I hate being pessimistic and rarely am, but the problem in this case is largely structural and unfixable in the near term. It consists of two elements. First, the U.S. president, though often described as the world’s most powerful person, actually wields little power within the overall U.S. political system. Second, many of the players whose cooperation is necessary in uniting the nation have little incentive to cooperate. Combine those realities and it’s hard to see how today’s white-hot partisanship gets significantly cooled down.

The problem’s first element: As political scientist Richard Neustadt famously observed in 1960, “Presidential power is the power to persuade.” Dictators can and often do force factions to unite by threatening to destroy them otherwise. But Neustadt and one of his former bosses, Harry Truman, noted that the president can barely force anyone to do anything apart from giving orders to the armed forces. He or she certainly can’t make Congress obey orders. But still – what’s to stop a president from emulating Lyndon Johnson and deploying masterful persuasive powers to get legislators to cooperate and enact historic measures such as civil rights laws and Medicare?

The answer is the problem’s second element: Congress has changed since Johnson’s day, with Democrats becoming more liberal and Republicans more conservative. Common ground has virtually disappeared. Through years of escalating inter-party warfare, congressional districts have been redrawn to the point where almost none of them are competitive. As a result, the problem is especially acute in the House, which influences everyone else. To win, you just have to win the primary, and primary voters tend to be each party’s most extreme members. Let’s adopt the uncharitable but realistic view that most legislators want above all to be reelected. In Johnson’s day you did that by appealing to voters of both parties, which required at least some cooperating with the other side. Today you win by being a hero to your party’s most extreme voters. To them, cooperating with the other side is treason. Your incentive is no longer to cooperate. It’s the opposite – to thwart the certain ruination that the evil opposition is plotting, whipping your supporters into a frenzy of anger and resistance.

No president, however well intended, can defeat those incentives or overhaul this structure. The one glimmer of hope is distant. Beginning to redraw districts to make them more competitive would start to change the corrosive incentives. Districts get redrawn based on the decennial census, next scheduled for 2020. So the absolute soonest we could begin to see change would be in the 2022 mid-term elections for the Congress that would be seated in January 2023.

None of this means we can’t fix our hyper-partisanship, but it means that no president alone can do much about it, regardless of fine sounding pledges in victory speeches. It will take all of us, and it will take some time.

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What We're Reading Today

Election Day at last
And Hillary Clinton is the winner in the traditional Dixville Notch, N.H., midnight voting. Clinton got four votes, Donald Trump two; Gary Johnson and Mitt Romney (as a write-in) each got one. CNN

With 90 million expected to vote...
...thousands will monitor the election. Trump has repeatedly urged supporters to observe polling stations for signs of a rigged election, increasing the pressure on  local officials and both parties to prevent intimidation or voter fraud. The Supreme Court denied a Democrat request for a restraining order against Trump supporter Roger Stone’s political organization, Stop the Steal, which will be conducting exit polls.  USA Today

Many Hillary supporters are wearing white
Though it's long after Labor Day, many female Clinton supporters will don white dresses, blouses, or pantsuits, representing the color of the suffrage movement. The trend took hold after Clinton wore a white pantsuit at the final debate. Fortune

Democrats could take the Senate  
Prognosticators expect the Democrats to win control by a small margin; Republicans currently hold 54 seats. Key races are in Pennsylvania, where Dem challenger Katie McGinty leads GOP incumbent Pat Toomey, and in Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Indiana. WSJ

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington...
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CBS hires Moelis and Goldman Sachs...
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LeEco CEO cuts his salary to 15 cents
Billionaire CEO Yueting Jia made the announcement, adding he would invest $10 million in the company to ensure it has enough cash on hand. The Chinese tech company wants to expand in the U.S. while also developing a self-driving car, but some question whether it's trying to expand too quickly. TechCrunch

Up or Out

Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz will replace his Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss on Lyft's board. Fortune

Lumber Liquidators CEO John Presley has resigned, to be succeeded by COO Dennis Knowles. Richmond Times Dispatch

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Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman backs BlackRock CEO Larry Fink...
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How to watch the election results tonight
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