If the filibuster is to fall -- or waver, or reform -- it must be in service of passing HR1, the Democrats' comprehensive package of voting and electoral reforms. American democracy depends on it. (If you don't like reading, you can listen.)
Would be interesting to get a post imagining what climate and energy legislation would look like in this bleak scenario in which democracy reform does not happen
I can't agree more with this post; but I also think a discussion of HOW we elect our officials is important to engage in alongside making it easier for people to vote. I'm afraid we're entering a positive feedback loop/deathspiral of democracy: 1) distrust of the government and overall civic participation is getting lower -> 2) government elected doesn't answer the needs of the people, but their constituencies/donors -> 3) people don't vote because they don't think it has a real impact/gov't matters, etc etc. I've done some legal research on the reforms in the Alaskan Ballot Measure 2 reform (soon to be published as a law review article!) and would love to hear some of your takes on these reforms. Mainly, Ranked Choice Voting coupled with a top-four nonpartisan blanket primary. I do think ease of access to voting is an important consideration, but it isn't the ONLY consideration when it comes to if people vote. Either way, if you want to read legalese about why RCV, blanket primaries, campaign finance reform, and treating voting as a social behavior rather than a purely-rational one, then I'd love to share my report!
David, I very much appreciate your big picture progressivism, never letting your focus on energy policy eclipse the central questions we face in becoming, at long last, a functioning democracy. And what I want to contribute will not come as a revelation to you, but I think it could be a rich area of discussion for any effort towards broad reform or progress.
Somewhat simultaneously, I have been reading Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, about how America's "racial problem" is actually the broader problem that we have a caste-based society, and also listening to several interviews with Heather McGhee, who is touring the release of her book The Sum of Us, which is about what she calls drained-pool politics. And it occurs to me that many of the seemingly intractable problems we face regarding climate change, and particularly how we must change the way we live in society together to reach these climate mitigation goals, come down to this issue of caste-based drained-pool politics. What would a climate-friendly society look like? Just to name a few things: housing density, public transit, and more communal resources to reduce wasteful production and resource and energy usage. People are highly resistant to that. Why? In part, because they are invested, quite literally, in the Single Family Home-based wealth accumulation system. Which came into being on the back of government-funded and mandated housing segregation (see The Color of Law). And now, also because reversals of the patterns to which we are accustomed threaten people's sense of their position in the caste hierarchy. Any one of our individualist cultural consumption patterns (cars and freeways!) has either directly derived from, or been infected by, our notions of caste.
People talk about addressing economic and racial injustice as an element of progressive government action, which I fully support, but I hear less about how that can only really be a subset of the whole problem, and in fact cannot solve our problem, because requiring government contractors on energy projects to hire more workers from disfavored groups, especially Black workers, or setting up reparative EJ programs to help/compensate/relocate communities of color living in places subsequently poisoned by the fossil fuel industry, cannot, in the end, foreclose on the core problem, and the "massive resistance" white communities still express towards changes in our social infrastructure we need to make to combat the worst of climate change. Maybe you should invite Heather McGhee or Isabel Wilkerson, or another scholar or activist on the podcast to discuss these questions? I would be, clearly, super interested in addressing the future of mass climate action in the face of caste divisions. Thanks!
I would beware apocalyptic language. "It's HR1 or we're fucked." The Democrats can hold both the Senate and House in 2022 even without HR1 (and I understand that HR1 calls for its redistricting component to take effect only after the 2030 Census). If we can't pass HR1 -- which we should! -- this kind of language will only tend to breed either apathy or cynicism. Or both.
The most important basis for continued Democratic control of Congress -- by far -- is passing good policy now that substantially improves people's lives, increases their confidence in the ability of Democrats to govern, and reveals Republicans' shortfalls at the same.
Would be interesting to get a post imagining what climate and energy legislation would look like in this bleak scenario in which democracy reform does not happen
Good to see you get off the grid once in a while. Keep it up!
I can't agree more with this post; but I also think a discussion of HOW we elect our officials is important to engage in alongside making it easier for people to vote. I'm afraid we're entering a positive feedback loop/deathspiral of democracy: 1) distrust of the government and overall civic participation is getting lower -> 2) government elected doesn't answer the needs of the people, but their constituencies/donors -> 3) people don't vote because they don't think it has a real impact/gov't matters, etc etc. I've done some legal research on the reforms in the Alaskan Ballot Measure 2 reform (soon to be published as a law review article!) and would love to hear some of your takes on these reforms. Mainly, Ranked Choice Voting coupled with a top-four nonpartisan blanket primary. I do think ease of access to voting is an important consideration, but it isn't the ONLY consideration when it comes to if people vote. Either way, if you want to read legalese about why RCV, blanket primaries, campaign finance reform, and treating voting as a social behavior rather than a purely-rational one, then I'd love to share my report!
David, I very much appreciate your big picture progressivism, never letting your focus on energy policy eclipse the central questions we face in becoming, at long last, a functioning democracy. And what I want to contribute will not come as a revelation to you, but I think it could be a rich area of discussion for any effort towards broad reform or progress.
Somewhat simultaneously, I have been reading Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson, about how America's "racial problem" is actually the broader problem that we have a caste-based society, and also listening to several interviews with Heather McGhee, who is touring the release of her book The Sum of Us, which is about what she calls drained-pool politics. And it occurs to me that many of the seemingly intractable problems we face regarding climate change, and particularly how we must change the way we live in society together to reach these climate mitigation goals, come down to this issue of caste-based drained-pool politics. What would a climate-friendly society look like? Just to name a few things: housing density, public transit, and more communal resources to reduce wasteful production and resource and energy usage. People are highly resistant to that. Why? In part, because they are invested, quite literally, in the Single Family Home-based wealth accumulation system. Which came into being on the back of government-funded and mandated housing segregation (see The Color of Law). And now, also because reversals of the patterns to which we are accustomed threaten people's sense of their position in the caste hierarchy. Any one of our individualist cultural consumption patterns (cars and freeways!) has either directly derived from, or been infected by, our notions of caste.
People talk about addressing economic and racial injustice as an element of progressive government action, which I fully support, but I hear less about how that can only really be a subset of the whole problem, and in fact cannot solve our problem, because requiring government contractors on energy projects to hire more workers from disfavored groups, especially Black workers, or setting up reparative EJ programs to help/compensate/relocate communities of color living in places subsequently poisoned by the fossil fuel industry, cannot, in the end, foreclose on the core problem, and the "massive resistance" white communities still express towards changes in our social infrastructure we need to make to combat the worst of climate change. Maybe you should invite Heather McGhee or Isabel Wilkerson, or another scholar or activist on the podcast to discuss these questions? I would be, clearly, super interested in addressing the future of mass climate action in the face of caste divisions. Thanks!
I would beware apocalyptic language. "It's HR1 or we're fucked." The Democrats can hold both the Senate and House in 2022 even without HR1 (and I understand that HR1 calls for its redistricting component to take effect only after the 2030 Census). If we can't pass HR1 -- which we should! -- this kind of language will only tend to breed either apathy or cynicism. Or both.
The most important basis for continued Democratic control of Congress -- by far -- is passing good policy now that substantially improves people's lives, increases their confidence in the ability of Democrats to govern, and reveals Republicans' shortfalls at the same.