Dem
51
GOP
49
We regularly get letters from people who hate the Democrats and also hate the Republicans. Folks like this are sometimes called "double haters." It is also known that about 35% or more of eligible voters don't vote and studies show that many of them don't vote because they don't like either party. Wouldn't it be heaven to have, say, 28 parties so you could fine tune your choice to a party that matched your wishes on practically everything? Be careful what you wish for.
The Dutch parliament has 150 members in the lower chamber, which has almost all the power. It is chosen by straight proportional representation. If a party gets 0.7% of the popular vote, it gets 1 seat in parliament. Currently there are 18 parties with members there. There are two more parties with at least one seat in the upper chamber (the Senate) but none in the lower chamber. And there are 24 more parties that didn't make it into either chamber last time. That's 44 parties, so lots of choice (although only 28 made it onto the most recent ballot).
The problem is putting together a coalition with ≥76 seats after an election. Last time it took 9 months to form a government with four parties (one conservative, one liberal, and two centrist Christian) with a total of 77 seats. Needless to say, in that circumstance, all it takes is two members to balk at something to cause the ship to sink. That happened on Friday over the question of immigration. No European government is jumping for joy about welcoming thousands of immigrants, especially not from Syria or Africa, but sometimes refugees manage to get to Greece or Italy by boat. Neither country can handle them all, so the European Union distributes them. Guess what, feller, you're going to Belgium, and you over there, you're going to Romania.
The Dutch government was (grudgingly) willing to take the migrants who made it and who were assigned to the Netherlands by the E.U. The battle was whether their families should be allowed in and when. Prime Minister Mark Rutte wants to create a two-tier system with temporary refugees (e.g., from war zones like Ukraine) and permanent refugees. He also doesn't want to allow refugees' families in, at least not for a few years. That split the coalition and the government collapsed on Friday. So he called King Willem-Alexander to offer his resignation, but the King was off in Greece on vacation. Kings get 6 weeks vacation, just like everyone else. The King is a traditionalist and doesn't do Zoom resignations, so he had to come back to accept it. The situation regarding immigration in many other European countries is similar. Rutte was merely leading the pack. Immigration politics is everywhere.
New elections will be called for in the fall. Rutte said that 13 years as prime minister are enough so he is leaving politics altogether. If the current coalition gets 75 or fewer seats, they will need to find a fifth party to get to 76—and they still will have to agree on the immigration question they can't agree on now. If that fails, some other combination can try, but there is no alternative bloc that is big enough. This means negotiating with tiny one-issue parties that really want whatever their issue is. The Animal Party wants rights for animals, for example. The anti-capitalist party (BIJ1) wants to rid the country of capitalism. There are a couple of quasi-Fascist parties nobody else will touch with a barge pole. Putting together a majority and then writing a formal program on what they want to accomplish in the next 4 years is a challenge. If the election is held in, say, November 2023, it could be November 2024 or later before there is a government. Putting the country in limbo for long periods of time is common in many countries with proportional representation. Israel, Belgium, and Italy come to mind here.
You know how hard it was for the House to elect a speaker this year with only two parties. Now imagine that the House was elected nationwide by proportional representation and Freedom Caucus was a separate party, the 18-Biden-district Republicans were a separate party, evangelical Republicans were a separate party, the Libertarians were represented by a real party, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had her own party, and the remaining Republicans were the Reagan-Bush Party. Also imagine that the Democrats were split into at least six actual political parties—say, the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Progressives, the Black Caucus Party, the Moderate Democrats. and the Blue Dogs. And maybe a bipartisan AARP Party. We already have 13 potential parties here, without considering potential new and very narrow parties (the Tech Party, the Farmer Party, the Pro-Choice Party, etc.). After the election they would engage in horse trading to get to 218 to not only elect a speaker, but to pick committee chairs and assign spots on the committees and lay out what they planned to do. It could take a year. Or more. So be careful what you wish for. Every system has its pros and cons, and there is no panacea. (V)