“Wishcasting” the future of American politics | No. 174 — December 12, 2021
Why should other western democracies get to have all the fun?
This week, I am following the lead of Lee Drutman, a political scientist and friend of the blog, and Jamelle Bouie, columnist for the New York Times, in dreaming up improbable scenarios for what a better US political system looks like.
Last week, Drutman challenged his followers on Twitter to write “more scenarios about how American democracy improves, and really specific scenarios, not the hand-wavey stuff about how Americans put aside their differences.” And yesterday, Bouie wrote in his own newsletter for the Times that he can think of many solutions for the problems of our current moment but few ways to get from A to B, though the uncertainties of the future could provide paths to reform.
I tend to agree with Bouie that the path forward is hard to see. I am what Drutman may call a doomsayer, a pessimist, a party-pooper, or simply a grouch. I believe that the three major problems with American democracy today are (a) that the two-party system incentivizes divisio…
