Preview of my Leigh Bureau DeLongTODAY briefing for 2021-03-19 Fr: Let me try, today, to give an overview of the general situation that America's political economy finds itself in today. And let me take a step back and say the obvious and well-known things...
It seems to me inexorable logic that a parliamentary party will defeat a non-parliamentary party in the context of the US system. The US system has too many veto points which a parliamentary party can use. It's HARD to pass legislation in the US and get it to survive court challenges, much harder than it should be. The solution to that problem is to exercise strict party discipline as the means to move policy through the system.
The ante-bellum Democrats knew this. The pre-FDR Republicans knew this. The lesson may have been lost during the Cold War, but the modern Rs re-discovered it and have spent 25 years preventing the Dems from advancing their policies despite consistent electoral success. The only way to defeat this obstruction is for the Dems to adopt the same tactics. We can only hope it's not too late.
It seems to me inexorable logic that a parliamentary party will defeat a non-parliamentary party in the context of the US system. The US system has too many veto points which a parliamentary party can use. It's HARD to pass legislation in the US and get it to survive court challenges, much harder than it should be. The solution to that problem is to exercise strict party discipline as the means to move policy through the system.
The ante-bellum Democrats knew this. The pre-FDR Republicans knew this. The lesson may have been lost during the Cold War, but the modern Rs re-discovered it and have spent 25 years preventing the Dems from advancing their policies despite consistent electoral success. The only way to defeat this obstruction is for the Dems to adopt the same tactics. We can only hope it's not too late.