The road not taken

Thanks to President Trump's phone call to the Ukrainian President and Speaker Pelosi's capitulation to pressure from her Democratic Caucus, we're likely to endure the spectacle of an impeachment just as the 2020 election cycle gets underway.  What possible good can come of this?

David Brooks for one sees no good outcome.  I have to agree with him.  The likely outcomes seem to be:

• Congress becomes totally focused on impeachment to the exclusion of other critical business.
• Impeachment gets voted down in the Senate
• President Trump's core supporters get energized.
• Independents get pissed at the Democrats for a futile gesture taking them away from dealing with substantive issues.
• The Democrats House majority gets chopped back or lost. 
• VP Joe Biden gets taken out of the presidential race, removing the leading moderate Democratic candidate.
• The Democrats nominate a presidential candidate too left wing for most Americans to support.
• The President gets re-elected and we get 4 mores years of political warfare.

Speaker Pelosi's sudden capitulation to the impeachment crew - before any of the evidence came out - seems mysterious to me.  There might be method behind this but it seems totally focused on her keeping control of her House majority.  Consider:

•  No House vote was taken to open up the impeachment hearings.  You would think that if this support was so strong, she would do so immediately to let the American people know how serious this was.  Nope. Refusing to do so protects her wavering, moderate members for a while longer rather than putting them on the record.
• She has outsourced and distributed the impeachment inquiry to both  Rep. Jerry Nadler's judicial committee and Rep. Adam Schiff's intelligence committee.   With two on the job, they stand a better chance of turning up something substantial.  They also both want some limelight They may regret this if the impeachment process turns out to be a fiasco but the Speaker probably avoids getting splattered by letting them run with the ball.
• She could care less about the presidential race.  The back blast from any impeachment inquiry will likely take out VP Joe Biden and perhaps any chance for a moderate candidate.  If voters go to the polls sensing President Trump might get re-elected, the Democrats might even hang on to their House majority as a counterweight.  

 There's a chance voters might get really choked with Congress for wasting time on this rather than dealing with substantive issues and turf out a lot of Democrats.  It's a risk she has to take.  A good politician is like a good surfer; you make the best of the waves you've got.  And hers was heading towards impeachment.

There is another alternative here which cooler heads have proposed: Presidential censure.  The most famous example was the censure of  President Jackson which so enraged him he fought hard to get it expunged from the Senate record.   A number of commentators have called for this in response to the Ukrainian call crisis including Bill Whalen in Forbes and  Thor Hogan in the Washington Post. 

There are three good tactical reasons for the Democrats to choose censure over impeachment:

1. President Trump has masterfully exploited divisions in the Democratic Party; censure would give the Speaker a chance to turn the tables on him.  A lot of Republicans were uncomfortable with the President well before he went on record asking a foreign head of state to help him dig up dirt on a potential opponent.  Dozens of Republicans in both the Senate and the House would support a censure vote to express their disapproval (or worse) with the President's performance.  Having put themselves on record as supporting a censure vote, they would be a lot easier to pressure in a subsequent impeachment vote - if one came up.   A censure vote might be sold to the Democratic caucus as a baby-step towards a more certain impeachment. 
2. A bi-partisan censure vote might not influence President Trump's base voters but it certainly would influence independent and moderate voters.  Without these voters, the President stands no chance of re-election.
3.  Finally, a censure vote could proceed quickly and let Congress get back to business dealing with important issues now relegated to the back burner.  Ultimately, Congress will be judged on its effectiveness and a lot of Americans don't see impeachment as a big issue.  The Speaker knows this.

In June, Speaker Pelosi ruled out censure, calling it a "day at the beach" for the President.  She might want to reconsider but it might be too late.  Her wave is already too close to the beach. 

-- Mike Power

What are the odds?

If you read this blog, you likely have a passing interest in third party politics.  If so, there's a nasty little axiom of political science you should know about:

Duverger's Law 

Duverger's Law asserts that two party systems are favored in a first-past-the-post, winner-take-all election.  Common sense tells us why.  When there's only one winner possible and all the winner has  to do is get more votes than the runner up, voting for a third party seems pointless or could be  counterproductive (if they guy / gal you hate gets in).   Voters tend to self-sort into two broad coalitions and elections becomes two-party races.  The video below explains it all:

Scale matters here I think.  If you're running for Dog Catcher in Gold Point, party affiliation doesn't matter and the field can be large. When the stakes are high, the pressure to sort into two parties is much greater.   In a presidential election, it's virtually irresistible: it's going to come down to a choice between two candidates. 

So - we all know that no third party candidate have ever come close to getting elected President of the United States.  Ross Perot did best at about 19% in 1992 but that's a long way from winning.  We can safely conclude that the odds of a third party candidate getting elected President are zero.  There might be other benefits to a third party of running a national presidential candidate but we shouldn't kid ourselves about their chances. 

But what about other offices?  In some future post, I'll compile the statistics for the House of Representatives and Senate.  In this one, I'd like to look at state governors.  Since 1790, there have been 2,414 governors elected in all of the states (you'll have to do the tallies manually from this Wikipedia summary).   Of these, 82 were elected as independents or third party candidates. So, for governor, we have betting odds of about 3.4%.   So - a third party or independent candidate has a 1 in 33 chance of getting elected governor.  Way better odds than running for President.

Certain states tend to favor third parties.  Nevada had a noteworthy run from 1895 to 1911 when candidates from The Silver Party were repeatedly elected governor to defend the state's vital economic interests.  Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia and South Carolina had viable competitive third parties at the state level for various periods of time.

The bottom line seems to be that a national third party's best chance of influencing national politics will start at the state level with state politics.  

If the Alliance Party is going to effect real change, it's likely going to have to start at the bottom with local candidates running for local office (hopefully more exalted than dog catcher).   I think it's also worth keeping in mind that if one of the major parties steals and implements any of our good ideas, we also all win.  The bottom line is to get on voters' radar screens by proposing pragmatic, common sense, moderate solutions and debating them on their merits.  If we can influence the direction our country takes - either directly through election or indirectly through adoption - we will have done our bit.  

-- Mike Power