You don't have to be a disappointed Democrat to understand that our political system is fundamentally broken. With a new batch of uneven electoral procedures in place all over the country, we only narrowly avoided another litigated presidential election.
Meanwhile, the 2004 campaign was awash with more money than the American political system has ever seen, and it set a new low standard for tone. Gerrymandering continues to reduce the U.S. House of Representatives and many state legislatures to bodies of politicians insulated from competition and the popular will, because they get to choose which constituents they want to represent, rather than the other way around. Closed primaries tug both parties to the extremes and disenfranchise independents. Congress is accomplishing little in the public interest, and the party that controls it engages in the worst pay-to-play tactics aimed at lobbyists that we've seen since the Gilded Age.
In the past, Democrats have been divided, and mostly indifferent to, political reform because, as the party in power, they benefited from the status quo, no matter what they actually thought about it. That attitude helped Republicans pose as the anti-status quo, anti-Washington, pro-reform party, a theme they used powerfully in the Reagan Revolution of 1980 and the Gingrich Revolution of 1994. They were still clinging to that same theme in the latest election, but it was rank hypocrisy, because they're the ones in control of the whole federal government.
Now that Democrats are completely out of power in Washington, the political system is threatening their interests as well as their values. There is no longer any reason to resist political reform. In fact, there are plenty of good reasons to embrace it. And for those who believe political reform is just a boring "process issue" that voters don't care about, think again. Two of the most powerful outsider politicians of the past decade -- Ross Perot and John McCain -- made political reform a central issue of their campaigns.
For Democrats, an insurgent political reform agenda could help finally put to rest perceptions that they are the party of Washington, the party that is most estranged from the mainstream values that are so rarely honored in Washington.
It's a strategic two-fer: Democrats can do well for themselves by doing good for the country. Here are the areas where they should first focus attention on fixing our political system:
Election reform: After two consecutive presidential elections marred by wildly inconsistent rules and practices -- for registering to vote, voting early or by absentee ballot, handling challenges of voter eligibility, informing voters of polling place changes, purging voter rolls, designing ballots, and casting, counting, and recounting votes -- it's time to create a level playing field for this most fundamental ritual of democracy. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 did not adequately address these problems, and actually made some of them worse. It's time for a HAVA II that aims more seriously at basic uniformity -- or, alternatively, for a grassroots movement to adopt uniform state election reform legislation.
While we're at it, another election procedure commonly used today needs reform: closed nominating primaries, which disenfranchise the political independents who make up more than one-quarter of the electorate and empower partisan extremists and organized interests. Using open primaries, which allow participation by independents -- and in some cases allow "cross-voting" for candidates of another party -- would make the nominating process far more meaningful and competitive.
Redistricting reform: The House of Representatives, designed by the Founding Fathers as the branch of Congress most accountable to the public, has become a self-perpetuating incumbency machine, in which most members never face serious challenges for re-election. Thanks to partisan and, in some cases, bipartisan redistricting plans that are specifically designed to protect incumbents, the number of House seats that are competitive has plunged in the past decade. According to the authoritative Cook PoliticalReport, 151 House races were competitive on the eve of the 1992 election, after the decennial redistricting process was completed.
In 2002, after another round of redistricting, only 45 seats were competitive. Incumbents almost never lose these days. Aside from the few who have been deliberately gerrymandered out of their seats, only one House incumbent lost in 2002, and two lost in 2004.
This is anti-democratic, with a small "d." Insulated from competition, House incumbents often have nothing to fear other than intraparty primary challenges, typically from the extreme left or right. This dynamic helps promote the ideological and partisan polarization of national politics that has been so evident in recent years.
It is also anti-Democratic, with a big "D." The narrow playing field of House races is a powerful asset for the perpetuation of Republican control over Congress. In each of the past two elections, Democrats would have had to sweep an extraordinarily high percentage of competitive races in order to gain control. That handicap will continue until at least the next post-census election, in 2012.
Meanwhile, the baleful precedent set last year by the audacious Texas legislature threatens to make gerrymandering a constant plague, not just a decennial ritual. Engineered by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the reredistricting conducted by Texas Republicans was more to their liking than the one that was initially done after the 2000 census, when Democrats were still in a majority.
Hyperpartisan gerrymandering shapes more than just the U.S. House of Representatives. State legislators are also drawing their own districts in ways that minimize competition and skew political maps to favor the party in power. In one of the most striking examples, the California Assembly drew a map for itself in 2002 that was designed to eliminate competitive districts entirely.
Congress has the power to regulate its own redistricting, subject to the constitutional requirement of equal population. But it is unlikely to undo a system that effectively confers 10-year terms on most of its members. The only practical course for redistricting reform -- especially if it is to reach state legislative redistricting as well as congressional redistricting -- is a strong grassroots effort in every state to reform the process. And the best available model is Iowa's, which makes competitive districts a top consideration in political map-drawing as a matter of state law. The Iowa system should be studied, refined, and championed by progressive reformers everywhere.
Ethics and lobbying reform: While a transactional relationship has always existed between lobbyists who want legislation and members of Congress who want campaign contributions, the level of open abuse has grown enormously during the recent period of Republican control. Under the aegis of something called the "K Street Project" -- another Tom DeLay favorite -- Republican congressional leaders and conservative activists have begun to blatantly intimidate lobbying organizations, not only to skew campaign contributions entirely to the GOP, but to hire Republican operatives as lobbyists -- or risk the loss of access to the legislative process. This shakedown campaign has been accompanied by an unprecedented degree of direct involvement by lobbyists who agree to pay to play in the bill-drafting process, and a new upsurge in corporate pork, especially in the GOP's frequent tax cut bills.
Toothless congressional ethics rules and lobbying disclosure laws need to be toughened immediately, and new measures are needed to close the revolving door between members and their staffs and the lobbying shops. Democrats should lead another charge for campaign finance reform, insisting on tough Federal Elections Commission enforcement of existing laws, along with a ban on fund raising and contributions by lobbyists.
These steps would be but a modest beginning tow a rd a robust and aggressive political reform agenda for Democrats, but they are an essential starting point. Democrats have nothing to lose but their reputation for complicity in the abuses of the current system, and everything to gain -- including a political system that works for the country.
