Is Political Reconciliation Possible?

I've joined a group called Braver Angels dedicated to bridging the hyper-partisan divide in the U.S. It pairs "red" and "blue" Americans on a one-to-one basis to truly listen to each other and converse in structured ways. The goal is not converting each other but understanding each other, and perhaps even finding good and "light"...

Two Political Earthquakes on One Day

Joe Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes. In Senate run-offs, Raphael Warnock won it by 90,000 votes and Jon Ossoff won it by about 50,000 votes. This is a political earthquake, a historic election flipping Georgia into the Democratic category and changing control of the US Senate from Republicans to Democrats. Mitch McConnell must...

A Shift From Zealotry to Pragmatism?

"Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio, television and the internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.” -- Senator John McCain (R-AZ), casting the deciding vote killing the Republicans' extremely flawed plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. As Donald Trump and...

End to Congressional Gridlock, Opportunities And Dangers for Republicans Ahead

The 115th Congress (2017-2018) provides opportunities to end gridlock and pass legislation on infrastructure investments, health care reform, financial regulation and deregulation, and possibly immigration. Congress also has opportunities to reassert bipartisan oversight into investigations, and to take back some authority it has given away to the executive branch. There was widespread frustration, on both the left...

Divided Government No More

Republicans 2017-2019 will control all three branches of government and have total responsibility for what happens. George Will: "Americans perennially complain about Washington gridlock, but for seven decades they have regularly produced gridlock’s prerequisite: divided government. From 1944 through 2016, 22 of 37 elections gave at least one house of Congress to the party not...

Gerrymandering Dilutes Representative Government

A big problem in national politics is hyper-partisan redistricting with computer software -- gerrymandering of Congressional Districts -- so that the party that garners just 51 percent of the popular votes for the House of Representatives in a state can actually win 75 percent of the House seats. How to Gerrymander Your Way to a...

Political Paranoids in American Politics

"Since popular voting began in the 19th century, scarcely any winning candidate has received more than 60% of the vote, and very few losers have received less than 40%. Inevitably, Americans will differ over who should be in the White House. But this does not necessarily mean they are polarized. "By polarization I mean something...

Why Is American Political Culture So Partisan, Mired in Gridlock? 10 Reasons

Back in 1995, just as the Internet was beginning to emerge as a political tool, I envisioned a time when citizens would become more engaged in politics, right from their computers. See my piece, "Vision of a New Democracy: Internet Gives Citizens Chance to Connect." That future has certainly happened. With the proliferation of email,...

Senate Filibuster: A Blight on American Democracy

On news that Senate Republicans are promising to block Obama's appointments, Bruce Johnson writes: I wonder if the Republicans will get really intransigent and try to block WHOEVER Obama names to the Supreme Court just on general principles. If they do, it'll be interesting if the Dems exercise the "nuclear option" they despised so much...

A Very Productive Congress and Legislatively Successful President

Originally posted in 2010. Ironically, the Congresses to follow -- the 112th (2011-2012) and the 113th (2013-2014) -- were two of the most unproductive in decades.  Despite negative public misperceptions, the 111th Congress (2009-2010) is on its way to becoming the most productive since the historic 89th Congress of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society 11965-67, according to analyst...