interviews
The Nationalization of U.S. Elections
by Dan Hopkins
December 31, 2020
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
In Conversation with Colonel Dillon, Operation Inherent Resolve
by Colonel Ryan Dillon
April 2, 2018
This interview with Colonel Ryan Dillon, the official Spokesman of Operation Inherent Resolve, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place December 15, 2017. This is part one of an ongoing conversation between frank and Colonel Dillon.
[Colonel Dillon] Hello!
[frank] Hi how are you?
I’m doing well, and yourself?
Good, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me I really appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Well, I can just jump right in. You guys have had a lot of news in the last week or so.
Yeah. It’s been pretty sporty out here. You know when I first came into this, it was very busy, and things have been, at least in military operations, have slowed down a little bit. At least as far as air strikes in Iraq go. Less in Syria. There’s still plenty of fighting in Syria that is happening right now.
Before we go into what's happening right now, I want to take a step back. Could you explain the mission of Inherent Resolve as it started.
Okay, so we’ll go back. It's pretty well documented, and I don't know if you've been to our site Inherent Resolve, but you know, it was about three years ago when the Islamic State really came onto the scene as an organized army if you will. Meaning that they were largely in small groups that were able to conduct spectacular attacks in cities and on roads, sow fear amongst the citizenry. And then they started to take territory. And it was as they started showing up with vehicles, and armored vehicles, after every place that they were able to take, where there's any kind of military presence, the military then dissolved. Iraqis aren’t very proud of that, but they acknowledge that in many cases they just dissolved and just ran away. And so every place that that had happen, all the weapons — they started to grab them, the vehicles. And so their army if you will, just continued to grow, and grow, and grow.
And it wasn’t really until they were about 20 kilometers north of Baghdad that the Coalition stepped in. Quickly thereafter many nations started to jump on it, and recognize that the Islamic State was very much a global threat. The coalition continued to grow, and grow, and grow until it’s where it is right now. 70 nations. 4 partner organizations. To defeat Daesh. Not all of those nations are military contributing members, but many of them play roles in other facets of the campaign, overall to the United States. That's counter propaganda, working in centers throughout the world, or going after their finances, or formed terrorist networks.
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, recently declared that Iraq is now free from ISIS control. Control over territory is one thing, but what about their ideology and intellectual presence? What’s the strategy moving forward?
The Prime Minister did say all areas have been liberated. However, he did make it very clear that we must still pursue ISIS relics and any other terrorist organizations, or any kind of terrorism that exists in Iraq. Any that does is counter to the way that we want to live in a won Iraq. So we must unify and continue our pursuit of any of these elements. We, as a coalition, assess in Iraq and Syria, that there are less than 3,000 fighters that remain in Iraq and Syria. So spread out in small areas in Syria. They still have territory. There’s still territory that we have not cleared, our partners at the SDF, have not cleared.
Back to Iraq, the Iraqi security forces know full well that ISIS still exists, both their ideology, and in small groups, and in cells that are throughout the country. And we know that for a fact because every single day the Iraqi security forces, all elements of it, the federal police, the Iraqi army, the counterterrorism service — they conduct patrols and are continuing to find these small cells. They continue to have engagements, small, but continue to fight ISIS elements. To include fighting and detaining foreign fighters that are trying to move throughout the area, trying to escape and get out of the country. So we know that there are pockets of ISIS.
There's also just you know, tons of explosives, and IEDs, mortars, and other materials that can be used for future attacks. And that's another thing the Iraqi security forces are doing. They’re going out and identifying all these caches, finding these tunnels that are, in some places, very intricate, and finding these hiding places where where they still exist.
Does a reduced number of ISIS fighters change your day to day drastically?
It does. So the way that we have conducted this campaign from the very beginning is through a strategy called By, With, and Through. And that is both in Iraq and in Syria. So in Iraq, By, With and Through means through our Iraqi Security Force partners. They are the ones that are doing the planning and the operations. They're the ones that are really fighting. They're the ones on the front lines.
We have provided support to the Iraqis really through five different ways. One is through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Those are our drones and other intelligence collecting means and ways to identify ISIS fighters. Number two is by providing advisors, and our advisors were largely on the ground with the battalion and brigade elements while they were conducting these operations. These operations are when we talk about Mosul, when we talk about Tel Afar, Hawija, Akashat. So these are major combat operations. The fact that there are now very few combat operations that are underway, at the same scale that we have done over the last three years, those advisers are shrinking. Meaning that they are less required. So that's number two.
Number three is training and equipping. We have trained more than 125,000 Iraqi security forces across all facets of their military. That includes, the majority are Iraqi army, 44,000 Iraqi army. I think it’s about 25,000 Iraqi police — that includes local police, the Federal Police, Counterterrorism service, Border Guard Force, and tribal mobilization forces, and the Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters in Northern Iraq. So training. And then precision strikes, both ground artillery and air strikes.
So the strikes, you know, after all these major combat operations have gone down significantly. In September our totals were about 1,500. Then October was about 700. November down to just under 300.
I believe November 26 there were zero.
Correct. That was the first time in the three years of our campaign that we have not had a strike in either Iraq or Syria. And then it was about three weeks ago, almost a month now, that we announced that there were going be about 400 Marines in Syria that were going to redeploy, back to United States, and they would not be getting replaced. So the number of strikes continue to tailer off quite a bit. We still are very much into the training aspects, a lot of that training has shifted and adjusted accordingly now that the these major combat operations are finished. We're now transitioning to wide area security and the threat is less so of an army, if you will, the conventional type of threat, and more of an insurgent terrorist type threat. So they have adjusted accordingly in training. We will say that it is very much our intent to continue to encourage, and to provide trainers to do conventional type fighting.
If you rewind to 2014 that was really the issue. The problem was you had a lot of these Iraqi security forces that were in static positions and as soon as this conventional threat arrived, they just dissolved. So we see very much a necessity in training them on some of the conventional and combined arms type fighting that we’ve done for the last three years.
What’s your current assessment then on ISIS’s ability to project power from Iraq or Syria?
Very little. Number one, they are on the run. It makes it awfully difficult to manage and direct a global network when you are in pursuit at the rate that we are going after ISIS right now. There's no question that their twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa were very much hubs for them both. They were, you name it, for many of the variety of different things that ISIS was doing, and they were organized, they were very adaptable. They're savvy. So we very much recognize that, and we don't want to see things like their research develop, their external operations, these branding efforts to conduct attacks in, you know, anywhere outside of Iraq and Syria. As we all know, all of these attacks that we've seen over the course the last three years, many of them emanated from planning in Raqqa and in Mosul. They were planned there. They were resourced there. They were launched from these locations. We don't want them to hold any territory or have any sanctuary. Because the other thing is, and I’ve read some really good articles recently that really dig into it, is their ability to manufacture and build weapons at an industrial level. And you can tell how nefarious — their intent. You’re talking about the type of weapons they’re trying to put together. They’re trying to mix chemicals. Thankfully they have not been very successful at that. But we don't want to give them time and space and resources to be able to get there.
Is there a laid out timeline for U.S. presence?
In Syria there’s still plenty of work to be done. We're training these local Internal Security Forces.
In Iraq, what gives you confidence that the areas that were so difficult to regain over the last three years, as you mentioned, won’t revert once you withdraw?
We've already seen the Iraqi Security Forces, in a couple different instances, show that they are very much capable of fending off attacks. About three months ago, there was an attack in Ramadi. There were about three simultaneous explosions happening at the same time, with several different ISIS fighters. Three years ago, the Iraqi Security Forces would have just said, uh oh, and ran away. In this case they very much stopped the attacks and nearly ran to the seams. And then, not only did they stop the attack, and kill those that were that were immediately there, but they went and put guys on helicopters, pursued them, and went after them as well. That's just one small indicator to show that they are very much in a better place than they were three years ago. I think the other thing is most people who have lived under Daesh do not want to live that that way again.
Do you consider Iraq a success right now? Should Americans?
It should be positive. You know, we’re talking very much about a military success. But that success does not equal full success. There's more that is required by the civilian efforts. I mean Mosul, east Mosul is great. People that were once displaced are all back here. University is back, it's open. Students are in there full time. It’s west Mosul that was just devastated by the amount of damage that happened from face-to-face fighting. So there are stabilization efforts that are required. In many cases immediately following a lot of these battles. You have to get the security taken care of. Because as we've seen, as we still see Mosul, in Ramadi, in Fallujah, and in Raqqa, the sheer level of explosives that ISIS has implanted and left in each location is mind boggling. I mean in Raqqa, the estimate right now is more than 8000 IEDs and booby traps left behind. Strictly and solely for the case of damaging, and hurting, and killing civilians who are going to come back. If you put these mines and booby traps in ovens, in dresser drawers, in kids toys, that goes beyond military necessity.