One thing Biden and Trump have in common is a BBB as their early signature legislative initiative, although they are very different BBBs.

(listening to the latest @ezraklein.bsky.social podcast; he starts with this observation!)

I sometimes have some very futuristic visions! www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html 1/

But in the near term, I'd be grateful just to adopt approval voting for the Senate and President, and proportional representation for the House, to encourage multiple parties and a more consensus-building rather than screw-the-other-party form of politics. /fin

if you think this, you think the United States won’t survive, at least not as a democracy. a country cannot remain as structurally misgoverned as we now are (under either party, though more flamboyantly under MAGA) and survive as a meaningful democracy. 1/

arguably this is just a historical statement rather than a speculative one. 2/

under contemporary communications tech and nationalized politics, the FPTP countries (including the UK and Canada but most egregiously the US) are not functioning democracies (where they once may have been when politics was more local). 3/

(if you haven’t read it, i recommend @leedrutman.bsky.social’s book on this stuff.) bookshop.org/p/books/brea... /fin

Republicanism is just limited and representative rather than direct democracy. The “republic not a democracy” claim is incoherent. 1/

Constituent services is not a legislative role. It’s a corrupt and corrupting form of incumbency bias (which doesn’t mean i won’t use it, we live in this world). That’s not to say there shouldn’t be roles in government for citizen advocacy. 2/

But the quality of that service shouldn’t depend on who your Rep is, and what their tenure has been, and how much good PR they can get from helping you. 3/

Constituent services “represents” a tiny, tiny fraction of individuals, but a good reputation their can be used to overcome deficiencies in the legislative role, representing the interests and values of the full body of constituents. 4/

A good representation in constituent services that you can play up and tout buys legislators the freedom to cater to their donors, rather than serve their constituents. 5/

The dual role of legislator and ombudsman, again, introduces tradeoffs that mean citizens don’t get the best legislators, in terms of vigorously representing their values and interests. And legislator is far, far more important a role than ombudsman. /fin

Constituent services speaks to power, and she had a lot of that. But constituent services is not a legislative role, it’s a weird, kind of disturbing, add on to our system. 1/

From my perspective, her values and priorities, as a legislator, were far from mine, and I don’t think representative of SF. 2/

But incumbency bias meant she faced no meaningful challenge, and a big part of that bias is why would you not want a figure so powerful as your representative, do you really want to be represented by a freshman? /fin