Sander’s not a democrat. He’s an independent, but is a part of the Vermont Progressive party. he is only in congress because he’s from Vermont… he’d never get anywhere in a presidential election and I suspect he realizes that.
But I’d sure as hell vote for him!
As far as I can see, it’s still too high. Perception is not fully in line with reality.
Okay… I’d read that sci-fi story. Go write it!
I don’t think people vote for Congressional representatives because the candidates platform matches their own but becauseone is less objectionable than the other. We need to change our method of counting votes so that people are not afraid of losing their vote by voting for a minor party candidate who actually represents their views.
Public opinion of Congress reaches a new low
Which, in combination with this. . .
Pretty much verifies that the system is completely and utterly hopeless.
“…new low of 7%…”, not surprising at all.
/looks at graph
Wait. It was once as high as 42%? Even during the Vietnam war?
Well, let’s not forget that selling “government is dysfunctional” is actually a strategy of approximately half of the people running for government, as well as a huge media empire that supports them.
There are two sides of the “government is dysfunctional” coin. One is the “this government is dysfunctional because it is loaded with obstructionists,” and the other is, “all governments are always dysfunctional so we should obstruct everything they do as much as possible.”
Basically at this point it is a given that a Republican Congress will be dysfunctional, but it is not at all a given that people who think it is dysfunctional think that the people who are making it dysfunctional are the bad guys.
(As a contrast, Ontario just had an election where the “government sucks” party should have sailed to a clear victory over the incumbent party based on scandals carried out by the incumbents. It seems, though, that the hard sell of “all governments are corrupt” has led people to shrug at corruption, and a mismanaged campaign by the “government sucks” people saw them losing very badly. It came across as quite the petard hoist.)
I’m just going to cut to the chase and admit that everything you said is absolutely true.
I’d rather have a viable third party than accept the existing pendulum, but you’re still right - if we have to choose between the two groups, the Democrats have a far better record (in the 20th and 21st centuries, anyway) and are more likely to make things better for 99.99 percent of Americans in the future than the existing Republican party is.
Do Kennedy and LBJ count? 
I guess not, and FDR/Truman was a special case too, wartime and all that. The last case of two Democrats in a row before that was Pierce and Buchanan in 1857…(and well regarded by history, they are, too).
Do Kennedy and LBJ count?
If you count voting with a bullet. 
Too soon?
FDR/Truman was a special case too, wartime and all that.
Right, and note my usage of modern American history in context.
I went back and showed the last 40 years. That’s plenty of time for a lot of corporatist, ping pong damage and status quo stagnation to manifest itself (as it has).
And, of course, if you back far enough in time, the two parties change so much as to flip flop with each other at times.
But, yeah, if we elect two Democratic executive administrations consecutively, it will be unprecedented in modern American history. And if we can muster getting out enough Republicans to thwart filibusters from Congress, it’ll also be the first time in over 40 years that we can stop having the DINO and bluedog Democrats having the Republicans as a convenient excuse for how shitty and/or stagnant things are for the middle and lower classes.
I’d like to see how a lot of the Democrats behave when they don’t have a proper scapegoat in place to “justify” their actions and inactions. It’ll truly separate the liberal Democrats from the corporatist DINOs and I think that’ll be a good thing for America in the long run.
I think the effect will be that a good percentage of the hardcore Democratic base will then either usher in a third party to the left of the DINOs, vote more truly liberal Democrats into office to unseat them or both.
It’ll at least be nice to see what happens when the corporatist right that controls both DINOs and Republicans is faced with a party that actually has some amount of will to represent the American public instead of them and only them.
Are you sure you really want that?
Ha, no… not that kind of liberal democrat - More like this kind of liberal democrat and this kind of third party.
To be fair, Nick Clegg would be seen as a communist over here. I don’t think he’d disagree with anything in that definition of liberal democrat.
I like Rocky Anderson though - he and Jill Stein were the two candidates I liked most in the last election.
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