with, as if a uniquely divine wisdom was coursing through their veins.
Putting aside the idolatry of such notions, in fact, the early American leaders held diverse views on the balance between state and national power, with some key figures advocating for a strong national government. James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” was instrumental in moving beyond the weak Articles of Confederation, urging a more robust national framework to unify the states and address common issues. Alexander Hamilton also argued for a strong central government, believing it essential for maintaining stability. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, underscored the importance of a unified nation, too.
I would argue that most Americans, if pushed to make a choice, would choose the national identity. I love the Keystone State, but do not roam the earth as primarily a Pennsylvanian.
I can think of one way around this total dysfunction: the emergence of a centrist political party that represents the board swath of people between the roughly one-third who are MAGA-leaning and the roughly one-sixth who are progressives (or can at least stomach the woke movement). Such a party would have to somehow accommodate the likes of both moderate conservatives like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and moderate liberals like, well, Biden—but if that happened it would align with the views of about half the country (myself included) and might win most states, reshuffling the deck.
That is, for various reasons, not likely. But if things continue as they are, expect America’s national mood to turn increasingly ornery.
And since the populist conservatives are a majority of the Republicans, winning most of the party’s primaries, they’ll dominate it for a while If they somehow retain enough support to continue to win elections on the strength of the distorted system, I would not be surprised to see a movement toward secession among the Blue states of the West and Northeast. Although there is no constitutional provision for secession, it would not be inconsistent with the idea – popular especially on the right – that the states are somehow supreme. A breaking point approaches that could get ugly. Push people far enough and even liberals will get violent.
The world has known many empires—and their close cousins, huge countries. Most have fallen, from the Roman to the Byzantine, from the Mongol to the Ottoman. The only ones that stumble on have a strong national identity, like China. The others usually fell victim to an internal rot: like people, they arise, flourish, decay and die.
America is well along this path, and it can only save itself by mustering up a focus on a viable national identity. You are either a country, or you are not. The states, with all due respect, are in the way. And while this may sound like heresy, so is the uniquely American cult of the Constitution.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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