The existing social safety net has proven inadequate. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps help to ameliorate some of the burden of the recession for some people, but their counter-cyclical nature brings increased calls for the restriction of government spending just when such spending would seem most necessary. There is no suitable program for the underemployed.

A more effective means of helping families in times of economic crisis would be permanent, systematic reforms in which the breadth of the more stable the citizenship system was expanded to serve as a better compliment to the dynamism of capitalism.

• Real health care reform is at the top of my list (more here).

• I think it is worth considering local or state-sponsored childcare as a way to promote families by diminishing the leisure and economic trade-offs of having children.

• Inasmuch as most higher-end jobs require basic computer literacy, a permanent program for providing such classes to both children and adults could be a huge boon to both our economy and to individual social mobility.

• We need to reverse the trend of shifting the cost of higher education from the state to the students. That trend threatens to substitute the capitalist model for the citizenship model, reinforcing social stratification in what should be the brightest path for social mobility.

Each of these programs could both boost our overall economy and greatly help families in weathering the worst storms of capitalist dynamism. Families that could count on health care, childcare, and access to increased education could afford to risk part of their leisure time on entrepreneurship in good economic times. In hard times, such programs would help them maintain some of their pool of leisure time. With that time they could aid their neighbors, engage in political activism, better themselves, or ensure a brighter future for their children. In short, they could continue as citizens in the midst of a capitalist crisis.

(For the other posts in this sequence on family, see here and here.)

But I do not believe the state has a compelling interest in denying marriage to same-sex couples. That violates the basic principles of the citizenship system, particularly equality before the law but also the notions of individual liberty and secular pluralism.

The government’s interest in promoting stable families (as I argued elsewhere) lies in preserving the opportunity for individuals to pool and direct their leisure time as they see fit. The freedom to make decisions about leisure time, to exercise liberty in the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ is the foundation of participatory democracy. When the government interferes with how we choose to exercise such liberty or who may exercise such liberty, it must do so with a compelling reason. Religious values, however ecumenical or well-intentioned, do not rise to this standard. Neither do general and improvable fears about the decaying social order. Nor is “tradition” a sufficient reason for denying equal access to government benefits.

To deny individuals their liberty in pursuing happiness as they see fit is a potential step toward majority tyranny. Those who seek to exclude same-sex couples from the opportunity of marriage are directly challenging the notion that all citizens are equal. We have sadly allowed this inequality for too long in our nation. Fortunately, we have now reached a point where the Constitution, in the hands of the Supreme Court, may once again serve as a tool for extending the basic promises of citizenship to all. I hope and pray that our justices will rise to the occasion.

(For the other posts in this sequence on family, see here and here.)

As I have explained before, I see citizenship and capitalism as the two dominant and indispensable systems structuring American society (see here). But the logic of modern capitalism is fundamentally opposed to a family structure in which the labor of only some family members is sufficient to provide for the needs of all family members. Businesses, seeking greater profits, will tend toward paying each worker the minimum wage necessary to keep only that worker fit to continue working. This system will continually pull more family members into the work force, producing a short-term gain for each family but a long-term decrease in per-person wages. Whenever other developments diminish the relative power of labor, we will see an increase in this trend toward all family members working.

Only a citizenship-based system which values each individual equally and separately from the worth of his or her labor will be able to counterbalance this trend. Theoretically, labor unions can play this role. But the most effective such force would be government. Child labor laws, maximum hours, and minimum wages are all examples of the system of citizenship being brought to bear in limiting the system of capitalism. These laws have balanced economic growth against other values and alternative (non-economic) interpretations of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

But why should the government favor the family as a unit of social organization? Why, in the terms described above, should it care whether some or all family members must work for their support?

My answer is that our democratic system benefits from the way that stable families distribute leisure time for non-economic activities, such as child-rearing, community building, political activism, religious worship, peer mentoring, and education. The opportunity for citizens to direct their non-economic leisure time in such pursuits is a fundamental building block of our pluralistic, participatory democracy.

Families, with their ties of mutual affection, are better suited for that distribution of leisure than any other broadly accessible social organization of which I know. Individuals, alone, can only choose leisure activities based on the time their work affords them. Larger communal organizations place too-great a burden on each individual to conform with communal norms. Families, only one step removed from the individual, based on mutual care and affection, and sufficiently adaptable to varying circumstances, are the best social structure for preserving the opportunity for participatory democracy.

(For the other posts in this sequence on family, see here and here.)

The Background: The U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to draw congressional boundaries (Article I, Section 4). It also gives states the authority to determine how electoral votes (EVs) are apportioned (Article II, Section 1). But in a series of cases in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legislative boundaries had to be proportional. This was the “one man, one vote” principle: that each vote has to bear equal weight in determining representation. For the states, that meant an end to using other area boundaries (like county lines) to draw congressional districts because it gave the votes of some (rural voters) greater weight than others (urban voters).

The Court recognized one large exception: the U.S. Senate. Since the Constitution explicitly establishes that the distribution of senators on a basis separate from population, that doesn’t fall under this general principle. But the Court rejected the same argument on any state-wide basis. Both congressional districts and state legislative districts must obey the rule of equal representation.

So where does that leave state discretion in dividing electoral votes? The Court hasn’t tackled the issue directly, but this is how I think its previous rulings apply in four scenarios:

1. Divide Most EVs According to Congressional Boundaries and Assign the Remaining Two EVs to  the Victor in the Majority of Congressional Districts - This is plan is a double-whammy in violating the “one man, one vote” rule.

First, the congressional boundaries are drawn with a partisan tilt. The Court says that’s fine for electing representatives. But is that thumb on the scale acceptable for choosing how to apportion the state’s presidential electoral votes? By definition it will mean that voters in certain districts have their votes count for less. Imagine a scenario where turnout is up in a heavily Democratic urban district and flat in a heavily Republican rural/suburban district. There could be 100,000 more votes for the Democratic candidate and the same even split in the electoral outcome because those Democratic votes because of how those votes were distributed over otherwise irrelevant land boundaries.

Second, by assigning the remaining two votes based on the district level outcomes, this plan would multiply the impact of the district boundaries. A set of districts with a relatively even split tilted to one party would trump slightly fewer districts that heavily favored the other party, even if the statewide vote favored that latter party. In competing for state-wide electoral votes, some voters would be at a distinct disadvantage only because of how the boundaries were drawn. That is exactly what the Court rejected in the decisions regarding the “one man, one vote” rule.

2. Divide Most EVs by Congressional Boundaries and Assign the Remaining Two EVs According to Popular Vote – There’s been some talk that the Virginia legislature might ultimately choose this approach. I think this is still unconstitutional for the reasons above, though less clearly so because at least the two at-large EVs are decided on an equal basis. Still, the Court would have to find an implicit exemption to the equal representation principle for the other EVs. To do so where it had only protected explicit exceptions (the U.S. Senate) would be a reversal of precedent.

3. Winner-Take-All According to Popular Vote – Critics of the electoral college hate this system because it violates the spirit of a popular election. But it passes the constitutional test on two counts. First, all voters in the state have an equal say in determining how the state’s EVs will be appointed. Second, the division of the EVs along state boundaries is explicitly decreed in the Constitution (just like the U.S. Senate appointment). Also, as it happens, historically this system has more closely reflected the national popular vote than the approaches above.

4. Proportional Division of EVs According to Popular Vote – I think it would be bad for one or a handful of states to do this on their own, tantamount to an attempt to rig the presidential election. But I think it nevertheless would pass constitutional muster for the same reasons as the winner-take-all approach: It doesn’t violate “one man, one vote” within the state and the unequal state distribution is explicit in the Constitution.

The Catch: In general, I’m not sure whether anyone has standing to bring this matter to court. Presumably the voters whose votes bear less weight in the new scheme would have standing, but that may only apply after the plan worked. Except that Virginia falls under the stricter standards of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So the Justice Department can counter the change if it believes the plan would diminish the power of minority voters (likely) and create a fast track to the federal courts. I don’t see any reason the current Justice Department would hesitate to do so since it has challenged voter ID laws and this is certainly at least as serious. So, if Virginia decides to re-weight the value of its citizens’ votes, there should be a way for the federal judiciary to halt their plan to rig the next presidential vote. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Those on the show are no pushovers. By season three they’re in the midst of congressional investigations into the president, first lady, and chief of staff. Now, toward the end of the season, they’ve just issued a formal censure of the president, only the second in U.S. history. The Republicans insisted on, and won, a concession from the White House that Democrats be allowed to join in the censure without fear of reprisals or other pressure from the administration. In all of this, Republicans have been hard-nosed, clever, and ideologically-driven in seeking their policy preferences.

The difference is that conservative Republicans in the House and Senate now are generally guided by only one policy preference: simply to negate whatever Obama and the Democrats propose. Theirs is the counter-party and the politics of pure opposition. They don’t want to strengthen their hand for negotiations because they never want to negotiate. That makes a huge difference in how politics works. So, for instance, the Republican policy on healthcare is simple: repeal Obamacare. The U.S. Senate has rapidly deteriorated into requiring a 60-vote majority for everything. The filibuster has existed for a long time, but until Obama’s presidency it was never the automatic reaction of the minority to every single item of business. That’s the government by obstruction that the Republican Party has embraced.

As I’ve written before, part of the cause is ideological. As a body, conservative Republicans have decided that smaller government is the solution to every problem – from the environment to the federal debt to health care to gun violence to the economy. With that idea it is not difficult to see why obstruction would shift from a means to and end.

But I think an excess emphasis on partisan obstruction has also blinded them to the benefits of compromise. There are deals to be made that would make government both more efficient and more effective. But they’ll never find or pass them if they insist on obstruction always and forever. Nor should they be shocked if they increasingly find themselves shut out of the policy-making process, as they were on Obamacare and will be permanently if the Senate majority reaches a point of deciding that it is worthwhile to finally just do away with the filibuster altogether.

I think our nation and government would be poorer if Congress heads more in the way of majoritarian absolutism. But that’s the likely outcome in the face of such obstructionist political behavior. It would be better for us all if the Republican Party learned again to dig in with all they’ve got. Maybe they should be watching some more of The West Wing.

Johnson is perhaps the closest I’ve seen in my political life to a third party candidate worth supporting. Unlike most, he has some impressive administrative experience: 2 terms as governor of New Mexico. That’s no small feat and certainly puts him on the short list of those with sufficient qualifications to potentially be a successful president. The Libertarian Party actually seems to be making some gains of late – Johnson’s vote total is the highest in Libertarian Party history. And I suspect that in addition to some party supporters, a President Johnson could draw from potential supporters in both major parties, so he might actually be in reach of staffing the executive (though it would be a challenge). In addition, Johnson has the advantage of a clear ideological perspective without coming across as a crazy who knows how to compromise in order to get closer to his goals.

Though I didn’t vote for him, I do hope Gary Johnson sticks around. Not because I hope he’ll be a right-wing spoiler a la Ralph Nader. But because I think his continuing presence could help down-ticket Libertarians in positive ways. As a general principle, I think the way to build a new political party is from the ground up. But a reasonably well-regarded presidential candidate could help that grassroots growth by lending some cache and publicity. If I were Johnson’s political manager, this is what I’d recommend:

1) Hire a real campaign manager, one with experience in a major-party presidential campaign.

2) Start running, now, in the presidential election of 2016, just as though you were hoping to be a major-party candidate. That means a few well-timed visits to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada to reach out to supporters and potential donors. Your potential competition will be doing so shortly.

3) Start preparing a political book. Obviously, you won’t write most of it yourself. But all the big candidates have them eventually and a clear statement of sensible Libertarian ideals can only help you and your fellow party members. Start with the war on terror, TSA, FISA, and the Patriot Act, then move into social and economic policy. Make clear that Libertarianism is more about a direction and governing philosophy than the end of government. In addition to helping you it will also provide ammunition for the more moderate members of your party in their efforts to keep the wackos at bay.

4) Make it clear that (a) you’re running for president, (b) you expect to be treated seriously as a candidate, and (c) you’ll need like-minded members of the U.S. Congress to accomplish your legislative objectives. Identify at least a handful of potential viable Libertarian candidates in key states so you can raise money for them and promote their efforts alongside your own. Don’t be afraid of embracing moderate defectors from other parties. They’ll lend you credibility and a sense of ‘momentum.’ As screwed up as our two-party system is right now, there is potential in the growing number of unaffiliated voters. If you can make the Libertarian Party a safe place for them you’ll have a much larger potential constituency.

5) Realize that you’re in for a long-haul. Not only is 2016 a long way off, it’s a long-shot. But there’s no reason you can’t keep running. That’s the benefit of being in a third party – as long as you remain the big fish in the small pond you can write your own nomination ticket. Eugene Debs did it in the early 20th century. And though he didn’t win he did help change modern American politics in a positive direction, bringing in first the Progressives and later the Liberals into his views on Constitutional liberties and economic policy. On the policy front, you can win by losing as long as you establish yourself as a credible candidate whose supporters might hold the margin of victory rather than a one-off electoral fluke.

Of course, I didn’t vote for the man and don’t expect to do so in 2016. But I’d love to see him help some real, independent Libertarians get elected to Congress and see an aggressive defense of our civil liberties. Here’s to hoping.

First, policy agreement is not the only reason to vote for someone. For example, I don’t vote for third party presidential candidates because I doubt they could accomplish the goals we share.

As I wrote in the previous post, the modern presidency is very much part of the two-party system. Both necessity and shared feeling dictate that a president will turn to the party to fill top positions in both executive offices and White House staff. Right now, both parties have deep wells of experts with experience in government office. So even if a president is inexperienced he can draw on the wealth of knowledge provided by these women and men. But a third party president would lack such support staff. I am sure there are talented, knowledgeable members of the Green and Libertarian Parties (for instance) but they lack the deep experience with governing at the highest levels that the two parties possess.

Beyond that,to get much of substance done, a president needs the support of Congress. When the president presides over united government this task is made much easier because he can act as both party leader and president in coercing Congress to adopt his policy positions. Even when a president faces a majority in opposition, major party candidates at least have a solid base from which to begin any necessary vote wrangling. Without large numbers of third party congressmen and -women, a third party president would find governing nearly impossible.

Second, ignorance is not the only (or even the main) reason for the two-party system. Often I run into versions of the argument: “If voters were just more informed about the choices, they would vote for third party candidates.” But there are actually structural reasons that we maintain a third party system. I’ll mention two here.

1) The winner-take-all voting system we have tends toward two-party rule. In countries with proportional representation systems strong third (and fourth, and fifth, etc.) parties are much more common. Unless/until we adopt a proportional representation system, we’re likely to continue with two dominant parties, even if the parties themselves come and go (as they did repeatedly in the 19th century).

2) Now that we have two parties, they act as historical gatekeepers to political participation. Most of the most talented potential office holders will make their way up through the ranks of the major parties because that’s where there is the most opportunity of advancement, the most recruiting work being done, and the most coordination between activists. This is a case where what has been is likely to continue to be. Yes, some talented individuals will, for ideological reasons, tether their careers to the less successful parties. Others will come from outside of the political arena and adopt third party political identities (think Michael Bloomberg). Still others will abandon the main parties when they find their advancement stifled there. (think Gary Johnson). But those numbers will continue to be small because the third parties have been small.

1) You are voting for a party as much as a president. Any president in the modern era owes his election to the party and can be expected to continue listening to party officials and activists after gaining office. What much of the writing about “the real Romney” (or “the real Obama” for that matter) misses is how little the individual president actually matters, at least in ways that we can determine ahead of time. The fact is that both the Executive Branch and the president’s White House staff are collectively far more important than the individual at the top when it comes to shaping the future of U.S. policy. The president chooses those people from among his own party and they usually represent the broad interests of the party as a whole at the time of the election.

The Obama administration is a good example of this. When Obama took office some commentators noted how many former Clinton people there were and how many Chicagoans.  But, of course, those were really Obama’s only two choices  You get to those levels of government only by (a) serving in the previous party administration or (b) serving in the successful campaign. If Romney is elected president, expect to see the same: plenty of lower-level Bush administration officials and Romney campaign staff.

2) Campaign promises matter, including those made during the primary season. The political science/historical research suggests that candidates actually do try to carry out their campaign promises. There are multiple explanations for this:

• They may genuinely mean and believe in them.
• They believe this is necessary in order to get reelected.
• The same party pressures that prompted the promises continue after the election.

Whatever the reasoning, candidates do try to follow through. And part of the point (especially in the primaries) for interests groups to try to force promises by politicians is that they really do have some force afterwards. So don’t self-justify your vote by thinking to yourself, “Well, he had to say that to get elected, but he doesn’t really mean it.” Whether he meant it or not, the promise made is likely to shape future policy commitments.

3) Presidents have far less control over the economy than we usually think. I wrote about a version of this in my frustration with one of the Republican presidential debates: The Magical Presidency. We have an idea, often peddled by candidates on either side of the aisle, that the president is responsible (for good or ill) for the state of the economy. That’s just not the case. Government spending and regulation must almost all pass through the Congress, over which the president has only tangential influence. Even then, there’s a big difference between short- and long-term impact of such policies. One-off actions in crisis (like not raising the debt ceiling) can have a dramatic immediate affect. But the larger and longer-term health of the economy is almost always out of the president’s hands. Any direct impact is unlikely to be apparent until much later.

For example, Clinton gets a lot of credit for a good economy and budget during his term. But his term also saw deregulation that ultimately contributed to the 2007 meltdown. Bush’s tax cuts and wars contributed to a budget deficit that only really began blooming under Obama. The short term impact of Obama’s stimulus is still in some dispute but the longer-term consequences for the shape of federal spending is only beginning to become clear.

If you’re looking for a president who can “fix” the economy, you’re likely to be disappointed. Better (in my moderate view) to vote for the candidate whose economic principles are in line with your own sense of “fairness” on tax and spending issues. Back to point 2, presidents are likely to try to follow through on the priorities they favor now because (point 1) they’ll be responding to the same pressure groups after the election. So by all means vote on that basis. Just don’t expect that one of the other candidate has in their back pocket a magic wand for fixing the economy in January 2013.

1) Citizen Obama. The most interesting “new”-ish approach in the speech was the theme that ran through the final one-third of it, about the importance and implications of “citizenship.” Viz:

As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights – rights that no man or government can take away. We insist on personal responsibility and we celebrate individual initiative. We’re not entitled to success. We have to earn it. We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system – the greatest engine of growth and prosperity the world has ever known. [That is: we are for individuals, and for success. And now the pivot:]

But we also believe in something called citizenship - a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations. [And on to explain the ramifications.]

The reason this is interesting: It is a way to deal with the out-of-context “you didn’t build that”  meme not by (1) matching its out-of-context-ness, with an offsetting “like to fire people” theme (as some DNC speakers did); nor (2) directly making the case for the value of public/private interactions, as Bill Clinton effectively did last night, but (3) attempting to change the terrain, or the game, with a new definition of terms. More later on the implications, but a very interesting re-casting of the debate.

I’ll have to go back and look at the text of the speech more carefully, but this recasting “capitalism” and “citizenship” as two parts of a core pair of what the United States stands for sounds very much like what I set out to do here. No wonder I continue to like Obama so much, despite the struggles he’s had in accomplishing what I’d like to see happen.

• A sound principle of judicial restraint. I wrote earlier of the general need for judicial deference but Roberts got more specific in outlining a practical rule: It is the job of the justices to search for a Constitutional justification to uphold the law, not a Constitutional excuse for striking it down. So, even though he was unconvinced by the Commerce Clause arguments and seems to regard Obamacare as bad policy, he was willing to uphold it on the grounds that the “mandate” and “penalty” function sufficiently like a tax and thus fall within the legitimate scope of Congress’ Constitutional powers.

• The debate over the Commerce Clause. I share some of Roberts’ concerns about the seemingly infinite reach of the Commerce Clause. I think we do need to find or agree on some reasonable modern limitation on what that power means. But I don’t think that limit is to be found in the activity/inactivity distinction. Here I side with Ginsberg. Part of her dissent boils down to this: Just because we can imagine a power being abused does not mean that it is unconstitutional. So the specter of Congress ordering us all to buy broccoli does not mean that the Commerce Clause can’t include the health insurance mandate.

I’ve seen conservatives villainize Roberts for his decision and liberals lionize him. Then there were conservatives who claimed that the Commerce Clause portion of the ruling represents a silver lining and those liberals who pointed to it as a dark cloud on the horizon.

From the standpoint of moderation, however, I can’t help but see the portions of the ruling regarding the individual mandate as a victory.* The Court avoided a party-line vote on a contentious partisan issue. Roberts found a argument that would allow him to both declare his ideological preferences (no on the Commerce Clause) and uphold the law as Constitutional (yes on the taxation power). The idea of the Court as the legal branch (rather than merely a partisan branch) received another boost. Just the kind of institution-strengthening decision I was hoping for.

* I’m still trying to sort out the Medicaid part of the ruling. But that can wait for another post.