What are core American Principles ?

From Paul Waldman…

“How the GOP Enhances Rural Power at the Expense of the Rest of Us.”



“Conflict between urban and rural people is as old as cities themselves and a constant all over the world. But in America today that conflict has a disturbing political force, as Tom Schaller and I argue in our new book White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.

Today I want to focus on an aspect of that story that makes the United States unique: Only here are rural citizens given such outsized political power. That power is built into the design of our political system, but it also has to be continually renewed by the Republicans who depend on rural voters to maintain their control of political institutions. Unfortunately, while rural Americans could use the power they possess to improve their lives, they almost never do. That power is used only to maintain Republican control and stymie liberal policy advancement, even when liberal policy goals would directly help rural people themselves.

Readers are no doubt familiar with how the Electoral College and the Senate enhance rural influence. Donald Trump only became president because small rural states lean Republican, and 600,000 Wyoming residents have the same two representatives in the Senate as 39 million Californians. But this phenomenon plays itself out at the state level as well, not only through gerrymandering but also in new anti-democratic innovations Republicans are spearheading.

When legislative control is not enough

Which brings us to Missouri. The state used to be competitive — though Bill Clinton was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win there, Barack Obama lost it by just 4,000 votes in 2008 — but now it leans pretty firmly Republican. In the state legislature, Republicans enjoy a supermajority: They control the state senate 24-10 and the state house 111-51.

Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped liberals from using the ballot initiative process to pass progressive policy change that the majority of Missourians want. In recent years there have been successful ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, legalize marijuana, nullify a right-to-work law passed by the legislature, and accept the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid

Republicans there have had just about enough of allowing the state’s voters to dictate policy. So they’ve come up with a plan that amounts to the creation of an Electoral College for ballot measures — and like the Electoral College we use to pick presidents, it gives extra power to rural voters.

The Missouri senate just passed a bill on party lines changing the requirements for a ballot measure to succeed: Instead of needing the approval of a majority of voters, initiatives would also need to win a majority in at least five of the state’s eight congressional districts. Which means that every progressive measure, even those enjoying majority support, will almost inevitably fail.

To understand why, you have to look at the Missouri congressional delegation. It contains six Republicans and two Democrats, and the lines are drawn in a way that eliminates virtually all electoral competition. Only one of the districts — the 2nd, represented by Ann Wagner — is remotely competitive, but a Democrat hasn’t won there since 1990.

Then there are the other five Republican-held seats. The Bloomberg CityLab has systematically classified every congressional district in the country by density using Census tract-level data, and according to their calculations, three of those five districts are “pure rural,” and the other two are “rural-suburban mix.” Which means that in order for a ballot measure to succeed in Missouri if this bill becomes law, it would have to win in every completely urban or suburban district, then also get majorities in at least two of the districts with large rural populations. In effect, it would give rural Missourians their own veto.

Republicans probably pursued this course because of their bitter experience with Medicaid expansion, a battle they ultimately lost. They were one of the holdout states, and when progressives put a measure on the ballot to accept the expansion in 2020, Missouri had set one of the lowest Medicaid eligibility cutoffs in the nation; if parents made more than 22 percent of the federal poverty level, or the princely sum of $5,764 dollars per year, they were considered too rich to receive Medicaid.

Even as Missouri was voting to reelect both Trump and the state’s Republican governor by comfortable margins that year, voters approved the Medicaid expansion measure by 6.5 points. Republicans in the legislature then refused to appropriate the relatively small amount of money necessary to accept the expansion (the federal government picks up 90 percent of the cost). Asked why, one GOP state representative insisted that because the measure failed to garner a majority in rural areas, that meant it was invalid. “Rural Missouri said no,” said Rep. Sara Walsh, as though those were the only votes that mattered.

In the end, the state Supreme Court ordered the expansion to go forward, no doubt leaving Republicans livid that poor Missourians — many of whom are the same rural voters they represent — will now be able to go to the doctor. But Missouri is hardly the only state where we see Republicans openly stating that rural people’s votes should count more. In 2018, Wisconsin Republicans used their extraordinary gerrymander to retain near-supermajorities in the legislature despite the fact that Democrats got many more votes, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos justified the outcome this way: “If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority.” You know, those places.

Who deserves power?

“The United States was born in the country and moved to the city,” wrote Richard Hofstadter in 1960. It was a steady and inexorable migration; the 1920 Census was the first in which a majority of Americans lived outside what the government defined as rural areas, and today, the Census classifies 20 percent of the population as rural.

But their dwindling numbers have not eliminated their power; in fact, as the rural population shrinks, their extraordinary leverage becomes even more stark. Whenever questions are raised about the political inequity these arrangements create, Republicans will either imply or simply state that rural voters (or more specifically rural White voters; rural minority populations are largely ignored, a topic Schaller and I address at length in our book) simply deserve that power more than the rest of us do. They’re heartlanders, real Americans, honest hardworking folk who should enjoy a special status.

Unless something unusual happens, the bill changing the ballot measure rules will probably pass the Missouri House, though it’s hard to know how it would fare in the inevitable court challenge. What we do know is that Republicans will keep working to enhance the power of rural voters at the expense of the majority of Americans who live in suburbs and cities. The GOP’s political survival, and ability to dictate the rules under which all of us live, depend on it.”