Left versus right is ruining democracy

[dudacek]

The two-party system is the single biggest roadblock to a healthy democracy by the people, for the people and should be abolished.

It is a poison that perpetuates tribalism and adversarial relationships, prevents consensus building, squashes reason and demolishes trust.

Why are people unwilling to discuss a better way?

[North Buffalo]

2 hours ago, dudacek said:

The two-party system is the single biggest roadblock to a healthy democracy by the people, for the people and should be abolished.

It is a poison that perpetuates tribalism and adversarial relationships, prevents consensus building, squashes reason and demolishes trust.

Why are people unwilling to discuss a better way?

Because, though it does all the above things except tribalism.  I actually think it decreases tribalism, though it still exists within each party.  Multi parties would just separate out the tribalism.  Part of the reason for the adversarial relationship is the result of the two parties being so close in popularity.  When one party dominates, it can build consensus without as much threat from the other party and allow for reaching out to the other side without a threat of losing overall control.  Multiparties don't solve your problem however and in many cases exacerbates these issues.  Part of the problem right now is technology and the speed at which information is sent out without proper vetting from more sources then ever before.  Backroom politics use to provide for compromise.... the backrooms have been exposed and are continuously being exposed by technology and the speed of information for good reasons too... but the loss of them has caused a lot of cover to be blown off the ability to make compromises.  This has nothing to do with a two or multi party system though imo.

[Eleven]

7 hours ago, dudacek said:

The two-party system is the single biggest roadblock to a healthy democracy by the people, for the people and should be abolished.

It is a poison that perpetuates tribalism and adversarial relationships, prevents consensus building, squashes reason and demolishes trust.

Why are people unwilling to discuss a better way?

The more parties, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Try to get either of the big two interested in that, though.

Edited July 18, 2018 by Eleven

[LTS]

As a registered independent... I despise both the Democratic and Republican parties for the twits they keep putting up for office. I welcome a much broader spectrum than the pseudo-factional Elephants and Donkeys.

As for why we don't look past the two party system?  We suck, as a population.  We can't use our brains to process options.  We hate them.  People, honestly, don't want to think. If you had to present a third side to an argument, let alone a fourth or a fifth, the entire conversation would be ignored.  People can't handle it because it takes time away from worrying about their next status symbol purchase or what mindless television show to watch.

Imagine the news spending 10 minutes explaining 5 different party solutions to a problem.  People would turn it off.  

That said, I wish people wouldn't.  I wish they would be more interested in how the country operates than spending 16 hours binge-watching a television show. I wish the media would actually spend time introducing alternate viewpoints.  There are plenty of third party sites on the Internet, but until mainstream media picks it up, there's no chance of people being interested.  I was excited when CNN actually held Libertarian town hall meetings.  I think it was a step in the right direction (even if it had been some socialist party instead of Libertarian).  

Debates need to have multiple parties involved as well.  This would open the eyes of people.  I believe it would also lessen the attack responses that the two party system invites in which a candidate never answers what they would do, they only tell you what the other candidate can't or won't do.  It's much harder if there are 5 people on stage.

All in all, introducing a wider spectrum of viewpoints into society and thus into Congress would be great.  It would or should make the government a bit more central thinking.

[darksabre]

I've long felt that coalition style parliamentary government could be a better option, but I always stop just short because I wonder if it would be too volatile for such a large and diverse country like ours? I feel like the two party system, by design, tends to temper short-term whims and provides a more stable government. 

I don't know. Just thoughts I've had on the subject. I would be in favor of a system where people felt better represented and were more likely to vote because of it. 

[dudacek]

I don’t want multiple parties. I want none.

Pick the person that best represents the interest of your community as a local representative and have that person lobby, vote and negotiate on your community’s behalf.

Substitute state or nation into the above statement for the other levels of government.

Use forms of direct democracy more often and in a more streamlined fashion.

Representatives should have loyalty to their constituency, not their party. Voters should be supporting good legislation, not an organization.

Edited July 18, 2018 by dudacek

[darksabre]

1 minute ago, dudacek said:

I don’t want multiple parties. I want none.

Pick the person that best represents the interest of your community as a local representative and have that person lobby and negotiate on your community’s behalf.

Substitute state or nation into the above statement for the other levels of government.

Use forms of direct democracy more often and in a more streamlined fashion.

I dunno man, people inherently form up into groups based on ideology. It feel like it would be really tough to not have political parties. 

[Eleven]

14 minutes ago, dudacek said:

I don’t want multiple parties. I want none.

Pick the person that best represents the interest of your community as a local representative and have that person lobby, vote and negotiate on your community’s behalf.

Substitute state or nation into the above statement for the other levels of government.

Use forms of direct democracy more often and in a more streamlined fashion.

Representatives should have loyalty to their constituency, not their party. Voters should be supporting good legislation, not an organization.

Well, we can't ban them in the US without amending the Constitution, so we're stuck with the concept, at least.

[darksabre]

Plus, I think the point of having organized parties (in theory) is to be able to regulate them. If you ban parties what you really end up with is underground political parties, where all of the problems of campaign finance are even more sketchy. I don't know how you would practically do it without making things worse. 

[LTS]

2 hours ago, dudacek said:

I don’t want multiple parties. I want none.

Pick the person that best represents the interest of your community as a local representative and have that person lobby, vote and negotiate on your community’s behalf.

Substitute state or nation into the above statement for the other levels of government.

Use forms of direct democracy more often and in a more streamlined fashion.

Representatives should have loyalty to their constituency, not their party. Voters should be supporting good legislation, not an organization.

Beyond the other items, having NO parties creates a logistical nightmare.  For any given election how do you limit the ballot?  Who is allowed in a debate?  There are a litany of items that would need some realistic limit or else they would be rendered useless and thus hindering the system more.

 

[dudacek]

We could figure it out. It’s just the entrenched system that gets in the way.

[Taro T]

On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 9:44 AM, dudacek said:

I don’t want multiple parties. I want none.

Pick the person that best represents the interest of your community as a local representative and have that person lobby, vote and negotiate on your community’s behalf.

Substitute state or nation into the above statement for the other levels of government.

Use forms of direct democracy more often and in a more streamlined fashion.

Representatives should have loyalty to their constituency, not their party. Voters should be supporting good legislation, not an organization.

Sounds good in theory.  

Don't see any way it would work in practicality.

Really believe a bigger problemin the US is that the 2 major parties are now solidly left & right.  This really is a phenomenon that only happened in the last 35-40 years.  (And really happened so fully in the last 20.)  It was a good thing having "Blue Dog" Democrats & "Rockefeller" Republicans, IMHO.  They've pretty much disappeared from the landscape - definitely at the national level, seemingly at the local & state levels as well.

[jsb]

1. We are not strictly a democracy otherwise Hillary would be our president right now
2. You have control over who your representative is, you want a Rockefeller Republican or Blue Dog Democrat, vote one in, don't expect another district, city, state to vote one in for you
3. A big fallacy is people don't vote because they don't have a major interest in the ballot, closer to the truth is because people are too stupid and lazy. An example of that is when an education fund gets voted down. If all the people who have kids got off their lazy @ss and voted for it, it would have won overwhelmingly.
4. The Parties are a conglomeration of people who don't necessarily think alike but band together to matter. Republicans... gun enthusiasts, anti-abortionists, lower taxes-less government interference-less regulations while Democrats lean towards more government regulation, environmentalists, freedom of choice, etc.... None of these ideas necessarily agree with each other but it's a you have my back, I'll have yours
5. Our biggest problem as I see it is the demonization of people who don't agree with us. They aren't evil they just disagree with us

[Drunkard]

I believe gerrymandering has led to polarization on steroids. There's very little compromise these days in Washington because our elected officials are more concerned about losing their next primary election to someone who is deeper blue or deeper red than losing their bid for re-election in the general. This fuels the us vs them mentality and short of one party controlling everything we basically grind to a stalemate, go back to our corners, and blame the other side.

We need more purple districts to lead to elected officials who serve a more diverse constituency. That would lead to more compromise and more deal making allowing things to get done.

[Eleven]

2 hours ago, Alkoholist said:

I believe gerrymandering has led to polarization on steroids. There's very little compromise these days in Washington because our elected officials are more concerned about losing their next primary election to someone who is deeper blue or deeper red than losing their bid for re-election in the general. This fuels the us vs them mentality and short of one party controlling everything we basically grind to a stalemate, go back to our corners, and blame the other side.

We need more purple districts to lead to elected officials who serve a more diverse constituency. That would lead to more compromise and more deal making allowing things to get done.

I don't disagree with your conclusion regarding purple districts, but given that Elbridge Gerry died a couple of centuries ago, the practice that bears his name must be at least that old.  Query why it is affecting things now that it was 200 years ago.

[5th line wingnutt]

4 hours ago, Alkoholist said:

I believe gerrymandering has led to polarization on steroids. There's very little compromise these days in Washington because our elected officials are more concerned about losing their next primary election to someone who is deeper blue or deeper red than losing their bid for re-election in the general. This fuels the us vs them mentality and short of one party controlling everything we basically grind to a stalemate, go back to our corners, and blame the other side.

We need more purple districts to lead to elected officials who serve a more diverse constituency. That would lead to more compromise and more deal making allowing things to get done.

Part of the gerrymandering is "natural".  Big cities tend to be Democratic, rural areas Republican.  New York City is heavily Democratic and has 9 million people.  That is 12 congressional districts right there.  Other big cities are similar.

[SwampD]

Left versus right has alway been contentious, but I believe it was the banning of earmarks by Obama that has raised it to the level we are at now. 

In the past, you could get some votes from the other side if they could get something out of it as well, and legislation would get passed where both sides actually felt like they "won." 

Now, it's a winner take all scenario so ###### those guys on the other side of the aisle. There's no benefit to compromise anymore.

Bring Back Pork!

Edited July 26, 2018 by SwampD

[Eleven]

12 hours ago, SwampD said:

Left versus right has alway been contentious, but I believe it was the banning of earmarks by Obama that has raised it to the level we are at now. 

In the past, you could get some votes from the other side if they could get something out of it as well, and legislation would get passed where both sides actually felt like they "won." 

Now, it's a winner take all scenario so ###### those guys on the other side of the aisle. There's no benefit to compromise anymore.

Bring Back Pork!

I don't like "bridges to nowhere," but you have a point. And I'll freely admit that the *only* reason I support Cuomo (and supported Spitzer) is because they invested in Buffalo.  (Time for a gubernatorial thread soon!)

Edited July 27, 2018 by Eleven

[Drunkard]

17 hours ago, Eleven said:

I don't disagree with your conclusion regarding purple districts, but given that Elbridge Gerry died a couple of centuries ago, the practice that bears his name must be at least that old.  Query why it is affecting things now that it was 200 years ago.

It's definitely true that Gerrymandering has existed since long before the current political divide. I don't believed it caused the hyper partisanship we see now, I think it just exacerbates it (hence the steroids analogy). The way these districts are set up leads to so many of them being politically safe from an R vs D perspective and that makes it become more of a hurdle to compromise with the other side because you're vulnerable to attacks from your own side for being soft on key issues important to your red or blue base.

That's why the tea party won all those seats from establishment Republicans back in 2010. In the really red districts anyone who was perceived to be working with Obama and not part of the obstruction or bust strategy found themselves vulnerable, not in the general elections, but from members of their own party in the primaries.

[Drunkard]

15 hours ago, 5th line wingnutt said:

Part of the gerrymandering is "natural".  Big cities tend to be Democratic, rural areas Republican.  New York City is heavily Democratic and has 9 million people.  That is 12 congressional districts right there.  Other big cities are similar.

I get this, but they still make it worse by carving up districts block by block in order to pack or spread the demographics to levels that didn't exist in the pre software age.

[Drunkard]

13 hours ago, SwampD said:

Left versus right has alway been contentious, but I believe it was the banning of earmarks by Obama that has raised it to the level we are at now. 

In the past, you could get some votes from the other side if they could get something out of it as well, and legislation would get passed where both sides actually felt like they "won." 

Now, it's a winner take all scenario so ###### those guys on the other side of the aisle. There's no benefit to compromise anymore.

Bring Back Pork!

This is another great point. Pork spending allowed these elected officials to compromise and go back to their constituents with a reward for that compromise. Many people may not have been happy overall with that latest spending bill but if they were able to secure some funds to build a library, dredge their harbor, or fix some potholes they at least had some sort of feather in their cap to hold up to their voters.

[Randall Flagg]

I wasn't really sure where to put this, so I'll just put it here. Each side is always such a monster, innit? I spend weeks seeing headlines all over social media and legitimate news sources talking about the "Unite the Right" gathering of  neo-nazis, and how white supremacy is just bubbling under the surface of our nation ready to explode, and how it drove literally half the country into voting in the guy they don't like. 

And then the rally happens, with all the media imaginable gathering earnestly, and there are literally twenty losers sitting there in the street. What a hysterical, pathetic sight from multiple angles.

I'm sure we'll still be treated to 1,000 articles about the dark cloud, the evil elephant in the room. 

Which news corp was it that drove out to east bum- nowhere to find and interview a random neo-nazi in his house in rural PA? That was so illustrative of the whole thing. 

And the same exact thing happens in the other direction, too. 

And yes, I know the immediate history of "Unite the Right." But people have lost faith in pillars of the western world. The open platform provided by freedom of speech lets moron neo-nazis make fools of themselves. They don't show up because they don't want to be embarrassed in person and be shown to the world as losers. Their ideas lose in the public court of debate and scrutiny, as they should. And in places where being like these people is forbidden by law, well, quite frankly, there are far more sinister politicians in those countries, especially as you move east through Europe, but even in the UK, than the single worst one in the U.S. in this regard, I'm confident in that. There is no serious public hold that this garbage ideology has at almost any level here. (Now that Bannon is gone teehee)

Unfortunately we are never going to fully be rid of these ideas, people will always be the same, but what we have in place is the best way to quash dangerous race nationalism and ensure that it gets no serious political foothold. 

There are far more valuable discussions to be had, and far more relative contextual lenses to look through, than talking about how we're 1931/32/33 Germany, pitting literal communists against literal fascists on a precarious national-policy-and-identity tipping point.

[LTS]

Well, if you think about it.  Extremism drives viewership and engagement.  The middle is boring.

So, what's going to get covered?

People really own think in terms of their own experiences.  As such, if they're not exposed to a moderate way of thinking they will only view the world in us vs. them terms.  This problem is compounded when people refuse to go out and broaden their own horizons and instead get their information from agenda driven media outlets because what they really care about is sitting down and binge watching something on Netflix for the next 12 hours or talking about some television show for countless hours.

I don't see this changing in the future.  It's on a rising spiral of who can yell louder and make more extreme positional statements.  Yesterday I saw a sign about "An EPIC event".  I don't even recall what it was for.. but really.. an EPIC event?  Where do you go from there?  What's bigger than EPIC?

We need to dial it back, as a society.  We need to lower the focus on controversy so it reduces people focus on being controversial.

It doesn't ever go away. But people pushing those extreme agendas can certainly be pushed back into their corners and be marginalized.