I love getting up on Sunday mornings, brewing some dark roast coffee, and sitting down to read the paper. A languid Sunday morning and fresh, hot coffee are part of the delight, but so is the anticipation of stumbling across some interesting topic that I wouldn’t have discovered had I not picked up that paper.
These Sunday Morning Coffee posts are written on my laptop, posted on Substack, and certainly don’t come to you via newsprint. But they are a collection of topics I’ve been reading or thinking about, with links to various newspaper articles, magazine pieces, podcasts, and more. Whether you read it on Sunday or on some other day of the week, I hope you’ll also stumble across some random, interesting topic here.
WHAT I’M THINKING ABOUT
An example of how gerrymandering warps our politics
Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about how the only legislation that is passing the House of Representatives these days are bills that have bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats.
Which should be a good thing, right? That’s what voters say they want: bipartisan majorities working together to pass legislation.
Except that most recent spending bills have passed with more support from Democrats than from Republicans. Which doesn’t sit well with the more conservative GOP members of the House, who not only opposed these bills but weren’t thrilled that Speaker Mike Johnson even put them up for a vote. Even though – again – the bills did pass with support from a bipartisan majority and were necessary to keep the government open.
This dispute mostly comes down to the fact that the hardline House Freedom Caucus has no interest in any compromise at all. But without compromise in a closely divided government, well, nothing will pass and the government will come to a standstill.
So the Speaker of the House is caught in a vise-like Catch-22. Either cater to the far right in the GOP caucus and shut down government … or compromise with Democrats, anger some of his members, and possibly lose his post as Speaker. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is already threatening Johnson with the same fate that befell former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as she recently filed a motion to vacate the Speakership.
The real problem, though, I believe, is buried further down in the WSJ article. It’s this:
Among Republicans who won their districts in 2022 with less than 60% of the vote, more than two-thirds on average voted in favor of the six [spending] bills. But in districts where Republicans ran uncontested or won with 60% or more—a category that includes about three-fourths of Freedom Caucus members—votes were roughly split yea/nay.
The obvious conclusion is that when Republicans represent a district that is even moderately competitive, they are voting to make government work. But when they represent a district that is not remotely competitive, with no risk of losing their seat, they’re more likely to be bomb throwers who eschew compromise and are willing to shut down the government. Or remove Speakers of the House of their own party for disagreements over spending bills.
Now, does the same hold true for Democrats? Good question. The only real comparison we have is when Democrats held a similarly narrow majority under Nancy Pelosi. According to reports, it was a hellish few years for Democrats in navigating the different factions of their party. Yet they still managed to pass several major pieces of legislation dealing with infrastructure, climate change, and more. And never came close to shutting down the government. Maybe it’s because Pelosi was good at her job. Or perhaps it’s because Democrats are the party that wants to make government work.
In any case, we should probably assume that anyone from any party will feel safer about being a bomb thrower when they represent a non-competitive seat. On the other hand, these numbers from the WSJ prove that when our Congressional representatives are concerned with appealing to voters in a general election they’re more incentivized to work with the opposition and to actually pass legislation. Sounds like something we should all favor.
So, uh, maybe gerrymandering isn’t such a good thing for democracy?
WHAT I’M READING
Politics Articles
Is the country in the midst of a political realignment based on race? Nate Cohn of the NY Times weighs in. Nate Silver also has some thoughts on the topic.
Has Joe Biden actually been a great president? The polls say no. But Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican political consultant, says the answer is unequivocally yes.
Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, Time magazine considers whether the Court will next consider overturning the right to same-sex marriage?
Why, asks Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, is Donald Trump trying to make Ukraine lose?
Republicans oppose efforts to promote diversity … except when it comes to recruiting diverse candidates to run under the GOP banner.
Health officials are worried about a resurgence of measles because of a drop in vaccination rates among Americans.
Life Beyond Politics
HISTORY: Did you know that, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pardoned Joe Biden’s great-great-grandfather?
SPORTS: Caitlin Clark may be the most electrifying player in college basketball today, in either the women’s or the men’s game. The Athletic looks at the physics that make her three-point shot so lethal.
LIFE: Sir Paul McCartney, who is 81-years-old and one of two surviving Beatles, still keeps up with his longtime yoga practice. McCartney can even do a headstand.
BOOKS: What are the great American novels? The Atlantic has some thoughts, from The Great Gatsby in 1925 to Biography of X in 2023.
LIFE: Are smartphones ruining childhood?
TRAVEL: After leaving his job at NBC News, Luke Russert spent three years traveling to 67 countries. And then came home to write about his experiences on the road and his efforts to deal with unprocessed grief from his father’s death.
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
I recently read Andrew McCarthy’s travel memoir, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain, about trekking the Camino de Santiago with his son. So I was pleased to find that Rolf Potts chatted with McCarthy about these experiences for an episode last year of his Deviate podcast. Worth a listen if you enjoy travel.
Ezra Klein of the New York Times has some of his best, most thought-provoking interviews when he ventures beyond politics on his podcast, the Ezra Klein Show. One of his recent episodes delved into the conflict between our work and parenting ideals in an intriguing conversation with the sociologist Caitlyn Collins.
(Sunday Morning Coffee - original photo by Engin Akyurt via Pixabay.)