How Democrats Lost Their Majorities
Daily Memo: Kazakh Pipeline Suspension, EU Bracing for the Worst
More than two-thirds of all Kazakh oil exports flow through the pipeline.
By?Geopolitical Futures ?- July 6, 2022
Pipeline games.?A Russian court?ordered a 30-day suspension of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium , a major pipeline carrying oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea, over oil spills. More than two-thirds of all Kazakh oil exports flow through the pipeline. The court’s decision comes two days after a phone conversation between Kazakhstan’s prime minister and the president of the European Council in which the Kazakh leader, apparently?distancing himself from Russia , said his country could serve as a buffer between East and West.
Looking for gas. In two weeks, the European Commission will present?an emergency plan to secure natural gas supplies for the winter , President Ursula von der Leyen said, adding that the European Union must be prepared for further disruptions of flows — even a complete cut-off — of Russian gas.
Plant closure.?Russia’s largest?secondary lead production plant suspended operations ?due to the complete cessation of exports. Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade stopped issuing licenses for the metal’s export, fearing a shortage of lead for the defense industry. The plant in question, Fregat, produces about a quarter of Russia’s secondary lead, which is recovered from used objects like lead-acid batteries. Several other facilities are also reportedly preparing to stop working.
British assistance.?The first batch of Ukrainian troops?arrived in the U.K. for military training as ?part of a program to train up to 10,000 new Ukrainian recruits every four months, according to U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. Separately, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson?pledged ?10 more self-propelled artillery systems for Ukraine.
Chinese-Philippine relations.?During a visit to Manila, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing is ready to work with new Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to help usher in a?“new golden era” in relations . This comes after Marcos committed to pursuing a friendly policy toward China.
Checking on Uzbekistan.?Russian President Vladimir Putin and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev?discussed ?bilateral cooperation and strengthening trade and economic partnerships during a phone call. Putin said Moscow supports Uzbek efforts to stabilize the situation in Karakalpakstan, where large protests recently occurred.
Palestinian unity??Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Tuesday with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Algeria,?reportedly to discuss the possibility of a unity government . The last time such a meeting took place was 15 years ago.??
Turkish security.?Turkey and Italy signed nine cooperation agreements , including on defense, trade, diplomacy and development. According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they are also willing to sign another deal covering the SAMP/T air defense system project. Elsewhere in Turkish security,?the defense minister met with the UAE’s chief of military staff in Ankara , where they discussed military training cooperation and defense industry.
Joint ventures in Venezuela.?Private investment firms in the U.S. and Venezuela have announced a joint venture for oil and gas exploration . The companies have not commented to the media further, nor have they disclosed the size of their investments.
Joint drills.?The U.S. and Egypt conducted a joint air drill Tuesday ?from an Egyptian military air base. The exercise included multirole combat aircraft and training on operations such as midair refueling.
International law. At a meeting in Vietnam, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov?stressed the need to uphold and protect international law . It’s a thinly veiled criticism of the West, which Russia has accused of breaking international law in Ukraine.
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WSJ: How Democrats Lost Their Majorities
The party narrowed its appeal to the left and surrendered its edge. Now it gripes that the Constitution is unfair.
By?Robert Showah - July 5, 2022 12:41 pm ET
After the Supreme Court overturned?Roe v. Wade, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed a common sentiment on the left by calling the decision “illegitimate” and accusing the justices of “cementing minority rule.” The claim is that the court doesn’t reflect the will of the people because some justices were appointed by presidents who “lost the popular vote” and Senate majorities whose states collectively account for a minority of the U.S. population.
This argument arises from a broader intellectual current questioning the legitimacy of Republican electoral power, which originated in academia and seeped into politics by way of left-of-center commentary. But it’s important to understand how conservatives won this victory at the court. Republicans have been winning more majorities, or at least pluralities, than Democrats for more than a quarter-century.
The U.S. isn’t a centralized regime but a vast democratic federation whose governing system is informed by scale. That means consent of “multimajorities”—not a single nationwide majority—is required to wield federal power. To elect senators who will confirm federal judges, parties need to remain competitive in the states. The Electoral College demands the same of presidential contenders. For most of the 20th century, Democrats succeeded in being the multimajoritarian party. But in recent decades, Republicans have attained much greater influence at the federal level by ascending at the more intimately democratic levels of American government.
Detractors of American democracy lament the Republicans’ “structural advantage” in the Senate. Yet since 1920 Democrats have controlled the Senate for a total of 58 years. During most of that period Senate Democrats earned a larger share of Senate seats than their share of the national House vote, most recently in 2012 earning 55 seats on 48.8% of the vote (and 51% of the presidential popular vote). Since the Senate revised the filibuster rule in 1975 to make 60 votes the threshold, Democrats have twice earned supermajorities of that size and held more than 55 seats five times. Republicans have topped out at 55 seats.
But Democratic Senate power is waning for a reason. In a union of states, power is earned by notching multiple victories proximate to voters. For much of the 20th century Democrats won by sustaining an impressive coalition of Southerners—a mix of conservative Dixiecrats and neoliberal Blue Dogs—along with a pro-union arm of Midwesterners. This coalition provided Democrats a bench of figures with statewide name recognition to succeed retiring Senate Democrats or compete for Republican-held seats. But since then, Democrats broadly have staked their attainment of federal power on the imperial coattails of presidential politics while neglecting to fend off a decadeslong ground-level offensive by Republicans emboldened by Democrats’ lurch leftward, including on abortion policy.
The first sign of return on the GOP’s grass-roots investment came in 1994, when Republicans went from fully controlling seven state legislatures to 15 and took control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years, even after Democrats largely controlled redistricting in states comprising about two-thirds of the national population.
In 2010 Republicans flipped 26 Democratic legislative chambers including in Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, Indiana and Michigan. In 2017 Republicans expanded their multimajorities by holding 33 governor seats, a year when 60% of Americans lived in a state that elected a Republican governor.
Since 1994 the South-Midwest coalition federal Democrats relied on when the party promised “safe, legal and rare” abortions has cratered. Senate Democrats have lost a net 17 seats across the Midwest and South and gained 11 in the Northeast and West—a deficit of six seats. Two of those seats are in North Dakota, a state that before 2010 was re-electing two Democrats to the Senate, sometimes by margins wider than those in New York or California. And while inroads in rural states have aided Republicans, the GOP has also expanded in mostly suburban states such as Louisiana and Nebraska.
A stark indication of Democrats’ emaciation in the states is the current map displaying abortion policy by state. Democrats have managed to pass policies protecting abortion access in only 16 states,?according ?to the Journal.
But all is not lost for Democrats. The end of?Roe?may put Republicans on the defensive in some states. And this year Democrats have a better shot at retaining the so-called antidemocratic Senate, with fairly good prospects in six key states, than they do in the more proportional House. Democrats blame their disadvantage in the lower chamber on gerrymandering, despite?estimates ?that more districts ostensibly lean Democratic than Republican owing to court victories and their own gerrymandering in blue states.
Yet rather than look for ways Democrats can win back voters, some in the commentariat focus on expediently timed structural critiques of the Senate as favoring less populous states. Apart from being the point of the Senate, that structure was decisive in advancing legislation during the Obama and Clinton presidencies, which relied on several Democrats from states their party’s nominee failed to carry.
The Senate isn’t going anywhere. Much has changed about our politics and abortion access since the 1973?Roe?decision, but the need to win elections isn’t one of them. If the self-proclaimed party of democracy wants to own the conservatives, it needs to start by assembling majorities at the state and local levels.
Mr. Showah, based in Austin, Texas, writes at statehood.substack.com.
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