a group of young House members: See reporting by Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), pp. 140–42.
“Young Guns”: Ibid., pp. 140–42.
“single most important thing”: Quoted in Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?, p. 122.
the Republicans filibustered it: The bill eventually passed. See Joshua Green, “Strict Obstructionist,” The Atlantic, January/February 2011.
Senate obstructionism spiked after 2008: Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, pp. 87–89.
“indefinite or permanent vetoes”: Ibid., p. 85.
A stunning 385 filibusters: Milkis and Nelson, The American Presidency, p. 490.
The confirmation rate: Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, pp. 92–94.
“nuclear option”: “Reid, Democrats Trigger ‘Nuclear’ Option; Eliminate Most Filibusters on Nominees,” Washington Post, November 21, 2013.
“raw exercise of political power”: Quoted in ibid.
“We can’t wait”: Quoted in Jonathan Turley, “How Obama’s Power Plays Set the Stage for Trump,” Washington Post, December 10, 2015.
Obama began to use executive authority: See Nelson, “Are We on the Verge of the Death Spiral That Produced the English Revolution of 1642–1649?”
“executive memorandum”: “Obama Mandates Rules to Raise Fuel Standards,” New York Times, May 21, 2010.
he announced an executive action: “Obama to Permit Young Migrants to Remain in U.S.,” New York Times, June 15, 2012.
President Obama responded to Congress’s refusal: “Obama Orders Cuts in Federal Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” New York Times, March 19, 2015.
Mitch McConnell urged states: “McConnell Urges U.S. States to Defy U.S. Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gases,” New York Times, March 4, 2015.
“John Calhoun’s Secessionist screed”: “A New Phase in Anti-Obama Attacks,” New York Times, April 11, 2015.
Raising the debt limit: Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, p. 5.
leaders of both parties knew: Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, pp. 6–7.
willing to use the debt limit: Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics, pp. 295–96; Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, pp. 7–10.
“bring the whole system crashing down”: Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, pp. 25–26.
Tea Party–backed Senators: Ibid., pp. 7–8, 26–27.
“We weren’t kidding”: Ibid., p. 26.
Senate Republicans intervened: As former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson put it, “The Senate simply has no business conducting foreign policy with a foreign government, especially an adversarial one….The Cotton letter creates the impression that Senate Republicans are rooting for negotiations to fail.” Michael Gerson, “The True Scandal of the GOP Senators’ Letter to Iran,” Washington Post, March 12, 2015.
“I couldn’t help but reflect”: Quoted in Susan Milligan, “Disrespecting the Oval Office,” U.S. News & World Report, March 16, 2015.
Cotton and his allies: The New York Daily News blazed the word Traitors on its front cover the following day.
not once since Reconstruction: Kar and Mazzone, “The Garland Affair.”
several Republican senators: “Republican Senators Vow to Block Any Clinton Supreme Court Nominee Forever,” The Guardian, November 2, 2006.
“if Hillary Clinton becomes president”: Ibid.
“historical precedent”: Quoted in ibid.
Their voters are now deeply divided: Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan D. Weiler, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?
“way of life”: Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), p. 23.
“somewhat or very unhappy”: Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes, “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization,” Public Opinion Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2012), pp. 417–18.
Being a Democrat or a Republican: Ibid.
the numbers are even higher: Pew Research Center, “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” June 22, 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-animosity-in-2016/.
The Democrats represented: See James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Re-Alignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1983), pp. 214–27; Alan I. Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 54–56.
Evangelical Christians: Geoffrey Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 171.
the parties overlapped: Schickler, Racial Realignment, p. 179; Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), Chapter 3.
southern Democrats’ opposition and strategic control: Ibid., p. 119.
“conservative coalition”: Binder and Smith, Politics or Principle?, p. 88.
democratize the South: See Mickey, Paths out of Dixie.
Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”: Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center, pp. 66–73; Tesler, Post-Racial or Most-Racial?, pp. 11–13.
what had long been: Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center, pp. 66–73.
southern blacks: Carmines and Stimson, Issue Evolution.
The post-1965 realignment: Matthew Levendusky, The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
partisanship and ideology converged: Ibid.; Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center, pp. 63–73.
the ideological differences between the parties: See Pew Research Center, Political Polarization in the American Public (Washington, DC: Pew Foundation), June 12, 2014.
The social, ethnic, and cultural bases: This section draws on Hetherington and Weiler, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics; Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center; Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?; and Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster, “The Rise of Negative Partisanship and the Nationalization of U.S. Elections in the 21st Century,” Electoral Studies 41 (2016), pp. 12–22.
they constituted 38 percent: “It’s Official: The U.S. Is Becoming a Majority-Minority Nation,” U.S. News & World Report, July 6, 2015.
the U.S. Census Bureau projects: Sandra L. Colby and Jennifer M. Ortman, “Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014–2060,” United States Census Bureau Current Population Reports, March 2015. See https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf.
The nonwhite share of the Democratic vote: Tesler, Post-Racial or Most-Racial?, p. 166; Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?, p. 29.
Republican voters: Tesler, Post-Racial or Most-Racial?, pp. 166–68.
the GOP embraced the Christian Right: Geoffrey C. Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?, pp. 69–77.
76 percent of white evangelicals: “The Parties on the Eve of the 2016 Election: Two Coalitions, Moving Further Apart,” Pew Research Center, September 13, 2016, http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/2-party-affiliation-among-voters-1992-2016/.
The percentage of white Democrats: Abramowitz, The Polarized Public?, p.67.
married white Christians: Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center, p. 129.
By the 2000s: Ibid., p. 129.
the two parties are now divided: Hetherington and Weiler, Autho
ritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, pp. 27–28, 63–83.
most of the norm breaking: Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics; Mann and Ornstein, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.
Republican voters rely more heavily: Levendusky, How Partisan Media Polarize America, pp. 14–16; Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics, pp. 149–64.
69 percent of Republican voters: Levendusky, How Partisan Media Polarize America, p. 14.
popular radio talk-show hosts: Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics, pp. 170–74.
The rise of right-wing media: Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism,” Perspectives on Politics 16, no. 3 (2016), pp. 681–99.
“no compromise” position: Levendusky, How Partisan Media Polarize America, p. 152.
California Republican representative Darrell Issa: Levendusky, How Partisan Media Polarize America, p. 152.
“If you stray the slightest”: Quoted in Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics, p. 177.
Hard-line positions were reinforced: Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez, “The Koch Network,” pp. 681–99.
Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform: Elizabeth Drew, Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Power in America (New York: Viking Press, 1997), p. 65.
outside groups such as Americans for Prosperity: Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez, “The Koch Network,” p. 683.
the Koch family was responsible: Ibid., p. 684.
the GOP has remained culturally homogeneous: Grossman and Hopkins, Asymmetric Politics, pp. 43–46, 118–23.
white Protestants are a minority: Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center, p. 129.
“overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive”: Richard Hoftstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Vintage, 1967), p. 4.
“slipping away”: Parker and Barreto, Change They Can’t Believe In, pp. 3, 157.
“strangers in their own land”: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016).
“real Americans”: Based on an analysis of national survey results, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse found that those who most strongly identify as Americans tend to view “real Americans” as 1) native-born, 2) English-speaking, 3) white, and 4) Christian. See Elizabeth Theiss Morse, Who Counts as an American: The Boundaries of National Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 63–94.
“The American electorate isn’t moving”: Ann Coulter, Adios America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2015), p. 19.
“Take Our Country Back”: Parker and Barreto, Change They Can’t Believe In.
CHAPTER 8: TRUMP AGAINST THE GUARDRAILS
A study by the Shorenstein Center: Thomas E. Patterson, “News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, May 18, 2017, https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days. The news outlets covered in the study were the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, as well as CNN, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and two European media outlets.
Trump administration officials were feeling besieged: See Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, “At a Besieged White House, Tempers Flare and Confusion Swirls,” New York Times, May 16, 2017.
press coverage: Patterson, “News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days.”
“no politician in history”: “Trump Says No President Has Been Treated More Unfairly,” Washington Post, May 17, 2017.
He later reportedly pressured: “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” New York Times, May 16, 2017; “Top Intelligence Official Told Associates Trump Asked Him If He Could Intervene with Comey on FBI Russia Probe,” Washington Post, June 6, 2017.
he dismissed Comey: Josh Gerstein, “Trump Shocks with Ouster of FBI’s Comey,” Politico, May 9, 2017; and “Trump Said He Was Thinking of Russia Controversy When He Decided to Fire Comey,” Washington Post, May 11, 2017.
Only once in the FBI’s eighty-two-year history: Philip Bump, “Here’s How Unusual It Is for an FBI Director to Be Fired,” Washington Post, May 9, 2017; “FBI Director Firing in Early ’90s Had Some Similarities to Comey Ouster,” U.S. News & World Report, May 10, 2017.
Trump had attempted to establish: Tina Nguyen, “Did Trump’s Personal Lawyer Get Preet Bharara Fired?,” Vanity Fair, June 13, 2017; “Mueller Expands Probe into Trump Business Transactions,” Bloomberg, July 20, 2017.
the president removed him: “Mueller Expands Probe into Trump Business Transactions.”
Trump publicly shamed Sessions: Nolan McCaskill and Louis Nelson, “Trump Coy on Sessions’s Future: ‘Time Will Tell,’ ” Politico, July 25, 2017; Chris Cilizza, “Donald Trump Doesn’t Want to Fire Jeff Sessions. He Wants Sessions to Quit,” CNN.com, July 24, 2017.
launched an effort to dig up dirt: Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, and Matt Apuzzo, “Trump’s Lawyers, Seeking Leverage, Investigate Mueller’s Investigators,” New York Times, July 20, 2017.
the government’s dubiously elected Constituent Assembly: “Venezuela’s Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Rejects Dismissal,” BBC.com, August 6, 2017.
“the opinion of this so-called judge”: “Trump Criticizes ‘So-Called Judge’ Who Lifted Travel Ban,” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2017.
“unelected judge”: White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement on Sanctuary Cities Ruling,” April 25, 2017. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/25/statement-sanctuary-cities-ruling.
Trump himself responded: “President Trump Is ‘Absolutely’ Considering Breaking Up the Ninth Circuit Court,” Time, April 26, 2017.
the pardon was clearly political: A few nights earlier, Trump had said to loud applause at a political rally, “Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?” He rhetorically asked, “So was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?” See “Trump Hints at Pardon for Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio,” CNN.com, August 23, 2017.
The move reinforced fears: “Trump’s Lawyers Are Exploring His Pardoning Powers to Hedge Against the Russia Investigation,” Business Insider, July 20, 2017.
“If the president can immunize his agents”: Martin Redish, “A Pardon for Arpaio Would Put Trump in Uncharted Territory,” New York Times, August 27, 2017.
The Trump administration also trampled: Ryan Lizza, “How Trump Broke the Office of Government Ethics,” The New Yorker, July 14, 2017.
House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz: Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, described Chaffetz’s action as “strong-arming” and “political retaliation.” “GOP Lawmaker Hints at Investigating Ethics Chief Critical of Trump,” New York Times, January 13, 2017.
administration officials tried to force the OGE: “White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll,” New York Times, May 22, 2017.
“broken” OGE: Lizza, “How Trump Broke the Office of Government Ethics.”
Trump did not replace Comey: “Trump Faces Tough Choices in FBI Pick,” The Hill, May 15, 2017. Trump’s eventual appointee, Christopher Wray, was widely expected to maintain the FBI’s independence.
Senate Republicans resisted Trump’s efforts: “Trump Is Reportedly Considering Bringing Rudy Giuliani on as Attorney General amid Troubles with Jeff Sessions,” Business Insider, July 24, 2017.
“enemy of the American people”: “Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People,’ ” New York Times, February 17, 2017.
“I love the First Amendment”: “Remarks by President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Committee,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, February 24, 2017. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/24/remarks-president-trump-conservative-political-action-conference.
“disgraced the media world”: See https://twitter.com/�
�realdonaldtrump/status/847455180912181249.
“I think that’s something we’ve looked at”: Jonathan Turley, “Trump’s Quest to Stop Bad Media Coverage Threatens Our Constitution,” The Hill, May 2, 2017.
multimillion-dollar defamation suits: “Confrontation, Repression in Correa’s Ecuador,” Committee to Protect Journalists, September 1, 2011, https://cpj.org/reports/2011/09/confrontation-repression-correa-ecuador.php.
“If I become president”: Conor Gaffey, “Donald Trump Versus Amazon: All the Times the President and Jeff Bezos Have Called Each Other Out,” Newsweek, July 25, 2017.
He also threatened to block: Philip Bump, “Would the Trump Administration Block a Merger Just to Punish CNN?,” Washington Post, July 6, 2017.
President Trump signed an executive order: “President Trump Vows to Take Aggressive Steps on Immigration,” Boston Globe, January 25, 2017.
“If we have to”: “Judge Blocks Trump Effort to Withhold Money from Sanctuary Cities,” New York Times, April 25, 2017.
The plan was reminiscent: “Venezuela Lawmakers Strip Power from Caracas Mayor,” Reuters, April 7, 2009.
President Trump was blocked by the courts: “Judge Blocks Trump Effort to Withhold Money from Sanctuary Cities,” New York Times, April 25, 2017.
he called for changes: Aaron Blake, “Trump Wants More Power and Fewer Checks and Balances—Again,” Washington Post, May 2, 2017. Also https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/869553853750013953.
Senate Republicans did eliminate the filibuster: Aaron Blake, “Trump Asks for More Power. Here’s Why the Senate GOP Will Resist,” Washington Post, May 30, 2017.
some Republican leaders: See Hasen, The Voting Wars; Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (New York: Picador, 2015).
strict voter identification laws: Berman, Give Us the Ballot; Benjamin Highton, “Voter Identification Laws and Turnout in the United States,” Annual Review of Political Science 20, no. 1 (2017), pp. 49–67.
The push for voter ID laws: Justin Levitt, “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” New York University School of Law Brenner Center for Justice (2007). See https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud; also Minnite, The Myth of Voter Fraud; Hasen, The Voting Wars, pp. 41–73; Sharad Goel, Marc Meredith, Michael Morse, David Rothschild, and Houshmand Shirani-Mehr, “One Person, One Vote: Estimating the Prevalence of Double-Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections,” unpublished manuscript, January 2017.
How Democracies Die Page 27