00:00 hey there and welcome back to heimlich's
00:01 history now we've been going through
00:02 unit two of the ap government curriculum
00:04 and in this video we're gonna look at
00:05 what factors affect how well congress is
00:08 able to get its job done so if you're
00:09 ready to get them brain gals milked well
00:11 then let's get to it so in this video
00:12 here's what we're trying to do explain
00:14 how congressional behavior is influenced
00:16 by election processes partisanship and
00:18 divided government so in the last two
00:20 videos we've looked at the mechanisms
00:22 congress uses to do its job like
00:23 leadership structures and enumerated
00:25 powers etc and that's how it works in a
00:27 perfect world but this is not in fact a
00:29 perfect world and so we need to look at
00:30 a few factors that can either facilitate
00:32 the process of law making or slow it
00:34 down the first factor affecting how well
00:36 congress can do its job is ideological
00:38 division now we'll talk more about
00:39 ideology in the next unit but for now
00:41 just understand that liberals and
00:42 conservatives represent two different
00:44 ideologies or sets of assumptions and
00:46 principles and over the last 30 years
00:47 we've seen a very clear trend where
00:49 republicans have over time become more
00:51 conservative and democrats have become
00:53 more liberal and that polarization has
00:55 serious implications like the further
00:56 from the middle each one gets the less
00:58 their ideas about what is good for the
01:00 nation overlap the result is that it
01:02 becomes very difficult for them to
01:03 negotiate and compromise which is what
01:05 our system of government requires bills
01:07 come up and instead of healthy debate we
01:09 get policy gridlock and partisan
01:11 fighting and that can really impede the
01:12 process of getting laws passed and so in
01:14 an environment like this the best way to
01:16 get work done quickly is to have the
01:18 same party as the majority in both the
01:20 house and the senate that way they can
01:22 always pass legislation which aligns
01:23 with their ideology without having to
01:25 consider the ideological position of the
01:27 minority party for example this is how
01:29 fdr got so many of his new deal programs
01:31 passed in his first hundred days of
01:32 office in more recent times this is how
01:34 president obama got his health care plan
01:36 passed over republican objections so
01:38 when one party dominates both houses of
01:40 congress things get done quick fast and
01:42 in a hurry the opposite of that reality
01:43 is a divided government in which
01:45 opposing parties hold majorities in both
01:47 houses or when the president is from one
01:49 party and congress has a majority from
01:50 the opposing party and that as you can
01:52 imagine slows things down significantly
01:54 and let me give you an example of both
01:55 realities that i just mentioned in 2016
01:58 president obama had the chance to
01:59 appoint a new supreme court justice now
02:01 2016 happened to be the last year of his
02:04 eight-year term and so obama was not up
02:06 for re-election and the word we use for
02:07 a president in that situation is a
02:09 lame-duck president because since
02:11 there's no chance he was going to be
02:12 president again congress didn't have
02:13 much incentive to work with him on his
02:15 agenda items anyway supreme court
02:17 justice antonin scalia died during
02:19 obama's lame duck stretch but hey he's
02:21 still the president and still has the
02:22 constitutional responsibility to appoint
02:24 a new justice and he did so and of
02:26 course he made the appointment in
02:27 accordance with his own liberal ideology
02:29 the problem is that we had a divided
02:31 government the senate whose job it is to
02:33 confirm presidential appointments held a
02:35 republican majority and so senate
02:37 majority leader mitch mcconnell said
02:38 that it wasn't good form to allow a
02:40 president to appoint a justice in the
02:42 final months of his tenure since we're
02:44 about to get a new president and so the
02:45 senate refused to hold confirmation
02:47 hearings and that is an example of
02:49 things getting bogged down because of a
02:50 divided government but what's
02:52 interesting is that four years later in
02:54 2020 it was another election year and
02:56 this time republican donald trump had
02:58 the opportunity to appoint a new justice
02:59 in the waning months of his presidency
03:01 and the republicans still held a
03:03 majority in the senate instead of
03:04 adhering to the principle that they laid
03:06 down with obama namely that it's not
03:08 good form to appoint a new justice in an
03:10 election year they moved heaven and
03:12 earth to hold confirmation hearings for
03:13 a conservative justice to be put on the
03:15 bench now whatever you think about that
03:16 is irrelevant for our purposes it just
03:18 matters that you can see how a
03:19 government dominated by one party can
03:21 speed up the work of congress now
03:23 another factor that affects how congress
03:24 gets this work done is the way
03:26 representatives understand their role
03:28 and there are basically three ways that
03:29 they can think about it first they can
03:31 conform to the delegate model of
03:33 representation in this model the
03:34 representative believes he or she must
03:35 vote with the will of the people even if
03:37 it goes against the representative's own
03:39 judgment the delegate believes that he
03:40 or she is there to represent the
03:42 people's beliefs and desires not their
03:44 own you especially see this model in the
03:45 house because every two years they have
03:47 to answer to the people in another
03:49 election now representatives can also
03:50 adhere to the trustee model of
03:52 representation the idea here is that the
03:54 representative believes he or she has
03:55 been entrusted with the people's faith
03:57 and therefore must vote according to his
03:59 or her own conscience so a trustee can
04:01 actually vote against the will of the
04:02 people if he or she believes it to be
04:04 the right thing to do a great example of
04:06 this happened during the impeachment
04:07 hearings of donald trump republican
04:08 senator mitt romney voted for trump's
04:10 removal from office even though the
04:12 majority of his utah constituency did
04:14 not support that vote and the third
04:16 model of representation is the politico
04:18 model which is essentially a hybrid of
04:19 the other two the politico will act like
04:21 a delegate when it's clear that his or
04:23 her constituents feel strongly about an
04:24 issue but if not the politico will act
04:26 more like a trustee okay the last topic
04:28 we need to consider with respect to how
04:30 efficient congress does its work is the
04:32 issue of redistricting remember that
04:33 every 10 years based on the information
04:35 gathered by the census congressional
04:36 districts are redrawn to reflect the
04:38 most current population numbers and this
04:40 can be a highly contentious issue and
04:42 things can get even crazier when
04:43 districts are not reapportioned properly
04:45 and i reckon we ought to talk about one
04:46 of your supreme court cases that
04:48 addresses this namely baker versus carr
04:50 in 1962. now i have a whole video on
04:52 this case that goes into a lot more
04:53 depth but here it's enough to know that
04:55 in tennessee the work of redrawing
04:56 districts had not been done properly and
04:58 that meant that rural voters had a lot
05:00 more voting power than urban residents
05:02 the argument here was that such a
05:03 situation violated the equal protection
05:05 clause of the 14th amendment and the
05:07 court agreed that it did so out of this
05:09 case you get the one-person one-vote
05:11 principle meaning that redistricting had
05:13 to be done in such a way that every
05:14 person's vote was equally powerful and
05:16 then we have another required case which
05:18 addressed redistricting but before we
05:20 talk about it i need to introduce you to
05:21 a term that you'll need to know namely
05:23 gerrymandering the idea here is that
05:25 districts are drawn in such a way to
05:27 benefit one party or group over another
05:29 maybe you're confused as to what i'm
05:30 talking about so let me explain it up
05:31 real nice for you suppose you have 50
05:33 people divided into five districts and
05:35 40 percent of republicans and 60 are
05:37 democrats if you draw the districts like
05:39 this democrats will always win these
05:41 three districts and republicans will
05:42 always win these two districts but if
05:44 you draw the districts like this
05:45 democrats will win in every district
05:47 either way more districts will be voting
05:49 democrat than republican but suppose
05:51 some wily republican draws the districts
05:53 like this then look what happens
05:55 republicans will hold majorities in
05:56 three of the districts and now democrats
05:58 only have two so that's what we call
06:00 partisan gerrymandering where districts
06:02 are redrawn to favor one party over
06:04 another but our next required case deals
06:06 with racial gerrymandering so in shaw
06:08 versus reno two north carolina districts
06:10 were drawn in very weird shapes in order
06:12 to create majority black districts now
06:14 to be fair north carolina was only doing
06:16 what the justice department told them to
06:17 do on account of the voting rights act
06:19 of 1965. so even though these districts
06:21 were drawn in order to boost the power
06:23 of the black vote the court ruled that
06:24 drawing districts solely based on race
06:27 was a dangerous practice that could on
06:28 other occasions be used to
06:30 disenfranchise minority voters and thus
06:32 such a practice was deemed
06:33 unconstitutional so the point of
06:35 everything i've just said is this the
06:36 factors that affect how well congress is
06:38 able to do their job include ideological
06:40 division or alignment whether
06:42 representatives understand themselves as
06:44 trustees delegates or politicos and the
06:47 process of redistricting and
06:48 gerrymandering okay if you want help
06:50 getting an a in your class and five on
06:51 your exam and may then click right here
06:52 and grab review packet i got more videos
06:54 on unit two right here and if you want
06:55 me to keep making these then by all
06:57 means subscribe and i shall oblige
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