The Democrat and GOP stalemate before the mid-term elections

It is safe to say that controlling the government can be both a blessing and a curse. The set of circumstances that have unfolded over the past two years combined with structural features of the political system make aspects of the current electoral environment an almost inevitable result.

Because they controlled the House, Senate and Presidency, the Democrats were largely, but not wholly, free to pursue their policy agenda as they confronted a tremendous set of obstacles posed by the deteriorating economy combined with foreign and domestic crises.  

By almost any measure, the Democrats were effective at getting substantial policy changes enacted.  However, the policy successes have largely failed to resonate among voters who appear to be more sensitive to the shortcomings and costs of the policies rather than the potential benefits. There are likely several reasons for this. 

Once the Democrats turned to enact actual policy, advocates of particular approaches were quickly confronted with the realities of the legislative process. Compromises were struck, for example, to facilitate the passage of notable legislation reforming the provision of health care and providing additional oversight over the lending practices of credit card companies. Idealists and activists championing uncompromised or alternative approaches were at the forefront of the 2008 election but they were at least partially disappointed in the final policy. Coverage of the lawmaking process consistently revealed how the required compromises resulted in dissatisfaction on both sides of the ideological divide on almost every issue. 

Consider also the decision to stimulate the economy through increased federal spending. Given the desire to get as much spending underway as quickly as possible, incumbents were provided with an irresistible opportunity to take advantage of the increased spending to fund projects in their individual districts. Rightly or wrongly, such actions did little to dispel the notion that the Democratic majority was simply engaging in “politics as usual.”  

Public perceptions of the policy consequences and motivations are especially important because of the inability to implement policies and assess their actual consequences before the next election. At best, votes are cast based on hypothetical rather than actual policy effects. While the benefits of the many policies that the Democrats enacted affected a diverse and diffuse group of citizens with hard to quantify benefits, the projected and actual costs of stimulating the economy, providing financial support to automobile companies and financial services companies, subsidizing home and car buyers, and increasing access to health care can be accounted for relatively easily. Voters interested in assessing the legislative performance of the Democrats therefore face the difficult question of how to weigh clear costs against unclear benefits.

An answer as to how to weigh the costs and benefits of the Democratic agenda was, and is, provided by the active and persistent Republican critiques. While perhaps unfortunate from a “good government” perspective that would hope that the parties would work together to enact policy for the good of the country, the Republicans’ actions are completely understandable, if not predictable, given the circumstances they found themselves in. Every minority party faces a fateful choice: work with the majority party and contribute to compromise policies that would hopefully incorporate the best ideas from both parties, or else oppose the efforts of the majority party by becoming a vocal and energetic critic.

Given the current electoral and media environment, working with the majority party is unlikely to provide the minority party with a path back to the majority. Consider the counterfactual of what the current election would look like if the Republicans actively worked with the Democrats to enact policy.  On what platform could the Republican party hope to win the 2010 midterm election? Vote for us because we work well with the majority party Democrats?

The best way a minority party can overcome the advantages of incumbency and retake the majority is by making an association to the majority party a liability for candidates. Looking across the country, Republicans continue to stress the themes they have raised throughout the 111th Congress. While Democrats were busy pushing policy through the legislative process, Republicans raised consistent objections about costs and the size of government that have allowed them to successfully frame the current electoral debate. The difficulty of judging the actual consequences of the enacted policy change combined with the steady Republican objections has provided Republicans with a platform that can be applied to every district and which can be easily driven by the national media. 

In contrast, the variation in the circumstances and preferences of the Democrats in Congress has prevented them from creating a uniform response. Having arguably lost the debate as to how the policies should be judged before their effects are fully realized, contested Democrats have largely tried to shift the debate by either running on personal connections to the district or else attempting to make more nuanced policy distinctions. In either case, Democrats increasingly face the need to create more personal, more complicated, and therefore more expensive, appeals.

In my opinion, the happenings of the current election illustrate a more significant possibility. The knowledge that the next election is always at most two years away combined with the fact that both parties believe they can potentially be the majority party in the next Congress and the current media environment almost necessarily results in a lawmaking environment that is highly partisan and borderline dysfunctional. When governing and campaigning become indistinguishable, as it increasingly appears, it is hard to imagine difficult policy choices being made.

Clinton is Associate Professor of Vanderbilt University Dept. of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions