Open Seat

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz has introduced a Motion to vacate the chair of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. If it passes, the California Representative Kevin McCarthy would be forced out of the position.

And then what? Assuming that Speaker McCarthy is ousted (which is far from guaranteed at this point), it could be quite a while before a new Speaker is elected. The Democratic members of the House would be unlikely to vote for any Republican to be a new speaker; and it seems unlikely that either (any?) of the factions on the Republican side would be able to unite the caucus to force one of their own through.

It's weird, watching the Congress become more and more dysfunctional as members attempt to keep multiple constituencies happy. As Congressional districts become more and more safely Democratic or Republican, the Representatives from those districts have less and less to worry about in general elections. Primary elections, on the other hand, are a different story, and this tends to push candidates (challengers and incumbents alike) into competition to see who can cater the most to the set of people who will turn out for a primary election.

Be that as it may, however, it's not the whole problem. It's generally understood to be common knowledge that certain group of people will vote certain ways. Part of the reason why Alabama has been effectively ignoring court orders to change their congressional maps is that they don't want to create another district that will vote to send a Democrat to Congress the next time the seat is up for election.

It's not enough for votes to be in play only within a party. They have to be in play between parties. And right now, they typically aren't. Voters who change the party they vote for with any frequency are much rarer than might be supposed. What tends to make a jurisdiction "swing" between parties are differences in the turnout of low-propensity voters. In a closely divided election, whichever side tends to do the better job of getting infrequent voters to actually show up tends to win. (This is the reason why so much campaigning is negative - negative campaign ads tend to demotivate the other side's low-frequency voters.) But these marginal shifts haven't been enough to moderate things. That's going to take more people being prepared to switch parties.

And as the two parties move farther and farther apart, that's going to become a taller and taller order. People in Florida's 4th District may not approve of the way Representative Gaetz is going about things, but as long as they are willing to ignore the primary election and only vote Republican in the next general election, Representative Gaetz is going to understand that he had to appeal to party activists. And once he's done that, the rest doesn't matter.

The habit of viewing Washington D. C. as dysfunctional, and letting things end there, ignores the part that the electorate overall plays in abetting that dysfunction, as they pursue their own interests. Only when people decide that partisan loyalty is no longer their friend will things begin to change.