What Americans Want

Perhaps you've noticed: Mitch McConnell is fond of explaining "what the American people want." Always has been.

So, for example, Mitch tells us that the American people gave Republicans control of the Senate in 2014 in order that President Obama's judicial nominations be given particular hostile scrutiny. And not just scrutiny: McConnell even blocked, without so much as a hearing, Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

It's actually not quite correct to say that Garland was blocked. McConnell announced within hours of Antonin Scalia's death that no Obama nominee would be even considered, despite the fact that 11 months remained in Obama's term. That's what the American people wanted, you understand, as evinced by Republicans flipping the Senate in 2014. Clearly the American people were fed up with Obama—who won two elections by substantial margins—and his Supreme Court picks.

And then, wonder of wonders, the American people gave us "united government" by electing Donald Trump to the presidency, while maintaining Republican control of the Senate. What a remarkable mandate. It was time to do the peoples' bidding and get busy ramming Trump's judicial appointments through the Senate. First order of business was to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat McConnell had held open, but that was just the beginning.

The American people wholeheartedly approved of all of this. After all, Republicans gained two net Senate seats in 2018. Never mind that they had lost a net two seats two years earlier, in 2016. McConnell knows a mandate when he sees one.

So the American people obviously approved of what Trump and McConnell have been doing with the judiciary, and have expressed particular approval for McConnell's now driving the Senate to vote on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement just months before the end of Trump's presidency, and in the midst of a heated and immensely consequential presidential race.

Remember, back in 2016, McConnell's justification for blocking any Obama nominee was that in an election year the American people should have a say in who is elevated to the court. That's how he explained it back then. Remember? Now McConnell justifies his reversal of that admittedly insincere principle by explaining that the American people had their say, and that they've said they want Trump and McConnell to proceed. "United government" is the proof. It is useless to point out that this post hoc rationalization drips with hypocrisy. Anyway, what sounded like a principle when it was coming out of McConnell's mouth back then was in truth nothing more than cynical expediency.

We can, however, examine more closely what the American people do want, as indicated not by election outcomes and seat shuffling, but by how they actually voted.

Consider the "united government" that gives McConnell his presumed mandate to run roughshod over norms and even his own short-lived principles that justify the raw exercise of power. McConnell's mandate begins with Trump getting 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump got just 46.1 percent of the popular vote—2.1 percent less than Clinton—and has had an approval rating in the low 40s throughout his presidency. Some mandate.

As for the Senate, over the last three elections that together determined the current makeup of the Senate (2018, 2016, and 2014), Democratic Senate candidates received almost 25 million more votes than Republican Senate candidates. In other words, the "united government" that underlies McConnell's mandate was achieved through a massive popular vote loss by Senate Republicans. The margin was 124,632,826 to 99,757,291. Democrats received 55.5 percent of the popular vote over those three elections, whereas Republicans received just 44.5 percent—an 11 point difference! (In all this I ignore votes cast for third party candidates. If considered such votes would in any case reduce Republican margins even further.)

Note, too, that the 2014 election, to which McConnell refers approvingly for his mandate to restrain Obama, and which dramatically flipped the Senate to Republican control, was an exceedingly low turnout election. Just 46 million votes were cast in that election, compared to 92 million (twice as many) in 2016 and 87 million in 2018. Speaking of 2018, Republicans got just 40 percent of the Senate popular vote, and Democrats 60 percent, but Republicans love to point out that they picked up two seats. I was going to say that sometimes the calendar just works that way, but more important is that the mechanisms by which we elect senators and presidents are fundamentally undemocratic relative to the populace as whole. In other words, relative to what Americans want.

Thus, the current makeup of the Senate and the presidency evince not what Americans want, but rather minority rule exercised ruthlessly. You might think that a minority party, and a president who never received a popular mandate, would at least rule more graciously and with more consideration of the larger electorate's preference. But you would be wrong.

And make no mistake: Republicans are a decidedly minority party. The table below shows how the popular vote broke between Republican and Democratic Senate candidates over the past 8 elections. As you can see, Democrats almost always win by very high margins. Beside 2014, the only other year where Republicans won the popular vote was 2010, which of course was the year of the Tea Party uprising. Even in 2004, in a year that the Republican incumbent president, George W. Bush, won reelection, Democrats received almost 5 million more Senate votes than Republicans. That was not enough to keep Democrats from losing 4 seats. And finally, the Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote in exactly one of the past 7 presidential elections.

Votes cast for Senate candidates

Year	Republicans	Democrats
2018	34,723,013	52,260,651
2016	40,402,790	51,496,682
2014	24,631,488	20,875,493
2012	39,130,984	49,998,693
2010	32,680,704	29,110,733
2008	28,863,067	33,650,061
2006	25,437,934	32,344,708
2004	39,920,562	44,754,618

So be careful, Mitch. When we actually look at what Americans want, we see that how they speak through their individual votes doesn't align with what you're saying and doing. There are structural obstacles for us to overcome. But even so, this is unlikely to turn out well for you.

 

Copyright (C) 2020 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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