Lee Drutman

1 week ago | newamerica.org | Lee Drutman

The first couple months of the Trump administration have been a harsh winter of discontent in American politics. We barely dodged a government shutdown, the president is issuing illegal orders, and we’re grappling with economic uncertainty. Yet, as winter inevitably turns into spring, will our democratic disaster turn into a moment of renewal? Perhaps.

1 week ago | newamerica.org | Lee Drutman |Anne Meeker

Some reformers have advocated for proportional multi-member districts, suggesting that they would better represent Americans by having more than one member acting on behalf of citizens in the House and the Senate. However, such a shift in representation brings to question how constituent services would work under a multi-member model.

1 month ago | leedrutman.substack.com | Lee Drutman

(Last week, I gave a keynote presentation at Colorado State University’s annual Democracy Summit. I had a great time meeting with faculty and students in Fort Collins, CO. I am grateful for the invitation. Below, I share my prepared remarks, interspersed with some photos from the event. The college newspaper has this nice write-up of the speech)Last October, a striking survey revealed something profound about our national psyche.

2 months ago | leedrutman.substack.com | Lee Drutman

(This is the second in an ongoing series of posts reiterating the case for proportional representation – here is the first)Welcome to the are-we-in-a-constitutional-crisis-probably-we-are-in-a-crisis times. It's all very strange. It’s hard to believe a phase shift like this could actually happen. Then bam. Suddenly we're here. For several years I've been screaming about the two-party doom loop, and how it erodes the basic foundations of representative liberal democracy.

2 months ago | newamerica.org | Lee Drutman

On February 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil will once again predict whether we’ll have six more weeks of winter. But here in Washington, we don’t need a groundhog. We’re living our own political version of Groundhog Day. Every morning brings the same exhausting partisan battle. Stakes somehow feel both apocalyptic and strangely artificial. Here’s how our political time loop works: Elections remain perpetually close. The tighter the margins, the higher the stakes feel.