Its pretty fucked up when Dems get more votes for House candidates, and the Pubbies end up with more seats. And the people who can fix that are the ones who benefit.
It’s silly for another reason too.
We saw an interview last fall where he said blithely that of course Congress would agree to make public college free, and when asked by the interviewer what would happen if the Republicans didn’t get in line, he shrugged and said, “We’ll get millions of college students to march through Washington and demand it, and they’ll come around.”
In addition to demonstrating a poor understanding of what motivates Republicans (and as you say what motivates their supporters), it also brings up the question of why he hasn’t done this sort of thing already. You don’t have to be president to organize a march. The man’s been in Congress for what, thirty years? Think of all the things he could have accomplished had he just led a few protest marches in that time!
That’s why they ain’t about to fix it.
The only way to fix it would be multi-member districts or some form of strict proportional representation. Both would likely require constitutional amendments.
The demographics don’t favor current republican ideology. The generation of white conservatives that voted for Reagan is retiring or beginning to die off, and the generation of white suburbanites who grew up mindlessly worshiping his legacy is approaching middle age. But not every gen-Xer adored Reagan, and the millennials and digital natives (along with 10-15 million immigrants over the last 10-15 years) are tipping their hand that they are about to take the country in a different direction.
Republicans are very much aware of this, and they’re beginning to figure out that their propaganda machine isn’t working the way it once did. They’re down to their last card, which is to send vote suppression efforts into overdrive. That’s why we need democrats in power at the state level more than we need a Bernie Sanders in the White House. That’s also why we need a pragmatic democrat - any democrat - who can nominate a left-leaning justice to the bench.
Even with a democrat in office, I wouldn’t put it past republicans to continue filibustering nominees. They might even filibuster nominees even if another justice - say Ginsburg, for instance - retires. I could actually see them shrinking the court. They’d argue that the people didn’t vote for liberal justices and there’s nothing in the constitution that requires a specified number of justices. People like Ted Cruz might just gamble that they’d keep getting reelected by their constituents despite being historically unpopular outside their states.
Any amendment, any reference to the Constitution that endows states and local governments with ‘rights’, privileges, and powers needs to be removed. States do not have rights; they have powers, and they have shown a propensity to abuse those powers time and time again.
Didn’t say I had an easy way to fix it, said it was kinda fucked up. You disagree, some rationale you can offer?
He isn’t even up to the “I’m Just a Bill” level, is he?
That may or may not shut him up.
Good luck with that. You must not have taken US history yet.
I am no Sanders fan and have by now come to believe he is a malignant self-absorbed idiot, but it is not unreasonable to think that his ability to inspire protest marches and people power might be stronger shouting from the bully pulpit of the presidency than as a fairly unknown Senator from Vermont.
Yes still naive, yes he was ineffectual in Congress, and yes he can still use people power to support Clinton’s getting things done that were shared agenda items after the election, but not really fair to think he could have done such march approach before now.
Getting a million college students to march accomplishes nothing. If Bernie had any political sense, he’d focus on getting those million students to vote, especially in mid term elections.
Hear, hear. Look at how Reagan reacted to the Berkeley Free Speech movement. [Cliffs: his inclination was, to put it mildly, not to give in to them or even negotiate.] Right wingers would just pit themselves against the “anarchists” threatening the sanctity of the Republic or whatever.
That’s nice to say, but if the reality was defeating Democratic incumbents and nominating unelectable lefties resulting in a Republican majority, wouldn’t a lot of people currently criticizing Bernie say that’s more of the same bad tactics?
My side has already experienced that, losing a lot of winnable races because our base does vote and as a result has nominated some losers. Delaware and Nevada should both have Republican Senators today and we’d be well positioned to get up to 60 by 2018 if we’d only been smarter. There are advantages to the base being disconnected, and the main one is that the seasoned establishment types select electable candidates. The downside of course is that the electable types don’t have firm principles.
There’s always tradeoffs. If the Bernie supporters do everything they need to do to increase the strength of their movement, that’s going to be necessity weaken the Democratic Party in the short term, just as the Tea Party movement has weakened the Republican Party in the short term(yeah, we won two midterms, but the two elections previous featured us losing a lot of races we really should have won.)
adaher’s concern for the health of the Democratic Party is touching.
I think Bernie would make a crap President. But I hope his followers have the strength for the long haul–in other races & in future election years.
I’m hardly concerned, in fact I’m quite glad Clinton is the nominee, because a) she’s moderate and will not damage my agenda in any way while in office, and b) she’s beatable.
I’d be perfectly happy to see the Democratic Party either be permanently moderate or fall into civil war. Or better yet, just come around to my way of thinking.
But for me this is an intellectual exercise not an emotional one. I’m just trying to understand and relate to what Bernie voters are thinking, because I also tend to side with the Tea PArty on a lot of issues relating to the internal divisions of the GOP. I’d rather see a Democrat than some of those corrupt K street Republicans in charge. I suspect that many left-wing Democrats see things the same way.
Okay, get to work on getting the states to do that.
And then, start figuring out what to do with all of the things that the states were handling.
State-level income and sales taxes? That’s Congress’s problem now.
Running governors’ races? That’s Congress’s problem now as well, although I don’t see what good having governors would be since everything has to be handled at Federal level anyway.
Fixing potholes in streets? State and local governments no longer have the power to do that - call Congress. Oh, and if the election of Representatives is changed to reflect the statewide party vote count rather than doing it by district, and you live in a rural area, have fun trying to find anybody who will show any interest in that.
Harry Reid tells Bernie that it’s over.
I expect they’ll be a lot of both public and behind the scenes pressure on Bernie to concede after Tuesday. They can offer carrots such as convention speaking spots for him and his surrogates. They can offer the stick by making him a virtual nobody in the Senate, even punishing him with undesirable committee assignments and a bad office.
It is over for Bernie because even if Clinton does have to be denied the nomination it won’t be for Bernie. It’ll be for Biden.