Trump Has Opened the Pathway to Reform

Apart from Donald Trump, the basic problem of the Republican Party’s so-called fever — the extent to which it has been captured by nihilists and ideological extremists — is that the party is untethered from any electoral dynamic that might force it to moderate its behavior.

For example, despite the much-discussed willingness of some Black and Hispanic men to support the occasional Republican candidate (mostly Trump), the Republican coalition is still overwhelmingly white and conservative and spread throughout the nation’s rural and exurban counties. In theory, there are tensions within the Republican coalition — the party’s commitment to the interests of the superrich is an uneasy fit, to say the least, with the most downscale elements of its blue-collar constituency; in practice, those tensions are subsumed by commitments to a shared cultural (and often religious) identity.

Democrats must navigate a large and fractious alliance of interests, some of which are at odds or cross-purposes with each other. Republicans, by contrast, can sail the relatively calm waters of demographic homogeneity. But what this also means is that there is no force internal to the Republican Party’s electoral coalition that might force its representatives onto a different path.

In the absence of an alternative demographic or ideological base from which to build influence, the ambitious Republican politician has one option if he or she hopes to advance within the party: rigid commitment to ideological purity. The only way to get ahead is to out-conservative — or now, out-MAGA — your rivals.

There is no incentive for anything else. If you want to win a primary, if you want to ascend to leadership, if you want to avoid the ire of conservative media, if you want to be on a national ticket, then you cannot have enemies to your right. There is no room, in the national Republican Party, for the moderate Republican governor of a Democratic state — the Larry Hogans and Charlie Bakers of American politics. There is not even room, it turns out, for the pragmatic conservatives of the party — the Nikki Haleys and Mitt Romneys.

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 United States will always have a conservative party, but American democracy needs that party to be committed to the maintenance of our democratic institutions. The only way to plot a path from here to there is to forcibly change the incentives within the Republican Party, which is to say, the only way to break the fever is to change the rules of the game. A more democratic American democracy — where majorities elect and majorities rule — would force the Republican Party to try, once again, to compete for national majorities.

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.

If the aim of both the Democratic Party and its allies is to protect and defend American democracy, then it cannot avoid a confrontation with those aspects of the American system that enabled the Republican spiral into nihilism. If Democrats win control of Washington in November, they should make reforming our democracy a priority, since even without Trump, the sickness in the Republican Party will remain. It will take strong medicine to save the patient. Democrats must be prepared to administer the cure.

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