Honest Graft on the "Congress, Two Beers In" Podcast

 I had a great time the other day chatting with Josh Huder of Georgetown University on the "Congress, Two Beers In" podcast sponsored by Georgetown's Government Affairs Institute. We discussed Republicans, Democrats, Biden, Trump, Congress, policy, and media as we tried to figure out the current status of American party politics and where things might go from here. The episode is available at this link or can be found on podcast apps by searching for the Government Affairs Institute.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Biden's Had Success with Congress, But He's No LBJ

Some Democrats, justifiably happy with the legislative productivity of the 2021–2022 session of Congress, have gotten a little carried away lately when describing its supposed transformational importance. In today's column for Bloomberg Opinion, I draw on data showing that the last Congress was not historically exceptional in its lawmaking acoomplishments, and suggest that Biden's perceived achievements were made possible by the previous success of Barack Obama in enacting major health care reform in 2010. The piece is also available on the Washington Post site.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Why Are Democrats More United? The Voters Did It

The Democratic Party is more unified these days than it was in the past—and is certainly less openly divided than the Republicans, who just took five days to select a Speaker of the House. The main reason for this newfound internal harmony is the evolving behavior of the American electorate: the moderate/conservative dissident bloc of Democrats representing rural constituencies has mostly disappeared from office, replaced by more ideologically orthodox Democrats from the suburbs. This change has made party leaders' job easier and has eased the chronic factionalism that is now more evident on the Republican side of the aisle, as I explain further in my latest column for Bloomberg Opinion.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: What the Freedom Caucus Gets Right About the GOP

The extended process of electing a House speaker last week put Republicans' internal divisions on public display. Democrats and leadership-aligned Republicans had ample opportunity to attack or mock the band of holdouts, many affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, who prevented Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker until the 15th round of balloting. But for all their grandstanding, the holdouts have a point about how Republicans fail to deliver on their government-cutting promises—which portends more conflict ahead, as I explain in today's column for Bloomberg Opinion.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Most Voters Are Partisans, But Independents Were Decisive in 2022

Sifting through the evidence from the 2022 election reveals that Democrats' better-than-expected performance didn't reflect a turnout advantage over Republicans, but instead resulted from a historically unusual success among independent voters. Although it's fashionable to view the American public as divided into two implacable partisan sides, the remaining slice of persuadable voters can easily prove decisive in a highly competitive electoral environment, as I discuss further in today's piece for Bloomberg Opinion.

Today in Blooomberg Opinion: Let's Stop Messing with the Voting Rules

 Georgia's Senate runoff was resolved much earlier this year than it was last time, when it wasn't held until January. But this change reflected how often the rules that govern our elections are changed and changed again as the party in charge seeks a crude strategic advantage. And in this case, it didn't even gain that advantage—the Georgia Republicans who moved up the runoff date to cut down on early voting lost on Tuesday, just as they did in the 2021 runoff. In my latest piece for Bloomberg Opinion, I pine for the day when both parties accept a stable set of rules and focus on the much nobler task of persuading and mobilizing voters.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Voter Turnout Was High Again in 2022

Voter turnout in the 2018 midterms reached 50 percent of eligible citizens, a modern record. This year, it stayed nearly as high (47 percent), indicating that the voter surge last time was more than simply a "Trump effect." I consider what the rise in turnout says about today's American politics in my latest piece for Bloomberg Opinion. 

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Trump's Critics Call Him Unelectable. Will Voters Listen?

The disappointing results of the 2022 midterms have awakened concerns among some Republicans about their party's occasional tendency to nominate weak candidates in key races. Some of these party leaders now fear that another Trump nomination in 2024 will drag down their party once again—but as I observe in Bloomberg Opinion today, Republican voters aren't nearly as accustomed as Democrats to accept that a tradeoff exists between electability and other party goals.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Bad Candidates Were Only Part of the GOP's Problem

 The Republican Party's unexpectedly disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections has inspired some finger-pointing at its flawed slate of Senate nominees in key states (and the former president whose endorsement helped these candidates gain nomination). But as I argue in a new piece for Bloomberg Opinion, candidate quality was not the only reason why the GOP underperformed last week. The results are consistent with a larger party image problem that extended beyond a few unappealing candidates.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: We Know More About Our Candidates Than We Ever Did Before—But It Matters Less

One of the main story lines of the 2022 election has been the question of whether the Republicans have squandered a favorable general climate by choosing a weak set of specific nominees. In my final pre-election piece for Bloomberg Opinion, I explain that while the proliferation of information makes it easier than ever to learn about the qualities—including the foibles—of individual candidates, the power of partisanship is so strong these days that these considerations mean much less than they once did.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Puncturing the Hype Around Debates

With all the increasing attention that debates are getting as our politics becomes nationalized and social media-driven, their actual substantive value to citizens remains dubious. In my latest column for Bloomberg Opinion, I lament the way debates are covered in the media and conclude that we're actually much better off if elections aren't decided on the basis of candidates' debate performances.

What a Republican Congressional Majority Might Do: An Interview with The Signal

In an extended interview, I spoke with Graham Vyse of The Signal about what to expect from a hypothetical Republican congressional majority next year. It's likely to be an eventful Congress; as I observed in the interview, "The last time there was both a Democratic House and a Republican president in the United States, the president was impeached twice. The last time there was a Republican House and a Democratic president, the Republican speaker got run out of town by his own party."

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Republicans and Corporate America Split on Culture, Ally on Economics

In today's column for Bloomberg Opinion, I investigate the Republican Party's proclaimed "divorce" from big business. Corporate America and the populist Trump-era GOP have indeed found themselves on opposite sides of the culture war. But they still have much to agree on when it comes to economic policy, so their relationship looks more like a strained marriage than a permanent split.

As Biden's New Drug Policy Shows, When It Comes to Legalization It's the Political Leaders Who Are Being Led

President Biden announced on Thursday that he would issue pardons to Americans with federal marijuana possession convictions, while encouraging governors to do the same for the much greater number of citizens convicted of similar offenses at the state level. Biden also revealed that his administration would begin the process of reviewing whether marijuana should be classified by the federal government as a dangerous Schedule I drug. While the president cannot fully legalize marijuana possession or sale without congressional approval, Biden’s actions represent a clear gesture of support for ending the enforcement of laws prohibiting its use.

For anyone who is old enough to remember the aggressiveness of the government’s anti-drug campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s, the prospect of federal marijuana decriminalization is a notable milestone. And the fact that Biden is the president overseeing this policy change seems even more remarkable. Although he was a young left-of-center adult during the 1960s, the teetotaling Biden has never exhibited any whiff of the counterculture, and his record in the Senate—especially while chairing the Judiciary Committee between 1987 and 1995—was marked by repeated support for toughening federal penalties for drug-related crimes.
 
But by changing his mind about cannabis policy, Biden is merely following a path already traveled by many of his fellow Americans. In 1990, only 16 percent of respondents to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey favored the legalization of marijuana. By 2018, the most recent year with available data, the share of supporters had risen to 61 percent. The rate of increase was even higher among Democrats: from 17 percent in 1990 to 69 percent just 28 years later.
 
It’s rare for public opinion to swing so dramatically on any political issue. But drug legalization is an especially unusual case because American citizens started rethinking their beliefs well before their elected representatives did. Even today, political leaders still seem to be lagging behind the rapidly shifting attitudes of their constituents.
 
Political scientists have traditionally emphasized the role of political elites in shaping the views of ordinary citizens. On many issues, most Democrats and Republicans in the mass public accept the positions advocated by the leaders of their favored party. For example, the share of Republican voters who saw free trade agreements as a “good thing for the U.S.” dropped from 56 percent in 2015 to 36 percent two years later, according to the Pew Research Center, reflecting the sudden shift in messaging from the top of their party once Donald Trump, a vocal critic of free trade, assumed leadership of the GOP.
 
But the rise in support for legal marijuana can’t be explained that way. It began in the 1990s, well before gaining the endorsement of prominent politicians in either party. Advocates of legalization initially found much more success in enacting state-level reforms using the citizen initiative process, which put their proposals directly before voters, than they did by persuading their elected representatives to approve changes in state law. Seven of the first eight states to legalize cannabis for medical purposes (starting with California in 1996), and 12 of the first 14 states to approve recreational use (starting with Colorado and Washington in 2012), did so via ballot proposition.
 
On this issue, Americans didn’t simply listen to their party’s most prominent figures. Decreased national crime rates since the 1980s, newfound skepticism of the theory that marijuana acts as a “gateway drug” to more dangerous substances, and growing media promotion of its medical benefits have convinced voters to support legalization over the reluctance or outright opposition of most political leaders. International trade and other complicated, remote topics might ordinarily prompt citizens to exercise deference to the judgment of professional politicians. But drug legalization seems like an easy issue to understand and relate to personal experience, which makes voters more secure in making up their own minds.
 
Biden is clearly hoping to increase voter enthusiasm among young Democrats and liberal independents by announcing his policy change a month before the midterm elections. But after waiting as long as he did, Biden’s timing risks becoming anti-climactic. Most supporters already live in states where marijuana is either fully legal or permitted in practice, and even the Republican opposition doesn’t seem motivated to put up much of a public fight over an issue on which popular sentiment has steadily moved leftward. Sometimes in politics, our so-called leaders discover that they’re the ones who are being led to someplace new.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Trying to Nationalize a Nationalized Election

Kevin McCarthy and the House Republican leadership recently released their "Commitment to America," the latest in a series of successors to Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America. Today in Bloomberg Opinion, I argue that the minority parties engaging in this strategy are making two flawed assumptions: that voters will care (or even know) about these manifestos, and that they will help nationalize the election. Because today's congressional elections are already nationalized, these policy plans are mostly an exercise in redundancy.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Another "Year of the Woman" in the 2022 Elections

The number of women running for Congress and governor spiked upward in 2018 among Democrats, and then rose again in 2020 within both parties as Republican leaders responded by recruiting their own slate of female candidates. It remains high in 2022, even though the original cause of this surge—the presidency of Donald Trump—no longer exists. For Bloomberg Opinion this week, I consider whether an enduring rise in the number of office-seeking women will turn out to be an important legacy of Trump's election, and identify two reasons why it may well rise even higher in 2024.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Why the Democrats' Policy Accomplishments Don't Necessarily Help Them Win This Year

In my newest piece for Bloomberg Opinion, I explain that Democrats should not expect to be rewarded by voters for their recent policy accomplishments this fall, as voters have historically turned against the ruling party in midterm elections regardless of—and sometimes because of—its legislative productivity. For Joe Biden, the political payoff from policy changes like the climate change bill and the student debt forgiveness plan is more likely to arrive when he asks his fellow Democrats to nominate him a second time in 2024.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: How Dr. Fauci Became a Polarizing Figure

In my latest piece for Bloomberg Opinion, I explore how the retiring Anthony Fauci—who started off as a universally admired voice in the early weeks of the COVID pandemic—became a partisan figure in American politics. The root of this evolution lies in the two parties' differing attitudes towards experts who draw on their credentials to assert authority over policymaking; Democrats are inclined to defer to "the science," while Republicans are likely to rebel against what they see as liberalism in the guise of objectivity.

Today in Bloomberg Opinion: Why Moderates Still Control Congressional Policymaking

I have a new piece in Bloomberg Opinion today that explains why moderate members of Congress continue to exert strong influence over federal policy—such as the recently-enacted Inflation Reduction Act, a bill shaped much more by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia than by the president or congressional leaders—even in an age of polarization when the number of moderates in office continues to dwindle.

Some Lessons and Questions After the Kansas Abortion Referendum

1. Since the Roe v. Wade decision, the typical American's position has been "abortion should be legally permitted for some reasons but not others." This remains true even in many conservative-leaning states, like Kansas, where a majority of elected representatives are pro-life.

2. Neither party fully represents this view, but the Dobbs decision has abruptly shifted the terms of political debate from whether abortions should be made modestly harder to get (a somewhat popular position) to whether they should be banned almost entirely (much less popular). This puts Republicans in a riskier position than they were in before Dobbs.

3. Republicans could partially mitigate this risk by moderating their abortion positions. But the trend within the party has instead moved toward greater ideological purity. Not only are there fewer pro-choice Republican candidates than there used to be, but a growing number of pro-life Republicans now oppose carving out exceptions to legal prohibition (e.g. to protect the woman's health) that were once considered standard doctrine within the party.

4. The abortion issue will almost certainly work to the net advantage of Democratic candidates this fall compared to an alternative timeline in which the Dobbs ruling did not occur. Dobbs forces Republicans to defend a less popular position than before, and it also provides an extra motivator for Democrats to turn out in a midterm election when they otherwise might have felt some ambivalence. How much of an advantage, however, is unclear; odds are still against it having a transformative effect on the overall outcome.

5. The overturning of Roe also makes abortion a much bigger issue in state and local politics than it ever was before. We will now start to find out what the effects of this change will be. They, too, are difficult to predict with confidence.

6. By increasing the electoral salience of abortion, an issue on which higher levels of education are associated with more liberal views, Dobbs will probably work to further increase the growing "diploma divide" separating Dem-trending college graduates from GOP-trending non-college whites. The best-educated county in Kansas is Johnson County (suburban Kansas City), where 56 percent of adults hold at least a bachelor's degree. Johnson County voted for George W. Bush in 2004 by 23 points, for John McCain in 2008 by 9 points, and for Mitt Romney in 2012 by 17 points, but was carried by Joe Biden in 2020 with an 8-point margin over Donald Trump. It voted against the pro-life referendum on Tuesday by a margin of 68 percent to 32 percent.

7. After the unusual national focus on politics during the Trump years, it would be reasonable to expect a bit of a collective withdrawal—a "vibe shift," perhaps—as Americans adjusted to the less aggressively newsworthy Biden presidency by spending more of their time and attention on other matters. But the remarkably high turnout rate for the Kansas referendum (held at a normally sleepy time of year for politics) raises the possibility that mass political engagement will remain at elevated levels despite Trump's departure from office. It's another thing to keep an eye on as we head into November.