For responsible party government to happen, writes Hershey (p. 338), "all the elected branches of government would have to be controlled by the same party at a particular time." [Emphasis in the original.] This situation existed in 2017-18, and again in 2021-22. So did we have responsible party government during these periods? Explain with reference to class readings, discussions, and outside research.
The Hershey book came out shortly after the 2020 election. Pick any chapter and explain how events since then would require her to revise her analysis.
Who is going to win the presidential election? In your answer, take account of political science theories (see the "introduction to forecasting" article on Sakai), public opinion surveys, and the current state of the country.
Explain the importance of the rural vote in the 2024 Senate elections.
Explain how the January 6 investigations and prosecutions affected the power of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Pick a relevant topic of your choice, subject to my approval. If you have a passion that bears a plausible connection to American political parties, write about it.
The specifications:
Essays should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page.
Submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs or Google docs.
Cite your sources with endnotes in standard Turabian format. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism and will result in severe consequences.
Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you -- especially errors that I have noted on previous papers.
Graduating seniors should return papers to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Wednesday, May 1. All others should return papers by 11:59 PM, Friday, May 3.
Drutman: "American-style two-party democracy is the outlier. Multiparty democracy with proportional representation is the norm among advanced industrial nations."
Examples of multiparty systems: Canada (not pr), Britain (not pr), Israel (pr)
Major party deterioration and issue responsiveness
Economic decline
Unacceptable major party candidates
Reasons for the brevity of the bursts
Major parties coopt the third party agenda: Wilson coopts TR on Progressive reform, FDR coopts Socialists on social programs, Nixon coopts G. Wallace on law & order, Clinton coopts Perot on deficit control.
But note an alternative explanation: long ballots create election fatigue.There are 90,837 governments in the U.S. In addition to the federal government, the 50 states and DC, there are 3,031 county governments, 35,705 township and municipal governments, 12,546 independent school districts and 39,555 other special-purpose local governments. More than 500,000 Americans hold elected office.
Multiparty democracy leads to more complex political thinking, more policy-focused and positive campaigning, and more compromise-oriented politics. Israel?
Multiparty democracy leads to more broadly legitimate, inclusive, and moderate policymaking.
Multiparty democracies represent racial minorities much more fairly. India?
Chapter on the case for a multiparty system: Lee Drutman, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). ON SAKAI
A recent survey asked Republicans and Democrats whether they agreed with the statement that members of the opposition party “are not just worse for politics — they are downright evil.”
The answers, published in January in a paper, “Lethal Mass Partisanship,” were startling, but maybe they shouldn’t have been.
Just over 42 percent of the people in each party view the opposition as “downright evil.” In real numbers, this suggests that 48.8 million voters out of the 136.7 million who cast ballots in 2016 believe that members of opposition party are in league with the devil.
The mass partisanship paper was written by Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason, political scientists at Louisiana State University and the University of Maryland Kalmoe and Mason, taking the exploration of partisan animosity a step farther, found that nearly one out of five Republicans and Democrats agree with the statement that their political adversaries “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.”
Their line of questioning did not stop there.
How about: “Do you ever think: ‘we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died’?”
Some 20 percent of Democrats (that translates to 12.6 million voters) and 16 percent of Republicans (or 7.9 million voters) do think on occasion that the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposition died.
We’re not finished: “What if the opposing party wins the 2020 presidential election. How much do you feel violence would be justified then?” 18.3 percent of Democrats and 13.8 percent of Republicans said violence would be justified on a scale ranging from “a little” to “a lot.”
Both Democrats and Republicans have become more certain that the opposing party’s vision for the country represents a clear and present danger. Three-quarters (75 percent) of Republicans say the Democratic policies pose a threat, while nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Democrats say the same about the GOP’s agenda. Only 30 percent of Democrats say Republican policies are misguided or wrong but not dangerous, while 19 percent of Republicans say the same of Democratic policies.
The Select Committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the January 6th insurrection, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results. This included at least:
68 meetings, attempted or connected phone calls, or text messages, each aimed at one or more State or local officials;
18 instances of prominent public remarks, with language targeting one or more such officials;56 and
125 social media posts by President Trump or senior aides targeting one or more such officials, either explicitly or implicitly, and mostly from his own account.57
Furthermore, these efforts by President Trump’s team also involved two other initiatives that tried to enlist support from large numbers of State legislators all at once:
The Trump Campaign contacted, or attempted to contact, nearly 200 State legislators from battleground States between November 30, 2020 and December 3, 2020, to solicit backing for possible Statehouse resolutions to overturn the election. At least some messages said they were “on behalf of the president.” 58
Nearly 300 State legislators from battleground States reportedly participated in a private briefing with President Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman, and others on January 2nd. The President reportedly urged them to exercise what he called “the real power” to choose electoral votes before January 6th, because, as President Trump said on the call, “I don’t think the country is going to take it.” 59
It may be impossible to document each and every meeting, phone call, text message, or other contact that President Trump and his allies had with State and local officials in various battleground States. What follows is a summary that focuses on four States and that demonstrates the lengths to which President Trump would go in order to stay in power based on lies—the Big Lie—about the election.
A pro-Trump nonprofit organization called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, a federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the permit, granted by the National Park Service, lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be “on site” during the protest have close ties to the White House.
Conservative Groups: The Republican Attorneys General Association, Turning Point Action, Tea Party Patriots, Council for National Policy.
The Institute's pre-election 79Days Report laid out a scenario in which post-election violence breaks out and Trumpists have to put it down.
Riot control efforts continue throughout the country. There are rumors that several sheriffs in conservative counties throughout the country are hinting that they may deputize regular citizens into posses should the lawlessness come to their counties. Social media is ablaze with volunteers from Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers and other Posse Comitatus groups to form posses
Q Prior to the election, Mrs. Thomas, were you involved in any discussions about the potentiality of fraud or that the Democrats might try to steal the election or anything to that effect?
A Yes. Well, that's a big part of why we had some people, including John 2 Eastman and Chuck DeVore, come to Groundswell meetings. There were two groups that created, it was called, the 79-day project, and it was briefed to our groups, about what would happen by the left if they lost the election. And they had tried to war-game out what that was.
And so that was something that our groups were focused on, what could happen if Biden lost.
Q Did you participate in the 79-day project?
No. We just brought them in to brief groups.
Did they -- "they," you mean Mr. DeVore and Mr. Eastman?
STEP 1: John Eastman concocts a “legal blueprint” whereby VP Pence elides the requirements of the Electoral Vote Act based on 7 states submitting dual slates of electors, allowing Pence to either count the alternate slate or not count those states at all https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf…
STEP 3: DOJ, meanwhile, submits letters to each state, indicating (falsely) that they have reason to believe that there has been election fraud. This creates perception that results are actually in question, bolstering VP’s ability to discount their votes.
[She later tweeted: “Jeffrey Clark’s letter references the alternate slate of electors “which have already been submitted”… his DOJ scheme was part and parcel of the same Eastman/forged slate scheme (also creating appearance the the “alternate slate” is OK as a matter of law)”]
STEP 5: Plan for all of these angry and agitated individuals to come to D.C. on January 6, the day that Eastman’s plan will be put into effect. The protesters are sent to march on the Capitol, to further put pressure on VP Pence and lawmakers, as stated in Oath Keeper indictment.
STEP 6: Since mob attack is intended to keep up pressure on Pence/lawmakers, they must be able to remain in Capitol as long as possible.
STEP 7: ??? I’m not sure what was supposed to happen at this point. Presumably, Pence would somehow declare Trump the winner, or if not, the Capitol would remain occupied until they found a way to make him do it. Seems like they planned to continue the siege.
The point is that there are a lot of moving parts and evidence surfacing in a lot of different areas but they are all connected to one overarching goal: Keep Trump in power by subverting the counting of the electoral votes and preventing the transfer of power to Biden /END
In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!
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