Jon Stewart Questions If America's Two-Party System Works? | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

JON STEWART: As Ross Perot would say, you know, it doesn't make sense. You can take two chickens and put them on a pig's back, but that doesn't give you a barn. [THEME MUSIC]. Hello, everybody. Welcome to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. My name is Jon Stewart. I am your host of the podcast. We will be enjoying a conversation today concerning--. guys, I'm just trying to--. so when I come into the podcast, I really don't know what level of energy we're talking, of course.

It's The Weekly Show Podcast with Jon Stewart. I'm Jon Stewart. I've got the uber producer team, Brittany Mehmedovic. and Lauren Walker with me. And we have been discussing, what. is the appropriate level of energy to bring to a podcast? On the show, I'm usually shot out of a cannon. because I got the Biden cocktail they shoot. right into my ass-- or the Trump cocktail--. to make me ramble. But either way, I'm fired up. So today, the show is going to air. We're taping it the day before, but the show is airing before--.

it's going to be right before the debates, the Presidential Debates. So you may be listening to this podcast. prior to watching debates, or you. may be listening to this podcast in your disaster bunker. after listening to those debates because I'm assuming--. the bar has been set relatively low, but if you're watching the news, if both men make it through these 90 minutes. without either passing away or starting a war,

we will consider it a grand success for the country. and for the democracy. But the big controversy, of course, is, what are the criteria so that a third party. can't make it in there? Because this election obviously people. talk about as the one where there is real dissatisfaction. with the choices. The choices are clear. I don't think it's a question of whether or not it's clear. The two candidates couldn't be more different as individuals. The things that they want to do for the country. couldn't be more different.

For instance, if you're interested in any way. in women's right to choose or these kinds of other issues, well, there's-- there's no question, you've got one party that literally talking about. not letting people have IVF. So the issues are clear. The candidates' personalities are clear. Their felony records are clear. But there is a great dissatisfaction with that. So RFK, Jr is now considered the leading third-party.

candidate because he polls quite well, I think, in a majority of those things. You've got Jill Stein, you've got Cornel West. You've got a Libertarian Party, so there's probably. a few others out there. But the real question is, why don't third parties work? Why don't they really ever get a foothold in a country? Is it just because there's always. a level of dissatisfaction with the two parties and the two. choices that we have? Is there always a feeling of, oh, you know. what I'm going to vote for? None of the above. So whatever that means. And that feeling doesn't last.

You know, we've had some real challenges. Ross Perot got almost 20% of the vote. George Wallace-- people forget about this. George Wallace, who was the former Governor of Alabama. and a segregationist, he won five states in 1968. as a third-party candidate, even though he only. got, I think, 13% of the vote or something along those lines. But the point being, why the hell--. we're a consumerist country. No, we expect choice. We have lime moritas.

I'm not even sure what a lime morita-- but we. add lime to almost everything and pretend. that it's a different product. It's not. It's the same product. So that's going to be the point of today's show. Why is it so hard in a country that. is yearning for more choices to get. a foothold with a third party? Is it a structural problem in our Constitution? Is it a corruption problem in that. the two parties are a duopoly working.

to keep everybody else out? We've got two great experts to talk about that. Oh. Not to segue too abruptly. We also put out-- what did we put out, Lauren? A little--. LAUREN WALKER: Yeah, we put a call. out asking people for some things they'd like us to cover. And Brittany has gathered those together for--. JON STEWART: What do you got? What were they saying? BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Well, so first of all, my family wrote in. They have a really big issue-- JON STEWART: That's not--. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: --saying the word "fuck.". So--. JON STEWART: With you saying it.

BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah. Really mad at me about it, Jon. JON STEWART: For saying "fuck?". BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: For saying "fuck.". JON STEWART: So I've worked with Brittany now. how many-- we've worked together for many years. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah. JON STEWART: Potty mouth. On air and off. Lauren is wearing headphones. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Yeah. JON STEWART: Not as a way of equalizing sound. As to protect her ears. LAUREN WALKER: Are you talking to me? [LAUGHS]. JON STEWART: That's what I'm saying!

It's to protect her ears from the vicious sailor, the vicious dock worker. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Totally. No. We got some really great answers, honestly. And I think they're topics we're really excited about. We have gerrymandering, the housing crisis in America. JON STEWART: OK. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Long COVID. JON STEWART: You know what would be great, too, is to get back into Wall Street fuckery. There is so much Wall Street fuckery going on. I'd love to check back in on like the MMTMT--. all that, GameStop.

I'd love to check back in on payment. for order flow, all the things that we. tried to talk about prior. The long COVID community, that's a really interesting one. because there are--. from what I'm understanding-- and unfortunately I don't--. I'm not very well-versed in all of it, but like millions--. we're talking about millions of people that. have residual effects from getting these infections. and have been debilitated. I mean, there's no questionnaire.

So there's--. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: I feel like there's. been a steady stream of reporting on-- on this, but there's not like a great understanding. So people may have these symptoms. and not even understand what it is. JON STEWART: Right. And it doesn't seem to be-- you know, progress in research, I assume, is glacially slow. And who knows if they're even, you know, studying the correct thing. So that'll be really interesting to get into. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Jon, we had one more question. and we feel like you're the perfect person to answer this. JON STEWART: Yes. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: Somebody wrote in and wants to know,

why are the Hamptons so great? JON STEWART: Oh. Because they're not. Because the Hamptons are basically--. you know all the people you fucking. hate the most in Manhattan when you have to go into Manhattan? Imagine them in shorts. Imagine them in shorts and crocs fucking clogging. up the line at the cappuccino store. while you're just waiting in there to get a coffee, and meanwhile, it took you five hours. to get out there and want a bowl of guacamole and it's $88.

Why are they so great? Who wrote in they're so great? The Jersey Shore is great. Jersey Shore is great. The Hamptons are a shit show. Jersey Shore is-- is soft custard and slices and men. with tattoos quietly singing Bon Jovi to themselves. as they try and find their cars in the Life. Time Gym parking lot. That's what we're talking about.

Hey, which brings me to the point. Next week is July 4th. I hope everybody has a great July 4th. We are going to be off. I hope you go down the shore-- and when. I say go down the shore, I mean the Jersey Shore. Lauren, are you ashore? Do you go Jersey Shore? Where do you lie? Where do you--. LAUREN WALKER: Jon, do you see how pale I am? JON STEWART: Oh, all right. All right. I feel you. More of an indoor--. LAUREN WALKER: I can't do sun. Yeah, I'm an indoor kid. JON STEWART: Well, let's--. enough fa-fumfering. Let's let's get to the guests in talking. about our third-party system and why we don't get there.

With us today-- very --exciting professors. We're not fucking around today, people. We are bringing you professors. Men of knowledge. Max Stearns, Law Professor, University of Maryland. Carey School of Law. Author of Parliamentary America, The Least Radical Means of Radically. Repairing Our Broken Democracy. And Sam Rosenfeld, also an Associate Professor. of Political Science at Colgate University, and the co-author with Daniel Schlozman of The Hollow. Parties, The Many Paths and Disordered Present.

of American Party Politics. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. We very much appreciate it. MAX STEARNS: Thank you so much for having us. SAM ROSENFELD: Happy to be here. JON STEWART: There is no. Clarion call of the American electorate more profound. than "both choices suck.". I'm going to vote for the lesser of two evils, but why don't we have better choices? America is a consumerist society. We are known for having 31 different flavors of Coke.

and only two candidates. Yet, third-party candidates almost never get. traction in American politics. Why is that? Max Stearns, I'll start with you. MAX STEARNS: Well, thank you again for having me on. So this traces to what I call the third-party dilemma. We have a two-party system. It's not what the Framers of the Constitution. thought they set up. They thought that they set up what I call a rock, paper, scissors constitution. They thought they were going to be the endless rival games.

among the three branches of government. set up in the Constitution, the legislature--. JON STEWART: Ah. They thought the battle in American governance. was going to be the checks and balance. of the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch. Not-- they were not considering that it. was going to be a battle of political ideologies? MAX STEARNS: Indeed. And they thought that the system that they set up--. we can add the layer of federalism--. would break and control what they. call the violence of factions. They thought that they had come up with a system.

to avoid permanently entrenched factions or precursors to what. we think of today as parties, but they set in motion. through certain decisions that they made an inevitable path. toward a two-party system. And I think the really important thing. for voters to understand is, it's not a problem. of our individual will. It's not like we have a problem because we're. not voting for third parties. Our institutions do not create space for third parties.

to play a significant beneficial role. Instead, it punishes voters when. they vote for third parties rather than rewards them. And the question becomes, how do we. restructure our institutions to change that? JON STEWART: To change that. Sam, why is that? Why are we set up for a binary? Is the Electoral College the big villain in all this? Because it's the winner-take-all system, a third party--. I mean, Ross Perot with the Reform Party got, I think,

20% of the vote. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. JON STEWART: Almost 20% of the vote. Zero Electoral College votes, and--. and disappeared and became a not very consequential party. SAM ROSENFELD: The Electoral College. catalyzes and exacerbates what I believe. the institutions don't--. JON STEWART: Sam, don't-- you know, I'm not a professor. So if you're going to start throwing--. SAM ROSENFELD: It makes it worse--. JON STEWART: "--catalyzing" and "exacerbating," I'm just. going to have to leave. SAM ROSENFELD: I-- I withdraw. It makes it worse. It makes it worse.

And, you know, there's no Electoral College. in Congress, in state legislatures, governorships, et cetera. And yet you still have two-party dominance. all across American history in those places as well. The core thing-- I mean, this goes back--. there was a political scientist, a Frenchman. named Maurice Duverger--. JON STEWART: Oh, Duverger. I'm so sick of that guy. SAM ROSENFELD: Mid-20th century and he put forth what political. scientists call a law, Duverger's law, that says, if you have a system of electoral rules in which you.

have single-member districts-- so one person occupies. a particular geographical unit, and you decide on who that. person is by plurality voting-- not runoffs, not proportionality, it's whoever gets--. JON STEWART: Direct democracy. SAM ROSENFELD: Well, it's whoever. gets the most votes wins. JON STEWART: Right. SAM ROSENFELD: That combination, plurality voting. and single-member districts, tends to lead to-- this. is why it's not really a law. It's just a kind of a rule of thumb--.

tends to lead to stable two-party. systems and makes it very hard for-- for a kind. of equilibrium--. I'll withdraw "equilibrium.". Multi-party systems that can continue to be competitive. And it's because of-- as Max is alluding to, whoever gets the most votes wins, and there's only one. winner, immediately makes everybody need to be. strategic in their decisions. You get afraid that what you're going to do-- completely. logically-- afraid that you will end up potentially.

spoiling the race and allowing for your. least-favorite candidate to win, and so everybody coordinates. JON STEWART: Isn't that always the big criticism. of-- of a third-party vote? So there is always a clamoring in American politics. for this other choice. I would call it none of the above. And different people represent none of the above. Now it's-- it's RFK, Jr or it was Ralph Nader. or Jill Stein or Cornel West. Somebody is none of the above. Sometimes they represent really narrow interests. Sometimes it is just--. I think in the case of maybe Ross Perot, this feeling.

that the government had no common sense, as Ross. Perot would say, you know. It doesn't make sense. You can take two chickens and put them on a pig's back, but that doesn't give you a barn. Like, he would just say crazy things. But, you know, there's this idea. that that protest somehow represents something that. is missing in American politics, whether it be pragmatism or common sense. But it never has legs.

And, even if they got in-- let's say. the protest vote got in, who would they govern with? Wouldn't they just have to join with whatever. the binary is in Congress? MAX STEARNS: That's right. The intuition in our politics is that in order to win, you have to keep your side intact. and fracture the opposition. Both sides see that they have to keep their sides intact, fracture the opposition. That leads to two teams, which we call parties. So that dynamic is really deeply embedded. It's the opposite of what the Framers thought they did.

and what they intended, but it is hard-- it's. hardwired into our system. And simply wanting to support a third party. doesn't make that go away. The problem is that when you vote for a third party, if it's to the left of the Democrat. or to the right of the Republican, it's a spoiler. I came up with a term from my book, a randomizer. If you've got somebody like RFK, Jr who looks like he's going to pull votes from both sides, then it's a randomizer and it renders the choice of President.

really a kind of random outcome because you. don't know when a three-way race how that's going to play--. JON STEWART: Mm-hmm. MAX STEARNS: --play out. JON STEWART: I have to interrupt very quickly. I think one of you is about to be arrested. SAM ROSENFELD: Sorry. I'm in the heart of Washington, DC here and--. JON STEWART: Oh. Sam is about to get hauled away for-- for discussing. this-- this very delicate thing. So-- so-- but-- but Max, then--. if the idea is that's what it comes to, why doesn't the two-party system, then, function better? If-- if the idea is that a third party is anachronistic.

for the way that this system was designed, even though the Framers maybe didn't intend. it that way and they were--. I don't know if you guys know this, gods amongst men. I don't know if you know, they were infallible. But let's say they didn't do that. Well, then, why doesn't the two-party system. function in a way that doesn't entice people. to these third-party options? MAX STEARNS: Yeah, so I know you're joking when you say god. amongst men-- gods amongst men, but I do want to say,

because I know you're joking and I assume most of your--. JON STEWART: I am joking. MAX STEARNS: No, no, no, I know that. JON STEWART: I'm absolutely joking. MAX STEARNS: I know that. But I want to make sure everybody understands. One of the things we have-- one of the things. that we have to get over is American exceptionalism. The idea that there was a group of geniuses who happened. to meet at a particular time and place who solved. all the problems of democracy. That's not true. They actually messed up in pretty significant ways. The system that they constructed. isn't the system that we have, or at least the ones that they. thought they constructed.

And so it's-- it's really important to recognize that. JON STEWART: Did they recognize that they had screwed it up? MAX STEARNS: They did very early on. I mean, you can look at the fact. that George Washington's farewell address. talks about partisanship. You can see that Thomas Jefferson-- you know--. SAM ROSENFELD: They became partisan. I mean, that-- the very people who created an anti-party. constitution formed the first party system. in the United States-- first two-party. party system in the 1790s. JON STEWART: My favorite part of it. is, they didn't even wait. Like, I think--.

SAM ROSENFELD: It was them! JON STEWART: Washington gave the speech about don't do this, don't do this, and like four years later, they were like, all right, we're going to do it. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah, they had already done it. It was like-- yeah, anyway. JON STEWART: No! Sam, don'-- don't anyway. Tell us, what did they already do? SAM ROSENFELD: Well, the--. his famous speech against partisanship. says a lot of prescient things. It'll invite-- it'll make us vulnerable to foreign powers. manipulating our democracy, et cetera. But it was also-- it was a partisan speech in disguise.

It was-- Alexander Hamilton kind of turning the shiv, trying to make Jeffersonians sound. anti-American and opponents of the Constitution. JON STEWART: Whoa. Whoa. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. They were doing it all in the 1790s. JON STEWART: That's deep. So Washington, in his sort of above-it-all Savior. of the Nation, Founder of the Nation, I'm-- and by the way, all I know about this is from watching Hamilton, so everything that I say is from apparently every--. SAM ROSENFELD: He's a good rapper. JON STEWART: Everybody rhymed back in the day.

But Washington famously, above it all, was actually it--. was a partisan speech elevating the Federalists. SAM ROSENFELD: Absolutely. Because there was no--. in spite of themselves, they became. party builders because they disagreed with each other. about governance. And it turned out, as Max was saying, they were wrong about--. they thought that they could create. a system to avoid the mischiefs of faction, to avoid parties.

And, in fact--. JON STEWART: And to avoid dictatorships. And to avoid authoritarians. SAM ROSENFELD: But to-- but in fact, there. are no liberal democracies anywhere that are not, in essential ways, organized by political parties. And they found that that was the case right away. But there was nothing--. in the 1790s, there was no legitimacy around the idea. of permanent, partial, conflicting.

opposition teams in government that would. rotate in and out of power. And so if you make a speech about how bad parties are, that was, in part, a way of trying to say, the people who are opposed to our government. are, in fact, against the country, against the Constitution, they're. enemies of the republic. MAX STEARNS: And one thing I'll just add to that. The first implicit acknowledgment that the Framers. got it wrong in the Constitution. itself is the 12th Amendment. SAM ROSENFELD: Yes. MAX STEARNS: Which, for the first time, lets a President and Vice President. run together on a slate.

Otherwise you ended up with this weird shotgun marriage. where you've got a Federalist President, Adams, and a Democratic-Republican Vice President, Jefferson, who hate each other-- until they. love each other later on in life, but end up running against each other, right? SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. JON STEWART: Can I tell you, there. is nothing better for me than watching. professors amen each other. SAM ROSENFELD: Mm-hmm. Peach. JON STEWART: Max is in there, like the First--. or the 12th Amendment, and Sam is like, mmm, yes. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah, my--. my glasses are fogging up, I'm so--. JON STEWART: Get 'em, Max! SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. JON STEWART: You get 'em, Max.

But also, isn't the first thing is All Men Are Created Equal, and they have a provision where some men. are three-fifths of a man. Like, isn't that also somewhat of an acknowledgment of, we're. created equal, and then literally. the math is different than that within the Constitution? SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. MAX STEARNS: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's one of three clauses. that, without mentioning slavery, condone and institutionalize it. You know, so this idea that these people. were sort of demigods--. I mean, it is deeply troublesome to treat them. as though they were carrying tablets down from Sinai.

They weren't. They were men drafting a document. You know, they were subject to the limitations. of knowledge of the day and they got things wrong. SAM ROSENFELD: There's a way of putting a positive gloss. on that, that in part, they were not gods, they were fallible men. But also, they were victims of being political innovators. Like, we have the oldest continuing. formal democratic constitution in the world, and a lot of what they were developing. was kind of sui generis.

They-- things like proportional representation system--. JON STEWART: It hadn't been seen. SAM ROSENFELD: Hadn't been invented yet. Hadn't been developed. And so--. JON STEWART: Why did they decide, then--. was there a conversation about a parliamentary system? Was there a conversation about, you know--. or they just really thought, no, we've devised a system. where the different warring factions are. the institutions of government, not. the ideologies of individuals. MAX STEARNS: There is some possibility that we could have.

gotten closer to a parliamentary system, but the fact is, they really did think that they were going. to break this notion of-- of-- of factions. and-- and-- and parties. SAM ROSENFELD: Madison, in his Virginia Plan--. Madison's original proposal involved the President. being selected by Congress. I mean, there's other things in that scheme as well, but that in and of itself is like. a proto-parliamentary notion. JON STEWART: And it was somewhat selective--. I mean, it wasn't the election of Jefferson.

selected by Congress? Wasn't that how it went down? MAX STEARNS: Well, that's because the Electoral College. failed for the first of two times that. sent the election to Congress. And-- and you ended up with this strange result. And here's the great scene from Hamilton where Alexander. Hamilton actually endorses Thomas Jefferson over--. over Aaron Burr. And supposedly said-- it's a great line. He said, "I'd rather have a person. with the wrong principles than a person with no principles.". JON STEWART: No principles. Right, right. Boom-- come on! The room where it happened.

I'm going to try not to do the song and dance. So they create the system. It immediately devolves into partisanship. And at that point, it seems like now the parties are there. Is it that the parties have colluded. to keep this as a binary and to keep out the ability for reform. parties or populist parties or other things. to infiltrate them?

Or is the system as designed make. it nearly impossible for us to spread. beyond those two parties? Or is it a combination of both? SAM ROSENFELD: Max will talk about other kind. of formal institutions that bake it in to a certain extent. Electoral rules are controlled by states. and state legislatures. They control things like how many signatures you need to get. access to a ballot line. And you can make that more or less onerous. And certainly, once you have two kind of major parties,

you can see-- and it varies state by state, they make it more easy or harder for others to break in. JON STEWART: Even now to even get on the debate stage, you need 15% in four independent polls, and you need to be registered so that you. could get 270 electoral votes. It's an incredibly high bar. SAM ROSENFELD: Absolutely. And-- and then the flip side, though, is American parties.

are a entrenched duopoly, but they. are also, as organizations, incredibly permeable. They change a lot. It's very easy--. JON STEWART: Sometimes-- sometimes they. become a family organization. SAM ROSENFELD: Exactly. I mean, you're seeing it right now. JON STEWART: You just put your daughter-in-law in there. and it becomes an arm of your real estate empire. SAM ROSENFELD: Then you can see-- but lots of people who. aren't in Trump's family kind of acting. as if they are kind of his bodyguards, his-- his crew.

But let's just say the major parties. are flexible organizations that, time and time again. across American history, have adopted some of the priorities, the energies, the movements that had. powered third-party movements. That keep them-- JON STEWART: --co-opt them. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. JON STEWART: Or they subsume them. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. And-- but they do-- it's not--. it's not a conspiracy to snuff out all of the actual substance. of the third parties. The third parties have huge substantive effects. even though politically and electorally they don't last.

MAX STEARNS: But it is--. going back to your question, though, there is a kind of-- you know, sometimes the parties. fight each other over institutions, but sometimes they agree on institutional outcomes. because they have a sort of symbiotic relationship, right? You know, where they benefit at the expense of third parties. And we see that in certain Supreme Court cases--. don't want to bore you with the details of it, but there are some Supreme Court cases that have really. disallowed third parties to challenge their way into being. more effective competitors.

In one sort of central lesson of our history is, the last place to count on for fixing our democracy. is the Supreme Court. That's not going to be the institution. that saves our democracy. We have to go back to some founding principles. JON STEWART: Boy-- boy--. you know what? That's when I'm going to go, preach! That clearly they're not the institution. that's going to save it. How many of us can afford Supreme Court justices? I mean-- SAM ROSENFELD: Right. JON STEWART: You know, maybe I could get a couple of them, but, you know. MAX STEARNS: Well, and on this presidential--. we're going to find out in the next day just how--.

JON STEWART: I mean, just as a-- as a side note, as presidential historians, the idea that the President--. I mean, talk about something that is an utter anachronism. or anathema to the Constitution, the idea. that the President is a king is the whole reason we fought. that war in the first place. MAX STEARNS: Well, right. And one thing that we need to-- you. know, Sam talked about the fact that we have the longest. constitution of any nation in the world, which-- which is certainly true.

But one thing I encourage people to think about. is like if you're thinking about the--. the brilliance or wisdom of any system, like an engineering system, business model, musical genre, would you say, if I can find a single outlier that's lasted. longer than others, that must be the best, or would you say that a system that's been replicated again. and again and again benignly, adapted. to different situations, that's the test of a really. wise and sound system. On the replication test, which I think. is the one that virtually anybody would pick,

our system absolutely fails. With exported democracy--. JON STEWART: Wait, it fails? MAX STEARNS: Fails. We have exported democracy around the globe, but we have never once successfully exported. two-party presidentialism. That is a model on which we are alone. on the stage for good reason. Most systems that are considered. successful democracies have proportional representation. and coalition governance. Multi-party governance in a proportional representation. system. And we--.

JON STEWART: So you're suggesting that--. you're talking about the--. I'm assuming the European model or the way that-- that--. MAX STEARNS: Well, there's more than one model, so we need to be careful about that. It's not as if-- it's not as if parliamentary captures all. the nuances across systems. JON STEWART: Right. MAX STEARNS: One of the things I try to do in my book. is take readers on a virtual world tour. I take them to seven countries not just limited to Europe. But the central lesson of that tour--. there's two central lessons of the tour. There are two threats to democracy. Too few parties like the US, too many parties.

Hyper--. JON STEWART: Too many parties-- too many parties gets. you things like Nazi Germany. MAX STEARNS: Absolutely. JON STEWART: Where like a very fringe party with, I don't know, 27% of the vote can suddenly take. over and do all those things. Or Brexit. MAX STEARNS: Absolutely. So you need to come up with-- what most political scientists. think the sweet spot somewhere between three to four. at the low end, seven to eight at the high. JON STEWART: So who's got that? Who would you point to and say--. MAX STEARNS: Germany. JON STEWART: There's a success--. MAX STEARNS: Germany has a system, although they've. adapted it a year ago to make it a little bit different. than it had been, but really, post-World War II Germany.

was based on a system called-- is based on what's called. mixed-member proportionality. Sorry that it's a--. JON STEWART: Mixed-member--. MAX STEARNS: Mixed-member proportionality. JON STEWART: I'm sure there's a German word for that that's--. MAX STEARNS: That probably takes. a minute-and-a-half to say. JON STEWART: [MOCK GERMAN]. MAX STEARNS: Exactly. Exactly. But the-- the idea is, that-- so they. have a two-chamber legislature like we do. The Bundesrat's roughly equivalent to the Senate. The Bundestag's roughly equivalent to the House. And what you do is when you're voting.

for the-- the lower chamber, you cast two ballots, not one. One is an what they call a constituency seat. election, which is just like we have now, our district elections. And one is by party. So what they do is they use the party ballots nationally. to allocate party proportionality. for the nation as a whole. And the consequence of that party ballot. is no single party is likely to get a majority, and that means parties have to come together.

to actually form a government. I'm proposing a simpler system than that, but a variation on that. JON STEWART: Right. And I think this is one of the vulnerabilities. that Trump exposed of our democracy, is that the democracy is held together, actually, by these hundreds and thousands of administration positions. that do things like certify elections, hold elections. And those positions are held by--. I'm going to say partisans, but not ideologues. And what they're trying to do is replace a partisan system.

with an ideologue system so that it supercharges the kinds. of unfair manipulations of the system. to keep yourselves in power. And the way I look at it in our system--. and Sam, maybe you can talk about this--. is, for instance, you look at certain states. like Arizona, that's like kind of a purple state. But if you look at their state legislature, it's supercharged. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. JON STEWART: It's-- it's highly, you know, super--.

super-partisan. It's got a supermajority for one party that clearly doesn't. represent what the people are. We've got this two-party system that has been so--. it's been gamed out of effectiveness. and gamed for pure power purpose. Is-- is that a fair statement, Sam? SAM ROSENFELD: The polarized extremism, particularly. of Republican state party organizations. and a lot of these places-- and it's most dramatic precisely.

in-- in swing states. In red states, they can kind of ease off the gas. pedal a little bit, but it's supercharged. in Wisconsin and North Carolina, in Arizona. It's in part a reflection of the weakness. of state party organizations and the kind of--. party organizations at other points in time-- in particular, places in the United States-- have. been rooted civic organizations that have a real kind of--. JON STEWART: A foundation in the community.

A real--. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah, exactly. Both-- both at the state level, and then state parties. were big actors, particularly in an era in which. they controlled delegations at conventions. and they had kind of clout in the national level. And as that recedes, as a broader story of the decline. of face-to-face civic organizations entirely, what you get is party organizations at the state. level and local level that are usually just. kind of empty shells, they become backwaters.

for local activists--. ideologues-- these days spun up around national issues. JON STEWART: So all politics are national. SAM ROSENFELD: All politics--. JON STEWART: And the states are the meth labs of democracy. They're no longer the labs of democracy. SAM ROSENFELD: The Arizona Republican Party. is a great case in point how insanely Trumpy it's gotten. and kind of personalized around whatever Trump spun up about. That's what the small number of local activists. who control these state parties these days care about as well.

And, you know, they'll censure elected. officials in their own party if they run afoul of Trump. JON STEWART: And I think Oklahoma censured Lankford, who. was their senator, who was an unbelievably consistent. hardline conservative, but because he had proposed. a border bill that Trump didn't want, they were like, that's it, you're done here! SAM ROSENFELD: And it's like part of the problem. is in the politics nationalizing so much people's. identities as political actors being so caught up.

in national kind of culture war conflicts, it means that there's all these subnational issues and policy. conflicts that could give rise to much. more flexible and fluid--. and have in the past coalitions, but in part, it's a function of organizational decay. at the subnational level that you get. such polarized state parties. JON STEWART: So basically, the ethos is, we've got to own people as opposed to governance. But Max, I want to ask you-- so the two-party system, then, is not the best methodology.

American exceptionalism is wrong. even when you look at our political system. being the most effective around the world, but what have we done to that two-party system. to make it even less effective? And how have we hollowed out-- is it a hollowing out of our--. the way we select our delegates and our people? What have we done to this two-party system. that's made it so ineffective for for actual governance? MAX STEARNS: Yeah, so so one thing that's happened,

just a slight difference with Sam on this. is, you know, after Barack Obama's first election in 2008, Republican operatives figured out. that for pennies on the dollar, they. could throw money at below-the-radar state races. in in blue and purple states. And-- and basically, if they turned. enough of those states red--. JON STEWART: You're talking about secretary of state and--. MAX STEARNS: No, no. I'm talking about-- I'm talking about general assembly races. And because they draw the congressional maps for the US.

House of Representatives, they could actually. turn their delegations red. And the strategy, which David Daley--. he wrote a book called Ratf**ked. It's a really fascinating--. JON STEWART: How dare he? MAX STEARNS: That is the title. And he tells the story, this audacious story of a plan. called red mapping, where essentially the idea is. to hyper-gerrymander these maps so. that you get entrenched Republican control. of the House. They thought they had a lock on it.

for 30 years-- they didn't, it flipped back in 2019. But when you combine red mapping and blue mapping, here's what we can say about the House of Representatives. It is no longer the case that we. are choosing our representatives. through our votes. Our representatives are choosing us through. hyper-gerrymandered districts. And the consequence of that is to push. the centers of the two parties increasingly far apart. And if you go-- and if you look at the Pew Research data, they have a graphic--. they actually have it--.

and you can actually see like a cartoon moving. From 1994 to 2017, you had had the parties with some degree. of significant overlap--. if you go back to the '50s, there was much greater overlap. But the centers of those two parties. have grown further and further apart. One cause is hyper-partisan gerrymandering, another cause is the transformation of the way. that we receive news and news like content. through social media. JON STEWART: Right. MAX STEARNS: And this has created. the synergistic loop that--. JON STEWART: The media is now incentivized.

for those extremities as well. I mean, it's incentivized for engagement, and engagement is only possible if people are scared or angry. But I would ask you guys, when you talk about red mapping, it doesn't take much of a push to get there because going back. to, again, bringing us back around to the Founders, didn't the way that they designed this as a compromise. for slave owners in the South who did not have. the kinds of populations, you know, how do you create.

a democratic system where people's voices matter when. one side of the country really doesn't have that many people. who are considered people? So what you do is, you overweight. their representation. And that has carried us through--. I mean the Senate, for God's sakes, is Affirmative Action for rural whites. I mean, there's no question that they're overrepresented. MAX STEARNS: Absolutely. Absolutely true. The Senate is the single most anti-democratic institution.

of any institution in a country that claims to be a democracy. If you add up the population of the 21. lowest-population states-- so they get 42% of the senate, it equals California, which gets 2% of the Senate. JON STEWART: By the way, I think that's the right call. I don't know if you've--. I don't know if you've been out there, but it's probably the right call. A lot of weed shops. A lot of weed shops. MAX STEARNS: It's-- it's egregious. The problem is that fixing the Senate won't fix our problem. JON STEWART: And the other problem is, to even fix any of those systems, whether it's--.

you know, there's the direct vote. or there's the changes in the Electoral System, needs 75% of the states, and nobody is going to cede power. When you have a system that's designed. more for minority rule, who is going to cede that power? SAM ROSENFELD: I do just want to kind of point out--. JON STEWART: We got to--. do we have a professor fight brewing? Are you going to come--. SAM ROSENFELD: Well, I will say--. JON STEWART: Yes. SAM ROSENFELD: If you look at the United States Senate, it's gerrymandered for white rural voters, that's-- that's correct.

But it's also a polarized chamber. And there is no gerrymandering in the Senate, you know what I mean? Which is just to say--. JON STEWART: But it is not as polarized as the House. SAM ROSENFELD: It's true. JON STEWART: I can tell you, from spending time. in the Senate and spending time in the House, the House is the Wild West. SAM ROSENFELD: Of course. JON STEWART: You walk into some of those offices. and you're just like, holy shit, that guy's just a bumper. sticker picking a fight with--. SAM ROSENFELD: And witness Landry, as we were. just talking about, he's now-- JON STEWART: Yes. SAM ROSENFELD: --out of his own party. But the same trends of-- there was, over the course of the 20th century,

a very deep ideological divisions within the parties, especially in the Democratic Party. You had the most conservative white supremacists. in the country, were a pivotal faction in the New. Deal Democratic Party. JON STEWART: Right. MAX STEARNS: And then there were ideological differences. in the Republican Party as well that fostered an era in which. people rightly complained about Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, you don't have a clear choice.

And a lot of bipartisan lawmaking, a bipartisan kind of culture, people. complain about that for, I think, good, small d, democratic reasons. JON STEWART: But people now say we do have a clear choice. We just don't particularly think either choice. represents our interests. I mean, the two parties could not be more different. There is no question a clear, well-delineated choice. between not just party and issues, but personalities,

but people still are dissatisfied. with those two choices. MAX STEARNS: Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think that underneath these two parties, we really naturally have roughly five to six parties. So the Republicans--. JON STEWART: You're talking about how--. and those are representative like Freedom Caucus. MAX STEARNS: Yeah. I mean-- well, another way to think of it. is if we actually had the system that I advocate, which would generate a true multi-party system, the Republicans would probably fracture.

to the traditional conservatives, or GOP, and kind of the MAGA or America First party. The Democrats would split between traditional center-left. Democrats and Progressives. There probably is a Green Party. There might be a libertarian party. So we naturally have six parties--. JON STEWART: But how do you-- how do you limit it? Wouldn't then everybody say, well, I'm--. I'm a little bit at odds with the Libertarian Party--. MAX STEARNS: Yes. JON STEWART: So I'm going to start the Green Libertarians. MAX STEARNS: So the way you limit. it is to devise a system that generates.

neither too few parties like the US. and the UK, nor too many parties like, for example, I know in Sam's book, he talks about the Netherlands, which is. a perfectly good example of that, Brazil is a good example of that, France is a good example of that. JON STEWART: You're saying too many. Those are too many? MAX STEARNS: So you've got the risks on both sides. You want to hit that-- that-- that sweet spot. And mixed-member proportionality does that. The reason is because--. JON STEWART: Explain mixed-member. proportionality again so that I understand the sweet spot. MAX STEARNS: So-- so you vote in a constituency election one.

ballot and you vote by party. Let's take Washington State. Washington has 10 seats in the House of Representatives. My scheme would double it-- the House. of Representatives, double the size, and we use mixed-member proportionality. Imagine that--. JON STEWART: They would get 20 seats? MAX STEARNS: They would get 20 seats. So imagine in the district seating, they get five Democrats and five Republicans. And imagine that in the party proportional votes, four parties each get 25%.

We'll just arbitrarily say progressives, the Democrats, the Republicans, and America First all get 25%. JON STEWART: Mm-hmm. MAX STEARNS: Now what happens is. the Democrats and Republicans each got five seats already. That is 25% out of 20, right? So now the Progressives and America First each. pick up five seats. So now Washington State sends to Washington, DC. a delegation with five of each of those parties. And I propose we do this on a state-by-state basis. That's the first of my three Electoral reform amendments.

JON STEWART: How many representatives would. we have in--. MAX STEARNS: We would have double--. we would double the size of the House, which is for political--. JON STEWART: 870? MAX STEARNS: 870. This is for political buy-in purposes, which-- which I can explain. JON STEWART: So we need to build a bigger building. MAX STEARNS: Yeah. Or if the worst--. if the worst problem in the United States. faces is better architecture for the US Capitol, I'll take it. JON STEWART: Right. Right, right. MAX STEARNS: I think we can all agree that-- like, let that be the most serious concern.

JON STEWART: Now Sam, so I would say, that's probably not your solution. So where would you land on-- on how we fix this kind of thing? SAM ROSENFELD: I think people should go out and buy. Max's book and read it. They should buy my book--. MAX STEARNS: I'll second that. SAM ROSENFELD: Because--. JON STEWART: I'll third it. SAM ROSENFELD: Because precisely. on this exceptionalism, it's just like Americans just. don't realize that there are democracies that work really. well all over the world. And they go-- they just-- they have huge variations in how. their systems work, and none of them look like ours,

and people should take a look. People should read that--. Max is spreading the good news about parliamentary systems. I don't foresee the path to this happening anytime soon. JON STEWART: You believe it could. be positive, but impossible. SAM ROSENFELD: Well, yeah. I mean--. JON STEWART: You look at how to fix or how to--. SAM ROSENFELD: What we have--. JON STEWART: Ameliorate what we have now. OK, so what would you do, then, within that? SAM ROSENFELD: It is in part, also. by writing books and trying to spread the good news, in this point about just, like, people should recognize.

that political parties as institutions, which everyone. loves to denigrate, including the parties themselves, are, in fact, kind of the essential cornerstone. of all democracies everywhere and always have been. And that what you need to do is if you. are a politically-engaged person, if you want. to-- if you're motivated to follow politics, to go out and do things, you should conduct. your political activism with a frame of mind of,

how am I participating in, in a constructive way, building up. effective party organizations? That usually means at the local level--. JON STEWART: I mean, that is like the Tea Party. That is. I mean, that is what they did. I wouldn't necessarily say that was productive for governance, but it's certainly what you're talking about. But beyond the idea of us being better people or better. citizens, it feels like-- so we come down to the two things, and I guess we can sort of wrap on-- on this.

Our democracy is fragile right now because the government. doesn't feel like it meets in any way. the foundational needs of the people. And then so you have to look at that in two ways. Is it corruption within the system that makes it so that it. doesn't meet the needs? Or is it a structural problem that we cannot. overcome that is being co-opted by two parties seeking power? That would be the--. the foundational question of this.

MAX STEARNS: So let me say this. One area where Sam and I have profound agreement-- and a lot. of people in this space don't agree with the two of us, we are both pro-party reformers. We both believe it is essential to have. vital parties in a democracy. In fact, I'll even say--. JON STEWART: And they are not vital right now, they are hollowed out. MAX STEARNS: Correct. There's only one way not to have parties--. there's only one way to have a country. without-- without parties, and that's. to have a dictator declare all other parties illegal, right?

So-- so really, the antithesis of parties. is-- is dictatorship. And so you have to have parties. The question is, how do you make. parties do the effective work for the citizenry? And where I think Sam and I might disagree is this. Of course, amending is exceedingly difficult. There's no doubt about it. But probably prior to every amendment, people would have thought that it was impossible to do. because it's always been exceedingly difficult. It's impossible until it's inevitable. But there are a lot of reform proposals out there.

that are anti-party reform proposals. and they're getting a lot of press. Ranked choice voting at large multi-member districts, term limits. These are anti-party. The whole point of these proposals, get rid of the people that are in Congress now, replace them with somebody else. Mine is the only proposal--. JON STEWART: But it doesn't necessarily address how they. would govern, then, does it? MAX STEARNS: And mine is the only proposal that actually. allows every sitting member of the House and Senate. to keep their jobs.

And so when people say, is it realistic to reform? It is if you can actually compare it to other proposals. and come up with a solution that lets every sitting. member of the House and Senate keep their jobs. and allow them to become the heroes of democracy. And in my book, I explain how that's possible. JON STEWART: Good luck there. Yeah. I mean, I've seen those--. MAX STEARNS: If the alternative is to get rid of them. JON STEWART: Right. But Sam, to-- to that point, would. you suggest that the lack of functioning of our democracy. for the needs of the people is a structural issue in the way.

that the Founders had designed this bicameral legislation? Or it is a capture and a corruption. of that system by bad political actors and money? Where would you come down? SAM ROSENFELD: I come down on the former. I do try, particularly to students, to emphasize, the story here is not fundamentally. a cynical conspiracy. The story is, a lot of people--. JON STEWART: Tell RFK, Jr that. They're keeping him out of the debates. SAM ROSENFELD: More so now than ever.

because we're in a very ideologically-polarized time. People are sincerely motivated in what they're doing. Most of them think what they're doing is good for the country. It is the ill-fit between what have. become much more ideologically sorted, polarized parties--. two of them, and a constitutional system that--. we haven't talked-- the other distinction. between parliamentary systems and presidential ones. is, it's in presidential systems-- separation-of-power.

systems that you get divided government, that you get chronic gridlock when one party controls. And it's the ill-fit of-- we have like parties that. are becoming more parliamentary-like in some ways. in their ideological distinctiveness, but they can occupy power at the same time. So the one kind of--. I would advocate for people to be thinking about exactly. the big, broad structural arguments. that Max is talking about. I would advocate for people to think about political parties. and what they can do to constructively improve them.

But at a more kind of like in-between level of reforming. institutions, think about elements. in the political system that are. amenable to change, that enhance. the capacity for gridlock. So things like the Senate filibuster. JON STEWART: Oh yeah. SAM ROSENFELD: Things-- things about like--. JON STEWART: That hyper-charges the poor design. of the Senate, no question. SAM ROSENFELD: And it makes it impossible--. again, talk about an outlier. There's no country on Earth where there's this unbelievably.

unrepresentative second chamber that you have. to get a supermajority of that second--. it gives the opposition party veto power. JON STEWART: This is the thing that I think--. it's most important, I think-- if I want to have everybody. take something away from this conversation, it would be that, because that-- what you both brought up, I think, is something I had not thought about at all, which is, our country is an absolute outlier. We consider ourselves a shining City on a Hill. of democratic excellence and a model to the world,

and-- and what you're saying is, not only are we. not that, our system is actually. one of the least-functional democratic systems of any. of the others, whether you want to call it a democratic system. or a constitutional republic or a constitutional republic that. lays out a democratic system of representation. We're one of the least-functioning, and we don't even consider that. SAM ROSENFELD: Yeah. MAX STEARNS: I think that's exactly right. I think if your listeners or viewers take that lesson. and internalize it and just begin to question--.

I think one of the hardest things. is to begin questioning the things. that you were taught as a child. We all went to school-- no, I'm serious about this. JON STEWART: No, man. I totally agree. That's such a great point. I completely-- it's that whole nostalgia of America. was the best, and they always name that time when they were. seven years old, and you're like, right, because that's when you were. chasing the ice cream truck. But it's not real. SAM ROSENFELD: My one--. the time I cannot allow myself to stay neutral.

is when I teach undergrads--. I teach a book by Robert Dahl called how democratic. is the US Constitution? And when we get to the Senate and just the kind. of justifications for equal representation of states, and it's one student after another, whatever. their political views, they're just like, well, yeah, well, you have the House to represent people. This is-- you got to-- otherwise, everyone's going to gang up on Connecticut or something. And-- and I can't stop myself from. sputtering to just, like, break out in hives because people--.

it's just so assumed, so ingrained. And there's a real status quo bias to that. JON STEWART: Well, guys, I so appreciate it. Max Stearns, Law Professor, University of Maryland. Carey School of Law. Author of Parliamentary America, The Least Radical Means of Radically. Repairing Our Broken Democracy. Sam Rosenfeld, Associate Professor. of Political Science at Colgate, and the co-author with Daniel Schlozman of The Hollow. Parties, The Many Paths and Disordered Present.

of American Party Politics. I urge you to buy both books, and then you have, by then--. I'm going to say three weeks to fix. our two-party representative democracy. Gentlemen, thank you so much for a fascinating conversation. and for helping me see some things. that I really hadn't thought about, so thank you, guys. MAX STEARNS: Thank you. SAM ROSENFELD: Thank you. JON STEWART: Boy, did I enjoy that. I feel like I got a real--.

I don't know what you call it, like AP. History course on there. But when he said our democracy-- when he was talking. about it being replicated, I thought he was going to go, our democracy has been replicated. all around the world. It's the most successful form of government. He was like, nobody's replicated it, and nobody wants to because it doesn't work. Did-- did you find that shocking? LAUREN WALKER: I mean, yes and no. Like, I've been reading their books, so I kind of knew. it was coming, but also, the--. the point about the nostalgia I think is just so true. JON STEWART: Right. LAUREN WALKER: Like, we just can't see ourselves--.

BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: You mean we're not the best? I don't get it. JON STEWART: Well, even, like-- he was saying like, not only. are we not the best, we're--. like, I'm not even sure we're ranked. Like, they're talking about all these other systems. that are [INAUDIBLE], but fabulous conversation. Those guys, boy, they'd be fun to have as professors. So-- LAUREN WALKER: Oh, man. JON STEWART: I think it was great. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: --are lucky. JON STEWART: Very lucky. LAUREN WALKER: Yeah. JON STEWART: We are off next week. It is July 4th. I hope you guys enjoy yourselves. As always, lead producer, Lauren walker; producer, Brittany Mehmedovic.

The man behind the glass, Rob Vitolo, video editor and engineer. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Researcher, Catherine Nouhan. And EPs-- Executive Producer for those who are--. Chris McShane and Caity Gray. Thank you guys so much for all of it. And keep those comments and stuff coming on the socials. there, whatever you got. BRITTANY MEHMEDOVIC: We are @WeeklyShowPod on Twitter, weeklyshowpodcast on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok, and The Weekly Show Podcast on YouTube.

Follow, like, subscribe. JON STEWART: Follow-- follow, like, subscribe. Oh my God. We're influencers. Very, very nice. Take it easy. Have a great week off. Enjoy yourselves. When we come back, the first episode back. is we're going to break down people's tax bills. and what it goes to and how we could connect that. better to what people need. Woohoo! Democracy's saved. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. is a Comedy Central podcast.

It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. [THEME MUSIC].