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New Ideas for a New Democracy

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New Ideas for a New Democracy NEW IDEAS FOR A NEW DEMOCRACY at New York University School of Law About The Brennan Center for Justice The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and justice. Our work ranges from voting rights to campaign finance reform, from racial justice in criminal law to Constitutional protection in the fight against terrorism. A singular institution — part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group — the Brennan Center combines scholarship, legislative and legal advocacy, and communications to win meaningful, measurable change in the public sector. © 2012. This paper is covered by the Creative Commons “Attribution-No Derivs-NonCom- mercial” license (see http://creativecommons.org). It may be reproduced in its entirety as long as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is credited, a link to the Center’s web page is provided, and no charge is imposed. The paper may not be reproduced in part or in altered form, or if a fee is charged, without the Center’s permission. Please let the Center know if you reprint. We are engaged in a great fight for the future of American democracy. In 2012, our political system urgently needs repair. Government seems broken, Congress paralyzed. We wince at the sight of billionaires sponsoring presidential candidates like race horses. States have enacted the worst rollback in voting rights since the Jim Crow era. The integrity of our elections is at stake. That’s the bad news. The good news? Citizens are noticing. They are angry. They are looking for solutions — and leadership. A passionate commitment to democracy reform must be at the heart of the progressive agenda. We can tap the most exciting and positive trends in our political system as the basis for American renewal. Our goals: Modernized voter registration, where everyone who is eligible to vote, can vote. A campaign system relying on small donors, not big dollars. A vision of the Constitution as a charter for a vital self-governing democracy. A government that works again. New ideas for a new democracy. All of these will require long term, committed effort — thinking, organizing, and acting. Frederick Douglass reminded us, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.” That’s a fight worth making. We look forward to working with you to renew America. Michael Waldman President Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law The American Story The Declaration of Independence could have simply broken with Great Britain, but it did far more. It set out a vision of equal opportunity and political self-governance, one plainly at odds with reality in that revolutionary year. For two centuries our history has been marked by an effort to live out the meaning of that creed — never easily, and always over fierce opposition. In the era of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, men without property won the right to vote. In the Civil War and after, political rights were won by formerly enslaved men, only to be taken from them in a brutal repression. In the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, we began to use government as an effective tool to counter excessive economic power — assuring that democracy would not be overwhelmed by a new aristocracy. Women won the vote, in effect doubling the franchise. The New Deal not only stretched a safety net through programs like Social Security, but created new institutions to vest political power more widely, by protecting the right to organize unions. And in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, we sharply expanded the circle of democracy again, with African Americans and then millions of others gaining long-denied legal equality. At each moment, those who opposed wider democracy worried that giving more power to more people would lead to lassitude, a dilution of American character, or a government so bloated and voracious that it would sap entrepreneurial spirit. At every step, they were proven wrong. Each loosening of the vise expanded the nation’s creative and commercial spirit. We learned that our country grows stronger when power is entrusted to more hands. For Americans, democracy isn’t just another in a laundry list of issues. It is the issue — and always has been. But in recent years, our democracy, instead of rising, is in retreat. We boast the world’s oldest representative democracy, yet nearly half 1 of all eligible citizens do not vote. Conservatives have spent five decades denigrating government, framing it as “the problem” and not the solution. Nine lobbyists for each Member of Congress crowd the halls of the Capitol, pressing narrow interests over the public interest. The campaign finance system is awash in $5 billion of private money. And the United States Senate has paralyzed itself, adopting an unwritten but unbreakable rule requiring 60 votes for even the most routine of actions. These trends produced the economic cataclysm of 2008. The financial crisis was a political crisis. It was caused by a lack of regulation and oversight, fueled by market fundamentalism. A dysfunctional political system produced economic disaster in the lives of millions. The same dysfunction made it painfully hard to respond to the emergency. Overwhelming private power distorted the outcomes of health care reform and banking regulation. In the fight over the Dodd-Frank law, for example, financial interests spent $1.3 billion to sway Congress. In the 1950s, 8 percent of major bills were filibustered. Now, seven in ten are stonewalled. An utterly unconstitutional supermajority requirement has become the norm. The 2010 elections were marked by low turnout, and the first inkling of a flood of new conservative money into politics. Distressingly, Democrats did little to advance democracy reforms when they had the power to do so. For two years the party controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Yet it made no serious effort to enact legislation to expand voting rights, repair presidential public financing, or introduce campaign reform for Congress. Given a chance to change the Senate’s Rule 22 and curb abusive filibusters, lawmakers flinched. Barack Obama — a former constitutional law professor and voting rights lawyer — was the first Democratic president in at least half a century not to push for any major political reform legislation. Yes, a crowded agenda and the financial collapse imposed immediate challenges. But the failure to press for institutional change was a costly lapse. 2 BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE Conservatives, by contrast, saw the drive to change democracy’s rules as a central strategic imperative. They understood the topic was not process but power. Whenever they gained control of a political institution, they swiftly mounted an overt, audacious assault on institutions self-governance. In state capitols, as soon as legislative majorities shifted, Republicans rammed through the sharpest reduction in voting rights in decades. In the Supreme Court, the newly consolidated conservative majority swiftly overturned a century of campaign finance law. (In no other area has it been so aggressive.) These moves invariably tilt the terrain of politics and governance away from ordinary citizens. To be clear: This is not simply the clamor of a healthy democracy, the push and pull of normal politics. These trends are not sustainable. Respected centrist political scientists Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann sum it up in their new book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.” The Republican Party’s lurch to the right magnifies a polarized party system that seems unable to govern. American institutions depend on compromise, consensus, and checks and balances. Today’s fierce, money-fueled partisan politics have overwhelmed existing structures. We cannot expect American government to right itself automatically. Long-term crises — from climate change to exploding debt — will resist resolution. Competing nations, including those with more authoritarian governing models, will continue to pull ahead. Thomas Friedman recently wrote in The New York Times, quoting conservative scholar Francis Fukuyama: “When Americans think about the problem of government, it is always about constraining the government and limiting its scope.” That dates back to our founding political culture. The rule of law, regular democratic rotations in power and human rights protections were all put in place to create obstacles to overbearing, overly centralized government. “But we forget,” Fukuyama added, “that government was also created to act and make decisions.” 3 All this should profoundly worry progressives. Citizens don’t believe government can work — in large part because increasingly they see it as bought and sold by large interests. Without change, corrosive public anger will spread. But in a hopeful sign, public attention has soared even as the public mood has soured. In a poll for Democracy Corps, Stanley Greenberg found a majority of voters intensely frustrated at the influx of secret money that controls our system and undermines our democracy. Citizens, Greenberg argues, will be far more receptive to arguments for government programs only if they first see reform in Washington. The lesson is plain:If we want to solve our problems, we must fix our systems. 4 BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE 2012: The Attack on Democracy Two great trends have converged to threaten the integrity of the 2012 election. Marching Backward From Selma Over the past century, our nation expanded the franchise and knocked down barriers to full electoral participation. Now, however, that momentum has abruptly reversed — resulting in the most severe restrictions in voting rights since the Jim Crow era. 17 States passed restrictive voting laws since 2011 Since the beginning of 2011, 17 states passed 22 laws and two executive actions to curb voting rights. In October 2011, the Brennan Center concluded these moves could make it significantly harder for 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
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