John Dingell famously said he’d let you write the substance as long as he got to write the procedure, because he’d screw you every time. He was right. But there is something Dingell’s quip doesn’t quite capture, something that has become the defining feature of American politics in recent decades: the people writing the procedure are no longer trying to beat the other side. They’re trying to avoid the fight altogether. And the reason is simple. A political class that treats legislation as performance has no incentive to win. Winning ends the argument. The argument is the product.
Consider what just happened with the SAVE America Act.
The House passed it in February. Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. Trump called it his top legislative priority. Voter ID, the bill’s central provision, polls at 83 percent nationally — a number that includes more than 70 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Black voters. You do not find numbers like that anywhere in American politics. If the conditions for forcing a real fight ever existed, they existed here.
