I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when, after protracted consideration, it became apparent that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 Presidential Election. But, for me at least, that sigh of relief came after a deep gasp. On Tuesday night, it looked like Donald Trump had won another 4 years in office. Indeed, as the votes rolled in, senate races that progressives counted on winning fell to Republican incumbents; often by large margins. Nationally, the election was far from a repudiation of the Republican agenda. The fact is, America just barely voted Trump out of office. Many people who voted for Biden and Harris, split their tickets and voted for Republican senators and congressional representatives. State ballots and governorships also stayed largely in Republican hands.
This presents progressives with a dilemma: How do we move forward with an agenda in the face of a deeply divided body politic? I know that my suggestion will be met with resistance and in some cases scorn, but we must think about compromise. The question is: how does this compromise look? Fortunately, our divisions as a nation can be correlated with geography. This suggests that a Federalist approach to governance, where local control of policy can let “us do it our way and them do it their way.”
This will come with problems: for issues like climate change, how do we allow some states to continue releasing harmful greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, while others curb theirs? How do we protect the rights of women in states where the right to choose is limited? These are substantial problems, but they do have partial solution and existing precedent. For example: climate change is a global problem, but not all nations are fully committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet we choose to regulate emissions to directly reduce anthropogenic climate change, and indirectly apply market forces to entities that choose to not regulate greenhouse gas emissions. In the issue of safe access to abortion, federal laws should exist to mandate free passage for individuals, to other jurisdictions, to obtain desired medical services. These challenges and solutions are a compromise for both sides, but to keep our country together, they are worth it.
This article in the New York Times, by Gurbir S. Grewal and Jeremy Feigenbaum, describes a return to Federalism as a response to the Trump era of massive federal judgeship appointments. I think the central points apply to creating a country with a greater variety of governing approaches for the sake of compromise.
As a progressive, I have always felt that my “side” has the best ideas. Perhaps it is time we put our ideas up against the competition and see who wins.
Further reading in NY Magazine about the progressive embrace of Federalism.