I remember when Lyndon Johnson carried 61 percent of the presidential vote back in 1964. That was a landslide. I recall Ronald Reagan in 1984, winning every state but Minnesota. Another landslide.
In 2000, George W. Bush wound up elected President with 271 votes in the electoral college and Al Gore lost with a half-million more votes than Bush received. Our first 21st Century election came in with a President elected by 47.9 percent of the voters. In 2008, Obama won with 52.9% of the vote – in 2012, Obama was re-elected with fewer electoral votes than he received in his first election. Then Trump edged Hillary out – the electoral college went 304 Trump, 227 Hillary, but Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump.
I could go on – but we don’t have landslide elections at the national level anymore. Local elections are a different story – but we have a secretary of state and a bunch of election administrators who seem to believe that reducing competitive elections is a morally correct thing.
My high school civics class – Problems of American Democracy – left me with the understanding that our founders genuinely feared a tyranny of the majority. Of course back then we had Lyndon Johnson, fresh from his landslide, a Viet Nam war that was becoming increasingly unpopular, and a Democrat ran house and Senate. I guess the times made it an easy lesson for the textbook to present.
Still, I wasn’t prepared for the tyranny of tiny, temporary majorities. Obama probably recognized it first, when he began governing more by Executive Order than congressional legislation. A small, temporary majority passed ObamaCare. So far as support for the bills go, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, The Affordable Care Act, and Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act and his Inflation Reduction Act.
The one thing we know now is that these keynote legislative packages wouldn’t pass under a different tiny, temporary majority. I suspect that our founders never expected to have a two-party system so delicately balanced as we have now. 435 seats in congress – and perhaps two dozen are competitive. If the dems win the house, past behavior says they’ll be impeaching Trump before the first week is out. Likewise, there won’t be enough change in the Senate to convict.
It makes me think of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Charged with Perjury and Obstruction of Justice, while the Senate acquitted him, the charges were well enough proven that he lost his Arkansas Law License for Perjury and Obstruction of Justice – along with a $25,000 fine. It would have taken 67 votes to convict – the heaviest vote against him was 55-45, the other 50-50.
Picture how different recent history would have been if 12 Democrat Congresscritters had voted to convict – bringing it up to 67. Al Gore would have became President after February 12, 1999 – giving him the ability to run two more times. I have little doubt that, with the incumbency advantage, Al Gore would have beaten George W. Bush in the 2000 election. By the time 2008 came around, the nation would have been ready for a change – and a 2008 Obama victory would not have been particularly likely. My Dem friends like to remind me that Bush was elected by 537 votes in Florida. Less than two years earlier, Al Gore failed to become President when a dozen Democrat Senators voted to acquit Bill Clinton of the same charges that he plea bargained in Arkansas. The tyranny of tiny, temporary majorities does not seem to work with long-term outcomes in mind.
It’s a problem – but I don’t have a better solution than the founders did.
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