Agreed about the credibility of an anonymous article. Vox would do well to explicitly vouch for it.
But this throw-away line struck me as valuable:
>Why try to get on a good committee if you have already ceded authority to your unelected, unaccountable party leaders?
This, it would seem to me, is the most troubling aspect of all of this (to put it mildly). If the tacit assumption is true (that congresspeople cede their authority to unelected party leaders) then we do not live in a democracy, we live in something like a kleptocracy.
The congresspeople are still technically free to vote apart from the party, so it's still technically a democracy. But that and other factors (incl. the gerrymandering, money in politics, etc mentioned in this article) certainly lower the "level of democraticness".
Among other gems, it traces a "bill" through all the of the real process of Congress, as it has existed in the 21st century (IIRC that piece was written by a congressman; the language eventually gets stuffed into a much larger bill after party negotiations).
The sample chapter available for free from the linked site is also very good for understanding the evolution of the Senate.
But this throw-away line struck me as valuable:
>Why try to get on a good committee if you have already ceded authority to your unelected, unaccountable party leaders?
This, it would seem to me, is the most troubling aspect of all of this (to put it mildly). If the tacit assumption is true (that congresspeople cede their authority to unelected party leaders) then we do not live in a democracy, we live in something like a kleptocracy.