Is 51% really enough anymore?

[Ravenman]

@IdahoMauleMan

Come on folks, let’s keep it up. Keep going. This is great. The SDMB ‘Great Debates’ at it’s finest, in my opinion.

Keeping it up is a great idea. The problem is that nobody is really arguing against the points made by xtisme, Whack-a-Mole, Manda JO and myself.

So, at the moment, it’s kind of like exhorting the Super Bowl champions to play another quarter of football.

[IdahoMauleMan]

@Ravenman

Keeping it up is a great idea. The problem is that nobody is really arguing against the points made by xtisme, Whack-a-Mole, Manda JO and myself.

So, at the moment, it’s kind of like exhorting the Super Bowl champions to play another quarter of football.

Exactly. That is exactly my point.

This thread seems like vitally necessary groundwork, and a precondition, for lots of other threads that generate far more passion, energy and (potentially adversarial) discussions on the SDMB. A lot of those passionate discussions are going on right now.

Glancing at the pseudonyms of the posters above, I would posit that SDMB members of varying different political stripes and persuasions have actually agreed on a number of very important things in this thread.

In the context of the current political cycle, for example, that common agreement could be expressed as a desire for both major parties, and their candidates, to re-affirm those things on which we agree. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, whomever. We should all insist that whatever candidate we are supporting, or perhaps even those we aren’t supporting, adhere to those basic principles on which we all agree. 100% of Americans should be able to agree to that.

I don’t want to spoil it, of course, by going right to the end and stating those things. I’ve tried that in other threads and get immediately jumped on as being insensitive, or stupid, or blindly following some particular idealogy or another instead of getting with the program.

And some of that may be my fault, due to my poor written communications skills. Which is one of the reasons I like participating in these threads. It helps to keep me sharp.

But what I try to point out to others from time to time is (what I perceive to be) huge internal contradictions and fundamental departures from these critical common points of agreement. Things that I thought we all shared.

And then sometimes I try and reel back the discussion to those starting points, so we can start from there and work our way forward. But I never seem to get much traction with that approach, and the volume and temperature seems to get higher and higher, instead of lower. So ultimately I give up.

But I like this thread. Because it seems to be doing - successfully, so far - what I have tried in other threads with dismal results.

[Whack-a-Mole]

This fellow had an interesting observation which I think is well made. Just a piece of a larger (and lengthy) article discussing a tyranny of the majority.

I believe that Alexander Hamilton gave a hint to the solution of preventing tyranny of the majority in the last Federalist Paper (85), when he wrote, in a different context, “The intrinsic difficulty of governing thirteen states at any rate, independent of calculations upon an ordinary degree of public spirit and integrity will, in my opinion, constantly impose on the national rulers the necessity of a spirit of accommodation to the reasonable expectations of their constituents.” Also, “Every Constitution for the United States must inevitably consist of a great variety of particulars in which thirteen independent States are to be accommodated in their interests or opinions of interest.” What I wish to argue here is that the founding fathers set up the government, via numerous mechanisms in the Constitution, in such a way that it was supposed to force, not compromise, but accommodation of numerical minorities, in order to achieve majority rule, and that there were more obstacles preventing the tyranny of the majority in more important issues than in less important ones. The greater the obstacles meant, at least for Hamilton, the greater need for mutual accommodation. The electoral college is one such mechanism, but there are a great many more.

SOURCE: Mechanisms For Preventing Tyranny of the Majority in a Democracy

[Pleonast]

@KarmaComa

Regionalism. It’s a big problem for democracy to have a country as monolithic as the U.S. If it were a looser confederation of half a dozen countries it would be easier to represent people’s wishes.

Where are you from that you consider the U.S. to be monolithic?

[The_Hamster_King]

@Voyager

Only Bush in my memory got less than 50% and acted as if he got 70%. I don’t know how exactly one expects to share the presidency, anyhow.

By compromising with the other side more often.

Part of the reason the Republicans are so screwed right now is that Bush pretended he had a huge mandate when he didn’t. In 2000 and 2004 the elections were very close. Bush and the Republican congress should have taken this as a message that their hold on power was very tenuous and if they wanted to keep it they should move carefully and compromise with the Democrats as much as possible.

Instead we got stupid talk about “permanent Republican majorities” and “spending political capital”. They acted like it was 1984 and they had an enormous mandate instead of realizing that they were clinging to power by their fingernails. The result is the backlash we saw in 2006 and again right now – a massive rejection of the Republican party.

[DanBlather]

@Acid_Lamp

I don’t often do political threads, so go easy on me here.

Let’s try it this way.

Suppose that in a given election candidate A supports going to war, and candidate B does not. we will also assume that the vast majority of voters for each candidate share those views. Now candidate A wins the election and takes us off to do battle for Mom and apple pie. (let’s leave the specific checks and balances aside here and speak in generalities if at all possible) Since President A only won by a very small margin, is it fair to spend the tax dollars of roughly half the population on a cause that they adamantly do not support? It doesn’t seem so to me.

It takes 60 people to get anything done in the Senate (such as passing a budget) so your example is a strawman.

[Chronos]

Part of the reason the Republicans are so screwed right now is that Bush pretended he had a huge mandate when he didn’t. In 2000 and 2004 the elections were very close. Bush and the Republican congress should have taken this as a message that their hold on power was very tenuous and if they wanted to keep it they should move carefully and compromise with the Democrats as much as possible.

Instead we got stupid talk about “permanent Republican majorities” and “spending political capital”. They acted like it was 1984 and they had an enormous mandate instead of realizing that they were clinging to power by their fingernails. The result is the backlash we saw in 2006 and again right now – a massive rejection of the Republican party.

Exactly. When political parties behave rationally, the other 49% really does matter: When your party just barely squeaks in with 50.01%, you have to seriously consider the possibility that the coin flip might go the other way in the next election. If you want your party to stay in power, you’d be well-advised to make some compromises with the other side and yield on some issues to try to get better (more reliable) numbers the next time. Sure, you can say that you have a God-given mandate, but as we can now see, that doesn’t work out so well.

Likewise, there’s a world of difference between winning with 50.01% and winning with 75%: In both cases you win, but when you win with 75%, the other side has to make far more compromises and yield on far more issues to have a hope of competing the next time.

As I’ve said before, this means that every vote really does count: Even if you’re in a situation where your vote won’t make a difference between winning and losing (in an uncontested state, for instance), your vote will still make a difference in the size of the margin of victory or defeat. That might not matter right away, but it will matter two or four years down the road, when people make decisions based on that margin.

[Markxxx]

Well don’t forget many laws are made simply through court decisions. For instance Gay Marriage is opposed by more people than support it but already the JUDGES in three states have said “it’s OK.” The same thing for a lot of the civil rights movements in the 60s.

The system is unfair. It’s ridiculous that California with 36.5 million people has as many senators as Wyoming with 500,000 people. This has historically and currently resulted in a disproportionate influence of agriculture and mining influence.

You also see a lot of pork in bills sponsored. For example if California needs something that could effect 36.5 million people one of their Senators may have to agree to vote for something a Wyoming senator would want, in order to get that vote, even though what the Wyoming senator may want may be only for a few people

On the other hand the system does stop the rural areas from being tromped on by the cities and suburbs.

But you can see too many levels of government makes for inefficent services and duplication. You can see in cities like Chicago which are hemmed in by suburbs that they lose business and development to cities in the South like Houston or San Antonio who’s city limits are much bigger.

What you’re looking for is majority rule and the classic question is “what’s wrong with majority rule?” Of course the answer is “what if the majority is wrong.”

The last few elections have been very close and had it not been for the economy 2008 would have been probably a repeat, however pollsters now see people not really supporting Obama so much as voting against the Republicans

[Henrichek]

@Acid_Lamp

I don’t often do political threads, so go easy on me here.

Let’s try it this way.

Suppose that in a given election candidate A supports going to war, and candidate B does not. we will also assume that the vast majority of voters for each candidate share those views. Now candidate A wins the election and takes us off to do battle for Mom and apple pie. (let’s leave the specific checks and balances aside here and speak in generalities if at all possible) Since President A only won by a very small margin, is it fair to spend the tax dollars of roughly half the population on a cause that they adamantly do not support? It doesn’t seem so to me.

How about letting group A finance and provide the manpower for the war?

[Der_Trihs]

@Markxxx

Well don’t forget many laws are made simply through court decisions. For instance Gay Marriage is opposed by more people than support it but already the JUDGES in three states have said “it’s OK.”

That’s not “making the law”. That’s insisting that the state adhere to it’s own laws, instead of ignoring them in favor of bigotry. It’s the people/state’s error in writing laws that were apparently more just than they intended them to be.

[Captain_Carrot]

@DanBlather

It takes 60 people to get anything done in the Senate (such as passing a budget) so your example is a strawman.

No, it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate when the minority party filibusters every fucking vote. It used to be that most bills came up to a majority vote.

[KarmaComa]

@Pleonast

Where are you from that you consider the U.S. to be monolithic?

Canada – but I didn’t mean monolithic in the homogeneous sense.