Under Virginia law, Eric Cantor cannot appear on the ballot in November because he ran in the primary and lost. If he wants to try to keep his seat, he will have to try to get people to write in his name, and that’s rarely a successful effort. It doesn’t appear that Cantor will even try to salvage his career, and that gives the editors at Bloomberg View a sad. They penned a column this morning opposing such “Sore Loser” laws. After all, Connecticut doesn’t have a Sore Loser law and that allowed the warmonger moderate Joe Lieberman to fend off a challenge from that notorious extremist Ned Lamont.
To be fair, the editors make some good points:
Almost every successful party primary challenge occurs from the far right or left, of course. And the constant, looming threat of a primary challenge leads incumbents to adopt hard-line positions that are often out-of-sync with the general electorate, which makes bipartisan compromise exceedingly rare. Fear of being “primaried” is perhaps the most powerful force in Washington today, and it is a leading cause of its dysfunctional culture.
Sore loser laws compound this problem in two ways. First, they encourage candidates — and incumbents — to cater to the extremists in their party. Second, they prevent moderate candidates who lose party nominations from appealing to the broader electorate.
The editors are completely correct about this. But, let’s think about things a little bit. My political positions are a little out of the mainstream, although the country seems to be moving my way on most social issues (excepting guns, of course, where I am actually not an ideologue). But why shouldn’t I have a party that represents what I believe that isn’t disadvantaged by laws that make ballot access extremely difficult? And why do we have a system where me voting for the party that best represents my views would actually be to the advantage of the party that least represents them?
I’d like to vote for a party that wants to do away with for-profit medical insurance. Throughout the last two decades, I would have liked to be able to vote for a party that supports gay marriage rather than waiting around for the Democrats to finally decide that the water is safe. I’d like to vote for a party that’s willing to take a tough line to force Israel to the peace table. I’d like to vote for a party that has a plan to share more responsibility with our allies for maintaining a stable world order. I’d like to vote for a party that is more consistent in protecting our civil liberties and more full-throated in opposing torture.
The Democratic Party has to attempt to appeal to a majority of the people, and that prevents them from taking clear and consistent positions on many things because they don’t want to alienate groups that they rely on for their majorities. I’m forgiving of this tendency because I understand the political battlefield and I don’t like to cede power to the right. But can we agree that this system is less than ideal?
The problem isn’t so much that Eric Cantor has to appeal to rabid lunatics who fault him for not destroying the nation’s credit rating. The problem is that there isn’t a party for folks who want to default on our credit rating that is separate from the Republican Party. If Louie Gohmert and Steve King and Ted Cruz and Michele Bachmann belonged to the National Default Party and they had a few seats in Congress, this would not present too much difficulty. But they belong to the GOP and, increasingly, they are making the GOP act crazy.
In an ideal world, party membership would be much more important and politicians would do the bidding of the party that nominated them. Instead, the Democrats go trolling for anti-choice candidates they can run in deep red states and I have to be “sophisticated” and tolerate it because it’s smart strategy.
In other words, the problem is that we don’t have proportional representation. It’s winner-take-all plurality elections that are killing compromise more than Sore Loser laws. A party ought to be able to strike their own representatives off the ballot if they are unhappy with them. And Eric Cantor ought to be able to run for the nomination of a party that isn’t insane.
Stop the practice of gerrymandering congressional districts, that was part of what happened to Cantor, as I understand it. That would address a major CAUSE of the problem Bloomberg is complaining about.
Polarization in Congress and gerrymandering – there’s polarization, and there’s gerrymandering, and each is worth worrying about, but the one isn’t responsible for the other.
During the 2011 Virginia gerrymander, rural areas were added to Cantor’s district to make it safer. That wound up biting him in the primary.
But that’s the opposite of gerrymandering for power. When you gerrymander for power, you try to get 55% districts for your party and 90+% districts for the other party.
Instead, the Democrats go trolling for anti-choice candidates they can run in deep red states and I have to be “sophisticated” and tolerate it because it’s smart strategy.
Is it a smart strategy? And what about turds like Dan Lipinski?
If you care about reproductive rights, it is not an unambiguously smart strategy, but if you care about having a majority (or padding your majority) it is pretty much a no-brainer.
Start with the first:
Running anti-choicers muddies the party message, but anti-choice Democrats in the majority do less damage than anti-choice Republicans in the majority, because the GOP will be more aggressive and successful in legislating directly than through the amendment process. So, you lose a little and you gain a little, and we can debate where the balance lies.
On the second issue:
Harry Reid is anti-choice. Ben Nelson was anti-choice. Bob Casey is anti-choice. All of them were needed to pass the Affordable Care Act and much of the rest of Obama’s first term agenda. We can see how ineffectual we are without a filibuster-proof Senate and control of the House. Having a majority, preferably a super-majority is a prerequisite to getting any progressive legislation done.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate this system. That’s what I am complaining about. I’d like to belong to a party that is much clearer on where it stands and much more consistent in its message.
That’s what Ex-Lax is for.
In Cantor’s ex district, these voters chose to ignore Cantor’s TParty support, obstruction record and the power he wielded, arguably on their behalf.
Not surprising that these voters chose to vote against their own interests so to think that they would see the light and translate that into write in votes, unless of course Laura or Fox tells them to, is a moot point.
I quote from a thoroughly off topic Yahoo message board post regarding AT&T stock:
Your post aches to correctly identify the real problem. Yes I agree we don’t have proportional representation and I’m glad to hear this out loud, but you are missing a key enabler of the two-party system: Democrats!
Democrats don’t enable the two-party system, Democrats are a product of the two-party system. See Duverger’s law.
Democrats are not the victim of some mysterious force that is explained by Duverger’s law. Rhetoric aside, Democrats stick up for incumbents and seek benefit from playing the Republican foil at every step.
Until Democrats actually lift a finger to fix our broken electoral system, they deserve just as much blame for the state we are in. See latest Pew Research on political polarization in America.
What should the Democratic party do to “fix” the electoral system that doesn’t require Republican party assistance?
Until you can answer that, you’re just saying “Both Sides!”. I can get that from a pile constructed by David Brooks.
With proportional representation, you might have a Tea Party and a non-Tea Republican Party that can win back many of the people who deserted the party because they can’t stand the crazy. This will likely lead to a Tea-Republican coalition that has a greater share of the votes in an election than Republicans currently have.
“Eric Cantor ought to be able to run for the nomination of a party that isn’t insane. “
Ought to? Eric Cantor was a key enabler in making that party more and more insane. “He who lives by the sword … “
Much as I honor the Constitution, its greatness comes from the fact that all its laws are based on a higher law, what the Declaration calls “the Law of Nature and been struck down, as is only just.
The end of the comment should read:
“what the Declaration calls “the Law of Nature and Nature’s God”. It is by that higher law that Cantor has been struck down, as is only just.
Doesn’t the Bloomberg piece begin with the (convenient) assumption that the majority of eligible voters are politically “center right?” Therefore, primaries should sort out the candidates and leave the two closest to “center right” for voters to choose from in the general election. And the appearance of the Tea Party has mucked up the traditional system.
Yet, that can’t be correct. Long before the existence of the Tea Party, the CA GOP primary winners became more strident anti-tax, anti-equal rights, anti-crime, etc., and Democratic primary winners marched to the right as well. There were no “far right” vs. “far left” general election contests; only “far right” vs. “center right.” Forty years on it resulted in a totally unworkable mess. So bad that the CA GOP is now practically a rump party. However, Jerry Brown, circa 2014, champions public policies not dissimilar to Reagan, circa 1968. Both, in their time, to the right of the majority.
What was lost for liberals during those forty years were the words and arguments of progressive policies that had prevailed for the decades before then (not exclusive to Democrats) that had made the state financially strong and government workable. Losing that language also decimated the ranks of the liberal democratic bench. Hence, the need to elect a once-liberal septuagenarian as governor to somewhat right the balance.
The CA open primary system, top two move to the general election, initiated in 2011, has on balance shifted the political space to the left. Glitchy for the two major parties in primary contests where their candidate field is large and the district is 50/50 or leans slightly in one direction. Leading to two Democrats or two Republicans in the general election.
In heavily Democratic or Republican districts, minority voters don’t have a voice. But they didn’t have one with closed primaries either. Routinely nominating this cycle’s sacrificial lamb. With time, as voters become more conscious of the new power of primaries, that could change. Two adjustments to the open primary system could increase voter participation: 1) Top two provided both of the top two get at least 25% of the vote. If not, the top four advance to a run-off primary with the threshold increased to 37.5%. If two candidates fail to reach the threshold, the top three advance to a third primary. (IRV could replace the run-offs, but it asks voters to imagine a scenario and that’s problematical for many people.) 2) Top one for any primary candidate that gets 75% of the vote. (That saves a boatload of campaign money and time for candidates that are unquestionably unbeatable. It also requires that their supporters turn out for the primary. The opposition would be similarly motivated to get their voters out to avoid being shut out of the general election.)
As mentioned above, Cantor’s district was engineered to be “safer” for him, apparently to free up his time from worrying about picayune concerns like re-election so he could focus more narrowly on repealing Obamacare. Surprise!
Many voters interviewed have complained that Cantor was out of touch with his district. Oddly enough, even in our post-modern 21st Century society, voters still expect their elected representatives to pay attention to their needs from time to time. Al Ullman of Oregon found this out when he was about to ascend to be Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee back in the 1970s.
Finally, there is the question of what Republican voters want and expect from their elected officials. At this time, they want it all, and they expect their elected officials to govern solely for their benefit. Anyone else in the congressional district can just go hang; a Republican congress critter is the sole property of the district’s Republicans.
Those Republicans have been egged on to believe several impossible things, most of them before breakfast. Which is to say, they’re not the most rational creatures on God’s green earth. They think 12 million undocumented immigrants can be made to disappear with the wave of some magic wand. They think a riot in Libya can be quelled and dispersed within minutes by our military thousands of miles away. They think they’re all about to become wealthy, and that any additional tax burden on the wealthy will soon fall on them. They think the administration is about to confiscate every privately-held firearm in the nation. Ludicrous notions, all.
But where do these ludicrous notions originate? Do their party leaders say, “That’s absurd!” Except for the one time candidate McCain contradicted a woman at a campaign rally for talking nonsense about Obama’s birthplace, I can’t remember any time a Republican elected official told his or her constituents that they were indulging in fantastic thinking. No, they’re too afraid to rein in their lunatic base, which they’ve encouraged to think and act in unrealistic ways.
Eric Cantor couldn’t possibly tell the Republicans in his district that they were deluded. He has spent the last several years deluding them. And now he’s been supplanted by someone who out-crazied him. Does Cantor believe his own rhetoric? I don’t think he does, but it’s immaterial. The voters in his district’s party believe it, and the person to blame for that is Eric Cantor.
Agree completely with everything you said except for your first clause. Cantor’s district was modified only slightly in 2011. Removed lightly populated geographically large rural areas that wouldn’t have helped him at all on Tuesday. Also, he did very well in his 2012 election.
Substitute “Democratic Party” for “administration” and that one is not far from the mark.
See, the fact that no national Democrat has come out for confiscating guns is the very tell that the DemocratTM party will be coming for your guns…any day now…(quick, go buy more!).
The NRA is just a gun marketing lobby.
I’m surprised that in this whole post and thread no one mentioned Lisa Murkowski’s successful write-in campaign for Senate in Alaska after getting primaried by a teanut.
It does seem this is being considered for Cantor – I googled her name to get the spelling right and a whole bunch of Cantor articles popped up mentioning the possibility.
If you remember Murkowski’s campaign her huge challenge was the complicated spelling of her name – more than half of the ad time was devoted to the spelling! On the plus side, her Democratic opponent wasn’t really viable. Cantor has both the advantages of spelling and of a non-viable Democrat. Throw in just how crazy his teanut opponent is turning out to be – so crazy that Ms. “I am not a witch – I’m you – and like you I have to go around telling people I’m not a witch” looks mainstream by comparison – and I think Cantor has a very viable write-in chance if he wants to pursue it.
Democrats would be wise to help Cantor’s write-in candidacy.