TODAY UKRAINE; TOMORROW ?

Quo vadis? This is not really the beginning of where we are going.  The beginning was a long time ago.  As Faulkner said, "The past is not dead, it is not even past."  Russia's acts of expansion and aggression are part of its history and culture.  As the current crisis in Ukraine signifies, there is nothing to suggest that it will stop here or now.  It is part of the national DNA , long pre-dating Putin.  There was never a chance for "reset", and any such concept, if it still survives, should be discarded.  George Kennan's containment strategy still applies today and probably tomorrow as well.  It turns out it may not have gone far enough in its prophecy - he was right about the Soviet Union collapsing of its own weight, but it didn't take into account that it was Russia itself which was the antagonist under the guise of communism which eventually lost whatever appeal and strategic value it may once have had.  It was always Russian nationalism.  Russia will be a permanent adversary.  It is a renegade nation.  It has never believed in the Western tradition.  It does not have the political system or the institutions which would allow it to do so.  To develop constructive relationships nations need not always agree, but they need to be operating under the same set of rules.  Russia has never the subscribed to the generally accepted rules of conduct of the Western nations, such as a pluralistic political system that encourages competition and debate, democratic elections, freedom of speech and press, religious tolerance and independent judiciaries.  In fact, it rejects them.  It rejects the idea of a rules based international order.  There is no room for accommodation unless Russia changes its historic pattern.

First, a disclaimer.  I have no no expertise or experience when it comes to Russia, I have never been there, and I think the only Russians I have met have been New York City taxi drivers.  I rely a great deal on the writings of Angela Stent, a non-resident fellow at Brookings, Stephen Kotkin, a professor at Princeton, Serhii Plokhy, a professor at Harvard, and Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale.

Russia is not only a geopolitical threat. Russia's world view, particularly as articulated by Putin, represents the historical  reactionary forces that have recently gained support from autocratic leaders or would-be leaders in the West and in countries that since WW II have otherwise evinced a desire to emulate the West; even in the US.  And this, I believe, has encouraged Putin to take the action he has in Ukraine.  This philosophical conflict with the West has even greater long term significance than the current geopolitical issue.  It may not be the Cold War, or even a large scale "hot war" (at least not yet), but it may define the course of this century.  The Cold War was never really a conflict with communism but a conflict with Russian nationalism and the Russian value system.  In fact, for some in Russia the Cold War never ended.  Perhaps for them it never can.  Putin argues that Russia's national security is at risk, but it is really his political security which is at stake as the comparative economic benefits and personal liberties available in the Western ethos move closer geographically to Russia.

In 2021, before the most current Russian invasion of Ukraine, Plokhy wrote, "The ongoing military conflict in Ukraine is not only a contest of political values.  Russia's effort to stem its imperial decline by seizing the Crimea and occupying part of the Donbas presents a major threat to international order, with its bedrock principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation-states, on a level not seen since the end of World War II."

                                                What Kind of a Country is Russia?

Russian culture/society requires a czar, an autocrat, an authoritarian leader.  The serfs may have been freed, but this is still a nation of serfs who prefer to be dominated by an autocrat.  Notwithstanding the accomplishments of Russians in literature, art, music and science (although I am not sure how many of them were ethnic Russians and how many were from other ethnic groups within Russia or the former Russian Empire or how many were liquidated by Stalin), listening to Putin raises the question as to how far the Russians have come from the barbarian hordes which once populated the steppes.  Think of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its secret protocols which allied Russia with Hitler and allowed them to divide between them territories in Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, the  Stalin imposed genocidal famine on Ukraine in the 1930s which starved 3.9 million to death, the show trials and Stalin's Great Purge/Great Terror of 1936-38 in which over 700,000 were killed and one million sent to Gulags, Stalin's murder of Trotsky in 1940, the Katyn Forest massacre in 1940, the sell-out of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, the defenestration of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk in 1948, the bloody suppression by Russian troops of the Hungarian and Czech protests in 1956 and 1968, government targeted assassinations and murders throughout the world, the poisoning of the Kremlin's arch critic, Aleksei Navalny, and his subsequent imprisonment, the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018, the death  in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, the long history of the Gulag and the war crimes currently being committed against the civilian population in Ukraine.  These are not nature's noblemen.

Due to its size and diverse multi-ethnic society with accompanying fear of disintegration, Russians are obsessed with order and stability at the cost of individual liberty.  For this it always requires an external enemy.  They have endured a thousand years of repressive autocracy, secretive government, a lack of individual and property rights and expansionist foreign policy, with brief periods of reform followed by Putin authoritarianism.  The Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment have passed Russia by, and in fact Russia is the contemporary embodiment of the counter-enlightenment.

Western concepts of individualism, competition and free expression are alien to the more holistic, organic communal Russian values.  Or as Putin describes it - managed or sovereign democracy.  According to Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, "Putin is trying to turn Russia back into a totalitarian dictatorship of the pre-Gorbachev days".

                                                 Historic Relations with its Neighbors and the West

Russia is permanently expansionist for cultural, political and historic reasons and its national paranoia engenders a fortress Russia mentality.  (Catherine the Great: "I have to expand my borders in order to keep my country secure.")  This so-called defensive expansion is in part due to Russia's lack of natural borders, but Russia also has retained an imperial mindset based on a 19th century Concert of Europe or balance of power frame of mind.  In the 1830s or so the foundations of the Russian imperial identity were formulated as autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality; nationality being ethnic Russian, the preservation of Russian cultural dominance.

Russia is and historically has been obsessed with the West.  It is schizophrenic, both resentful and envious.  Putin plays to the dual legacies of superiority and inferiority complexes that for centuries have shaped Russia's view of its role in the world.  Moreover, many Russians believe their right to self determination is constantly challenged by the West.  George Kennan described the psychology of Stalin's regime as paranoid, viewing the outside world to be "evil, hostile and menacing".  Nothing has changed.

According to a former LA Times bureau chief, by the time she had left Russia she had come to accept that "hatred of the West and of the West's collaborators was not a sideshow or an occasional propaganda point but the very foundation of Mr. Putin's rule.  It wasn't only a deep hunger for Russian empire; there was a desire for vengeance, too."  She described it as institutional hatred.  Russia is "still fixated on the same handful of grudges, stung and distrustful over the humiliation of the Soviet collapse and the perceived treachery of NATO expansion".  In the view of Russia's leadership, Georgia and especially Ukraine must be brought to heel; the Russian empire would rise again.

For the Soviets, NATO was the foe because it embodied the Western resolve to resist them. The fixation with NATO did not end with the Soviet collapse.  In the early 2000s there was talk of Russia becoming a member of NATO.  One problem was that Russia would have to accept NATO's rules if it joined.  These were rules written in Washington and Brussels.  Putin, seeking to regain Russia's position as a great power, bristled at accepting the Western agenda.  Russia wanted to interact with the US as an equal, with the power to co-determine how NATO was run. It wanted an equal partnership of unequals.

                                                Russia's View of its Role in the World

Russia dreams of a role in the world beyond its capabilities.  Although it has the largest land area of any country it is only 9th largest in population and 11th largest in GDP (its GDP is less than New York State).  The US produces 50% of global GDP; Russia produces 3% of the world's economic output.  It exports little beyond oil, gas, coal, some minerals and arms.  It is not an industrial power.  It is a petrostate.  John McCain called Russia a gas station masquerading as a state. Or as one commentator has said, the only two real things in Russia are oil sales and theft; the rest of it is all a kind of theater.  It is a kleptocracy.  It looks less and less like an advanced nation.  Economic backwardness persists.  The disparity between Russia's self-concept as a great power and the reality of its capabilities, both natural and man-made, has limited its ability to play the world role it believes it is destined and entitled to play.  Economically and politically they have a hard time matching the West so they resort to coercion.

Russia wants to have its opinion taken into account; it is upset that the West doesn't recognize its special status as a great power.  Russia feels that it has a special place in the world, a special mission.  According to Richard Holbrook, what Russia wants is to restore a sense, however symbolic, that they still matter in the world.

If it were not for its nuclear weapons it would be a third rate power which could be ignored.  It is this perceived lack of recognition, of the respect which it feels it is entitled to, and which Putin appeals to, these delusions of grandeur, which contribute to its aggressive behavior.  This, its national character, is unlikely to ever change.  

                                                 Putin

Putin is not rational, but has the mentality of a gangster who is trying to punch above his weight.  He is obsessed with his legacy and his place in Russian history.  He resents being ignored.  He believes that he, as the leader of Russia, should have a significant say in all international decision making.  Out of desperation he draws attention to himself and Russia by the forays into Georgia and Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.  He resembles Hitler in his Lebensraum movement into the Sudetenland and German speaking lands to the east.

The core element of the "Putin Doctrine" is getting the West to treat Russia as if it were the Soviet Union, a power to be respected and feared, with special rights in its neighborhood and a voice in a every serious international matter.  The doctrine holds that only a few states should have this kind of authority, along with complete sovereignty, and that others must bow to their wishes.  It entails defending incumbent authoritarian regimes and undermining democracies.  The doctrine is tied together by Putin's overarching aim: reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.

Putin believes that Russia has an absolute right to a sphere of privileged interests in the post-Soviet space.  This means its former Soviet neighbors should not join any alliances that are deemed hostile to Moscow, particularly NATO or the European Union.  Putin has made this demand clear in the two treaties proposed by the Kremlin on December 17, 2021, which require that Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries-as well as Sweden and Finland-commit to permanent neutrality and eschew seeking NATO membership.  NATO would also have to retreat to its 1997 military posture, before its first enlargement, by removing all troops and equipment in central and eastern Europe, which would reduce NATO's military presence to what it was when the Soviet Union disintegrated.  Russia would also have veto power over the foreign policy choices of its non-NATO neighbors.  This would ensure that pro-Russian governments are in power in countries bordering Russia - including, foremost, Ukraine.  As Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany recently said, Russia has just moved "to wipe an entire country off the world map".

Angels Merkel saw through Putin back in 2014 at the time of the Russian launch of a war in Southeastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea: "Russia is violating the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Ukraine.  It regards one of its neighbors, Ukraine, as part of a sphere of influence.  After the horrors of two world wars and the end of the Cold War, this calls the entire European peaceful order into question."

Putin's Russia has defined its role in the world as the leader of conservative nations that espouse "traditional" values and as a protector of leaders who face challenges from the "color revolutions" - popular uprisings against authoritarian governments - which Putin believes are orchestrated by the West.  The image of Russia as the defender of the status quo - against what is depicted as a revisionist, decadent West trying to promote regime change against established leaders - is an integral part of the Russian idea.  Putin has been taken by the ideas of Russian ultranationalists who view Russia's destiny as a conservative empire in perpetual conflict with the liberal Western world.  Putin has said that Western Christianity is decadent because it supports LGBTQ rights and multiculturalism.  Russia is depicted as the bastion of forces that oppose chaos and liberal ideas.  He is committed to the idea that Russian civilization differs from Western civilization.  Putin has taken the position that the rule of law is not a universal aspiration, but part of an alien Western civilization.  Putin represents traditional, collectivist, authoritarian Russian political culture and appeals to a sense of Russian exceptionalism, which defines itself in opposition to the West.  He is driven by a concept of ethno-nationalism, an idea of nationhood and identity based on language, culture, blood and soil- a collectivist ideology with deep roots in Russian history and thought.  According to Timothy Snyder, the idea of Russia as a separate civilization from the West with which it competes goes back centuries, to the roots of Orthodox Christianity and the notion of Moscow as a "third Rome", following Rome itself and Constantinople - a new Byzantium.  

He claims that since the Soviet collapse there is a mismatch between Russia's formal borders and its  national and ethnic borders, and this is a threat to Russia's security.  Russia thus has a right to come to the defense of the 22 million Russians under threat outside Russia in post-Soviet space (shades of Hitler's Nazi Germany).  What certainly resonates today is the idea that there is one big Russian or Slavic nation, with maybe different tribes, but basically they are the same nation.  That is the model, from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, which Putin now subscribes to when he says Ukraine has no legitimacy as a nation.  What we see now is a return to a pre-revolutionary understanding of what Russians are.  It is a very imperial idea of the Russian nation, consisting of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.  The latter two groups don't have a right to exist as separate nations.  We are almost back to the mid-nineteenth century with imperial officers trying to hinder the development of Ukrainian culture and ideas.  Putin's nationalism represents a civilizational identity that suggests a common culture and political boundaries and justifies conquest and irredentism.

I was originally skeptical of the expansion of NATO.  Some have blamed that for the current crisis. But now we know why we needed it.  NATO enlargement has been only one of the reasons for the deterioration of Russia's relations with the West.  The most important reasons are Putin's obsessive nostalgia for the historic Russian empire, his resentment over the USSR's loss of its empire following its cold war defeat and Russia's unwillingness, over the last quarter century, to accept the rules of the international order, including acknowledging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the post-Soviet states and supporting a liberal world order that respects the right to self-determination.  If NATO had not been enlarged would Putin have allowed the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to live in peace?  If Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had not joined NATO would they still be independent states?  Doubtful.

Russia is still the nationalistic, expansionist, empire building police state it has historically been.  It is part of a pattern.  Putin appears to be attempting to turn back the clock, not merely to the heyday of Soviet Communism but to the time of an Imperial Russia. Whether it be granting political asylum to Edward Snowden, or actively engaging in supporting anti - government groups through a media, social network and cyber security campaign, or interfering in foreign elections, Russia under Putin is constantly on the attack.  And now, as we see, militarily.  To quote President Biden, "This was never about genuine security concerns on their part. It was always about naked aggression, about Putin's desire for empire by any means necessary, by bullying Russia's neighbors through coercion and corruption."

As Ivan Krastev, Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, argues, "Even if Ukraine were autocratic, it would not be tolerated by Putin.  He's reconsolidating imperial nationalism."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser, has stated, "It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire".  As Ukraine moves closer to the West, Putin may think this is his last chance to do so.

                                                Reflections in the Mirror

It is no wonder that the Republican right has shown an affinity for Putin.  They are cut from the same cloth.  The new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean.  They want to overthrow, bypass or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists.  They are scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.  The only difference may be that the Republicans don't control atomic weapons, at least not now.  Ukraine on the world stage is a reflection of what the ultra-right is pursuing in the US.  With the internet and the web, global geopolitics can no longer be separated from domestic politics, and the latter no longer stops at the water's edge.  Putin and Russia are the cutting edge of the modern counter-enlightenment which seems to be engulfing the world, including our own country.  What is so shocking is that the Republican right, until it sensed that the wind was blowing in a different direction, didn't even try to disguise its admiration for Putin.  Toxic partisanship seems to have eased up for the moment, but only slightly.

As recently as March 8, Mike Pence was praising Trump's "management" of Putin: "I do believe that the reason why our our Administration is the only American administration in the twenty-first century where Putin did not try and grab land and redraw international borders by force is because he saw American strength."  Some management; Trump's threat to leave NATO encouraged Putin's current invasion of Ukraine.  Pence's political organization is claiming that Putin's invasion was precipitated by a "horrific decision": Biden's revoking of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.  Ron DeSantis said of the Russians: "When Trump was President, they didn't take anything.  And now Biden's President, and they're rolling into Ukraine."  Kevin McCarthy argued that Democrats are unfairly blaming the Russian invasion for the current high gas prices when the real problem is their lack of love for fossil fuels - their failure to authorize more pipelines, new leases on public lands, and more drilling: "These aren't Putin prices. They're President Biden's prices."  All of this is disingenuous at best.  None of this would have any short term effect on gas prices. 

The Texas Republican, an organ of the Republican Party, asserted, "This war didn't have to happen."  Mr. Biden's White House "caused this".  Senator Jim Risch of Idaho claimed that the carnage depicted in President Zelensky's address to Congress was a direct result of a response by the Biden administration that had been "slow, too little, too late". 

Senator John Kennedy traced the invasion to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, the failure to attack Syria after it used chemical weapons, and the Russian seizure of Crimea, noting that this all happened while Joe Biden was either President or Vice President.  Of course, he neglected to mention that he was among eight Republican Senators who visited the Kremlin in 2018 after release of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report which determined that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.  

He also ignored the four years under Trump during which he repeatedly undermined NATO, sided with Mr. Putin over his own intelligence community on Russia's interference in the 2016 election and tried to bring Russia back into the community of developed nations.

Or the ever quotable Marjorie Taylor Greene (the gift that keeps on giving) declaring that an independent Ukraine only exists because the Obama administration helped overthrow the previous regime, an apparent reference to the popular uprising that took down a pro-Russian president of Ukraine - actually two Ukrainian governments ago.  By the way, she opposes any intervention although she also blames the Biden administration.

Representative Madison Cawthon of North Carolina called Mr. Zelensky a "thug", echoing Russian propagandists.

Senator Ted Cruz also blames President Biden for the invasion, arguing that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden's decision to waive sanctions against the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline caused the attack. Actually the latter was only an expansion of an existing pipeline and had already been completed, just awaiting administrative approval.  Indeed eighty percent of the expansion was built under the Trump administration.

 Aside from the sheer stupidity of these remarks and their divorce from reality, it is appalling, although perhaps not surprising, that these Republican Party leaders are trying to turn a human tragedy to partisan advantage.  

Bipartisan resistance to Putin is critical; American power is dependent on its democratic basis, the erosion of which has no doubt encouraged Putin's move into Ukraine.  

                                                Going Forward

Notwithstanding the sanctions, Putin is determined not to stop in Ukraine until he takes the entire country, however long it may take and regardless of the casualties on both sides (or the desires of the Ukrainians who voted for independence from the USSR by 92 % in a 1991 referendum; the majority of every region was for independence.  Prior to the referendum polls showed that even 58% of ethnic Russians in Ukraine were in favor of independence.). If he continues in his quest, we have to recognize that there is a strong likelihood that he will ultimately succeed militarily, even if at a high cost, at least for the time being.  In misjudging the West he has left himself no way out. Ukraine will become occupied territory, much as was the case when the Nazis occupied most of Western Europe during WW II and the Soviet Union acted likewise in Eastern Europe after WW II.  Putin will eliminate the democratically elected leadership and impose a puppet government of Quislings to administer a satellite state with the support of Russian troops.  But even if the sanctions can't stop Putin for now in Ukraine, if the foray into Ukraine is not made extremely economically painful, Putin will not stop there and will move into Georgia, the three Baltic states and the rest of Eastern and Central Europe next, all of whom were eager to ally with the West after suffering the oppression of the Soviet empire.  Even Finland may be at risk.  Russia under Putin sees no limits on its aggression in its desire to recreate the Russian empire. 

The full range of economic sanctions should be applied, particularly with regard to technology transfer; arms supplies to Ukraine should continue as well.  The US embargo on imports of oil and gas from Russia is important, even if it is mostly symbolic. Long term the European dependency on Russian oil and gas must be terminated, and the Europeans should eventually join the embargo, even if that is not practical immediately.  We and our allies should start building the foundation for ending such dependency immediately through increased exports from other oil exporting countries and increased LNG trade, although this may take time.  Nevertheless we should push as far as possible now consistent with keeping our allies together even it requires some sacrifices on our part (including high gasoline prices, perhaps softened by subsidies for those who are hit hardest).  This will be necessary to foreclose any further aggression by Putin into Eastern and Central Europe.  The sanctions must be maintained until Ukraine is able to resume its full sovereignty and independence.  This may take months and even years.  The confrontation with Russia will be long term.  In the meantime the US and its European allies should support any Ukraine government-in-exile and, as has been suggested, aid any long term insurgency from covert bases in Romania and Poland.  It should also expand its military readiness in Eastern Europe with boots on the ground.  More sophisticated antiaircraft missile systems should be transferred to the Ukrainians, perhaps including the Russian system purchased by Turkey if Turkey would agree (which would additionally put them back in the good graces of NATO and the US).  Sadly, Putin understands only one thing - military strength and the ability and will to use it.  It has also been suggested that for the present, even if a formal no-fly zone is too dangerous, humanitarian air corridors should be created, perhaps UN rather than NATO backed.  There is risk for us involved, but it is important for Putin to know we are willing to take risks.  It shifts the burden back on him to recognize and assess his own risks.  The best way to avoid WW III is to remain firm, not to shy away from calculated confrontation.

Is there a way out?  It's hard to see one that is acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine.  What might be reasonable is for Ukraine to renounce any attempt to join NATO (but not its right to join the EU) while retaining the right to defensive military security, and granting some level of local autonomy to the eastern provinces.  Perhaps throw in some mutual security pacts between NATO and Russia to downgrade offensive military capability in border areas.  Biden has already offered transparency in military exercises in the region and offsite inspections of the US missile-defense launchers in Poland and Romania to verify that they could not fire offensive cruise missiles contrary to Putin's assertions.  I am dubious that this would satisfy Russia. Putin is too far over-committed.  This would be considered a loss by him.  Russia will have to suffer much more before he will come to the table.

This is not only about Ukraine.  The Putin doctrine may have more appeal and lasting power than communism.  It has its antecedents long before Marx.  This is a worldwide struggle against the coming of the new authoritarian one party state and the attack on the rule of law and liberal democracy. We are all involved, and the US must take the lead.

                                             

 FILIBUSTER REFORM REVISITED, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT THE SUPER MINORITY AND LOVE THE NUCLEAR OPTION

"[T]he most fundamental characteristic of democracy - the idea that majority rule is the fairest way to decide the outcome of elections and determine which bills become law - is baked into our founding ideas and texts." Adam Jentleson, Former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senator Harry Reid

I. Background

My December 26, 2012, blog was captioned "It's Time for Filibuster Reform".  In my blog of October 30, 2020, I wrote, in contemplation of the November election, that if the Democrats won the White House and the Senate they "should aggressively propose meaningful legislation in several of the areas . . . which are most popular with the public.  If the Republicans persist in their opposition to all things progressive, as they did with Obama, then the Democrats should threaten to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate.  If that gets no results, then the filibuster should go". 

 In my December 13, 2020, blog, after the Presidential election but before the Senate run-off elections in Georgia, I wrote, "If . . . the Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia, [passing legislation which provides something tangible to everyone, regardless of color or identity] should be easier to accomplish, but it may require filibuster reform.  Total elimination of the filibuster is probably not possible (even some Democrats would not support it), and may not even be desirable.  Democratic Senators Merkley and Udall put together a reasonable and fair proposal to mitigate the abuse of the filibuster a few years ago (discussed in my blog of December 26, 2012) which the Democrats should revisit".

Much has happened with the filibuster since the first of the above mentioned blogs.  In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the "nuclear option" to eliminate the three-fifths vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments in order to overcome Republican obstructionism.  Supreme Court appointments were exempted and still subject to the filibuster.  In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell extended the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominations as well in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch (to fill the seat for which President Obama had nominated Merrick Garland for whom McConnell refused to hold hearings much less debate and a vote), although McConnell apparently sees no contradiction in his current opposition to elimination of the filibuster.

Given the immediate total 100% resistance by Senate Republicans (and House Republicans as well) to the initial significant legislation proposed by Democrats to cope with the effects of the Covind virus, although favored by a majority of the public, including Republicans, and to H.R.1, the voting rights bill, also favored by a majority of the public and again including Republicans, the time has come to recognize that only through elimination or reform of the filibuster will there be any likelihood that Republican obstructionism can be overcome.  It is also likely that the labor rights bill, "Protecting the Right to Organize Act", which the House passed with only 5 Republican votes, and the gun control bills increasing background checks (with 8 Republican votes), which has overwhelming public support, and increasing time for background checks (with 2 Republican votes) will run into a brick wall of opposition in the Senate where Republicans are unanimously opposed (It is already clear that Atlanta, Boulder and Indianapolis, et al, will not change their minds as has been the case in their past failures to act after similar incidents.  In April 2013, four months after the Newtown massacre, a bill enacting background checks on gun purchases introduced by Democrat Senator Manchin and Republican Senator Toomey was defeated by filibuster 55-45; The 45 Senators represented 38% of the people; the bill was supported by nine in ten Americans.  Since Newtown on December 14, 2012, through July 2020, more than 2,600 have been killed in mass shootings, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, 49, Las Vegas, 58, and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, 17.  When is enough, enough?).  

An infrastructure bill which the Biden administration is preparing, and which is vital to long term economic growth is facing similar lock-step Republican legislative opposition in the form of a pathetically inadequate "counter proposal", notwithstanding broad support among both Republican and Democratic voters for substantial infrastructure legislation.  The same fate likely faces the two bills passed by the House that would establish paths to citizenship or legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, including those brought to the country unlawfully as children and workers in the agriculture sector.  Likewise the bill to restore a key enforcement provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that made it harder for states to target voters of color which was struck down in 2013 by the Supreme Court.  And don't forget the bill to make the District of Columbia, with its 700,000 disenfranchised taxpayers, a state (DC has a larger population than either Vermont or Wyoming and almost as many as North Dakota and Alaska.  Do you think that Republican opposition to this bill might just have something to do with the fact that DC is 53% Black and Hispanic?).

II. History of the Filibuster

Before we get to discussion of the source of the current intransigence and dysfunction of the Republican Party let me restate the substance of my 2012 exegesis of the history of the filibuster since it no longer seems to be accessible on my blog website.  It is perhaps best summed up in my letter (unpublished) to the New York Times of earlier this year:

    "This is just putting off the inevitable [the need for the elimination of the filibuster] given the obstructionist approach of the Senate Republicans.  However, there is reluctance on the part of a few Democrats to pull the plug entirely on the filibuster.  To reflect for a moment, the idea behind the filibuster is to ensure that there is ample opportunity to debate when a bill is introduced in the Senate.  No one can disagree with the premise that the majority should not be able to ram legislation down the throat of the minority with no chance to discuss the merits.  However, in recent years the filibuster has been used by the minority, principally Republicans, for purposes never intended, in effect as a veto power.  It is now the primary tool of the Republican Party to block any legislation with which it does not agree.  From a defensive weapon meant to ensure debate it has become [in its present form] an offensive weapon to foreclose debate.  We have reached the point where the mere threat of a filibuster is often sufficient to stop a measure."

We now have an untenable situation where the minority can dictate to the majority.  Today it is standard procedure that if you want to pass any legislation in the Senate a simple majority is not sufficient; as a matter of practice, a de facto 60 vote supermajority requirement applies to all legislation (with the exception of the complex and extremely limited reconciliation process).  That hardly seems what the Founders had in mind.  This is not democracy.  It has been calculated that forty-one Senators from states with as little as 11% of the national population can effectively veto legislation.  The 21 states represented by two Republican Senators contain less than 25% of the population.  Even on the basis of the present 50-50 split Democratic Senators represent over 41 million more people than Republican Senators, that is, Republican Senators represent approximately 38% of the population.  Since 2000, Senate Republican share of the population has never exceeded 50%.  Their high water mark was in 2005-06, when they had 55 seats, at 49%.  In 2009, their share was 35%, yet they were still able to to block much of President Obama's agenda when Democrats represented 65% of the population.  (Without trying to push the analogy to its extreme, it should be noted that in the German parliamentary election shortly after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 his party only received 43.9% of the vote, and we know how that played out.)

Certainly minority rights need to be protected.  However, we have the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments and the Supreme Court (although lately the Court has not been of much comfort to minority groups) to do that (and we have not yet reached the point where losers of elections fall into the category of protected minorities, Donald Trump and his acolytes to the contrary notwithstanding).  We are a nation of minority rights, not minority rule.  The Founders also recognized the need to protect minority rights through the checks and balances which they incorporated into our constitutional structure. To pass legislation you need to get a majority in each of the House and Senate and the signature of the President, all elected by the people.  That makes it hard enough to pass any legislation even without the filibuster.

The right to filibuster is not provided for in the Constitution.  Where in democratic theory or in our revolutionary history does it say, "the minority rules"?  In fact, one of the principal driving forces behind the convocation of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to replace the Articles of Confederation with its supermajority requirement of approval of 9 of the 13 States for military, tax or spending legislation, which effectively paralyzed the government.

If a minority was allowed to block a majority, then, to quote Madison in Federalist 58, "in all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.  It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority."  Jefferson, who was in Paris at the time of the Convention, wrote to Madison, who served as the informal secretary of the Convention, "It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail".  In 1834, in a letter written shortly before he died, Madison concluded "The vital principle of Republican Government is the lex majoris partis, the will of the majority".

In fact the filibuster is not part of the original design of the Senate but is a historical anomaly.  The first House and the first Senate had nearly identical rule books, both of which included a motion to move the previous question.  In legislative procedure, such a motion is used to end debate and bring a matter to a vote.  In the beginning days of the House and Senate it apparently was not used much at all.  In any event, the House has retained it, and it is now used to end debate and to bring the matter in question to a vote.  The motion can be approved by a simple majority.  In the Senate, in 1805, Aaron Burr, presiding in his capacity as Vice President, recommended a pruning of the Senate's rules, and singled out the previous question motion as unnecessary.  In 1806, when the Senate met to re-codify the rules, they deleted the previous question motion from the Senate rulebook.  They did so not because they sought to create the opportunity to filibuster; they abandoned the motion as a matter of procedural housekeeping.  Deletion of the motion took away one of the possible avenues for cutting off debate by majority vote but did not constitute a deliberate choice to allow obstruction.  The first documented filibuster did not occur until the 1830s, and in the following years filibusters were rare.  Thus it stood until 1917, when, prodded by President Wilson who was unable to overcome a filibuster by a "little group of willful men" in the Senate to a vote on his bill to arm merchant ships against German U-boat attacks, the Senate adopted Rule XXII, the supermajority rule which at that time required a two-thirds vote to end debate (it was dropped to 60 votes in 1975), a process known as cloture.  It represented a compromise between those who wanted no cloture rule at all and those who wanted a simple majority cloture rule.  Thus it does not reflect a Senate uniformly committed to the filibuster but only the fact that a minority blocked more radical reform.  The purpose of the 1917 cloture rule was not to protect the right of a minority in the Senate to block legislation by engaging in unlimited debate, but to fill the gap in the Senate rules by giving the Senate some power to limit debate for the first time since 1806.  

Until relatively recently the filibuster was rarely used and mainly only by white supremacist Southern Senators obstructing civil rights legislation in order to maintain Jim Crow rules and racial segregation in the South.  From the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1964 the only bills that were ever stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills.  Now it has become the rule rather than the exception.  Between 1917 and 1971 no session of Congress had more than 10 cloture motions, a rough measure of filibuster threats.  In the 92nd Senate, which met in 1971 and 1972, the number of cloture motions filed jumped to 24, from an average of fewer than 2 per Congressional term between 1917 and 1970.  In the 97th Congress (1981-82), 31 cloture motions were filed; in the 102nd Congress (1991-92), 60; in the 107th Congress (2001-02), 71; in the 112th Congress (2011-12), 115; in the 116th Congress (2019-20), 328.  Not only does this reflect the level of partisanship between the Parties, it also suggests that it is far too easy to call for and carry out a filibuster.

The modern filibuster has an impressive list of victims in addition to civil rights bills - electoral college reform in 1970 which had broad bipartisan backing and the support of 81% of the American people, a paycheck fairness bill to reduce wage disparity between men and women, the DREAM Act to protect undocumented immigrants who came to America as children, the DISCLOSE Act to expose the anonymous donors pumping millions of dollars into the political system, a bill to allow public safety officers  to collectively bargain and form unions, a bill to close tax loopholes that reward corporations for sending American jobs offshore and an expansion of social security benefits, all Democratic bills.  In addition, some bills or provisions in them never get voted upon due merely to the threat of a filibuster and the requirement of 60 votes; for example, the public option for health care included in the ACA until the very end, even though it enjoyed majority support.

Republican Senators are much more united by what they want to stop than what they want to pass; their incentive to act is weaker since they can accomplish much of their agenda by doing nothing.  Democrats, on the other hand, are traditionally the force for social change, and their agenda tends to rely on passing major legislation.

 Aside from obstructing almost all progressive legislation, the filibuster has turned the Senate into a totally dysfunctional body which passes little legislation of any kind.  Is it any wonder that as recently as December 2020 82% of the public disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job?  Over the last 12 months approval has never been higher than 35%.   Under its present rules it is incapable of governance.  Of course, this works heavily in favor of the Republicans as they are congenitally indisposed to government and governance in the first place.  They are the Party of the status quo or even of the status quo ante.  Or as Henry Adams described the reigning conservatives of his time, they zealously believed that "what had ever been must ever be".

III. Current Filibuster Practice

To review how the filibuster works today:

    1. An individual Senator can prevent the Senate from holding a vote on a particular issue until 60 of his colleagues finally tell him or her "no".  Since, as described below, a filibuster would paralyze the Senate for days and perhaps weeks and make it impossible to carry out other business, today a Senator merely has to advise that he is going initiate a filibuster and the legislation in question is dropped or put to a vote requiring 60 votes for passage without requiring the opposing Senator or Senators to even debate the legislation, thus destroying the supposed purpose of the filibuster.

    2. Not only can Senators use the filibuster to force endless imaginary debate, but they can also use it to prevent debate from starting in the first place, since the motion to proceed which is required to start debate is subject to filibuster.

    3. In order to resolve differences between similar but not identical bills passed by the House and the Senate through the conference committee process, the Senate must pass three motions, a motion formally disagreeing with the House bill, a motion expressing the Senate's desire to conference and a motion enabling a small group of Senators to be designated as negotiators, each of which motions can be filibustered.

    4. Even after 60 Senators break a filibuster, the dissenters can still force up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate per broken filibuster, with the result that to pass a single bill the Senate may need to spend 30 hours on additional debate after breaking the filibuster on the motion to proceed, another 30 hours after breaking the filibuster on the cloture motion to end debate and possibly another 90 hours after breaking three filibusters if the bill has to go to a conference committee.

    5. As unanimous consent is required to avoid a filibuster and post-cloture debate, a single Senator can place a "hold" on any Senate business by indicating a willingness to withhold such consent by doing so through his or her party leader and without revealing his or her name to other Senators.

    6. In most cases Senators can offer any amendment to any bill under consideration, regardless of whether the amendment is germane to the underlying legislation, thus overwhelming the amendment process or effectively destroying the bill's chances of passage by filing "poison pill" amendments.

    7. Perhaps most significantly, a filibustering Senator (or group of Senators) does not need to speak continuously on the floor of the Senate to sustain his or her objection.

    8. In effect, following the initial objection, the majority must assemble 61 votes to end the filibuster rather than the minority having to assemble 41 votes to continue debate.

IV. Suggested Filibuster Reform

It's time for a change.  The last 12 years have seen the culmination of the scorched-earth partisanship initiated by Newt Gingrich (and again threatened by Mitch McConnell) which has led to unresponsiveness by Congress to the needs of the people of this country, Democrats and Republicans alike, and the widespread distrust of government.  Filibuster reform is a necessity if this course of legislative paralysis is to be reversed.  It can be done by changing the rules of the Senate which can be done by a simple majority vote which the Democrats now have if all 50 Democratic Senators support it with Vice President Harris' vote.

The following suggestions for filibuster reform are derived from the proposal of Senator Merkley of Oregon and former Senator Udall from New Mexico referred to in my 2012 blog:

    1.  Eliminate the filibuster on motions to proceed.

    2. Eliminate filibusters on amendments since Senators would still have the right to filibuster the final vote.  All amendments would have to be germane to the underlying legislation.

    3. Eliminate filibusters on the conference committee process.

    4. Require a substantial number of Senators, say, 10, to file a filibuster petition to block a simple majority vote on a bill.

    5. Require a specific number of Senators, say, 5, for the first 24 hours, 10, for the second 24 hours, 20, for the third 24 hours, and 41, thereafter, to be on the floor to sustain the filibuster.  If the count falls below the required level, the regular order prevails, and a majority vote is held.

    6. Require debate to be continuous. If, when a Senator concludes speaking, there is no Senator who wishes to speak, the regular order is immediately restored, debate is concluded and a simple majority vote is held.  Debate must be germane to the bill in question.

    7. Limit post-cloture debate to, say, 8, hours.

    8.  A motion for cloture could be initiated at any time and would still require 60 votes.

Such a procedure would seem to provide a reasonable amount of time for the minority party to debate the merits of any bill without totally upsetting the schedule of the Senate and yet keep the debate on course and ensure legitimate debate instead of merely being a tactical device to kill the bill.

It should satisfy those Democrats who are committed to the Senate as a debating forum (as delusional as that may be today) and are reluctant for that reason to eliminate the filibuster entirely.  Although not the ideal solution (which would be total elimination), it should make it possible to move deserving legislation through the Senate, albeit somewhat inefficiently, and a vast improvement over the current situation.  As a practical matter, it may be the only alternative which has any chance of success.  Other reform possibilities include establishing carve-outs for certain types of critical legislation, as has already been done with executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments including those for the Supreme Court (a carve-out for the new voting rights bill, which goes to the heart of our democracy, being a first priority candidate), lowering the threshold for cloture from 60 votes to, say, 57, then 54, and finally, 51, after specified periods as the debate on the bill goes on, or requiring the minority to provide 41 votes to continue the debate as opposed to having the majority provide 60 votes to end debate.

V. Recent Examples of Failure of Bi-Partisanship

For those moderate or conservative Democrats who may still view this as an extreme remedy, there really is no other recourse if Democrats hope to enact any part of President Biden's program.  Bi-partisanship with today's Republican Party is off the board no matter how desirable and preferable it would be.  Bi-partisanship requires compromise and open-mindedness to which Republicans are opposed, not just tactically but ideologically.  This is not part of the Republicans' DNA.  The Republican battle cry is, "If it comes from the Democrats, just say 'no'".  Let's look at some recent examples in addition to the pending legislation:

    a. Original Obamacare in 2009 - 1 Republican vote in the House (only after 218 aye votes were already recorded) and none in the Senate.

    b. From 2009 to 2013, before then Majority Leader of the Senate Harry Reid exercised the "nuclear option", President Obama faced 86 filibusters against his executive branch nominees.  All other Presidents before then combined had endured only 82 filibusters against their nominees.

    c. 2010 - Mitch McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

    d. First Trump impeachment - no Republican votes for impeachment in the House and 1 for conviction in the Senate on one of two counts.

    e. Second Trump impeachment - 10 Republican votes for impeachment in the House (197 voted against impeachment)  and 7 for conviction (43 voted to acquit) in the Senate on what should have been a "no-brainer" (although Constitutionally mandated a clear example of the danger of super majority voting; the vote for conviction was 57-43).

    f. Objection to State electoral college certification for 2020 Presidential election in Arizona - 121 Republican votes in the House and 6 in the Senate.

    g. Objection to State electoral college certification for 2020 Presidential election in Pennsylvania - 138 Republican votes in the House and 7 in the Senate.

    h. 2021 $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan - no Republican votes in the Senate or House.

    i. 2021 Biden cabinet appointments - of 21 appointments voted on as of this writing, Hawley has opposed 19, Cruz and Scott have opposed 18, Cotton has opposed 17, Tuberville has opposed 15; 23 of the 50 Republican Senators have opposed one-half or more of the appointees;  Collins has voted for all, Murkowski, Portman and Romney have each voted for 19.

Does this look like bi-partisanship?  Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema argue that by requiring a supermajority the filibuster forces bi-partisan compromise.  Really?  Good luck with that.  The truth is that the two Parties no longer hold a shared version of reality or a shared vision of ideals.  The Republicans draw primordial energy from the dark side of human nature and represent white supremacy, fundamentalist evangelical faith and volkish nationalism versus the Democratic ideas of reason, skepticism, humanitarianism, democracy, faith in progress, scientific secularism and modern concepts of individual liberty.  It is a sectarian divide not unlike a religious sectarian split.  Partisanship has become a "mega-identity", in the words of the political scientist Liliana Mason, representing both a division over policy and a broader clash between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite.

Simply put, there is no chance whatsoever for President Biden's program to be enacted in any recognizable form given the present state of the filibuster rule.  And if these programs are not enacted, aside from the harm to the country, the Democrats run a significant risk of losing both the House and the Senate in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024.

VI. The Republican Party And Democratic Values

Why is the Republican Party incapable of the bi-partisanship which is implicit in democratic systems?  It is because the Republican Party, with or without Trump, is the party of supporters of white (by 2020 81% of Republican voters were white) male supremacy, anti-feminism, patriarchy, homophobia, ethnocentrism and evangelical fundamentalism/Christian nationalism who are motivated by their fear of losing what they deem as their deserved traditional privileges.  In more polite terms these supporters are generically referred to as the Trump base, but this fails to identify its composition which the Republican Party has embodied and enabled and obscures what drives the Party's political program.  Forget about the self proclaimed ideologies of traditional conservatism - small government, fiscal discipline and family values - those are smoke screens and are no longer emphasized by Republican politicians as they don't resonate with voters in today's economic and cultural environment, not that they were ever viable policies or more than propaganda to enhance the position of the Republican Party's wealthy benefactors.  Today, for the Republicans, it's all cultural or social issues which they have come to see as their sole route to power.  Governance is beside the point.  To quote the NY Times in discussing the actions of Marjorie Taylor Greene as illustrating the attitude of the new ranks of Republicans in Congress, "A growing number of lawmakers have demonstrated less interest in the routine passing of laws and more in using their powerful perches to build their own political brands and stoke outrage among their opponents".

Each of these components of the Party's supporters incorporates anti-democratic values, as does the filibuster itself.  These Republicans were for democratic values, i.e., the majority decides, as long as they represented the majority, or at least considered themselves as such.  They believe in faux democracy only.  Now that such a privileged position is contested, they are unwilling to rely on the Bill of Rights (which they claim to revere) and the courts (although they have stooped to the most abject charlatanism to establish the Supreme Court as an anti-democratic bastion) to protect their imagined rights, that is, their ability to continue to govern as a majority even when they don't have the votes, but instead attack democracy itself in an effort to enable the Republican Party to wield power, even if it does not speak for majority views, through gerrymandering and voter suppression or overthrowing the votes of the feared new majority, even, as we saw on January 6, by resort to violence.  When they saw themselves as speaking for the majority they had no inhibitions about touting popular sovereignty (as advocated, for instance,  by Stephen Douglas  a Democrat when that was the racist party, in arguing that the white majority should be allowed to decide whether to permit slavery in the territories in the lead-up to the Civil War), but with the fear of becoming a voting minority they are now whining that they need the filibuster to protect their minority rights (as they similarly did when defending Jim Crow legislation, again as racist Democrats).  They are now relying upon it to defeat H.R.1 which would foreclose their attempts to reimpose Jim Crow through red state voter suppression and gerrymandering.  The majority which they wish to preserve today is the majority of the 19th century, the establishment that then dominated public life.  With the present composition of the Republican Party congenitally indisposed to tolerance and compromise and consensus, there is an increasing disdain for democratic institutions and norms.  The very natures of racism, anti-feminism, patriarchy, homophobia and religious fundamentalism represent inherent rejections of the democratic values which rely upon and compel bi-partisanship. 

To quote Jennifer Horn, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party who left the Party, the GOP, in its current incarnation, is "the most open embrace of an anti-democracy movement that we have seen in our country in a very long time.... We tried to disenfranchise American voters.  We targeted minority voters in Georgia and Michigan and Pennsylvania, trying to overturn democracy in America".  But she is a rare Republican exception; see the recent statement by the Arizona state representative who chairs the state's Government and Elections Committee explaining that Republicans were happy to create measures that kept people from voting because "everybody shouldn't be voting.... Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well".  

Echoes of Paul Weyrich, conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think (oxymoron?) tank, and, with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, in remarks to the Religious Roundtable in August 1980: referring to what he calls the "goo-goo syndrome: good government", "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote.  Elections are not won by a majority of people.  They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now.  As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

VII. The Republican Base Versus Bi-Partisanship

It has been noted by Jelani Cobb that the modern Republican Party has been built upon the  "Southern beachhead" established by Goldwater in 1960.  He further notes that in 2018 some 70% of "safe" or "likely Republican" districts were in Southern states.  Prior to the 2020 elections Southerners composed 48%  of House Republicans and 71% of the Party's ranking committee members.  The South, he contends, remains the nation's most racially polarized region and also the most religious - two dynamics that factor largely in the Party's political culture.

It is instructive to reflect on the historic use of the filibuster by Southern Senators to maintain their Jim Crow anti-democratic political, economic and social structure, an obvious link to what has become the Republican Party's anti-democratic use of the filibuster today, and, in the case of its opposition to H.R.1, its present racist bias which was imported lock, stock and barrel with the migration of the Dixiecrats to the Party as part of its Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.  These people wouldn't compromise then, and they won't compromise now that they dominate the Republican Party with its willing accomplices.

The filibuster is intimately tied to white supremacy and the anti-majoritarian, anti-democratic policy of the slave holding South.  The current Republican reliance on the filibuster can be traced back to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, albeit a Democrat, in whose footsteps the Republican Party with its present southern heritage is following.  Calhoun, in the years prior to the Civil War, was the most articulate spokesman for slavery and its extension into the Territories and the leading proponent of nullification or "concurrent majorities" whereby any State legislature could exercise veto power over the application of any federal law in such State.  Calhoun was determined to pull the United States back toward a form like the one which existed under the Articles of Confederation - one in which a minority could impose its will on the majority.  The issue then was slavery and ostensibly state's rights, and although the term "filibuster" and the filibuster itself was not yet in common use, the principle is the same - the right of the minority to veto the decisions of the majority.

Underlying the origins of the filibuster in the 19th century and to this day is the issue of the balance of power in Congress; then between the slave South and the free North and now between rural (white evangelical) and urban (diverse secular) America.  The fear then was that the addition of Senators from new (free) states would overwhelm the South in the Senate - something of the same type of fear motivating the rural white evangelical South and Plains states today; thus the fear of majority rule.

Let's explore the religious right element for a moment.  In doing so it is important to distinguish between mainstream Protestantism and the evangelical Christian nationalism of the religious right.  Nor is this a matter of questioning the theological beliefs of the right or any other religious grouping; it is about the application by the religious right of these beliefs to the political arena when the law no longer reflects conservative fundamentalist beliefs about proper social policy, their attempts to impose such beliefs on others and the implications thereof for reaching bi-partisan accommodation or consensus with their political agency and protector, the Republican Party, on issues of governance; that is, Christian nationalism as a political theology the religious right embraces in order to baptize their political ends with the support of the transcendent.

First, some statistics: The share of white Protestants identifying as evangelical was 56% in 2020.  White evangelical backing for Republican presidential candidates has hovered around 75-80% for decades.  About 80% of white evangelicals supported Trump in 2016 and at least 75% did so in 2020; in a poll conducted after January 6, 66% of white evangelicals agreed that Trump was a true patriot.  Roughly half of evangelicals embrace Christian nationalism to some degree (this kind of nationalism believes that non-Christian Americans are unable ever to be truly American).  28% of white evangelicals believe in QAnon.  

By 1996 the Southern Baptist Convention had adopted what has been called the "civic gospel": the view that America had been founded as a Christian nation, but had fallen away, and that Christians had to take aggressive political action to protect their own rights, to buttress public and private morality, and to restore the American Constitution; conservative activists argued that there was only one Christian view on political issues and that political liberals could not be true Christians.

Frances Fitzgerald has written, "According to fundamentalist tenets, obedience to constituted authority was the cardinal principle of Christian society: children were to obey their parents, wives their husbands,  and citizens the state, just as all humans were to obey God".  There is no room for egalitarian gender roles, which is considered incompatible with the inerrancy of the Scriptures.

Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Professors of Sociology, describe Christian nationalism as:

    " [A]n ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.  It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.  It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.  Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively 'Christian' from top to bottom - in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values and public policies - and it aims to keep it this way."

Katherine Stewart, who writes frequently about religious nationalism, describes Christian nationalism  in "The Power Worshippers", as follows:

    "It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.  It does not seek to add another voice to America's pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a 'biblical worldview' that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

"Christian Nationalism is not a religious creed but, in my mind, a political ideology.  It promotes the myth that the American republic was founded as a Christian nation.  It asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but on adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic and cultural heritage.  It demands that our laws be based not on the reasoned deliberations of our democratic institutions but on particular, idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible.  Its defining fear is that the nation has strayed from the truths that once made it great."

Religious fundamentalists believe in the inerrancy of the Bible including the historical accuracy of all of the events which are recorded in it such as the Adamic account of creation; that the Bible is the word of God and revealed truth through divine revelation.  Truth depends on revelation and faith, not reason.  The Christian right rejects the modernism of their fellow mainstream religionists and secularism in general.  There is only one right way and followers of other religions are indulging in heresy.  From the perspective of a fundamentalist religious believer divine commands take precedence over all other needs and obligations.  Believers who comply with laws which flout such commands risk eternal damnation.  

For the evangelical church, membership is no longer based in religion.  The litmus test for religious belonging comes via one's political beliefs.

How is it possible to work together with such true believers who leave no room for compromise?  Fundamental religionists accept an authoritarian and hierarchical source of governance which cannot be questioned.  It is strictly top-down; there is no room for democratic rules.  God's law overrules man's law; and who is to decide what God's law is? Certainly not the people.  If such fundamentalists form the backbone of the Republican Party, as is the case, there is no room for bi-partisanship.  Consensus is beyond reach.  As Katherine Stewart comments, "Today it makes more sense to regard the Republican Party as a host vehicle for a radical movement that denies that the other party has any legitimate claim to political power. . . .[F]ew Republican politicians can achieve influence without effectively acting as agents for Christian nationalism, and almost no Democratic leaders can realistically cede enough ground to earn the movement's support."

The idea of trying to negotiate with white supremacists is too absurd to even discuss.  They deny democracy on its face.  They are fighting back against challenges to their historically dominant position in American culture, society and government.  They are driven by a fear of the "Great Replacement", the theory that holds that minorities are progressively replacing white populations due to mass immigration policies and low birthrates.  Projections of a "majority minority" by around 2045, with white population then making up only 49.7 % of the population (24.6% Hispanic, 13.1% Black, 7.9% Asian), only compound this fear and further motivate white supremacists.  These are not people who are open to bi-partisanship, and the Republican Party has chosen to become their party.

The anti-feminists are much the same (remember Phyllis Schlafly successfully campaigning against the ERA).  It should be noted also that religious fundamentalism in America has historically been deeply tied to white supremacy as well as to the anti-feminist patriarchal mentality which lies at the heart of the anti-abortion movement.  There has been a marriage of evangelical morality to the Republican Party - all in the service of maintaining white conservative male leadership.

A recent poll conducted by a Republican pollster showed that, when asked if they believed politics was about enacting good public policy or about ensuring the country's survival as we know it, only 25% of Republicans said it was about the former and almost 50% said it was about the latter.  According to the pollster, there is a real sense among many in the Republican coalition today that they are under siege.  Whether it's a sense of losing cultural power or losing economic power, many people who have gravitated to the right don't see what's happening in Washington these days as really about such things as top marginal tax rates or what government spending should look like but rather as about the way of life they have known is changing rapidly.  And that makes them anxious and drives a lot of their views accordingly.  She goes on to suggest that for a lot of Republicans to relieve this sense of siege would mean some combination of feeling like they're able to practice their religion freely.  According to her, some recent research has shown that one of the most unifying beliefs of the Trump coalition was the idea that there is religious persecution of Christians in the U.S. these days (see recent speeches by Justice Alito and Attorney General Barr).  

For them, Trump seemed as though he was somebody who was going to defend their right to practice their religion as they saw fit and not be told by the government that they couldn't, or be told - not just by the government, but by other institutions - by schools that their children go to, or by the media, or by their employers - that they're not allowed to hold certain beliefs.  They're reacting not necessarily to things that the government is doing, but what they feel is an encroachment on their values coming from government, Hollywood, big tech, the media, universities, whatever.  It is not so much a matter of economic libertarianism as get the government out of my life libertarianism.  They're more willing to accept an extreme candidate because "he fights".  

According to the NY Times, "Recent party polling indicates that, more than any issue, Republican voters crave candidates who 'won't back down in a fight with the Democrats'".  Further, " . . . it's the willingness to engage in brass-knuckle political combat that's most important in the party right now".  According to Ralph Reed, now a Republican strategist, that " . . . has become the overarching virtue Republicans look for in their leaders. . . . Now we just dig in."

So, if you're a Republican politician, how do you wield power to deal with the problems your base sees?  As one commentator has pointed out, there aren't a lot of policy solutions to the problems the base is concerned about. There is not a lot of policy they can offer.  There is more a posture of fighting, and that's what appeals to the base, not bi-partisanship. 

VIII. The Future of Liberal Democracy Requires Filibuster Reform 

So there you have it.  The Republican Party in its present form has demonstrated that it is incapable of participating in a bi-partisan dialogue on a legislative program as it would be suicidal.  It has entrapped itself for short term political gain - a Faustian bargain.  Such being the case, if the Democrats wish to achieve their legislative goals there must be filibuster reform.  There is no other way.

It actually goes deeper than that.  There is much more at stake than a legislative program, important as that may be.  Due to the desperate situation the Republicans have created for themselves, their only recourse is to destroy democracy through gerrymandering and voter suppression.  At the state level they are capable in many states of doing just that (see Georgia and Texas and many others) and they are working on it (not even the opposition of usually Republican corporate America can discourage them). For them, it is to be decision not by election but by assertion, made not by a simply numerical majority but by "we", the patriots, the real Americans.  They have fused the idea of an entitlement to privilege - which is being stolen from white Americans by traitors, Blacks, immigrants, and socialists - with the absolute distinction between real and and unreal Americans.  The concern is not that there are bogus votes, but that there are bogus voters, that much of the US is inhabited by people who are, politically speaking, counterfeit citizens.  Unlike "us", they do not belong; they cannot be among the "we" who get to choose.  Which is why as a matter of self preservation as well as good government policy, to say nothing of the democratic ideals in which our country professes belief, H.R.1 must be enacted into law, and that is not going to happen without filibuster reform, as Republicans have made clear that they are dead set against it.  

Passage of H.R.1 should be seen as an existential issue, not only for the Democratic Party but for the future of this country, as it goes to the heart of liberal democratic government.  For that reason alone there must be filibuster reform, if not filibuster elimination, now.  It may well be a matter of "now or never".  If state voting laws are changed as contemplated in "red" states, there may be no second chance.  There will be minority government, and it will not be a benevolent minority.  It is time to take a page from the Republican handbook and play "hard ball".  We have finally come to the fork in the road, or, if you prefer, the Rubicon.  There is no via media.  We faced this once before at Fort Sumter, and now again on this past January 6.

 YOU'RE FIRED!

"The arc of  the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  Martin Luther King

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."  Immanuel Kant

"The mills of  God grind slowly; yet they grind exceedingly small."  Ancient Hellenistic philosopher, but more commonly associated with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

                                                                *    *    *

Although we're not quite at the finish line, we can't delay the post mortem on the election any longer as we are already edging into the 2022 election cycle.

So which is it ? Or is it all of the above?  This election leaves the questions unanswered.

Although the main objective has been accomplished, the down ballot results are disappointing.  There is still a chance in Georgia to save the Senate, but the odds of winning the necessary two seats are not great.  In the House, it looks like no more then a five seat majority.

What is the main takeaway?  Essentially it is that the adherents of the Enlightenment voice of reason cannot comfortably rely on the "good sense" of the American electorate.  We still don't know in which direction the country is going.  And based on past history the options are several, some of which are most disturbing.

In terms of a normal presidential election, Biden's victory would seem substantial.  However, when considered in the context of who his opponent was, it was a close-run thing.  How could a viper like Trump get some 74 million votes; almost 47% of the total votes cast?  In 2016, Trump could have been seen by some as an unknown quantity (not by any New Yorker who has been living with his antics for some 40 years; in 2016 Manhattan went for Clinton by 86% and in 2020 for Biden by 87%).  Let's give him a chance  - see what he can do. He's a successful businessman (actually he was a failed businessman).  Maybe he can improve government.  After four years, it's very clear what he can do, and that's to be a destructive corrupt incompetent mean spirited force.  To quote Henry Adams, "I expected the worst, and it was worse than I expected."  Trump was given his chance, and he totally blew it and imposed a lot of damage.  And in doing so he had as a willing and enthusiastic accomplice the Republican Party.  And yet Trump has been more than competitive in the 2020 election, and the Republicans have held off the Democrats in the Senate and strengthened their position in the House.  So, what's wrong with this picture?  

A significant portion of the American people are to blame.  We are not what we think we are or claim to be.  As recently stated by a NY Times book reviewer, "[T]oday's America is not at all what the founders hoped the nation would be, but represents instead what they feared it would become."  The Republicans, starting with Reagan and now led by Trump, have achieved their objective of creating a cult, and have appealed to those only too happy to follow anyone who would cater to their most tribal passions.  They need to satisfy a primitive sense of belonging to what they see as their kind of people, their clan.  Their non-inclusive sense of community is limited to those they see around them, to those who look the same and respond to external stimuli in the same way as they do and have the same personal history.

Although exit polls can be unreliable, and it is difficult to separate out the specific determinants of an individual vote, if there is any single factor which will dictate a person's vote, it seems to be whiteness, the sense that this is a white Christian country.  Purity is the password.  And this outlook is only reinforced in rural surroundings with a sullen hatred of the national government and a strong evangelical fundamentalist base which has historically been motivated by anti-modernism and anti-secularism.  Specific policy positions are not really important.  Even issues like gun controls, abortion and homosexuality are relatively unimportant in and of themselves. It is the fact that "their people", who are represented by the Republican Party, oppose them that counts.  It satisfies their sense of belonging.  This is their community.  The others, that is, the Democrats, are out to destroy their community.  Thus, elective politics becomes an existential confrontation that calls for no holds barred opposition, including rejecting election results (in effect, blame it on the refs), buying into totally unsubstantiated absurd and bizarre conspiracy theories of fraud and even bordering on violence.  

The latest attempt to overthrow the outcome of the election, that is, the petition by the State of Texas to the Supreme Court which was summarily declined, only emphasizes to a breathtaking extent the charlatanism (and for that matter the incompetence of the Republican legal elite) and the arrogance of the Republican Party.  In short, the votes don't matter, only the power to dictate the results.  (It's interesting to note that Biden won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by about three times as many votes as Trump won those states in 2016 which threw the election to him even though he lost the national popular vote by 2.8 million votes while Biden won nationally by 7 million votes.  No one questioned the result in 2016.)  For a Party that is constantly citing the Constitution it would appear that its members have never read it.  Does the Republican Party leadership really believe that Trump won the election?  Are they merely sore losers? It makes no difference.  They have so cultivated and aroused their ignorant base with their deceitful claims that they cannot escape the embrace of the base for fear of being displaced by those with even more extreme views.  They have sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.  Can there be a more blatant example of a total disregard for democratic principles, a republican form of government and more than 250 years of history?  Should there be cries of treason? Maybe we should resurrect HUAC to investigate the Republican Party.  If presented in a persuasive way I can think of a no more damaging attack on Perdue and Loeffler in Georgia.

By the way, I note that the chairman of the state Republican party of Texas is considering secession.  By all means, let them go!  Maybe we could work out a deal with Russia whereby we could deport to Russia all denizens of Texas who wish to go, and they could set up a semi-autonomous region in Russia with Trump as the local czar.  They could call it "The Russian Banana Republic".  Maybe we could throw in a Trump hotel in Moscow as further inducement.

Given such a situation, how do Democrats and other rational people move forward?  (Here let me interject that, if you believe in such things, it is more likely that the final battle at Armageddon will not be between good and evil but between the rational and the irrational.  That's what really separates us - the fault line that establishes the partisan schism in this country.)

Much has been written about reaching out to the white, rural, evangelical and non-college graduate sectors of the country which constitute the Republican base.  There has been criticism of the so-called "elite", the urban, educated cosmopolitans who allegedly have only contempt for this base and don't respect them or try to meet their needs.  They don't reach out to them and try to understand or talk to them.  My question is, what do these people want ?  What do they need?   What are the programs or policies that they want - other than anti-abortion rules, unlimited guns and rejection of homosexuality and gay marriage?  Does anyone think that if the Supreme Court was to overrule Roe v. Wade, overturn all gun control regulations, find bans on gay marriage constitutional and allow states to criminalize homosexual activity that these people would vote Democratic?  They would only be happy if we could recreate life as it was in the first half of the 20th century, or even earlier, (the good old days when Blacks and women couldn't vote and fundamentalist religious leaders rejected evolution) or at least as they think it existed.  The base does resent the "elite" who they denigrate as secular liberals and equate with the Democratic Party.  Nothing will change that, because they see the elite as different from them, and they, the base, don't want to change.  Their way is the right and only way.  These "conservatives" (although not true conservatives in the Burkean sense) resent what they see as liberals' belief in a god of supervening justice with which only they are familiar and who through them guides the world in directions of which they approve.  This competes with the god of the conservatives who created a fixed realm which is already laid out and doesn't need any human intervention to carry out.  Such intervention merely interferes with their god's plans.  These are people raised to believe that the truth is eternal and identity is fixed.  Overall, a Manichean world view, laid on a base of supernatural eschatological mumbo jumbo.

If this is a correct analysis, there is no point in reaching out to such a Republican Party clan.  They have their cult leader in Trump and will follow him anywhere, much like Jim Jones of the Jonestown massacre and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians, as long as he is willing to lead which, with his narcissism, he is likely to do even after leaving the Presidency.

The only way to deal with this conundrum is to win elections by (i) holding together the Democratic Party progressives and moderates, (ii) persuading independents and the unaffiliated to vote for Democratic candidates, and (iii) passing legislation which provides something tangible to everyone, regardless of color or identity, keeping in mind that politics and perfectionism do not easily mix.  Democrats must stop seeking their own brand of purity and start with what is possible.

If by some stroke of good fortune the Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia, this should be easier to accomplish, but it may require filibuster reform.  Total elimination of the filibuster is probably not possible (even some Democrats would not support it), and may not even be desirable.  Democratic Senators Merkley and Udall put together a reasonable and fair proposal to mitigate the abuse of the filibuster a few years ago (discussed in my blog of December 26, 2012) which the Democrats should revisit.  But even if some filibuster reform can be implemented which allows Democrats to be more aggressive, moderation should be the guideline.  Democrats should not force issues beyond what the general public, which includes swing voters, can tolerate at this time. Democrats should play the long game - looking to 2022 and 2024 and beyond.  Even modest gains, and perhaps only modest gains, should be able to establish (re-establish?) the Democrats as the majority party in America and lead ultimately to a genuinely progressive polity.

If the Republicans retain control of the Senate, they can be expected to stonewall the Democrats at every step of the way, and the dysfunction, which will be to no one's benefit, will continue (this is also an argument which should be made in the Georgia run-offs).  That should not stop the Democrats from pushing forward popular legislation even if defeat is a foregone conclusion.  Force the Republicans to vote it down, and remind the voters of that in the next election.