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Progressive Populis
Why
Progressives Lose: Affirmative Action for Conservatives
By Steven Hill
June 2003
One of the most obvious reasons for the
recent successes of the Republican Party and conservatives is being
overlooked by most political analysts. The unfortunate fact is, all
three branches of the federal government have a built-in STRUCTURAL
bias favoring Republicans and the conservative point of view. It's
like having a foot race where Republicans start 20 yards ahead of
Democrats. Despite the unfairness of it, that advantage is hardwired
into the U.S. Constitution. The current extreme conservatism of the
U.S. government can be directly attributed to the antiquated
18th-century institutions of the United States Senate and Electoral
College. Both of these institutions are structured to give
low-population and predominantly rural states more representation
per capita than higher population states. Because these states tend
to be the most conservative in the country, in effect these states
are granted a huge "representation subsidy," a kind of affirmative
action, that favors the Republican Party as well as conservative
elements within the Democratic Party. An interesting book, "Sizing
up the Senate" by Francis Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer, shows that this
representation subsidy in the Senate has the effect of
disproportionately favoring these low-population states when it
comes to representation, policy, federal appropriations, even
leadership positions in the Senate. For example, that representation
quota has over-represented the Republican Party in the Senate in
every election since 1958, primarily due to Republican success in
low-population, conservative states in the West and South.
Currently, Democrats and Jim Jeffords represent a total of 2.4
million adult Americans (if one counts the total adult population of
a state once for each senator representing that state), and
Republicans represent a total of 1.9 million adults -- yet the
Republicans have the majority. Similarly with the Electoral
College. The affirmative action quota for low-population states
favors the election of Republican and conservative presidential
candidates. For instance, in 2000 George W. Bush won most states
with three, four, or five electoral votes, and that small-state
padding explained the difference between the Electoral College vote
(won by Bush with a lean 271-267 margin) and the national popular
vote (won by Gore with a half million more votes). In 1789, the
ratio between the most populous state (Virginia) and the least
populous (Delaware) was 11 to 1. Now California has 68 times as many
people as Wyoming, and the gap is growing. The Framers simply did
not foresee such dramatic population imbalances over 200 years
later. Consequently, the apportionment formulas they have saddled us
with, which gives each state one Electoral College vote per each
U.S. Senator and gives each state two Senators regardless of
population, has given the people of Wyoming 68 times the per capita
representation of Californians in the Senate and nearly four times
the per capita representation in the Electoral College. The
low-population western and mountain states of Montana, Wyoming,
Nevada, North and South Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma
and Arizona form a vast area of fiery red Bush country stretching
from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, over one million square
miles, the size of all of Western Europe including Scandinavia. If
we add in Alaska, the region is practically the size of a continent.
This region is its own sparsely settled sub-nation of sorts of over
26 million people with the same population as the states of New York
and Massachusetts -- yet over five times the representation of New
York and Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, and nine more votes in
the Electoral College. Moreover, because of the Senate's
constitutional role in approving U.S. Supreme Court and lower
federal court nominees, this conservative bias is built into our
courtrooms as well. This "representation subsidy" for low
population, conservative states goes a long way toward explaining
the current dominance of a conservative movement based in the low
population and rural western mountain states, the southwest, and the
Confederate south. The fact is, a bias toward conservative,
low-population states has been constitutionally mortared into all
three branches of government. Yet the impacts of this
malapportionment hardly are examined by political scientists or
pundits, whether mainstream or progressive. Over the years,
low-population states representing a small fragment of the nation
have flexed their representation quota to slow down or thwart
desegregation, campaign finance reform, health care reform,
affirmative action, New Deal programs, gun control, even basketball
programs for inner city youth. Urban policy and assistance for inner
cities have been bottled up by Senators representing conservative
low-population rural states. Bill Clinton's domestic stimulus
program, which was targeted at urban areas in megastates like
California, was killed by conservative senators from underpopulated
states such as Oklahoma. Labor law reform, like a bill that would
have prohibited permanent replacement of strikers, passed the House
but could not muster the 60 votes necessary to break a Republican
filibuster in the Senate. Huge federal agricultural subsidies, a
boondoggle to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, are handed
out to many of these low-population farming states. Senators from
low-population states have exercised disproportionate influence over
foreign policy. Judicial appointments like Clarence Thomas have been
opposed by Senators representing a clear majority of the American
people -- but found themselves in the minority in the Senate. Given
the built-in institutional bias favoring conservatives, it is not
surprising that research has demonstrated in recent years that the
United States Congress is completely out of touch with the American
people. Political scientists Larry Jacobs, Robert Schapiro, and
others have shown that the Congress is on the same page as the
American people a mere 40 percent of the time, in terms of enacting
legislative policy that mirrors the desires of Americans. Fifteen
years ago, that figure was 65 percent. Peering into the crystal
ball at demographic trends, by 2050 as few as five percent of the
population may have majority power in the Senate. According to the
Census Bureau, by 2025 our four largest states, California, Texas,
New York and Florida will be non-white majority containing a
combined 25 percent of the nation's population -- yet these four
states will have the same representation in the Senate as
sparsely-settled Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota, with
similar malapportionment extant in the Electoral College. In other
words, with our nation evolving toward a multiracial amalgam without
historical precedent, the U.S. Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court
will continue to look like white rural America, resulting from what
one writer has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in
pickup trucks with gun racks." Shifting demographics are colliding
with anti-democratic defects implanted into our antiquated,
18th-century constitutional framework. This is a demographic built
to blow. It is deeply ironic that, for all the radical conservative
philosophy oozing from the ideologues of the Republican Party,
low-population, conservative, and predominantly white states have
benefited from the most flagrant form of representational
affirmative action. These conservatives tagged Lani Guinier as a
"quota queen" for some of her legal ideas regarding representation,
yet the representation scheme for the U.S. Senate and Electoral
College was founded on quotas -- specifically, a representation
quota, a subsidy, affirmative action, whatever you want to call it
-- for low-population states that have disproportionately favored
conservative and white-dominated states for decades. Most
legislatures, not only in the U.S. but around the world, base
representation on population. This is a principle that many popular
revolutions and struggles have fought for and wrested from kings,
dictators and tyrants. It's a sound principle, and one that our own
American democracy has proudly exported to the rest of the world.
Yet our own primary political institutions fail that test. Amending
the U.S. Constitution to change this malapportionment will be
extremely difficult since it will require support from conservative
Senators and state legislatures that benefit from the status quo.
Nevertheless, it's time to at least begin the national conversation
about these antiquated 18th century institutions that not only
distort representation but also twist national policy, and figure
out a viable strategy for badly needed reform. In the meantime,
conservative, rural, mostly white, low-population states and their
representatives will continue brandishing disproportionate
legislative, presidential and judicial power. Adding Why
Progressives Lose: Affirmative Action for Conservatives By Steven
Hill One of the most obvious reasons for the recent successes of the
Republican Party and conservatives is being overlooked by most
political analysts. The unfortunate fact is, all three branches of
the federal government have a built-in STRUCTURAL bias favoring
Republicans and the conservative point of view. It's like having a
foot race where Republicans start 20 yards ahead of Democrats.
Despite the unfairness of it, that advantage is hardwired into the
U.S. Constitution. The current extreme conservatism of the U.S.
government can be directly attributed to the antiquated 18th-century
institutions of the United States Senate and Electoral College. Both
of these institutions are structured to give low-population and
predominantly rural states more representation per capita than
higher population states. Because these states tend to be the most
conservative in the country, in effect these states are granted a
huge "representation subsidy," a kind of affirmative action, that
favors the Republican Party as well as conservative elements within
the Democratic Party. An interesting book, "Sizing up the Senate"
by Francis Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer, shows that this representation
subsidy in the Senate has the effect of disproportionately favoring
these low-population states when it comes to representation, policy,
federal appropriations, even leadership positions in the Senate. For
example, that representation quota has over-represented the
Republican Party in the Senate in every election since 1958,
primarily due to Republican success in low-population, conservative
states in the West and South. Currently, Democrats and Jim Jeffords
represent a total of 2.4 million adult Americans (if one counts the
total adult population of a state once for each senator representing
that state), and Republicans represent a total of 1.9 million adults
-- yet the Republicans have the majority. Similarly with the
Electoral College. The affirmative action quota for low-population
states favors the election of Republican and conservative
presidential candidates. For instance, in 2000 George W. Bush won
most states with three, four, or five electoral votes, and that
small-state padding explained the difference between the Electoral
College vote (won by Bush with a lean 271-267 margin) and the
national popular vote (won by Gore with a half million more votes).
In 1789, the ratio between the most populous state (Virginia) and
the least populous (Delaware) was 11 to 1. Now California has 68
times as many people as Wyoming, and the gap is growing. The Framers
simply did not foresee such dramatic population imbalances over 200
years later. Consequently, the apportionment formulas they have
saddled us with, which gives each state one Electoral College vote
per each U.S. Senator and gives each state two Senators regardless
of population, has given the people of Wyoming 68 times the per
capita representation of Californians in the Senate and nearly four
times the per capita representation in the Electoral College. The
low-population western and mountain states of Montana, Wyoming,
Nevada, North and South Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma
and Arizona form a vast area of fiery red Bush country stretching
from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, over one million square
miles, the size of all of Western Europe including Scandinavia. If
we add in Alaska, the region is practically the size of a continent.
This region is its own sparsely settled sub-nation of sorts of over
26 million people with the same population as the states of New York
and Massachusetts -- yet over five times the representation of New
York and Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, and nine more votes in
the Electoral College. Moreover, because of the Senate's
constitutional role in approving U.S. Supreme Court and lower
federal court nominees, this conservative bias is built into our
courtrooms as well. This "representation subsidy" for low
population, conservative states goes a long way toward explaining
the current dominance of a conservative movement based in the low
population and rural western mountain states, the southwest, and the
Confederate south. The fact is, a bias toward conservative,
low-population states has been constitutionally mortared into all
three branches of government. Yet the impacts of this
malapportionment hardly are examined by political scientists or
pundits, whether mainstream or progressive. Over the years,
low-population states representing a small fragment of the nation
have flexed their representation quota to slow down or thwart
desegregation, campaign finance reform, health care reform,
affirmative action, New Deal programs, gun control, even basketball
programs for inner city youth. Urban policy and assistance for inner
cities have been bottled up by Senators representing conservative
low-population rural states. Bill Clinton's domestic stimulus
program, which was targeted at urban areas in megastates like
California, was killed by conservative senators from underpopulated
states such as Oklahoma. Labor law reform, like a bill that would
have prohibited permanent replacement of strikers, passed the House
but could not muster the 60 votes necessary to break a Republican
filibuster in the Senate. Huge federal agricultural subsidies, a
boondoggle to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, are handed
out to many of these low-population farming states. Senators from
low-population states have exercised disproportionate influence over
foreign policy. Judicial appointments like Clarence Thomas have been
opposed by Senators representing a clear majority of the American
people -- but found themselves in the minority in the Senate. Given
the built-in institutional bias favoring conservatives, it is not
surprising that research has demonstrated in recent years that the
United States Congress is completely out of touch with the American
people. Political scientists Larry Jacobs, Robert Schapiro, and
others have shown that the Congress is on the same page as the
American people a mere 40 percent of the time, in terms of enacting
legislative policy that mirrors the desires of Americans. Fifteen
years ago, that figure was 65 percent. Peering into the crystal
ball at demographic trends, by 2050 as few as five percent of the
population may have majority power in the Senate. According to the
Census Bureau, by 2025 our four largest states, California, Texas,
New York and Florida will be non-white majority containing a
combined 25 percent of the nation's population -- yet these four
states will have the same representation in the Senate as
sparsely-settled Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota, with
similar malapportionment extant in the Electoral College. In other
words, with our nation evolving toward a multiracial amalgam without
historical precedent, the U.S. Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court
will continue to look like white rural America, resulting from what
one writer has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in
pickup trucks with gun racks." Shifting demographics are colliding
with anti-democratic defects implanted into our antiquated,
18th-century constitutional framework. This is a demographic built
to blow. It is deeply ironic that, for all the radical conservative
philosophy oozing from the ideologues of the Republican Party,
low-population, conservative, and predominantly white states have
benefited from the most flagrant form of representational
affirmative action. These conservatives tagged Lani Guinier as a
"quota queen" for some of her legal ideas regarding representation,
yet the representation scheme for the U.S. Senate and Electoral
College was founded on quotas -- specifically, a representation
quota, a subsidy, affirmative action, whatever you want to call it
-- for low-population states that have disproportionately favored
conservative and white-dominated states for decades. Most
legislatures, not only in the U.S. but around the world, base
representation on population. This is a principle that many popular
revolutions and struggles have fought for and wrested from kings,
dictators and tyrants. It's a sound principle, and one that our own
American democracy has proudly exported to the rest of the world.
Yet our own primary political institutions fail that test. Amending
the U.S. Constitution to change this malapportionment will be
extremely difficult since it will require support from conservative
Senators and state legislatures that benefit from the status quo.
Nevertheless, it's time to at least begin the national conversation
about these antiquated 18th century institutions that not only
distort representation but also twist national policy, and figure
out a viable strategy for badly needed reform. In the meantime,
conservative, rural, mostly white, low-population states and their
representatives will continue brandishing disproportionate
legislative, presidential and judicial power. Adding up the
cumulative impact of this over the next twenty years is a nightmare
scenario in the making. But ultimately it's that very
"demographic-democratic" crisis that will provide the incentives for
constitutional change. Steven Hill is senior analyst
for the Center for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org),
and author of "Fixing Elections: the Failure of America's
Winner-Take-All Politics" (Routledge Press, www.FixingElections.com).
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