I look at things a bit differently as I don’t like any of the politicians currently governing (or not) . However I can respect the fact that they are playing politics within the confined rules they are given
It reminds me of an old saying, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Im actually ok with whatever the people want. If they don’t like it, we can start over with a whole new set of people (Congress)
I think things need to get a whole lot worse before enough people wake up and realize that government has gone too long unchecked by the very constituents they are supposed to be avocating for.
Fair enough, but it seems to me that some people went out of their way to elect fringe elements of the political spectrum. Thus we’re getting the government that “we” voted for, in that we’re getting it good and hard.
Briefly: oh sure, it’s legal to hold the economy hostage in order to deny healthcare to the working poor. It’s legal to hold the economy hostage in order let the Keystone Pipeline go through. And it’s legal to write a ransom note, saying you will destroy the good credit of the United States of America unless financial reform (Dodd-Frank) is repealed.
That doesn’t imply that any of that is moral, ethical, appropriate or neuro-typical. And since there’s no end to the hostage taking, the Democrats are doing the right thing by refusing to negotiate with terrorists.
On the Other Hand
But hey, I’m all for free speech. Those who call for a smaller government without specifying that they mean stopping the gathering of economic data during the worst downturn since WWII, flushing years of planned biomedical, technological and antarctic research down the toilet, and denying FAA registration licenses to newly built aircraft, thereby undermining US exports - those who support these things without admitting it explicitly- have a right to do so. I could refrain from calling such a position cowardly. But that would be wrong.
The problem is the middle in this country. Most people in America don’t want “pure socialism” level left policies, but they also don’t want “robber baron rape” level right policies. They want centrist stances between the two with fiscal responsibility tied in there somewhere.
The extremists (of both parties) get elected because they energize a minority to vote for them in addition to the the centrists who swing more for their particular party. For instance, the Tea Party came to power in direct response to about half of the country’s frustration over the ACA. Huge changes that weren’t adequately fleshed out to the population as a whole that could be incredibly expensive for the goal of insuring 30 million people. (I’m specifically avoiding the debate of whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing or what might be better.) I think you’ll find that a majority of people don’t mind expanding health care. They mind the run-away costs that tend to happen with programs like these.
The Tea Party knows that if they don’t deliver the goods they were elected for, they will probably get tossed out on their ears, so they are doing everything they can to make it look like they are doing what they “were elected for”, such as repeatedly voting on the repeal of ACA and this utterly nonsensical shutdown.
Back to my original statement: The problem is that the majority of centrists don’t make their political will be heard loudly and clearly for a variety of reasons. You can attribute it to Fox News or whatever makes your day, but the truth of it is that a large segment of our populace has written off the democratic process. We went from 54% of eligible voters actually voting in 1996 to 58% in 2000 and got to 60% of eligible voters in 2004 and 61% of eligible voters in 2008. In 2012 it had dropped back to 58%. People vote, get disillusioned because of the crazies in the process, and then go “meh” and place it on the priority list somewhere between mayonnaise and mustard.
Note for reference: From 1972 to 1996, the active voters at presidential elections fluctuated between 50% and 55%. 2004 was the first time 60% had been hit since the 1968 elections.
I’m kind of smiling, because the implicit conclusion in those voting statistics that you mentioned is that things were better when fewer people voted. Perhaps the increase in voters over those decades reflects that more whack-a-doodles are going to the polls?
I don’t suppose you could point to any pure socialist left policies that have been on offer, could you? The political debate in Washington is between raving batwing loony robber baron rape right wing policies, and center-right policies. There are maybe half a dozen progressive Congressmen in Washington, and they have virtually no political power. So I’m not sure the problem is with the “middle.”
I noticed you didn’t offer an example of extremist Democrats. See, this is another example of false equivalence. The Republicans have a powerful extremist right wing element called the Tea Party, so the Democrats must have a powerful extremist left wing element called the Fillintheblank. Well, no they don’t. The Democrats have Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren and maybe half a dozen others who are routinely ignored on all policy debates. There is no equivalence here.
Your flawed understanding has led to a flawed analysis. The real problem is that the American political center is to the left of the rightwing bat crazy Tea Partiests and the center-right Republicans and Democrats who are controlling the policy and discourse in Washington. Most Americans favor taxing the rich at higher rates, they favor closing corporate tax loopholes, they favor jailing CEOS and directors of larcenous big banks, they favor legalizing marijuana, they favor gay marriage, they favor a lot of things that are simply not up for debate in Washington because they’re to the left of the center right folks who dominate Washington.
:dubious:
Democrats are, in the majority, left of center. The Ds do have roughly 20-30 overall that are dead center and two/three that are actually right of center. But you make it sound like you have six leftist adherents and everyone is voting for the government shutdown or something.
If you consider the centrist Ds as “Center-Right” then that may be on your own political views, which is an entirely different conversation.
Because it wasn’t pertinent to the point. I also didn’t list the members of the Tea Party. But, to help you out, I can list probably 12 off the top of my head: Grijalva, Lee, Schakowsky, Norton, Ellison, Conyers, McGovern, Honda, Clark, Lewis, Rangel, Moore, Serrano, Moore, Bleumenauer…I could probably list more if I put my mind to it or used a website. These are the far lefts, and several of them hold sway with mini-blocks within the voting members of Congress. The guys you list? They are all closer to the center of the D party. And the extremes aren’t “ignored” they simply act like sane people and make their comment and/or move to vote. Extremism in ideology doesn’t mean you HAVE to chain yourself to a tractor to save the puppies/trees/puppy trees. Doing that above your extreme views just makes you crazy while also an extremist.
The Tea Party gain, as I specifically stated, was a (n over) reaction to the ACA. As a country we could have avoided this in a hundred ways. But instead, a single party acted unilaterally for something that roughly half the US was against for many differing reasons. This wasn’t an R vs D divide, there was a divide within each of the two parties, also. The Tea Party emerged out of this divide of the republican party (with a generous grant from some interested parties.) The Ds and non-Tea-Party Rs reacted to this by moving a bit closer to center overall. I suspect that the Tea Party is short lived after this stunt, though they may take quite a few Rs with them.
How am I misunderstanding? And if the politicians are all right of the constituents that are voting them into office…who’s fault is that? I know one might want to say that it’s all the Rs/Tea Party’s fault, but I would blame the voters. And discuss why they are voting like they do…sorta like I already did.
So, who’s proposed these issues as a bill? Have any bills failed sponsorship? Failed at the vote level? Failed after one house? Unless every single person in Congress is too far right to even propose such things, your statement is partisan nonsense.
On the other hand, if we were really being held back by “those people” than why is the popular vote itself almost evenly split in every presidential election, no matter the winning party? Look at the votes. In 2012, Romney lost by 5 million votes. In 2008 McCain lost by 10 million. In 2004, Kerry lost by 3 million and in 2000 Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000. Obama’s campaign in 2008 was the first to generate a 10 Million vote difference since Nixon vs Mondale in 1984. And he lost it in his next election. Even with that “large” difference of 10 million voters in 2008 between Obama and McCain that was only 7.2% of the active voters of that election. And it fell to 3.9% in 2012. Are we going to flop back to an R next time? History says yes.
It’s almost as if the center is trying to find the best outlet for it’s views and isn’t finding either of the two parties perfectly suited to what they believe.
I doubt that. I think it’s indicative of both parties being more interested in delivering sound bites than reasoned discourse over an issue. I would love it if the House and Senate Majority/Minority leaders would get onto TeeVee and debate the major bills and political actions (like this shutdown).
I think we wouldn’t have near the issues with partisan division as we have now if they would talk things out rationally instead of trying to get “The Dems/Pubs are Coming!” into the media as often as possible. When you read a story, now, it’s often along the lines of “Ds say that the shutdown is bad, as McSenator Guy says, “Those Rs are putting guns to our heads!” Rs say that the Ds are overstating the shutdown issue, as Housie McPerson says, “The Ds are trying to RAPE OUR HEALTH!” More after these ads!”
So, you don’t get to evaluate the soundbites made without spending time doing a lot of research and work on your own time, which a lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to do. All of the shenanigans that happen in DC are for the benefit of those with like ideological minds. If you strongly identify as D/R, you will go “YEAH!” to the statement in the last paragraph from your ‘team’. If you are more of a centrist, you look at both statements, roll your eyes at both and get back to something else you are dealing with.
Holy crap, are you posting this from Doctor Manhattan’s timeline? 
I agree with a whole lot of this which is why i’ve been saying for awhile now that I wished passing laws required more of a supermajority than the simple one it does now.
A requirement of 2/3’s, would almost guarantee that only things put forth that had backing by quite a bit of both parties would be viable laws.
Everything else would just wander in squallor.
Of course this also falls more in line with my thoughts for limiting governments size and scope (power) so it could be bias speaking.
Reagan! Do’h.
Everybody has to have a dream, I guess.
So, could a law be repealed with just over 1/3 of the vote, or would that require a 2/3 vote too?
I can see both sides of that argument, but it would probably halt all work coming out of the US Congress as the members wouldn’t vote for something unless they were paid back on their own bill. I would also only see it working anywhere near well if we had a single chamber of Congress instead of being bicameral.
In light of the last two weeks, this seems a strange time to advocate additional government paralysis.
Unless benefits are cut back, social security and medicare spending has to more than double over the next 25 years or so to support elderly baby boomers. This requires passing unpopular laws which cannot be expected to gain a supermajority. A la Krugman, 2013 is probably not be the best year for higher taxes and lower benefits, but either it happens eventually, or the country goes into default. And then it the decline in benefits and rise in taxes will be even greater.
Europe and Japan have more severe demographic challenges than we in the US do. But most other well-established democracies have the advantage of a parliamentary system without Hastert Rules and filibusters. We should be trying, in any small way possible, to make our government more like theirs.
The same requirement to repeal.
Phillyguy,
Then I guess benefits will have to be cut back, if we cannot pay for what we spend then we don’t spend it. Or 2/3’s will need convincing that spending it is good for all.
I don’t exactly want paralysis but i dont want tyranny either and when 55% of the country decides for the entire 100%, it sure feels strange. I do want bipartisan support across the board for all things.
I just feel that the limited amount of things that garner that support would directly benefit a lot more of the people.
I’d agree with you in the current climate, all work would halt.
I think the people would be pretty quick to realize that we may need a whole new crop of elected representatives though.
Nit pick: 55% of the people who decide to vote decide for 100% of the country, which is only around 1/3rd of the populace on presidential elections. This last presidential election, of 330 million people, 125 million voted (37%).
This works if there is a bipartisan goal of benefiting people. One side actively argues that poverty is not a problem because people have refrigerators and can get “universal health care” by going to the ER and skipping out on the bill. The “limited” number of things with broad bipartisan support is just going to be what the “no help” side wants to give.