Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution

      The Republicans and their candidates, do seem to see it, but their hatred of everyone and everything not linked to their shrinking base and their fear of everything beyond their vision of a Norman Rockwell America makes it impossible for them to swim with the tide. The Republican base hates establishment Republican leaders such as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell almost as much as it hates the Democrats. It is so angry that it now turns to Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, who tout their own personalities in lieu of programs, and promise that once they have succeeded in mucking out the stables of Democratic America, they will unearth a purer version of America.

     Sanders gets it. He understands the deep distrust Americans seem to have of our national government. Sanders is calling for “a political revolution . . . [in which] millions of people begin to come together and stand up and say ‘Our government is going to work for all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.’” They’re even selling t-shirts, travel mugs, pillow cases and laptop skins with Sanders’ picture imploring people to join up.

     The election is still too far away for anyone to predict whether Sanders, Clinton or anyone else will receive his or her party's presidential nomination. And so, instead of prognostication, let’s talk about what a political revolution in 2015-16 might look like.

      Regardless of which party controls the levers of power in America, whether located in Washington, D.C. or in the smallest of our local communities, governmental institutions are naturally conservative in that they were designed to resist change. They were created to guarantee social stability, and they all represent hard-fought compromises that the people who framed them wisely agreed should not be undone without a broad consensus.

     Our two party system, the system of checks and balances, judicial review, federalism, the supremacy of the national government and the civil rights and civil liberties we cherish cannot be undone or easily replaced. Not only is the institutional machinery that could produce legitimate revolutionary change difficult to use, it is unlikely that a significant number of Americans would be willing to abandon what many regard as the miracle of the Constitution.

     But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done. It only means that a revolutionary has to work within the system we have.

     Newt Gingrich, in 1994, provided a workable template for political revolution. Tired of being powerless as a member of the minority party in the House, Gingrich created a unified party platform for Republicans seeking election to the House. He got all of the Republicans seeking election that year to sign onto and campaign for a set of legislative proposals he called the “Contract With America.”

     For the first time in 40 years, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. As the intellectual leader of House Republicans, Gingrich became Speaker and used party discipline to pass the legislation the Contract with America promised.
Unfortunately for Gingrich, he didn’t have control of the Senate or the White House. Senate Democrats succeeded in deploying the filibuster. Bill Clinton insisted that the 1994 election had not made him “irrelevant,” President and held firm for his own policies, even after his confrontation with Gingrich resulted in the first government shutdown in American history.
Republicans managed to hold on to control of the House and the Senate in the 1996 election, but very little of the Contract With America became law.

     Modern day revolutionaries should take note. The only way to succeed with a revolutionary political program is to have control of all of the institutions of government. Imagine what might happen if a presidential candidate were to make herself the leader of an insurgency intent on capturing not just the White House, but control of both houses of Congress as well.

     We now have a highly polarized parliamentary system in everything but name. We have unified and disciplined parties occupying Congress, and we’ve even seen the collapse of a coalition government in the House. The members of both parties in both the House and the Senate now vote the party line on all major issues almost all of the time. It’s rare to see leaders of one party seriously seeking to obtain votes from the other party. The parties in Congress can effectively stymie each other and the president of the other party, and that's why little gets done.  

     A revolutionary presidential candidate must take advantage of the system as it is. Such a candidate must become deeply involved in the selection of candidates for the House and the Senate. He or she must commit his or her own campaign resources—including campaign time and cash--to getting herself and her co-partisans elected on a single meaningful platform. That is the only way to avoid the sausage-making spectacle that accompanied the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

     A revolutionary presidential candidate would have to be straight with the American people. She would have to admit that the promises she makes are contingent upon the election of a working majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. She would have to insist that the only way to achieve the promised results is for the party to run the table. Voters would have to vote for all of the party's candidates so as to give the president a clear legislative mandate. It would be all or nothing.

     The problem with this ploy is that it will have the effect of denying the minority party (and the voters it represents) any serious governing role until the majority government falls. But the advantage is that voters will finally know who to reward for success and who to punish for failure, That is how democracy is supposed to work.

     And that would be truly revolutionary.