Breaking gridlock is key to democracy
Lee Drutman 20, Senior Fellow, Political Reform Program, “Escaping the Partisan Death Spiral,” Cato Institute, July/August 2020, https://www.cato.org/policy-report/july/august-2020/escaping-partisan-death-spiral
But the more power Congress leaves to the president, the more zero‐sum the winner‐takeall stakes of one election to decide one national leader becomes, thus further exacerbating polarization. This is why the 2020 election feels so existential, yet again. The doom loop is escalating once more and undermining our ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is preventing us from breaking out of the false choice between revitalizing the economy and maintaining public health. It also threatens the legitimacy of an election that is likely to be conducted largely by mail.
BREAKING OUT OF HYPERPARTISANSHIP
The future of American democracy depends on breaking this hyperpartisan doom loop. In a politics in which winning the next election becomes everything, we all lose. A relentless focus on winning loses sight of what it is that anybody actually wins. And as the stakes escalate, extremism continues to gain, and the relentless pursuit of short‐term victory challenges long‐standing constitutional norms.