NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

Comment: It's official, Americans are living under the rule of a minority

By Anne Applebaum comment
Washington Post·
8 Oct, 2018 06:26 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

New Supreme Court justice, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Photo / AP

New Supreme Court justice, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Photo / AP

Now that the predictable result has been achieved, it's worth taking a moment to think about the longer-term impact of the bizarre, emotional events of the past two weeks in Washington.

Reasonable people can still disagree about what happened in a house in suburban Maryland in the summer of 1982; reasonable people can even disagree about whether now, more than three decades later, those events should matter.

But reasonable people cannot disagree about the political orientation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In his testimony, he revealed himself to be an extreme partisan, a Republican Party activist and a man at least willing to bend the truth in public.

He did not reveal himself to be a man dedicated to upholding a neutral idea of the rule of law. On this point, Kavanaugh's opponents and supporters are in total agreement.

Just after he was sworn in to the job he might hold for many decades, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, tweeted: "Congratulations Judge Kavanaugh! Instead of a 6-3 liberal Supreme Court under Hillary Clinton, we now have a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court under President @realDonaldTrump, cementing a tremendous legacy for the President and a better future for America."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Note the expression "under President @realDonaldTrump": This was a partisan contest, and the winning side is crowing in triumph that one of the partisan faithful has been victorious.

But what now? Thanks to the quirks of the US Constitution and the vagaries of US politics, the result is that all three branches of the US government are dominated by minorities.

In the White House, we have, for the second time in less than two decades, a president who did not win the popular vote.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

He was elected thanks to the Electoral College, a system originally designed to block demagogues, but which no longer does. Electoral College delegates are not independent, as they once were; instead, they vote as their state party chairman decides. The effect is to skew the result.

Man, this chart says so much about our current political moment. How do you come back from this? https://t.co/Tal5p4mYMi

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) October 8, 2018

For many years now the Senate, the senior legislative body, has been grotesquely out of line, too.

The 40 million people who live in California get the same two votes in the Senate as the 740,000 people of Alaska.

The 20 million people of New York state get the same two votes as the 755,000 of North Dakota.

Discover more

Entertainment

Taylor Swift stuns fans with surprise social media move

08 Oct 01:37 AM
World

Michael strengthens into a hurricane, menaces Florida

08 Oct 04:15 PM
New Zealand

Hitler's descendant breaks silence, calls Trump a 'liar'

08 Oct 06:22 AM
World

Victim's chilling final text about 'terrible condition' limo

08 Oct 05:45 PM

A system created in the 18th century, originally designed to protect smaller states against the larger ones, now has the opposite effect.

The inhabitants of rural America have a far louder voice in Congress than the inhabitants of urban America, well out of proportion to their numbers. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.

The minority-dominated Senate and the minority-elected president have now chosen Justice Kavanaugh.

Trump approval declined from July to September, but has climbed steadily back over the last 4 Gallup weekly polls, from 38% on 9/16 to 43% today. What had looked like a clear fall off in early September has now recovered. pic.twitter.com/vsoffrESEQ

— Charles Franklin (@PollsAndVotes) October 8, 2018

And, thanks to his appointment, our Supreme Court may well cease to reflect the views of the majority, too.

One recent poll showed, for example, that a very large percentage of Americans do not want to overturn Roe v. Wade. The majority of Americans prefer legal, though restricted abortion; they support affirmative action; they also prefer legal same-sex marriage.

Of course, these are not the only (and maybe not even the most important) issues that the court will adjudicate in the next decade. But they are good proxies for "liberal" and "conservative" attitudes on social issues - and on all of them, the new "5-4" court seems likely to be well out of line.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

There is an irony here: When they were writing it, the authors of the US Constitution were worried about the tyranny of the majority, not the tyranny of a minority.

As of right now, @FiveThirtyEight shows a (slightly) higher probability that Republicans keep the House than that Democrats take the Senate. So however you are interpret the latter probability should influence how you interpret the former.

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) October 8, 2018

But two centuries after the fact, they have achieved the opposite effect.

If the coming Midterm elections do not reverse at least one and preferably both of the houses of Congress, that minority will have two years to entrench its power further, through gerrymandering, voter registration laws, court appointments, even changes to electoral law. And then all bets are off as to whether minority rule can ever be reversed.

The experience of other countries in similar circumstances is not encouraging.

Historically - think of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or, indeed, Bashar al-Assad's Syria - a minority's attempt to rule over the majority has led to terrible violence.

I don't predict anything like that in the United States, where the rules and traditions are different, but I don't see how this ends well, either.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Young Americans' faith in democracy is now at an all-time low. As the decisions taken by the US government become ever more distasteful to ever more of them, those percentages will only continue to grow.

What's even more amazing about this: 1) Trump favorable among R's in 2015 was 40% fave/60% unfavorable; 2) unlike all those other R POTUS',Trump didn't come FROM w/in the party structure, ran from outside it. And yet has managed to unify it v. quickly. https://t.co/lUb0LQInsE

— amy walter (@amyewalter) October 8, 2018
Save

    Share this article

Latest from World

World

'Terrible lie': Defence counters claims in mushroom murder trial

18 Jun 08:02 AM
World

Three Australians facing death penalty in Bali murder case

18 Jun 07:16 AM
World

Death toll from major Russian strike on Kyiv rises to 21, more than 130 injured

18 Jun 06:15 AM

Jono and Ben brew up a tea-fuelled adventure in Sri Lanka

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

'Terrible lie': Defence counters claims in mushroom murder trial

'Terrible lie': Defence counters claims in mushroom murder trial

18 Jun 08:02 AM

Barrister says prosecutors focused on messages to undermine Erin Patterson's family ties.

Three Australians facing death penalty in Bali murder case

Three Australians facing death penalty in Bali murder case

18 Jun 07:16 AM
Death toll from major Russian strike on Kyiv rises to 21, more than 130 injured

Death toll from major Russian strike on Kyiv rises to 21, more than 130 injured

18 Jun 06:15 AM
Milestone move: Taiwan's submarine programme advances amid challenges

Milestone move: Taiwan's submarine programme advances amid challenges

18 Jun 04:23 AM
Help for those helping hardest-hit
sponsored

Help for those helping hardest-hit

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP