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D-9 The Agency of American Democracy:

It is not readily evident, but essentially the American presidential electoral process is a quasi-parliamentary system.

The issue is how to select the executive of government.

In England, you do not vote for a Prime Minister (PM) you vote for a member of Parliament (MP) who then votes for a PM.

We do the same.

England’s a unitary system so essentially their Parliament = Our House of Representatives.

Ours is a federal system that provides protection for small states from being dominated by large states in the Senate and protection of large states from being dominated by small states in the House of Representatives.

The electoral college is a separate assembly body that allows each state to seat the combined total of delegates equal to each state’s combined total of Senate and Congressional Representatives. It’s up to the states to determine how they select that delegation, provided it’s done in a republican (democratic/lawful) manner. Nebraska and Maine do it proportionately, everyone else has chosen the winner take all/first past the post system. It’s fair enough.

What this means is that the electoral college is a parliament that sits for 1 time to solve 1 issue: the election of the executive. Then it is no longer needed and can disband.

This is a system that has worked and worked amazingly well.

Here’s why….

In Anglo-Saxon common law countries, historically ideological issues are resolved in the judiciary where judges make law by providing narrow answers, pragmatically (using common-sense) construed to narrowly asked questions.

It is hard to overstate the brilliance of this system but let me begin by saying it is decidedly non-ideological. As Oliver Wendall Holmes said, judges are free to choose from the market place of ideas. They do so pragmatically. Common Law is mostly common sense. Each ideology is used where it makes sense, and ignored where it doesn’t.  As result Common Law based societies are a giant patchwork quilt of ideologies – each being used where they make sense and each being ignored where they don’t.

(The brilliance of this simple system explains the ascendancy of Angl0-Saxon institutions globally from a tiny,  former postage stamp sized country, on a wind  and rain swept island off the northwest coast of Eurasia.)

(Legislatures then amend, veto or affirm if they think it is necessary the laws that are created by the judiciary. Most of the time they only tinker around the edges. When they do more than this they run into problems for not being pragmatic. In Florida the legislature did away with the common law duty to retreat before use of lethal force. That spawned the issues surrounding the George Zimmerman case where he stalked an innocent bystander, who eventually was provoked to lash out against the stalking, leading to the bystander’s death – essentially causing an unnecessary death).

The only major issue left to the political system then is economics. Economics is dominated by only two aspects: supply and demand. Should government policy enhance supply, demand, or neither?  Which to emphasize? This is why a 2 party system can work as a quasi-democracy. It’s absolutely brilliant!

The reason its brilliant, is by having only two parties, it becomes increasingly unlikely for rogue rule.

In the crisis that gripped the world in the first half of the 20th century after the end of World War I, the developed nations of the world that were not using Anglo-Saxon Common Law, used an alternative legal system, either French or German based Civil Code, both arising out of Napoleon’s code. That system says that judges cannot make law, only legislatures can make law. That shifts the ideological issues over from the judiciary to the political institutions – so much so that in those countries, historically politics is all about ideology. In a parliamentary system in a civil code country, an ideology that gains control of the legislature, then has hegemony over all other ideologies. So during the great crisis of the early 20th century, one by one, the developed nations in that system came to be dominated by rogue ideological rule: Bolshevik Communism in Russia, Fascism in Italy, Naziism in Germany, Militarism in Japan, Falangism in Spain. The prime exception was France which was split down the middle, that split paralyzed France in the run up to the Second World War, indeed some conservatives in France preferred the Nazi’s over the French Left.

Meanwhile the Anglo-Saxon world muddled through the crisis without losing its soul or distorting its civic institutions until it characteristically stumbled upon the solution to the crisis: the mixed economic system (quasi-private, quasi-public, based upon pragmatism). When World War II finally culminated in its fullness around 1941, it became essentially the Common Law nations against the rogue ideological states from the Civil Code nations, minus one – Soviet Russia, which was the only Civil Code nation to embrace a leftist ideology which had allied with the Anglo-Saxon nations.

(In his “Finest Hour” speech, Winston Churchill foretold that if Hitler defeated Britain, a new dark age might descend upon western civilization – as it had already in central Europe and Poland. But he also promised that if Britain won, the entire world would be introduced to a new golden age. Everything unfolded as he foretold, as the demand side bias mixed economic system became the global norm until 1980. In less than 30 years after World War II, the worlds gross product doubled: that means the world economy grew more in 28 years after World War II under the demand side biased mixed economic system than it had during the prior 11,000 years of human history since the neolithic [agricultural] revolution. Every form of human endeavor achieved new heights: architecture (literally) science, medicine, technology, music, film, literature (maybe), art (only if you like Jackson Pollock). All this culminated in a man landing on the Moon. Despite a significant decline in Britain’s role in the world politically, culturally it thrived. There were several poles leading this era: New York, Los Angeles and Churchill’s London. I tend to see the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” celebrating the launch of this new era and the triumph of the common man and the movie “A Hard Days Night” celebrating the absolute joy of this era near its zenith in the mid 1960s. All of these developments makes Churchill’s speech remarkable in its predictions. Basically, what he said would happen, came true: England won the Battle of Britain, Hitler lost World War II, and the Golden Age took humanity to new heights.)

After World War II, Civil Code countries adopted certain features from the Anglo-Saxon model to help protect against the development of rogue ideological rule and the threat of ideological hegemony from one ideology, such as judicial review and constitutional courts, or power sharing mechanisms to allow more ideological parties to have a seat at the table of power. In some ways France today has the most intricate and advanced system with a separate judicial body that rules on the constitutionality of legislation after it is passed by its legislature but before it is promulgated into law. (In the United States, a law is not found to be unconstitutional until after it becomes law and someone challenges it).

In Anglo-Saxon countries, there are no major political parties named after an ideology. The most successful socialist party in the Anglo-Saxon world is the Labor party in the United Kingdom, and it is named after the group it represents, not any ideology in particular. Same might be said for the Scottish National party there.

The issue of supply in demand is covered earlier. But in general, the rich want more supply bias policies, everyone else wants more demand bias policies. Policy bias tends to happen in eras.  Prior to 1933 the U.S. had a supply side bias era. From 1933 to 1980 (especially after 1945, the early years were transition era, followed by war which manifested in demand side bias) was a demand side bias era. Then after 1980 we entered a supply side bias era. We then hit supply side bias saturation point around 1998 whereby we should have switched back to demand side bias. This did not occur because supply side bias partisans were able to encourage enough people to vote against their interest or to be confused by the issues.

The supply side bias partisans represent the rich. The rich by definition cannot equate to a majority. Therefore they have to get people to vote against their interest by emphasizing non-economic issues. The longer they succeed at this, the more difficult it is to sustain. As supply side proliferates, wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, meaning more and more people go without. At some point of deprivation people will begin to vote their economic interests. Trying to prevent this takes greater and greater scheme of antics. Eventually the supply side bias partisans (the Republican party) have evolved into a caricature of their former self.  It is no surprise to hear even professional politicians and pundits from the Republican party wonder how the party of Abraham Lincoln some how became the party of Donald Trump.

The reason for this is simple: the Republican party is only for supply side bias policies, and those policies are in saturation, meaning they no longer can be efficacious for helping the economy AND the Republican party has been too successful at perpetuating their policy bias long past the saturation point. Supply side saturation has resulted in two recessions, and permanent economic harm for many former middle class Americans, most notable any that came into the work force after 1997, which is the millennials. It is no surprise then that 80% of all millennial are pro-progressive politically. That’s another way of saying, demand side bias. They voted in great uniformity in the primary elections in 2016 for Bernie Sanders – the only candidate openly advocating for demand side bias policies.

Sanders lost out to Clinton, but her need for Sander’s voters allowed Sander’s policy preferences to become advanced into the overall Democratic party agenda. In this, he was doing Clinton an enormous favor. She will end up getting the millennial vote. That vote will be 30% of the electorate in 2020 when Clinton has to run again. By the time of the inauguration of the next president in late January 2017, it will have become obvious to everyone that in power that we are at the dawn of a demand side bias policy era. If that president is Clinton, she will have been late to the party but, thanks to Sanders’ influence, she’ll be properly position to act accordingly, especially if she has a friendly Legislature. Our long national supply side bias saturation nightmare will finally be over. Clinton would then go down as the modern equivalent of FDR. She might even be around to preside over the burial of the movement conservativism that has hounded her and the country for 30 years. Of course that’s if she wins the election of 2016 and if she gets a friendly legislature.