Robert Draper for the N.Y. Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n\u2018Few Americans \u2014 including members of Congress themselves \u2014 believe that the legislative branch is fulfilling its duties as the founders intended. As Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat from Connecticut who has served in the House for 18 years, told me in June, \u201cCongress is somewhere between dysfunctional and irrelevant \u2014 and is despised by the people.\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2018The fact that a majority of House Republicans voted against certifying the election mere hours after the riot, coupled with the role of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader at the time, in acquitting Trump of impeachment charges weeks later, created a permission structure for Trump\u2019s eventual return to power. That ugly episode also left its mark on Congress, Himes said: \u201cIt\u2019s a huge unhealed wound that continues to separate the two sides of the aisle.\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n
The article contains a lot of details painting a picture that will generally be familiar to ELB readers. Then, it continues:<\/p>\n
\u2018How did we\u00a0get here? How did arguably the most accomplished deliberative governing body in the history of the world become so febrile and decrepit? Did it all begin with the decision to install C-SPAN cameras in the House chamber in 1979? Or with the torpedoing of Judge Robert Bork\u2019s Supreme Court nomination by Senate Democrats in 1987? Or with Newt Gingrich\u2019s bomb-heaving speakership from 1995 to 1999? \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2018I began covering Congress in 2010, when the so-called Tea Party wave led to a Republican takeover of the House and the end of Pelosi\u2019s initial reign as speaker. Raucous, perhaps even obnoxious, though that freshman class may have been, they saw themselves as reformers rather than arsonists.\u2019<\/p>\n
The article continues to describe how much worse it\u2019s gotten since then. What\u2019s lamentable is that the article devotes virtually no attention to the role the electoral system plays in contributing to the current condition. There\u2019s a minor passing reference to redistricting: a quote by one Republican member calling the non-arsonist Republican majority of yesterday \u201cThe kind of majority that you won\u2019t see again, thanks to redistricting.\u201d But that\u2019s it (as far as I saw). <\/p>\n
There\u2019s no analysis of how the structure of partisan primaries followed by plurality-winner general elections, given changes in political culture, create the toxic circumstances of today, or how nonpartisan primaries followed by Condorcet-based general elections would ameliorate the situation. If the job of a lengthy piece of journalism like this is to educate the public, this one in my judgment fell considerably short on that score. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert Draper for the N.Y. Times: \u2018Few Americans \u2014 including members of Congress themselves \u2014 believe that the legislative branch is fulfilling its duties as the founders intended. As Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat from Connecticut who has served in the House for 18 years, told me in June, \u201cCongress is somewhere between dysfunctional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":355544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[4175,15255,21703,22624,1446,19746],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7059596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-broken","tag-congress","tag-happened","tag-lawmakers","tag-repair","tag-told"],"yoast_head":"\n
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