I would think that if anyone already knew the answer to this question it would be the commenter who proudly describes themselves as “unshaved.”
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Well yes, political evolution is inevitable and no doubt subject to social pressure. So change will happen. But to what end?
My (admittedly biased) concern is that the entities best positioned to take advantage of the long game have been rigging the game for decades already. Makes one rather pessimistic.
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Yes. You have to compromise. Welcome to democracy where there is no such thing as a candidate that matches your beliefs perfectly or would do everything you want them to do (unless you’re running).
Politics, at its very core, is the art of compromise. You can’t have everything. If everyone chose a candidate that matched their beliefs perfectly, then those candidates would have to compromise anyway in order to get a majority. You’ll still be upset (because they compromised) and probably still complain about it.
A) Do you like this system?
B) Do you feel like most Americans are well represented?
C) If not, what do you recommend?
I’m pretty open-minded about possible solutions, but it’ll be a tough sell to get me to think one side is substantially different than the other.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that’s the case. It still matters which party does better when influencing a country with a huge economy.
The difference in parties is the difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, vs. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
We know which of those people have done a better job with running America than the other.
Well, you know that American politicians having corruption hardly means that other nations don’t have political corruption.
Any more than my car’s tires being flat means everyone else’s tires are fully inflated.
If you think the Republicans and the Democrats are the same you aren’t paying attention.
Its the Republicans that have led us to two near defaults, a shutdown, and now with control of both houses even more deadlock.
Its the Republicans that want to make sure LGBT people are second class citizens.
Its the Republicans again that have their head in the sand when it comes to climate change. Despite there being an overwhelming scientific consensus.
Its the Republicans that want to privatize public education.
Its the Republicans that want to cut taxes on the rich/have a flat tax/shutdown the IRS. Depending.
Its the Republicans that don’t want to pass immigration reform, or even fund Homeland security so that they can deal with the problem on the border (Btw, which was caused by the United States. Turns out deporting criminals only causes those criminals to be someone else’s problem. Then eventually grow into our problem again, when the people who are afraid of them swell at our borders in seek of refuge).
Again, I don’t love the Democrats. I think they could have more backbone, and be more competent overall but again at least they want to govern and move this country forward. While the GOP at every turn has proved it doesn’t want to govern, and isn’t going to provide real solutions to real problems.
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Thank you for proving my point by describing only policies that involve choosing niche victim populations. Meanwhile we’re still at war, bankers got away with ripping off huge swaths of homebuyers and laundering terrorist and drug cartel money, and marijuana is still illegal. That is, they are the same when you look at the policies that negatively affect the majority of the voting population regardless of who they vote for, and positively affect those who already have power and resources to bribe the political class to maintain the status quo.
I have a hunch that you don’t own a uterus and are not a member of a racial or sexual minority.
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That’s true, but I’m married to someone with a uterus and I’m raising someone with a uterus, and I’m concerned that not much is being done by either party to make this state/country a better place for them.
In our recent senate election, the Republican and Democrat candidates shared a number of campaign donors. What should I make of that?
My feelings are irrelevant. We have the system we have, and we know how to change it. Ireally hard, but not impossible. The 17th Amendment changed election law, so we know it’s possible.
So keep on having opinions, but your opinion really isn’t more powerful than the Koch brothers.
I agree with you that the Republicans and Democrats are not nearly as different as they ought to be. But when you talk about issues affect niche populations @bbfreak put climate change and privatization of schools on that list of things, and those are not niche issues.
Now I have some issues with those. Climate change always seems to be an issue with two sides: people who give it lip service and people who refuse to give it lip service with no one who actually does anything. I’m not sure that dismantling public education is really on the republican agenda, but if it is then that would pretty much be the last straw and America would officially be a third world kleptocracy (as voted by the American people!).
I think to argue a big difference between the two you need to point to what has actually happened while they were in power. On that note, war, no rule of law for bankers, and imprisoning around 0.74% of the population point to policies that are destroying the country that seem to be spanning the parties.
Then again, do we really think the Iraq war would have happened if Gore was president? I don’t. Afghanistan, maybe, but maybe even then he might have taken a different direction. On pot, I think the difference between the Republicans and Democrats is probably about 4 or 8 years - the difference is mostly generational rather than party based. For bankers, I think there are some outliers in both parties who would have really gone after them, but I don’t think any of them are likely to be presidential candidates or house leaders.
I think that there appears to be a real difference between the two parties. I also think that the way the election system works makes voting pretty almost pointless in far too many places. Then again, when I looked at voting patterns in Canada (which, admittedly are far more volatile than the US) I found that the only rule you could count on was that the future resembles the past right up until it doesn’t. Sudden reversals happen. Ultimately voting is a bit like wearing a seatbelt. Most of the time it doesn’t make any difference at all, but you never know when it will.
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[quote=“Humbabella, post:73, topic:53686, full:true”]I found that the only rule you could count on was that the future resembles the past right up until it doesn’t. Sudden reversals happen. Ultimately voting is a bit like wearing a seatbelt. Most of the time it doesn’t make any difference at all, but you never know when it will.
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That. There is change happening locally and from my few college level history courses I know that it definitely happens look at what the Democrats and Republicans stood for 150 years ago. Where is the Whig party these days? Also historically 3rd parties at least in 'Murrica have tended to either make the closest leaning party wake up and change their platform to get those voters, or they taking over as the Republicans did to the Whigs.
Yeah, this is very a good point. If America is going to oscillate forever between D and R then the real challenge is to change what D and R mean. If a left-wing third party means vote splitting on the left and victory for R (and the converse) then when a third-party appears, the party most closely aligned with it must absorb it to remain competitive. The only way to do that is to emulate it.
I think what the Tea Party is going right now is basically being a third party from within the Republican party,and you can see them shifting establishment ideas as they threaten Republican seats (sure, the seat will still say “R” next to them, but they don’t listen to the house leader and the previous R’s lost their jobs [which is what politicians really care about]).
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Which war are we still fighting? As far as I know, Obama ended both wars Bush started and avoided getting into a half dozen wars that Republicans wanted. Are there a hundred thousand troops somewhere that someone forgot to tell me about?
Marijuana is has some form of legalization or decriminalization in over half the states in the US with four states/territories having full legalization. Let’s not kid ourselves, if Obama wanted to he has the ability to shut it down. The man is clearly just wants to avoid the subject and let the states deal with it which, they almost certainly will do in the next couple elections.
Duke Energy dumped a mountain of coal ash in our rivers. They also contributed tens of thousands of dollars to our Republican senatorial candidate, and to his Democrat competitor. You can raise the scary specter of the Koch Brothers, but it appears to me that both sides of the aisle take bribes. The specific donors may change (or may be the same, as with Duke), but the effects are the same.
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