On the Dangers of One Party Rule

...But what if we don’t actually have a competitive two-party system? What if our nation actually has two one-party systems, instead? And if the United States has two one-party systems, then that means that each way they turn voters are confronted with the arrogance, stagnation and corruption that almost always disfigures single-party rule.

The best illustration of this reality is found in state government “trifectas.” That’s the term for a state where one party controls the governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature. As of this month, there are 23 Republican trifectas and 16 Democratic ones. That leaves 11 states with divided governments.

Republicans may govern more states, but Democratic states tend to be more populous. As a result, a roughly equal percentage of Americans live under total red or blue rule. As of January, 39.1 percent of Americans lived in blue trifecta states, and 41.5 percent lived in red trifecta states, which means that less than 20 percent of the population lives in a divided state.

Combine trifecta state control with aggressive partisan gerrymanders, and you have exactly the situation in Congress that my colleague Tom Edsall described this week: “An overwhelming majority of House members run in districts that are safe in the general election, where the only threat to an incumbent is from a more ideologically extreme challenger in the primary.”

Another way of putting it is that the other side is so weak in so many states and congressional districts that politicians can build entire careers without having to appeal to voters on the other side of the aisle.

For example, even in a year of remarkable public discontent, in which the House may well change hands, the vast majority of members of Congress are completely safe. The Cook Political Report lists 186 districts as solid Republican and 182 districts as solid Democrat. There are only 18 tossup races. If you add in the 20 races that merely lean in one direction or the other, that gives you a grand total of 38 competitive races in a 435-member House of Representatives.

As a result, one-party politicians are often born in the parties’ bases and inept at reaching anyone even a few inches to their ideological right or left. In fact, the very effort to reach out to the opposition is usually interpreted as weakness, a misguided compromise against an uncompromising foe.

The art of compromise vanishes before our eyes. After all, generations of politicians now come from the roughly 80 percent of the country where compromise is almost always unnecessary. Compromises are internal only, as the party negotiates with itself. The opposition might as well not exist.

Read the rest here.