The compounding effects of anti-majoritarian mechanisms

The anti-democratic nature of American political institutions means that Republicans have little incentive to moderate in response to the median vote:

Ostensibly, the pressure to win a general election should work to curb and curtail this dynamic. But the demographic homogeneity of the Republican coalition confers a distinct advantage on the party: It gives it a high floor from which to engage the biennial contest for control of the national government. When enough states in the union are low density and low population, the party that dominates the nation’s rural areas already controls nearly half the seats in the Senate and has a significant advantage in the House of Representatives as well.

What’s more, the efficient distribution of Republican and Republican-leaning voters — rural and exurban America extends through every state — means that, as we’ve seen in two of the last six presidential elections, a Republican presidential candidate does not need to win the most votes nationwide to win the Electoral College and therefore the White House.

The ability to win power without winning votes is a powerful disincentive to change. As we see with Trump’s struggle to break out of his MAGA echo chamber, it stunts a politician’s — and a party’s — ability to reach beyond the faithful. It has also stimulated, among the Republican rank-and-file, a real disdain for what the Republican senator Mike Lee called “rank democracy,” exemplified in the assertion that the United States is a “republic, not a democracy.” It makes sense: If more democracy would make it harder for Republicans to win, then more democracy can’t be good.

The obvious comparison here is the radicalization of Southern politics after Brown, when the formula for winning a Democratic primary was “be the most racist candidate.”

There are reforms that could mitigate this:

The reforms are straightforward. End the Electoral College and move to a national popular vote, possibly by embracing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. End partisan gerrymandering and experiment with forms of voting that might enable more party competition, like fusion, which would let two or more parties nominate the same candidate for office. End the filibuster and pass a new, more robust Voting Rights Act. Grant Washington, D.C., statehood in accordance with the wishes of a majority of its residents. And pursue reform of the entire federal judiciary, so that the Supreme Court, which has been too happy to help Republicans entrench minority rule in the states, cannot take an ax to this agenda.

The overriding problem is that the countermajoritarian mechanisms are insulating — they’re difficult to change precisely because the interests that benefit from them are overrepresented. But in the longer term it’s important to have an idea of what needs to be done.