Madison’s Metronome and the Frustrations of Fleeting Majorities
On the eve of the midterms, it appears that Democrats will be dismayed, Republicans exultant, and the plurality of Americans in neither camp even more ambivalent when the dust settles. Whatever one’s partisanship, it has become more tempting with each passing election to presume the fate of the Republic hinges on this particular vote. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
That American politics remains a recurring contest rather than an apocalyptic showdown is due to a complex set of electoral mechanisms my friend Greg Weiner has called “Madison’s Metronome.” A proper understanding of its workings can help partisans of all stripes see that things are never quite as bad, nor as good, as they might seem after any given election. Reckoning with its tempo would also benefit advocates and activists in civil society—and the funders who support them.
Let me shorthand the arguments that Greg develops in Madison’s Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of Americans Politics. (Coming in at an artfully written 140 pages, the book itself is well worth your time). It begins with a clarification of the commitment to majority rule that Madison, the founder who did the most to shape the Constitution, imparted in the document. Weiner shows the widely-held notion that Madison created a counter-majoritarian system of government dissolves under careful scrutiny.
However–and this is the key to his “metronome”–Madison held these majorities should be based on reason rather than passion. Especially on important matters, they needed to be broad and enduring rather than narrow and fleeting. The Constitution Madison helped create was thus an instrument of what Weiner calls “temporal republicanism,” one in which majorities got what they wanted, provided they held up over time.
The specific workings of this system include three interlinked electoral mechanisms, familiar to us from civics class, that are nonetheless distinct in their timing and geographic scope.
The entire House of Representatives, meant to be closest to the people, and the quickest to register their shifting opinions, has 435 members elected every second year from districts of roughly 750,000 people.
The Senate, meant to be a more deliberative body, the saucer that cools the House’s tea, has 100 members representing 50 states, one-third of whom are elected for staggered six-year terms every second year.
The president, chief executive for the nation as a whole, is elected every four years by the entire country via the state-based electoral college.
The enduring challenge of American politics–of Madison’s metronome–lies in assembling majorities capable of spanning the different time horizons, geographies, and political incentives of these distinct but interdependent offices.
The story for several electoral cycles now has involved leaders and parties attempting to pursue ambitious agendas with quite narrow and (as a result) fleeting majorities. For example in 2018, after two years of President Trump and the GOP legislative agenda on full blast, the Democrats captured the House. In 2020, after four years of Trumpism, they retained the House (by a narrower margin), managed to win back the presidency, and just barely controlled the Senate.
However, rather than turn toward the median voter on a range of pressing questions, as we might have expected, President Biden and the Democrats have frequently turned the other way. They have also presided over the highest inflation in two generations and growing unease about rising crime and declining social order. This is not a recipe for midterm success–nor for expanding marginal majorities.
We should keep this in mind with respect to one pending interpretation of the midterms: the party defending democracy lost, and the party of election deniers won. The result: even more impending doom for the Republic. I agree with Josh Barro that if President Biden and the Democratic Party had truly prioritized defending democracy, they would have done a number of things differently. Foremost among them would be building up rather than shrinking their electoral support. But as Barro, Ruy Teixeira and others have noted, this requires an agenda dedicated to winning over normal Americans in the exhausted majority, not servicing progressive activists.
It is also worth noting that if the GOP runs the table, they will then be in control of Congress and in the spotlight for the next two years. That could be one of the best things that Democrats have going for them heading into 2024, when the metronome will swing round again. Somehow I don’t see a growing majority of Americans rallying to the cause of overturning election results.
This recurring overshooting of the mark by newly elected majorities does raise a question: where are these counter-productive impulses coming from? For at least part of the answer, we should look at the dynamics among civil society actors–policy advocates and ideological activists and the funders who support them. On the right and the left alike, there appears to be a feedback loop producing growing returns to hyper-partisan advocacy and activism. That is good for expressing intensely held viewpoints. It is not conducive for building up majorities capable of holding together across multiple swings of Madison’s metronome.
