Do the Math

Politics, in the end, is a branch of mathematics. The candidates must decide how to attract voters and donations to their causes. These calculations involve millions of voters and dollars. But much smaller numbers can be just as important.The political math I have been thinking about lately involves the numbers one and two.

One is the size of a possible Democratic majority in the Senate. It could be that close, so every seat will be essential. I live in New Jersey. We do not elect a Senator this year, but we are also a solid blue state. I can usually vote my conscience. But, to gain a Democratic majority this year, not everyone will have that luxury. It might come down to what happens in Indiana, for example. Evan Bayh is nobody’s idea of a progressive, although his voting record is better than I would have expected. But a victory for him is a progressive victory. To see why, you first have to understand that Indiana is not going to elect a true progressive to the Senate. Remember, this is a state that thinks having Mike Pence for their governor is a good idea. But if a Bayh victory means the Democrats control the Senate, the Democrats would gain the chairmanships of all of the Senate committees. Surely some of those chairpersons would be progressives. Beyond that though, a Democratic Senate would mean that Clinton could nominate a more progressive judge to the Supreme Court than she would if the Republicans retained control. A Democratic Judiciary Committee chairman would allow this nomination to get out of committee to be voted on by the full Senate.

Two is the number of terms a president can serve since the ratification of the 22nd amendment in 1951. Lately I have been seeing a lot of posts advocating term limits for the House and Senate. A recent one also called for cutting the lifetime pensions for Congressmen from the current level of, if I remember correctly, $117,000 a year. Two assumptions are involved in this. One is that $117,000 is a lot of money. To most members of Congress, it is not. The majority of members of both the house and Senate are millionaires. More to the point, many parlay their government experience and connections into high paying lobbying positions when they leave congress. Cutting the pension would only create a greater incentive to do so. The second assumption term limit advocates make is that outgoing legislators would be replaced by better people. That’s just silly. If that were possible, the person you wanted replaced would not have been elected in the first place. Term limits are also a blunt instrument, forcing out both good and bad people. Again, I live in New Jersey, and we had the good fortune to have as our Senator Frank Lautenberg. Lautenberg was elected to five terms, and he had one of the most progressive records in the Senate over that time. It does no good for me to sit in New Jersey and call for term limits as a way to remove Mitch McConnell from his Senate seat in Kentucky. It is up to progressives in Kentucky to mobilize and work for McConnell’s defeat. Otherwise, whoever replaced McConnell might not have the power that his long service has brought, but he or she would be no better otherwise. In the House, term limits are a particularly bad idea. A person could only serve for a total of four years, all of which would be spent campaigning for that lobbyist job. A much better way to counter the power of entrenched legislators is to be in the habit of casting meaningful votes in Congressional election years. Progressives have been terrible at this recently; we were almost invisible in the 2010 and 2014 elections, allowing Republicans to gain and extend their majorities in those years.

Related to this last point, and also a matter of numbers, is the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Most experts predict that the Democrats will not be able to take the House this year, because there are too many safe Republican districts. These are the result of gerrymandering. We can deplore it all we like, but we as progressive voters must learn to do more. Gerrymandering happens when redistricting is done every ten years. At that time, each state draws its districts to favor the party that controls the state house and state legislature. These posts are decided in odd-year elections, and we progressives have been almost completely absent in these elections. In 2015, Bernie Sanders was calling for his political revolution, but his supporters did not show up to vote. The Tea Party never makes that mistake. They made a point at first of always voting, even when the available Republican was not conservative enough for them. Over time, they were able to take over the process, and elect the candidates they wanted. As a result, their electees controlled the redistricting process in much of the country in 2010. We have only until 2020, when the next redistricting happens, to try to reverse this trend.

All of these political equations yield the same result. We must vote meaningfully. As things stand, that means supporting some candidates who are not perfect. But as we become the likely voters that are the pollsters’ sole concern, we will start to have more candidates we can feel good about. In the meantime, we must understand that our votes for the least bad candidate in one place can empower a better candidate somewhere else. They can also create more chances to get better candidates elected. To unseat those who have gained the power to block action on our issues, we must do the hard work of actually winning an election against the odds. Even if Bernie Sanders had actually won the nomination and the presidency, that would not have been enough to solve these equations. That will take time, commitment, and patience.