Trump is only taking defiance in a nervy new direction
When politicians know more or less who will vote and how, they can ignore most voters — including their own loyalists — and long before the Republican tycoon came along, the supposedly immutable laws of American politics had begun to fall
Politics, we’re often told, is governed by rules — basic principles that explain not just what’s going to happen, but what rational candidates and parties can be expected to do. Donald Trump seems to casually defy all these rules — insulting Senator John McCain, a veteran; disparaging women; and building a rhetorical wall to keep out the single demographic group that his party seems to need for its survival, Latinos.
And yet with each transgression, his poll numbers bubble upward.
Trump is not the first to test the basic assumptions about how politics works and how we predict outcomes. He may be changing the rules of the United States presidential primary race, but in the halls of Congress and in governors’ mansions across America, politicians have already acted in ways that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. By testing and breaking the rules, they have been reshaping the practice of politics since long before Trump emerged.
Take this familiar rule: “Americans hate Congress, but love their own member of Congress.”
For decades, members of Congress secured re-election even in districts that voted for the other party’s presidential candidate, through slavish attention to local concerns, ranging from casework (helping constituents navigate Social Security problems) to winning earmarked appropriations for local spending projects, with the ribbon-cuttings that followed. Transactional politics of this kind then helped smooth the wheels in Congress, as leaders handed out earmarks, or federal funding specifically designated for projects in the district, in exchange for cooperation.
Half that rule is true: Americans really do still hate Congress. Approval ratings for Congress stood most recently at 13 per cent, near a record low. People still think more highly of their own senator or representative, but that’s changing: In Gallup polls since 2013, about 40 per cent disapprove of their own member of Congress, much higher than in previous periods of generalised hostility to the institution. Near majorities now say that their own member is “out of touch” and pays more attention to “special interests” than his or her constituents.
Numbers like those would normally foreshadow political doom. But 96 per cent of House incumbents won re-election in 2014, and the Republican majority — despite its own 71 per cent disapproval rating on Election Day — expanded.
With this norm, politicians can effectively ignore many of their constituents without putting re-election at risk, and many have rejected the standard practices of the recent past — most notably earmarks.
Beyond that, several members even announced in 2013 that they would not assist constituents with problems involving the Affordable Care Act. The idea of not just neglecting but actively refusing constituent services, for reasons of ideology, would be unimaginable to the constituent-focused members of Congress of both parties elected beginning in the 1970s.
The ‘median voter theorem’
Governors, too, rejected everything from infrastructure spending to federal funding for Medicaid expansion. Even when they saw their approval ratings drop into the 30s, they survived. In 2011, Rick Scott of Florida rejected $2.4 billion (Dh8.82 billion) in federal funds for a commuter rail project and yet got re-elected.
Underlying the old rule was a bigger one: The “median voter theorem” — the idea that the views of the typical, middle-of-the-road voter, as expressed through elections, drove parties and politicians. These are the “Reagan Democrats” and “soccer mums” of recent decades. Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have called this the “master theory” of their discipline.
It’s not much of a theory at all anymore. Wellorganised interest groups in the US, such as the National Rifle Association and the National Education Association as well as large donors and ideological warriors on both sides, have more clout than the median voter because they are organised and focused while most people aren’t.
And in many nonpresidential elections, the median voter probably isn’t voting at all. That’s particularly true for low-income people: Election participation by people in households just below the median income of $52,000 was around 40 per cent in 2014, compared with 52 per cent for voters in households earning $150,000 or more.
Consider another once-useful guideline, which dates to the 1960s: Americans are “philosophical conservatives but operational liberals”. That is, they hate the idea of government, but value the benefits they get from government — and politicians act accordingly.
Until very recently, this rule explained much of the behaviour of conservative Republicans in particular: They would propose abstract cuts, such as a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution or a cap on entitlement spending. Liberals would then recast the proposal in terms of specific cuts affecting children, veterans or seniors. After a little symbolic skirmish, each side would retreat to its corner, with few of the changes to the federal budget that had been promised.
This principle restrained even Ronald Reagan from more radical cuts, while making Democrats cautious — perhaps overcautious — about advocating large-scale spending programmes. (Recall former US president Bill Clinton’s announcement in 1996 that “the era of big government is over”.)
Putting operational liberalism to the test
Representative Paul Ryan tested the limits of operational liberalism with the budgets he put forward beginning in 2011, with a plan to privatise Medicare for “future retirees” and specific cuts to discretionary spending programmes. And at least half-a-dozen governors put operational liberalism to the test by cutting state spending on education and health in ways that directly affected services. Unpopular Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas nonetheless won re-election in 2014, as did Paul LePage of Maine, despite abysmal approval ratings for both, and Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio seem to have locked in levels of public investment on education and human services that are far lower than in the recent past and will be difficult to undo.
The old deal having been broken, Democrats, in turn, seem more willing to champion broad expansions of government like proposals to expand Social Security or make college free. The ideological alignment of the two parties will soon override these legacies from an earlier era when there were more conservative Democrats and moderate, or even liberal, Republicans.
These rules aren’t just convenient ways to analyse politics — they influence how politicians behave. If politicians believe they need to win favour with the median voter, they will do so. All the old rules lead to the same happy idea: US politics calibrates and centres itself and it usually pulls parties and most politicians back from the extremes.
But in recent years, Republican politicians especially have not only defied the rules, they have also protected themselves from the consequences. Restrictions on voting, along with aggressive redistricting, reduce the influence of the median voter. Campaign war chests (including “super PACs”) scare off opponents, from within their own party as well as the other. By crippling civilsociety institutions such as unions and community groups, which organise middle and lowerincome voters, they sometimes avoid being held accountable. They can use ideological media to reach mostly like-minded voters.
And by recasting politics as a winner-take-all conflict between wholly incompatible ideologies and identities — as most of the presidential candidates have done — they help to closely align party and ideology, so that those who identify as Republican will always vote Republican and vice versa. When politicians know more or less who will vote and how, they can ignore most voters — including their own loyalists.
Long before Trump came along, the supposedly immutable laws of politics had begun to fall. Trump is taking defiance in a nervy new direction. Now that congressional leaders, governors and Trump have shown the rules and customs of US politics to be hollow and unenforceable, we need a new set of tools to understand how democracy works, or doesn’t.
Mark Schmitt is director of the political reform programme at New America. This is an article from Campaign Stops at nytimes.com/campaignstops.
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