Thread by @jholbo1

This Ezra Klein/David French podcast episode is interesting. Contrasting views on how to deal with the severity of the partisan split - the red-blue civil war. Klein: more democracy. French: more federalism. 1/
podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6L…

Klein has the better of it. French's side reduces to something ugly - or just sad - when the Madisonian varnish won't take. French explains more democracy won't work because the right fears 'the tyranny of the majority'. That is, it won't accept majority rule. 2/

At all. Not just about Bill of Rights basics. He talks about how, for the right, even very modest policy steps - he cites Obamacare provisions and wearing masks to stop a pandemic - become 'condensed symbols' (in Dreher's sense) hence categorically unacceptable. 3/

He doesn't cite examples from the left because - well, what would they be? Klein quotes Madison, saying obviously you have to have majority rule on most stuff, otherwise no governing gets done. French replies: even Madison wasn't right about everything. 4/

French's 'right Madisonian' position comes to this: we have to maximally federalize so the right gets regions in which it's the majority because, by his implicit admission, the right just won't accept Madisonian-style government as legitimate. That's weak right Madisonianism. 5/

If French is right, the blue states are, in effect, locked in with a pathologically abusive red state spouse. The best that can be done, since divorce isn't practical, is trying to arrange separate bedrooms. Lean into the Big Sort. But that isn't what Madison had in mind. 6/

French actually makes more sense than I'm making him sound like he makes. It isn't crazy to say: look this democracy stuff, however just and reasonable, is just going to make the right explode. But it's an ugly indictment that the federalism case has to be made in those terms. 7/

Part of the problem has to do with the threat being perceived as coming from the cultural left but as being a threat to cultural hegemony on the right. Example: Indiana's RFRA led to boycotts. But there isn't any way to make strong freedom of association be only for the right. 8/

There is no way to address the right's baseline demand for disproportionate power and asymmetric dominance within a fair, Madisonian scheme. Conversely, any fair scheme will favor the left, which not only has the numbers but also the even-handed asks. 9/