The United States of Concurrency

Politics

The United States of Concurrency

Whoever wins, it’s not all or nothing—and that’s a good thing. 

Credit: Andrew Nordine/Shutterstock

Republicans have a right to feel good about the 2024 elections. Thanks to their “trifecta”—President Donald Trump and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress—GOPers can put a stop to wokeness as federal policy, stack the judiciary with cadres, and start up energy production. They might even be able to bull-DOGE some spending. 

Yet true conservatives, mindful that we live in a fallen world, should temper their optimism. Having been properly taught to not put their trust in princes, we should be mindful that the princes we like could be replaced—will be replaced, sooner or later—by princes we don’t like. That is, the day will come when Republicans are once again in the minority. 

Thankfully, our constitutional system is replete with minority rights. Here in the U.S., by design, winning isn’t everything and losing doesn’t leave the loser with nothing. 

To know more, we might brush up on John C. Calhoun. Why so? Because nearly two centuries after his death, the South Carolina statesman—he served as secretary of state, secretary of war, senator, and vice president—still stands as a leading theoretician of minority rights. 

More on Calhoun and his motley crew of intellectual frenemies in a moment. But first, let’s consider the thinness of the Republican majority; or, if one prefers, the thickness of the Democratic minority. 

Trump won a higher percentage of the popular vote this year than in either 2016 or 2020, and yet his percentage is below 50; he edged out Kamala Harris by a mere point-and-a-half. (Yes, the Democrats do have a strange ability to come up with new votes, even weeks after the voting; looking ahead, this mysterious power of theirs is yet another reason for GOPers not to get giddy.) 

Meanwhile, Trump’s popular-vote margin ranks 44th of the 51 presidential elections since 1824. MAGA can thank that worthy dinosaur, the electoral college, for making their national victory loom larger.

As for the House of Representatives, the latest numbers suggest the GOP might have won only 220 seats—and so, taking into account Trump-connected vacancies, the House could be a tight-as-a-tick 217 to 215 for a few months. So if it were to hit some bad luck, Republicans could possibly find itself in the minority before the 119th Congress is done. 

Interestingly, GOP House candidates won their popular vote by a margin larger than Trump’s, a full three points. That the actual House-seat outcome proved to be so narrow speaks to many factors, including Democratic gerrymandering. 

Indeed, the Democrats haven’t gone anywhere. Yes, they were shocked by the election results, but history tells us that election losers become more energized than winners; that’s why, in 18 of the last 20 midterm elections, the “out” party gained seats. 

In particular, smart Democrats espy the silver lining of not having to defend a Harris-Walz administration for the next four years. After Harris’s bleary post-election video—widely trashed, even by fellow Democrats—ambitious Blues, eyeing 2028, can see that the coast is clear. 

One of those likely ’28-ers, California governor Gavin Newsom, has already taken steps to bolster his oppositional credentials; he called a special session of his legislature to “Trump-proof” the Golden State. One of his measures would establish a state tax credit for electric vehicles—not including Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Meanwhile, other blue-state governors, and blue attorneys general, are coordinating their own plans to, as it were, govern from below. 

So when the Trumpy leadership of the federal government establishes a new policy against transgenderism, will blue states go along? Probably not. To be sure, the issue of males in female sports was an overall loser for Democrats this year, but it’s not so clear that policy will change in blue sanctums. 

Indeed, Delaware just elected a transgender woman (that is, born a boy) to the U.S. House. Rep. Sarah McBride may not be welcome in the Capitol ladies room, but it’s a safe bet that the theatrical freshperson will play Our Lady of Sorrows at Democratic rallies and fundraisers—and so stoke the faithful. 

Then there’s the related issue of DEI, which the Trump administration will disavow. But will Democratic governors, mayors, and other executives pay heed? Heck, will the federal deep state truly obey? 

Speaking of #Resistance, what about the Trump/Miller/Homan plans for deportation? Mayors of sanctuary cities, East, Midwest, and West, are already declaring their opposition. What will happen if there’s a federal raid somewhere and a mayor, or other official, gets in the way, perhaps as a human shield? Will the feds arrest? Prosecute? If so, where will they find a jury? 

And what if someone gets hurt or killed? Where will the media be during these dramatic moments? Will the billion-dollar lawfare-industrial-complex be far from the courtrooms—or the streets? 

On many other issues—including, but hardly limited to, abortion, medical marijuana, and school choice—the different branches and levels of government seek to check and balance (perhaps more like block and tackle) each other.

Out of all this echeloned anti-Trumpery, new Democratic stars will emerge. They might not be in the majority, but even in the minority, they’ll have plenty of power and make plenty of noise. 

So we come back to Calhoun, who was, after all, a Democrat. To be sure, of a much different kind than we see today, and yet in his devotion to minority rights, he is strangely, constitutionally, au courant.

When Calhoun wrote A Disquisition on Government, published in 1851, the year after his death, he was thinking mostly of defending the privileges of his own Dixie, which was shrinking relative to the industrializing North. Yet since Calhoun wrote with erudition and sophistication—he earned two degrees from Yale, although his alma mater canceled him in 2017—Disquisition is a work for all seasons. 

Calhoun argued for a sharp distinction between a “numerical, or absolute majority,” and a “concurrent, or constitutional majority.” The numerical majority is just what it sounds like: getting the most votes. But the concurrent majority “regards interests as well as numbers.” Such concurrence, Calhoun argued, is right and proper because it protects the minority from being crushed by the majority. 

In fact, a concurrent awareness of “interests” as a category to be considered alongside vote-totals is as American as apple pie. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison observed, “A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.” Appropriate deference to these interests, Madison concluded, was the only way to curb the “mischiefs of faction.” 

So from the beginning of the republic, a deference to interests—acknowledgment that some things are more important than numerical majorities—has been marbled through our institutions. For instance, each state, regardless of population, boasts two senators. Then there’s the judiciary; thanks to Madisonian thinking, a few un-elected judges became one of the three equal branches of the federal government. 

The Bill of Rights is yet another form of concurrency. No matter who wins the election, the rights of the people shall not be abridged, including those on the lonely minority edge of free speech and free faith. 

Of course, we can’t hide from the fact that Calhoun was a slaveholder (as was Madison), and that slavery was evil. Yet, unlike Madison, Calhoun was an avowed champion of slavery. So that makes it all the more interesting that so many figures on the left have embraced Calhounian thinking, even if not Calhoun himself. 

For instance, the biracial Lani Guinier, a professor at Harvard Law School, long championed what she called a “minority veto.” Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to be his assistant attorney general for civil rights. And yet amidst the uproar over her views—which were deemed left-wing, but were, at the same time, neo-Calhounian—she was not confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate. One might say that her concurrent views were checked by another kind of concurrency, the Senate’s. 

In a subsequent book, The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy, Guinier quotes Madison, but never mentions Calhoun. And yet she continues to echo the Carolinian, albeit thinking of different minorities, when she declares that minorities have “the right to fair representation,” “a meaningful voice in government.” Continuing in her uncrediting recapitulation of Calhoun, she asserts that each group has a right to have its interests represented, even if it’s in the minority.

She cites approvingly Supreme Court Justice Justice Potter Stewart, who in 1964 wrote of “the strongly felt American tradition that the public interest is composed of many diverse interests, [which] . . . in the long run . . . can better be expressed by a medley of component voices than by the majority’s monolithic command.” Guinier herself added, “In that ‘strongly felt American tradition,’ I hope more of us come to reject the ‘monolithic command’ of The Fixed Majority.” [Her capitalizations.]

Somewhere, on the spectral sidelines of intellectual history, Calhoun is applauding. After all, two centuries earlier, he made much the same point when he extolled a politics that weighs votes as much as counts them, “considering the community as made up of different and conflicting interests, as far as the action of the government is concerned; and takes the sense of each.”

The Calhoun-Guinier parallelism is so strong that Yale Law’s Stephen L. Carter allowed for the connection in his foreword to her book. Other legal observers have been even blunter, e.g., “Strange Bedfellows: The Political Thought of John C. Calhoun and Lani Guinier.” 

So yes, all those Democrats—mayors, governors, filibuster-minded senators—who look forward, from the minority, to vetoing Trump are following in the Calhounian tradition, even if they don’t know or don’t care.

For their part, conservatives might think more, and better, of Calhoun. He is, after all, featured prominently in Russell Kirk’s 1953 classic, The Conservative Mind; the author praises Calhoun’s “distaste for alteration; a determination to preserve an agricultural society; a love of local rights.” 

The Sage of Mecosta approvingly quotes Calhoun: “Irresponsible power is inconsistent with liberty, and must corrupt those who exercise it. On this great principle our political system rests.” Amid such thinking, concurrency, which brakes power, must have its place. 

So with Madison, Kirk, and Calhoun in mind, conservatives should practice restraint, because, well, that’s what conservatives are put on earth to do. Such restraint might mean for example, not seeking to use federal power to chase down progressivism even in its native blue dots. Squeezing too hard can create a sympathy vote, a backlash, maybe even a counterstroke. 

To be sure, the exercise of restraint can’t guarantee that the left will reciprocate, but if there’s no restraint, we descend into Schmittianism.

Instead, if both sides recognize that one size does not fit all, over the long run, both sides will be happier and the country more harmonious. 

For its part, MAGA has never been known for its emotional or constitutional punctiliousness; yet practical history, too, cautions presidents against overreach. Joe Biden grabbed for too much in his one and only term, and many other presidents came to grief in their second terms. 

So the wheel will turn. And when it does turn, the right will be glad if it never sought to stamp out or purge vital Madisonian/Calhounian institutions, most notably the U.S. Senate. 

Today, some of the Trumpiest of Trump supporters are saying that the Republican Senate ought to fall into line with MAGA, including all its personnel picks. Well, that’s not the way the Senate is supposed to work, as attested by the Constitution—or more recently, by such more accessible works as John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, James Burnham’s Congress and the American Tradition, and even Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent (which was made into a movie, for even more accessibility). 

All these works laud senators for standing on principle, embedding their stances in the meta principle of concurrency. Yes, concurrency is the underlying faith that institutions—competing with each other—should matter more than passions. And if the institutions endure, so will the republic. 

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