Break Up the Two-Party System: Lee Drutman
September 5th, 2024
”Fusion voting is an American form of multipartyism.”
We discuss how two parties alone cannot represent the diversity of views in American society, how fusion voting could solve for better representation, and who exactly should get engaged in our civic lives.
Lee Drutman is Senior Fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, co-host of the Politics in Question podcast (a fellow Democracy Group podcast!), and author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.
Lee’s civic action toolkit recommendations are:
Support political parties and reforms that create more choices
Be a good neighbor and participate in a local meeting
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Read Lee’s Paper:
https://protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/The-Case-for-Multiparty-Presidentialism.pdf
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Lee Drutman
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Lee Drutman Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to challenge the status quo.
As a pro-democracy podcast, voting reform is always one of our favorite topics. We've discussed ranked choice voting, open primaries, and ending gerrymandering. Today, we'll explore how fusion voting works and make a case for proportional representation.
Our guest is Lee Drutman. He's senior fellow in the political reform program at New America, cohost of the Politics in Question podcast, which is a fellow democracy Group podcast, and author of Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America. He's also a co-founder of Fix Our House, a campaign for proportional representation in the United States and a co-founder of the center for Ballot Freedom.
Welcome, Lee. Thank you for joining us.
Lee Drutman: [00:01:25] Oh, it's my great pleasure to be having this conversation with you.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:31] You have been on the democracy beat for a while now, and you are what I would call a democracy nerd. At New America you're focused on political reform, developing new strategies and innovations to repair the dysfunction of government, restore civic trust, and realize the potential of American democracy. In this election year, we are again told that democracy itself is at risk. So before we get into the weeds, what is the problem with the way we vote today?
Lee Drutman: [00:02:01] Well, as a democracy nerd, I am guilty as charged. The problem with how we vote today -- there are certainly a lot of problems -- but the one
that I'm most focused on is the way in which our electoral system really limits our choices to only two parties, or in many places, really only one party. And that is a consequence of our use of single member districts, which is a pretty antiquated system of voting. Most democracies around the world use proportional representation. And the challenge is that this is a diverse and big country, and to tell everybody that you have one of these two choices, neither of which a lot of people feel really represents them, is both demobilizing to a lot of people, and it also exacerbates this binary hyper partisanship that is really destroying the foundation of our democracy, because it puts people into these two camps. And when you put people into two camps and have them go at each other time and time again, they really start to dislike each other and even hate and dehumanize each other. And that's the moment that we're in with these nationalized, deeply sorted political parties that don't represent a lot of people very well and are also fighting with each other at this extreme level. It's really a recipe for democratic decline, and that's what we're seeing.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:37] Indeed. So you wrote a whole book making the case for multiple parties, having a democracy with more than two parties. What's wrong with the two party system? And what is what you describe as the doom loop?
Lee Drutman: [00:03:49] So the book I wrote is called Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America and the challenge of this moment and really the last decade and a half, although it continues to get worse, is that something radical has happened to the American party system. And the radical thing is that the country has become narrowly divided and deeply divided, narrowly divided, in that Democrats and Republicans are both at equal levels of support, roughly nationwide and deeply divided, and that Democrats and Republicans have come to represent two very different visions for the country and two very different constituencies. For most of our political history, we had two broadly overlapping parties. You know, while we had something like a four party system in the late 20th century with liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, and it wasn't perfect. But that overlap kind of created a resilience and broad compromise approach to to governing. And really, in this current era in which politics has become highly nationalized, divided over culture war issues, and deeply and narrowly divided are two party system has become a genuine two party system in a sense, and our political institutions can't handle it, or our brains can't handle it. This level of constant binary division has created these existential high stakes for
elections, and it has enabled one of our two parties to veer into illiberal, authoritarian territory with really no repercussions.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:37] Mhm. Well, it's clearly time to have more parties. And it's not that we actually don't have more than two parties. We do. We have other parties. And we even have third party candidates. But these candidates don't really stand a chance of winning. At most, a popular third party candidate can spoil a race. So in a time when there are more independents than democrats or Republicans and there's a wide swath of double haters, what is the future of third party candidates in your mind?
Lee Drutman: [00:06:07] Well, let's back that up a second to the point about Independents, right? So there's a lot of people who are registering as Independents and who are telling pollsters that they are Independents, and that's roughly 40, 45% of people now. Mostly they vote like partisans. So, you know, the question of whether or not we should call them Independents, but clearly they are signaling frustration with the two major parties. We also see a growing share of Americans, roughly 65% of Americans who say there ought to be more than two parties. Now the problem, as you know, there are third parties. But because of the way we set up elections in this country, which is winner-take-all elections, so there can only be one winner with a single winner election. And that means that voting for a third party is generally seen as a wasted vote or a spoiled vote, and so people generally are aware of this and choose not to do it. And as a result, third parties are the refuge of cranks and weirdos and dissidents, and nobody outside of cranks and weirdos and dissidents really takes them all that seriously. All of the energy, all of the money goes into the major parties. And the major parties reinforce that by telling you that if you don't vote for one of the two major parties, you are indeed wasting your vote. And you know, other than casting a protest vote, which some people want to do, it is kind of a waste of a vote.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:46] Yeah, well, voting is strategic, right? So if you want to register a protest vote by voting third party, that is totally up to you, of course. I mean, after all, we're still a free country when it comes to voting in this regard. Yes. So let's talk about fusion voting then. What exactly is fusion voting and how does it fit in? Why do we need it?
Lee Drutman: [00:08:06] Fusion voting is an American form of multipartyism, and it was widely legal in the 19th century. It was a system whereby multiple parties could nominate the same candidate. So if you're the Free Soil Party and you want to have some influence, you might not have enough supporters to elect your own senator. But if you offer your ballot line to the candidate or back then it was Whig and Democrat who best represents the abolishing slavery cause that you support. You can have an impact. So that was widely used in the 19th century. It's used by the populists, really part of the American electoral system. And it created a sense of fluidity within the party system that you could have these smaller parties that might not win their own seat outright, but as part of a coalition, could support a candidate who could win. And, you know, the Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s was really a coalition of these smaller parties as the Whig Party broke up. So this is an American tradition, except in the early 20th century, what happens is that we move to a system in which the parties now control the... Or the state now controls the ballots and major parties control states. So this idea of the secret ballot, the Australian ballot, which has obvious benefits but also makes the state responsible for regulating ballot access. So this is when we start seeing ballot access rules, and what do the major parties want to do? They want to eliminate competition from the minor parties, so they eliminate this practice whereby multiple parties could nominate the same candidate, thus starving third parties of a lot of energy. There are a few other reforms that happen in this era that also really hurt third parties. You know, ballot access. Also I think underappreciated, is the way in which the direct primary undermined third parties, because you're not really in the mix of one of the two major parties, you can still run as a Democrat or a Republican. I mean, this is sort of a radical thing that we also did in this era, is we opened up the primaries and took it away from party control. And I think we're still dealing with some of the repercussions for that. So New York State is the outlier here. 1911 they bring back fusion voting. And you've had some vibrant third parties using fusion voting in New York, the Working Families Party, the Liberal Party of an earlier era, the Conservative Party. Now there's a new effort to re-legalize fusion voting as a way to encourage folks who feel currently homeless in the party system to be able to organize their own parties that are not going to win seats outright as long as we have single member districts, but can certainly support candidates and build parties. There's a new party that just formed in Kansas, United Kansas, that is explicitly a pro fusion party. It's a party that tried to form in 2022. In new Jersey, the Moderate Party, they have sued to be able to cross nominate under the new Jersey state constitution. And there's a strong legal theory that a lot of these
bans on fusion voting are, in fact, illegal under state constitutions, because a lot of state constitutions have pretty robust freedom of association clauses. And the basic idea is that parties should be able to associate with candidates, and candidates should be able to associate with multiple parties. Why can only one party nominate only one candidate?
Mila Atmos: [00:11:57] Mhm. So I live in New York, right. So I actually experience fusion voting at the ballot box. And honestly I'm not sure it makes a really big difference. But maybe New York is not a good example because I kind of feel like if I vote for any candidate, let's say under the Working Family Party as opposed to the Democratic Party, it's still the same candidate. So...
Lee Drutman: [00:12:21] It is still the same candidate. But, but but by supporting the Working Families Party, you're building power for that view. You're sending a signal to the Democrat who is running on that shared ballot line that you care about a set of issues that the Working Families support. It's a much, much more nuanced signal than not having that, right. And, you know, it builds power. The Working Families Party, if they deliver 10% of the vote; if they deliver 20% of the vote. You know, that's a claim on the Democrat, and that's the choice that people who want a more progressive Democrat that they have, that they don't otherwise have, just voting for a Democrat. So it gives people more options to really exercise their voice, and more parties can bring forward more ideas. So I think it does make an important difference. And, you know, in many ways, the biggest difference it could make is within the New Jersey Moderate Party and the United Kansas Party, which are more center-oriented parties where they have real leverage because a vote in the center swings half way. It can benefit Democrats or Republicans. They can control the balance of power. I mean, I think the really important thing and, you know, maybe we can get into this a little bit is when we think about democracy reform and we think about the role of political parties. Now, I'm a political scientist, and I think just about every political scientist will tell you that political parties are the essential institutions of modern representative democracy. Political parties cohere and build collective action among diverse people who might otherwise lack representation, gives voice, it provides identity. And to me, it's really important to have vibrant and healthy political parties in democracy. And this is where I get concerned about some of the other reforms that are really candidate-focused, or really don't take
the importance of political parties as vehicles for collective action and collective identity as seriously.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:23] Okay, that's an interesting point. So tell me more about that. So I assume you talk about, for example, ranked choice voting, which is really candidate- driven, right? You're, you're ranking the candidates as opposed to ranking the parties. And again, I live in New York, so we also have ranked choice voting here. Tell us a little bit about what you see is the significant difference between that kind of reform and the party-driven reform, because also at the same time, I'm not sure like, let's say, if 10% of the vote goes for any given candidate under the working family party as opposed to the Democratic Party, I don't know how much power that really does build for the working family party.
Lee Drutman: [00:15:01] Well, if you talk to the people who lead the Working Families Party, they actually feel like it gives them a lot of power and a lot of voice, and ranked choice voting, you're right, it's a very candidate-centered reform. You're ranking the candidates, and the candidates come and go. Right. The parties, they stick around, they build power. They represent collective voice. The candidates are just kind of in it for themselves. It's, how much money are they raising? A candidate oriented system is really going to be about raising money for that candidate. It gives donors and wealthy people more power. Parties can kind of bring together a lot of interests and, you know, a clear brand. You know what they stand for, and you know what they're getting. Candidates. It's really hard for individuals to vet candidates without you know, that's just one of the things that parties should do. I mean, they don't do it as well in the United States as because of the way that we have a primary system that's open to anybody who wants to vote in those primaries. So that really undermines the ability of parties to vet candidates. But as a matter of representative democracy, one of the things that that we know when we look across countries is that in countries where parties have some discretion over who to nominate, you wind up actually with people who are invested in the party in the long term and want to put forward a diverse slate of candidates that will represent the diverse voters that they're trying to to represent. So I think this is a hard thing for a lot of people to to wrap their heads around, because there is this sort of natural instinct in America, particularly because "oh, I want to vote for the the person, not the party." But democracy is fundamentally a team sport, and a bunch of individuals running around trying to build their own personal brand makes it hard for teams to really
operate and build majorities and get things done. And, you know, there's a way in which we sort of have this fantasy idea of all these independent voters making independent judgments about independent candidates. But in reality, most people are really busy with their lives, and they don't have a lot of time to evaluate candidates or understand what they stand for or to figure out how do I rank among 5 or 6 different candidates? What people want to know is who's going to represent people like me? Who's the party that is looking out for me? And that is the way that you have effective, representative democracy with multiple parties that represent different constituencies, different identities. And people feel, "oh, there's somebody who represents me. There's a party that looks out for people like me that's going to fight for me, that has enough strength, enough teamsmanship, and is going to do that." One individual person, unfortunately, as much as we like to think, in a legislature, they're just one vote. Party is a lot of votes.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:02] Yeah. No, thank you for explaining it this way. I think that makes the case for parties very clear. And I think a lot of people don't think about it that way because most people, like you said, are busy and they really think about it as a popularity contest for the candidate. Their party affiliation, of course, is an important heuristic.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:22] We're taking a short break, and we'll be back with Lee Drutman in just a moment. But first, we're only two months out from the election now, and as we inch closer to November, we have to be extra picky about what we're watching, reading, and listening to. That's why I'm excited to share about the Daily Show Ears Edition.
Daily Show Ears Edition: [00:18:43] Want more updates on the 2024 presidential election? Of course you do. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show news team are finding the humor in all things election on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast.
Jon Stewart: [00:18:55] "Oh my God, so much, so much has happened. It's been a week, or a decade!"
Daily Show Ears Edition: [00:19:02] Keep up with the latest interviews with political experts and best of moments from the campaign trail. There's plenty of material we're working with.
Ronny Chieng: [00:19:11] "For most politicians or anyone else on earth, that would have been a low point of the interview. But because it's Donald Trump, it somehow got worse."
Daily Show Ears Edition: [00:19:18] The Daily Show Airs edition is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:27] And now let's return to my conversation with Lee Drutman.
But so in the middle of democratic backsliding and the fact that one party in this moment is anti-democratic, how does fusion voting solve for that? So, you know, for example, if Trump is on the libertarian ticket, I'm not sure it really makes a difference.
Lee Drutman: [00:19:50] Well, he's not on the libertarian ticket because... Mila Atmos: [00:19:53] They booed him.
Lee Drutman: [00:19:53] Fusion voting is illegal in most states, but even if they wanted him on the libertarian ticket, and turns out they didn't. The libertarians don't represent that much of the electorate. A much larger part of the electorate is, you know, what you might call non-MAGA Republicans. Right. These are the people who are voting in primaries for Nikki Haley. They're saying, I don't like Trump, but I can't stand the Democratic Party. So I don't know what to do. You know, I'm a Republican. I can't imagine voting for the Democrats, but I can't imagine voting for Trump. This is a very visceral thing for a lot of people. They've been lifelong Republicans. And how do they signal that? But if there were a common sense party where they could say, you know, this is a group of, you know, whatever I've heard, Jonathan Rauch calls them the Free Republicans. Robert Kagan calls constitutional Republicans, you know, common sense Republicans. There's all these names, but they can't coordinate on a identity and a label. Now, if they had a ballot line, the ballot line is power. So in a handful of key states Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you could see them organizing a group and say, look, you know, we want to show how pivotal we are, how important we are. We want to come together as a group, build an identity. And if you vote on our ballot line, you know, we're going to signal our power. So it might be 10%, but that's pivotal. That is at the, you know, the center of the electorate. And this could involve some
negotiations and say, well, we want to see a few people who represent us in the administration, or we want to build this coalition of pro-democracy people. Now in a country like Poland, they had a recent election in which there were three pro-democracy parties that were distinct, but they agreed that the current Law and Justice Party that was clearly authoritarian needed to go. And they said, well, you know, we're going to put whatever differences we have aside and we're going to be a three coalition party so people can vote for the party within that group that they feel connected to. And then we're going to govern as a coalition to restore democracy. Right now, people are faced with this binary choice. And to support the Democratic Party for a lot of people is to support the far left of the Democratic Party. And that makes it really hard for a lot of people who might, you know, be Nikki Haley supporters. We have a politics in which we treat all these voters as these sort of independent, floating actors. And I think that is part and parcel with this, this real problem of isolation and anomie in this country and building a party, building an identity, building a connection to a group of like minded people. That's a really important part of rebuilding our civic fabric. Collective action is so central to connecting people with a sense of purpose and a sense of meaning and a sense of voice, that their voice does matter in our democracy. You cast a vote. It's hard to know whether your vote matters.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:08] It's always hard to know if your vote matters. Sometimes it feels totally futile. I don't know why I show up, right? Or at least this is how a lot of people feel. You are also a co-founder of Fix Our House, a campaign for proportional representation in the United States, which honestly seems to me a stronger pro- democracy reform idea than fusion voting. Tell us more how does proportional representation work?
Lee Drutman: [00:23:30] Well, I think they're both important, but certainly I think proportional representation is the biggest, most transformative idea out there for our democracy, and most democracies around the world have proportional representation in how they elect their legislature, and most of them do it the following way. You have multi-member districts in which there are multiple representatives who will represent that district, and parties put forward lists of candidates and voters, select the party that they want and select the candidate from that list. That's called "open list proportional representation." That's the most common form of proportional representation. And the basic idea is that parties then get seats in proportion to the share of the party vote that
they get in a district. So imagine you have a five member district. 40% of people vote for Democrats. So Democrats would get two seats. So the two most popular candidates on the Democratic list would go to Congress. Republicans get 40%. They get two seats, two most popular Republicans. And the Common Sense Party gets 20% of the vote and they get one representative, so they get their most popular representative. It's this, open list system is very simple for voters. It's extremely fair. And you can get pretty good proportionality with 5 to 7 member districts, something that's, I think in practice would not be all that different. You'd still have a broad left coalition, you'd still have a broad right coalition, but you'd have a politics that actually looks, I think, a lot more like the politics that we had in an earlier era in which there was broad overlap and it was a more diverse politics and just represents better the ideological spectrum of this country. Whereas, you know, right now we have a really limited sense of who gets represented in Congress. I think that's a real problem.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:31] Yes, for sure. But let's talk about the presidential election, because if you had a proportional system, wouldn't that make the Electoral College fair?
Lee Drutman: [00:25:43] Well, there are a lot of countries around the world that have separately elected presidents and a proportional representation system in the legislature. They mostly tend to be in Latin America, and many of them are quite successful, stable democracies. And generally they work the following way is that, well, I mean, they do have two-round systems for president, which we should probably adopt, but generally it's pretty clear often early on, especially after the first round, two major coalitions, these are pre-electoral coalitions. There's a lot of incentive for parties to have coalitions for president. You might even have a Democrat versus a Republican president, although you'd have more parties in Congress. And, you know, coalitions would come together and they would compete for the legislative elections and they'd get a proportion of the seats, and then they would probably get cabinet appointments in proportion to their vote share, which is what happens in most presidential PR systems. And they would form governing coalitions in the legislature. And that's what happens in most presidential PR systems. In fact, I have a recent paper on how presidentialism and proportional representation work just fine. And if if folks want to read that, hopefully we can link to that in the show notes.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:13] We'll link it in the show notes.
Lee Drutman: [00:27:15] And that's been an interesting process because I co-authored this with a professor at the University of Notre Dame named Scott Mainwaring, who's an expert on Latin American democracy. And he wrote this famous paper in the early 90s suggesting that Multipartyism and Presidentialism was a difficult combination. And he's since changed his mind based on several decades of scholarly work about Presidentialism and Latin America. It turns out that presidentialism can work just fine with Multipartyism, and it's in some ways it's actually more stable because you build in more diversity within the country. Whereas the US system in which you have two party presidentialism is a really unusual combination. There are very few countries around the world. There are a few countries in Africa that have this combination. It can be incredibly destabilizing because you're really putting a lot of emphasis on this one office and this one party, and it really amplifies a lot of these dangerous winner take all aspects where it feels like if your side loses, you lose everything.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:27] Mhm. Yeah. I really feel like one of the first things we have to do is to do proportional representation and get rid of winner take all, but I think that's going to be very hard. That's an uphill battle.
Lee Drutman: [00:28:37] Well, I mean, it is, but it's something that's so intuitive, right? Like, it's just a basic principle of fairness. Proportionality is a basic principle of fairness. And I think one challenge that we have is this sense that, well, this is just how things work, because this is how things have worked our entire lifetime, and therefore we should just accept things as they are, you know, which is if we did that, nothing would ever change. And even that is not how things always were. I mean, we've always had majoritarian elections, but, you know, we've had multi-member districts in the past. They were probably even worse than single member districts because they were majoritarian. But a lot of democracies have changed. Democracy is a system that needs to evolve constantly, and that's one of the geniuses of democracy in many ways, that it's a system in which, you know, majorities can come together and say, we want something else that better represents our country. So, you know, it is an uphill struggle. But I think more and more people are engaging with this idea and saying, oh yeah, actually it makes a lot more sense. Why do we do it this backwards, antiquated way? Tradition. It's a weird tradition. Yeah. We used to treat women as property. That was a weird tradition, too. Right.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:59] Yeah. Well, in the in the age of disruptive technology, we should embrace evolving the way that we practice democracy in this country. We are, of course, in a presidential election year. So let's talk about what you think is the most viable third party going forward. I keep talking about the Working Families Party only because they are the most obvious to me in New York, but I don't really know very much about third parties in general. And is there a party that you're like, okay, this is a party that's really doing a lot of the groundwork and is amassing a lot of power and is a viable party long term and might have a third party.
Lee Drutman: [00:30:37] I mean, the problem is we're thinking here in terms of candidates and, you know, that's the way that we see things. The presidential election. It's, you know, very much about the candidates, but the rules make it really hard for third party candidates. I mean, the Working Families Party exists in New York because fusion voting allows them to play a productive and constructive role in our politics in most places. Third parties are spoilers and wasted votes, even in places where there is ranked choice voting. You don't see third parties organizing because you don't see candidates who want to run in in, "okay, well, I'm going to get 8% and I'm not going to be a spoiler, but I'm not going to win." Right. You need candidates. So if we want to get more parties to play a productive role, we need fusion voting. We need proportional representation. But in the current system of single winner elections, It's going to be hard for third parties to play a productive role. So I don't see any third parties really breaking through until we we get changes in how we vote. Now, I think what I like about fusion voting, particularly as a pathway to proportional representation, is that it encourages these parties to start to form because they can play a productive role, and then they can start to use that productive role because they command some loyalty and some share of the electorate to say "what we really want is proportional representation. So we can actually get some of our people in the legislature instead of just fusing with the other party candidates." And I think there's some real energy to that. And in order to make multi-party proportional representation work, we need to start building some of those new parties. But if they're just going to play spoiler roles or going to have to recruit candidates who are going to finish third in a ranked choice voting election, and not have any chance of actually winning, we're not going to see that energy in organizing. That to me is so important. We have such a big, diverse country. We need a few more parties.
And it's not just a third party. It's, you know, we need like 5 or 6 parties to really represent the diversity of this country.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:50] Mhm. Yeah I agree. So we are always building our civic action toolkit here at Future Hindsight. What are two things an everyday person can do to either join a party, form a party, or just be for voting reform?
Lee Drutman: [00:33:03] What is an what is an everyday person?
Mila Atmos: [00:33:06] Somebody's like, oh well, not you or me, obviously, but likesomebody who, let's say, votes every election.
Lee Drutman: [00:33:14] Okay. Because, I mean, I'm just asking this because I feel like this is a phrase that I hear, I hear a lot and I'm never sure exactly. So we mean somebody who's not super civically engaged, but so are they going to want to be more civically engaged?
Mila Atmos: [00:33:29] Yes. Yes.
Lee Drutman: [00:33:30] Is, I guess the question, but they feel they feel like they can't be right now, right, or they, because there's not really options for them. So I mean, I think that this is kind of a challenge in the way that we frame things a little bit is that when we talk about what are some things that everyday people can do, we're really putting the onus on them. We're saying, it's up to you. You have to do more, as opposed to thinking about why is it that we have a system in which so many people feel like it's so hard for them to plug in, like there's nobody who's really actively reaching out to them? I mean, I think this is, again, an important aspect of political parties is that political parties are the engines that really engage voters because the stakes of elections matter when they're competitive and you're trying to get out votes. And throughout, you know, the history of democracy, political parties have really been the engagers. So, you know, this to me is kind of represents and this sense my frustration a little bit with this term is that a lot of the way we think about this whole civic space is we're really "oh, well, we need to get people more involved," but we're not creating structures and elections and modes of civic involvement that make it easy for people to
plug in. It's really a "you're on your own. You should like, do something," but I don't know. Yeah. As opposed to why is it, why aren't we asking, you know...
Mila Atmos: [00:34:58] So whose responsibility is it to fix the system so that it's more conducive?
Lee Drutman: [00:35:02] Well, well, I mean, frankly, it's it's those of us who are engaged in this who have already already building up the civic capacity and who who are in governing institutions. Right. I think about this, like with the obesity epidemic and the problems of ultra processed foods. Right. Saying, oh, we just need people to eat less ultra processed foods. But the snacks everywhere are Doritos. Like, why aren't we focusing on regulating the food companies and putting taxes on these ultra processed foods? Those of us who are more engaged, rather than saying, oh, it's all, it's all on people. We just have to get more people civically engaged or more people to have a better diet. Because the problem here is when we do that, it's just the people who are already able to do this, who do this, right. I mean, it's the people who are already able to maintain a healthy diet and exercise. It's already the people who already have the time and the energy to show up who are doing this. But those of us who who are probably listening to this podcast and are engaged and think about this like it's actually on us to do more, to engage busy people who don't have the time to do all this stuff and make it easier for them to plug in and learn about stuff rather than putting it on them, because I, you know, I just don't think there's a lot of everyday people who...
Mila Atmos: [00:36:21] Okay. That's fair. so what are the two things that somebody should do who's already engaged to engage more people? How do we invite them in?
Lee Drutman: [00:36:28] Well, I think we've got to focus on building up active, support political parties, support reforms that create more choices so that there are actual opportunities to bring people in. And one thing that I think about a lot is just the importance of being a good neighbor, which is like a very simple thing, but kind of like building a connection to people around you and people in your community. And, you know, it's not like a democracy thing, per se, but, you know, at a like participating in a, in a local meeting, but it's just like, how do you build collective power; and you build it by building your social networks and by feeling a sense of commonality, so you can get to know people and say, "oh, what are the problems that we're having and how can we
organize?" Right. It's... Democracy is a collective activity. And I think that's really important, just talking to people and listening to people.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:25] Good advice. So as we are rounding out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Lee Drutman: [00:37:34] Gosh, I go back and forth between hope and pessimism so much, but I am hopeful that the pessimism is a precursor and a prelude to more significant changes in our democracy. I think sometimes you do need a crisis, and a sense that the status quo is is thoroughly broken before we collectively engage in some major democracy renovation. And, you know, I think really expand your imagination as to what's possible. There's been a kind of learned helplessness, almost, I think, in a lot of the democracy reform circles that we're going to do this little incremental thing and it's going to have a difference and really it's just taking buckets to a forest fire. And I think to really engage and think about what are some of the systemic reasons that we have to keep putting out these fires, and maybe we should think about why they keep starting in the first place. So. And that means expanding our our imagination and maybe even, you know, I think there's a real power to some utopian thinking, even. Not too utopian, but utopian enough to energize, as I've been reading a lot of the psychology around utopian thinking. And there's a sense in which, like, people really need big visions, big ideas about what things could be possible. And I think proportional representation and multi- party democracy is one of those big ideas. I think there are a lot of other big ideas out there, but I think we've got to think a lot bigger, and I think that's where I'm starting to see some real energy, and I hope that continues. It's not just about winning the next election or defeating Republicans, or getting some small minor Are incremental change pass. It's about really having a bold and exciting vision that that engages a lot of people.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:33] Yeah. Hear, hear. I totally agree with you. Well, we always agree that it's the big ideas that move people to take action. Thank you so much, Lee, for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Lee Drutman: [00:39:46] Oh, well thank you. It's been my pleasure, too.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:50] Lee Drutman is senior fellow in the political reform program at New America, author of Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multi-Party Democracy in America, and co-host of the Politics in Question podcast.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:09] Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Chris Melody fields Figueredo. She's the executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, and we had her on in the last election cycle. We're super thrilled to have her back to tell us about all the important ballot measures that matter in this cycle. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this episode, you'll love what we have in store. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll catch all of our upcoming episodes. Thank you! Oh, and please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:41:20] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.