THE LITTLE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER

(AND HOW THEY EXPLAIN WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE TAKING SO LONG)

“As long as we count the votes, what are you going to do about it?” — Boss Tweed

“Factions will always emerge in any organization whose members believe the organization’s goals are important.” Howard’s Law

When you get right down to the basics of of lawmaking in a representative democracy, it’s a binary world – zeros or ones. When a piece of legislation is voted on in Great Britain, Russia, Zimbabwe, Argentina or the United States, the decision is either “aye” or “nay” and the majority (50% + 1) decides. There are parliamentary methods available to do otherwise, but the basic questions are always decided thusly. The diverse, seething, tumultuous passions of an entire nation are reduced to an either/or proposition.

It’s a little thing, but the fundamental questions of any legislative procedure are based on this dichotomy regardless of whether the issue is being decided in a parliamentary system such as exits in Great Britain and most of the rest of the world, or in the United States Congress: Yes, No; Pass, Fail; Do, Don’t. The very nature of the universe dictates this situation and no one objects.

Little things cause candidates to prosper or decline in America and elsewhere. Analogy: NASA reports that a minuscule error in trajectory at the commencement of a space flight will result in a huge error at the destination if not corrected quickly. The error is magnified as the vehicle progresses. In just such fashion, mis-application at the core of a nominating process will result in a wide miss of the electoral target if not corrected early.

The fundamental difference between the American legislative system and Parliamentary ones is that we in America carry that dichotomy down to small things whereas Parliamentary systems do not. Nor do American Democrats and that explains, in part, why their candidate selection process is flawed, is taking so long and will nominate a loser.

Consider factions and coalitions. Parliamentary systems award legislative seats to any party whose candidates collectively achieve a vote total above a certain minimum – proportional representation. As a result, parliamentary systems tend to have many parties competing for office. Once the voting is concluded, the party with the most seats in the representative body is given the opportunity to form a government. If that party lacks a clear majority (remember, it takes 50% + 1 votes to pass ALL legislation everywhere), it must seek out other parties with similar – or at least not directly conflicting – points of view and invite them to share power in the form of cabinet positions dear to that party’s particular interests. Minor parties tend to be narrowly focused and their presence in a coalition government usually does not cause problems for the leading party in the group.

The Israeli Knesset is a wonderful example of how parliamentary systems deal with factions and build coalitions. This 120-member body sits today as composed by the latest election in March, 2006. The Kadima (Forward) party was formed only four months earlier by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who left the center/right Likud (Consolidation) party in order to pursue a route to Israeli-Palestinian relations which Likud opposed. After Sharon’s stroke in January, 2007, the party has been led by current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Kadima won 29 seats in the March, 2006 election. It formed a coalition government with the number-two vote-getter – at 19 seats – the Labor party. 48 votes is still short of a majority, so the Shas party (the party of ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews and holder of 12 Knesset seats) was offered four cabinet portfolios to join. Filling out the government’s 67-seat majority is the Gil (Pensioners) party which received the Health Ministry portfolio and a newly-created Pensions portfolio.

Parliamentary systems deal with political factions by combining them into coalitions after elections. This arrangement makes sense in a proportional representation system because that system allows factions to form their own parties and compete directly in elections.

In the American system, the head of government is not selected by the legislative branch, but is elected independently of it. The Founders wanted, above all, to avoid any concentration of power in any single institution and this was one of the ways their goal was achieved. Over the 200+ years of Constitutional government in the United States we have used and enhanced a winner-take-all electoral method. Some elements of that method are enshrined in either the national or state constitutions, while others are simply custom. Nevertheless, the method of selecting politicians to leadership positions at every level in the United States embraces the winner-take-all method which determines how factions are reconciled (because factions must always be reconciled – even dictatorships must do so).

In a winner-take-all system, coming in second gets you nada, zip, bupkis. You go home empty-handed while the winners take control. Thus, factions must form coalitions before elections, rather than after them as in parliamentary arrangements. Otherwise, they never get to compete at any level of politics.

The brutal, not to say Darwinian, nature of our elections has shaped our political lives in ways that many people do not appreciate. We have always had two major parties because only two possible outcomes of an election are possible – win or lose. Third parties in America are almost always failures. There have been two exceptions in our history. In the 1850′s the Republican Party destroyed the Whig Party; and in 1896 the Populist Party program was largely adopted by the Democratic Party and the Populists withered away. Individual legislators of either the Democratic or Republican coalitions move back and forth between parties on specific issues with relative ease compared to members of parliaments. The government is headed by the President and legislative majorities are not subject to votes of “no confidence” nor may new legislative elections be called in the interval between statutory elections.

When people complain that there is little difference between the two parties in America they are both right and wrong. They are wrong because real differences do exist but those who reside on either the left or right fringe discount those differences as “unimportant”. (George Wallace while running for president in 1968, “You kin take them two parties, throw ‘em in a sack, shake ‘em up, pour ‘em out, and ya cain’t tell no difference!”) They are right because both parties are (or should be) attempting to appeal to the widest spectrum of the electorate because failure to do so results in electoral oblivion.

Consider Jesse “The Body” Ventura. The former wrassilin’ pro got himself elected governor of Minnesota as a Perot reform party candidate through a combination of outrageous personality, popular disgust with the existing two parties, and state laws which allow victory without majority. Jesse put his tridelts on the armrests of the Gov’s chair in St. Paul, joshed with reporters around the country, talked about a “slap-down” with the legislature and accomplished precisely nothing much. The temporarily disaffected quickly went back to their previous party loyalties and the balance of his voters – who never had the patience for political activism in the first place – went back to one of the state’s 10,000 lakes and baited their hooks. Jesse had a coalition of one and factions of zero. When, on occasion, he reached out to the legislature to get one of his pet programs approved, the solons of both parties went into tag-team mode and pinned him. After one term, he and Minnesota had had enough.

The current problems of the Democratic coalition (which was formed prior to the primary elections and must be maintained if it is to achieve victory in November) in selecting a presidential candidate, stems from that party’s attempt to force proportional representation on a winner-take-all system. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama faced-off in Iowa, South Carolina, California, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and other states, and neither has gained a commanding lead because the delegates are awarded proportionally when every instinct, impulse, law and tradition in American politics demands that one or the other seize the whole prize or surrender it all. For example, the Nevada caucus went to Hillary by a slim margin, yet she got twelve delegates and Barak got thirteen. An American political party, whose factions must be reconciled before a national election, cannot prosper when such an outcome is possible.

Try to imagine a parliamentary system where the party which received a plurality of votes in the general election was granted all the seats. This actually happens – in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. Now try to imagine an American presidential election after which the largest vote-getter is named president but is required to include in his/her cabinet, representatives of all the other parties who opposed him/her in the general election. The first scenario does result in tyranny and the second would result in chaos.

When the Democrats meet in Denver this summer the hall will be filled with delegates, all of whom fall into one of four categories: Those committed to Barak Obama and believe that the contest is over; those committed to Hillary Clinton and believe that she has been robbed of her destiny; a small number of John Edwards delegates who wonder why they bothered to show up at all; and super delegates who, by then, should have already made the decisive decision.

Democrats created this dilemma way back in 1968 when the McGovern-Fraser Commission was formed and changed the nominating process to what we see today – including proportional allocation of primary delegates. For forty years, Americans have increasingly selected delegates (and, thus, candidates) in primaries rather than caucuses. Republicans have maintained a winner-take-all approach in every state that has not legislatively commanded proportional allocation and have, in the process, won seven of the ten presidential elections since. No causal link is inferred.

For the past two months, John McCain has had the leisure to spend his time knitting up the frayed edges of the Republican coalition. He will not be 100% successful because some factions will not be appeased. Nevertheless, the Republican factions are more-or-less girded for action while the Democrats haven’t even started; and their protracted contest will make their knitting all the more difficult.

Remember the old margarine commercial tag-line, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? It’s also not nice to fool (or attempt to fool) the underlying logic of your country’s political system. Unite your factions before the votes are cast, accept your victory and invite the losing factions to join you in defeating the common enemy. Not every voice needs to be heard; not every opinion is worthy; some people are better left on the outside looking in.

How did I miss this? According to Wikipedia, Joe Lieberman endorsed John McCain earlier this year. I kept seeing him on various New England daises with McCain but, since I don’t keep up with the news all that much (interferes with my preconceived notions, don’t ya know), I missed that tidbit. So, how about a McCain-Lieberman ticket?

WHOO! That needs a lot of thought.