Kick da Bums Out Mentality and Democrats

[D.Turtle]

What? Did you miss that Specter lost his primary, Blanche Lincoln almost lost her primary (and will definitely lose the general election)? In the House there are a lot more progressive challengers too.

The problem is that this cycle almost none of the "moderate" Democrats in the Senate are up for a vote.

In the House, most of the Blue Dogs will lose in the general election anyway, so there will be more ideological unity for the Democrats in that chamber (which is already relatively liberal in comparison to the Senate).

[Eframepilot]

The problem is the Senate. It's completely broken. The filibuster has become a 60 vote supermajority requirement at a time when partisan polarization is at an all-time high and appointments and votes are strangled by secret holds and languish for months or years. Oh, and they work for, like, three days per week!

As long as the Senate remains in its current condition, the Democrats will find their ability to push through important legislation (like additional necessary fiscal stimulus, immigration reform, or climate change mitigation) extremely hampered. It was a miracle that health care reform passed, even in its limited form.

Oh, and the whole thing is ridiculously unrepresentative. 2 Senators from Alaska and from California?

tl;dr, it's not the Democrats' fault, it's the rules that don't work.

[Akhlut]

Oh, and the whole thing is ridiculously unrepresentative. 2 Senators from Alaska and from California?

While I agree with the rest of what you wrote (for the most part), the fact is that the Senate was designed this way as a counterbalance to the proportional representation of the House. The basic idea is that the Senate keeps more populous states from dicking over smaller states and prevent a sort of tyranny of the majority as far as population density goes. It doesn't always work that way and can help bigoted assholes keep other people down, but it prevents other sorts of abuses as well. It's a mixed-bag.

[MKSheppard]

The problem is the Senate. It's completely broken

.....

Oh, and the whole thing is ridiculously unrepresentative. 2 Senators from Alaska and from California?

Jesus; someone completely failed reading comprehension of the US political system and why it was set up this way.

The Senate was intended to be a brake on sheer populism by making the senators APPOINTED by govenors (this was overturned by the 17th Amendment); and it was intended to allay the fears of the smaller states at the constitutional convention that their interests would be ignored and run roughshod over by the larger states.

Meanwhile, over in the house you have 53 representatives from California, versus just one from Alaska.

You'll be singing a different tune in January 2011; when it's the democrat controlled senate subverting the republican controlled house...and it will be the "calm collected senators who are keeping the screeching teabaggers in the house in check."

[Serafina]

Your system IS broken.
Because it is alternating because two extremes - either a 1:1 represenation where large states have lot's of power, or one where there is no difference due to size at all.
Let's take the german system for comparision: Our federal parliament is composed roughly 50:50 if people who were directly voted into that office and those who were appointed by their parties according to the amount of votes the party got. That already ensures that state interests play a smaller role, since many of the representatives are not bound to the interest of local voters, but rather just to voters in general (like it should be for federal politics).
We also have a secondary parliament, kinda like your Senate. Each state has a number of representatives there, determined by size. But that is not 1:1: the small states (some with less than a million inhabitants) have three votes while large ones (with more than ten million) have six votes, with degrees within that range. The representatives there are elected directly by state governments. This "senate" only get's to vote on things that directly affect the states, tough that's arguably the majority of our laws.


Federal politics are not only a matter of representing local interests and voters - they are also a matter of representing federal interests and voters. As far as i can see, your system fails in doing so on nearly every level. When representing local interests, neither a totally equal nor a 1:1 representation seem fair - the first will let small states drain too much resources, the latter does that for the large states.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok lets do this another way.

What could be done to fix this? Really?
I mean short of actual revolution and throwing everyone out, what possible way could we work to do ANYTHING to fix just how Fcked up US poltics are right now?
Because untill we do, I am just going to keep voting for every Dem I see.

Even if every Dem politician spent their time with their thumbs up their butts, it is STILL preferable to having more republicans in office. yes I DO consider that a valid selling point. In 2004 everyone said "theres no differance, its the same people, turd sandwich or giant douche." And then we got 8 years of Dubya showing us just how big a differance it really is.

[Eframepilot]

While I agree with the rest of what you wrote (for the most part), the fact is that the Senate was designed this way as a counterbalance to the proportional representation of the House. The basic idea is that the Senate keeps more populous states from dicking over smaller states and prevent a sort of tyranny of the majority as far as population density goes. It doesn't always work that way and can help bigoted assholes keep other people down, but it prevents other sorts of abuses as well. It's a mixed-bag.

The Senate was indeed designed that way - in 1787! The population differences between the largest and smallest states were not nearly as big. Now the system has become absurd. But really, I could tolerate all of the Senate's other eccentricities if it wasn't for the filibuster making a 60% supermajority requirement on nearly everything. That's just crazy, and it will make governing impossible until one party finally has enough and ends it when voting on the rules of the Senate at the start of a term.

[Thanas]

A) 2000. Learn your recent history.


B) So tell me, what is the big difference between Obama and Bush on civil liberties?

[General Zod]

B) So tell me, what is the big difference between Obama and Bush on civil liberties?

Obama seems to be in favor of repealing DADT? That's about all I got.

[Thanas]

Seems to be, but has not done anything so far.

Other than that, he successfully blocked every torture victim of the USA to have their day in court, claimed that he had the authority to order the killing of ciitizens without trial, continued wiretapping, expanded rendition, continues to use the state secrets doctrine, uses secret trials, declared that american courts have no right to rule over whether the USA tortures illegally obtained prisoners and named people to the Supreme Court who are in favor of expanding presidential power.


So why should anybody vote for him based on that, and how could a republican be worse than Obama on this front? I am seriously asking, because the only way a republican could be worse if he declared he personally would shoot prisoners after a torture picnic on the white house lawn.

[General Zod]

Seems to be, but has not done anything so far.

Other than that, he successfully blocked every torture victim of the USA to have their day in court, claimed that he had the authority to order the killing of ciitizens without trial, continued wiretapping, expanded rendition, continues to use the state secrets doctrine, uses secret trials, declared that american courts have no right to rule over whether the USA tortures illegally obtained prisoners and named people to the Supreme Court who are in favor of expanding presidential power.


So why should anybody vote for him based on that, and how could a republican be worse than Obama on this front? I am seriously asking, because the only way a republican could be worse if he declared he personally would shoot prisoners after a torture picnic on the white house lawn.

The Republicans might start getting ideas from Russia and begin using copyright laws to quash political opposition?

[Eframepilot]

Seems to be, but has not done anything so far.

Other than that, he successfully blocked every torture victim of the USA to have their day in court, claimed that he had the authority to order the killing of ciitizens without trial, continued wiretapping, expanded rendition, continues to use the state secrets doctrine, uses secret trials, declared that american courts have no right to rule over whether the USA tortures illegally obtained prisoners and named people to the Supreme Court who are in favor of expanding presidential power.


So why should anybody vote for him based on that, and how could a republican be worse than Obama on this front? I am seriously asking, because the only way a republican could be worse if he declared he personally would shoot prisoners after a torture picnic on the white house lawn.

Civil liberties are going to remain a nightmare as long as this "war on terror" continues. The Republicans may not be worse on civil liberties, but they certainly aren't better, and they would be more likely to expand the U.S.'s military activities. By all means, you should continue to highlight how bad Obama and the current administration are on this issue, but they remain the lesser of two evils.

[Simon_Jester]

Federal politics are not only a matter of representing local interests and voters - they are also a matter of representing federal interests and voters. As far as i can see, your system fails in doing so on nearly every level. When representing local interests, neither a totally equal nor a 1:1 representation seem fair - the first will let small states drain too much resources, the latter does that for the large states.

It was founded in an era when local governments held almost all the power: as I say below, before railroads and telegraphs. It's as if the Confederation of the Rhine had somehow survived into the modern era, and all pan-German government had evolved gradually from whatever institutions existed in the Confederation.

You'd be a deeply messed up country if that were the case, with a lot of bizarre quirks that could only be described as 18th-century holdovers. We're in the same position. Reform has been slow, and has become nearly impossible over the past half-century or so due to the rise of a self-congratulatory political conservative movement in America.

Note that by "political conservative" I don't just mean "right wing." I mean people who are reluctant or unwilling to seriously consider altering the way the system works. Either they don't understand the alternatives, or have convinced themselves that the alternatives must be inferior because they're not how we do it. It doesn't really matter what their views on issues like taxes, abortion, the military, and so on are. Americans across the political spectrum, even on what passes for the far left in the US, generally oppose any reform of the political system to take advantage of advances in the design of democratic governments since the 1780s.

While I agree with the rest of what you wrote (for the most part), the fact is that the Senate was designed this way as a counterbalance to the proportional representation of the House. The basic idea is that the Senate keeps more populous states from dicking over smaller states and prevent a sort of tyranny of the majority as far as population density goes...

So what?

Seriously, I can sort of understand why that was a good idea in the 1780s. Back then, there wasn't that much demographic difference among the colonies. The vast majority of the population was rural everywhere, with the exception of a few "major" cities that held only a small fraction of the American public. Thus, the only difference between the low-population and high-population states was one of physical size, so it made more sense to keep rural people in Virginia from arbitrarily being able to boss around rural people in Georgia just because there happened to be more rural people in Virginia. It was purely historical accidents that led to the population being distributed that way.

Also, at the time, the state was the primary unit of American politics, and the federal government was relatively unimportant because it was so far away from most of the country in an era before railroads and telegraphs. So that 'every state deserves representation' aspect was more important, because of the fear that a state, as opposed to "the people in the state," would start using the federal government to its advantage.

Ever since the American Civil War, the situation has moved away from that and is now laughably far away from that. The vast majority of the population lives in urban or semi-urban environments; some metropolitan areas alone (which exist entirely within one state) contain ten times more people than some entire states do.

Meanwhile, even the diehards have come to think of themselves as "Americans" more than "Pennsylvanians" or "Georgians." All really important issues in the modern era of US society are determined at the federal level, and by federal politicians who appeal directly to the people, with the states as nothing more than unusually powerful provincial governments.

Therefore, the "every state deserves representation" argument holds very little water because, as a practical matter, the states are not independent entities. Maybe they were in 1800, but they aren't now. They do not have a right to representation in and of themselves. Their people do... but why should the half million people of Wyoming have a right to as much representation as the thirty-five million people of California?

The only purpose that serves is to make it possible for a political party to screw over thirty million Californians by appealing to three hundred thousand Wyominians. Where's the justice, or the good government design, in that?

Face it, our system is packed with measures that only exist because they appeal disproportionately to the 20% or so of our population that is still rural. This minority receives far more protection than any other in our society's history, despite the fact that they don't contribute all that much to the nation's strength or economic well-being.* It's ridiculous.

*Many rural states receive more money from the federal government in aid than they pay in taxes... then turn around and vote against federal aid to anyone that isn't them and against the taxes they already aren't paying.

[Thanas]

Civil liberties are going to remain a nightmare as long as this "war on terror" continues. The Republicans may not be worse on civil liberties, but they certainly aren't better, and they would be more likely to expand the U.S.'s military activities. By all means, you should continue to highlight how bad Obama and the current administration are on this issue, but they remain the lesser of two evils.

According to your say so? After Obama vastly increased the commitment to the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and is still going to pay for a troop presence of tens of thousands of troops in Iraq? Pray tell, where would the Republicans expand the acticities to now?

Also, if you had seen Robert Gibbs in action, he clearly believes people who are in favor of civil liberties should get drugtested.

[Akhlut]

Seriously, I can sort of understand why that was a good idea in the 1780s. Back then, there wasn't that much demographic difference among the colonies. The vast majority of the population was rural everywhere, with the exception of a few "major" cities that held only a small fraction of the American public. Thus, the only difference between the low-population and high-population states was one of physical size, so it made more sense to keep rural people in Virginia from arbitrarily being able to boss around rural people in Georgia just because there happened to be more rural people in Virginia. It was purely historical accidents that led to the population being distributed that way.

Also, at the time, the state was the primary unit of American politics, and the federal government was relatively unimportant because it was so far away from most of the country in an era before railroads and telegraphs. So that 'every state deserves representation' aspect was more important, because of the fear that a state, as opposed to "the people in the state," would start using the federal government to its advantage.

I think that that fear is still founded (though using our current system is almost certainly not the best way to go about it), however. While we are working with federal level government and policy, it still affects member states and can do so harmfully if there aren't certain barriers in place that can help to prevent it (for instance, Western states trying to redirect water from the Great Lakes to their own states due to their own stupid water usage). Hence, I like the German model that Serafina mentioned where it is proportional, but the number of representatives is a lot smaller, with only between 3 and 6, depending on size.

Therefore, the "every state deserves representation" argument holds very little water because, as a practical matter, the states are not independent entities. Maybe they were in 1800, but they aren't now. They do not have a right to representation in and of themselves. Their people do... but why should the half million people of Wyoming have a right to as much representation as the thirty-five million people of California?

The only purpose that serves is to make it possible for a political party to screw over thirty million Californians by appealing to three hundred thousand Wyominians. Where's the justice, or the good government design, in that?

To protect the interests of Wyoming in general if the interests of California in general try to infringe on them, would be my general argument. If the ten most populous states (who, between them, hold 50% of the population) decided that they needed to completely hand over all federal land in Alaska over to development companies, who could stop them? While an unlikely scenario, I'm using it as an illustrative anecdote.

Thus, we run into another problem: states currently suck at what they are. Some of them are way too big, others are way too small. We either need more of them or less of them (which would also allow for a more intelligently made legislature). I think that is a much bigger issue of contention. Our Senate would be a lot more fair and just if our divisions of states were a lot more fair and just. If we redivided all the states to make sure they each included 10 million, then that'd be a lot easier on everyone all around, I imagine (for instance, stick the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Montana together and you get a state with about 10 million people in it, or one roughly equivalent to Ohio or Michigan in terms of population).

[Agent Sorchus]

Thus, we run into another problem: states currently suck at what they are. Some of them are way too big, others are way too small. We either need more of them or less of them (which would also allow for a more intelligently made legislature). I think that is a much bigger issue of contention. Our Senate would be a lot more fair and just if our divisions of states were a lot more fair and just. If we redivided all the states to make sure they each included 10 million, then that'd be a lot easier on everyone all around, I imagine (for instance, stick the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Montana together and you get a state with about 10 million people in it, or one roughly equivalent to Ohio or Michigan in terms of population).

Do not do the bolded part. You also have to pay attention to how easily local laws would be formed. In this theoretical state conditions vary too much between to have fair and just laws. It would also be a nightmare to manage the lands and resources, depressing the richer states for little gain in the poorer. It is better for this to be settled in the Federal budget rather than trying to locally equalize it based on population.

Yes some states shouldn't really exist, namely Rhodes Island and I wouldn't cry if Wyoming went away, and others probably should be split better (North and South California), But you have to consider other things than just population when doing so.

[Eframepilot]

According to your say so? After Obama vastly increased the commitment to the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and is still going to pay for a troop presence of tens of thousands of troops in Iraq? Pray tell, where would the Republicans expand the acticities to now?

Iran. Cheney wanted to attack Iran. McCain would likely be attacking Iran soon if he had been elected. The Republicans are worse.

Also, if you had seen Robert Gibbs in action, he clearly believes people who are in favor of civil liberties should get drugtested.

Bashing left-wing critics is sadly something both parties do. Do you have any reason to believe that the Republicans would be better on civil liberties? The Republican party these days advocates the resumption of waterboarding suspects.

[Akhlut]

I was mostly lumping those states together based on the fact that they are more similar to each other than to other states, just based on existing borders. Ideally, we would form entirely new, organic borders and could do so again every 50 years or so to equalize things like culture, population, and the like.

[Thanas]

According to your say so? After Obama vastly increased the commitment to the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and is still going to pay for a troop presence of tens of thousands of troops in Iraq? Pray tell, where would the Republicans expand the acticities to now?

Iran. Cheney wanted to attack Iran. McCain would likely be attacking Iran soon if he had been elected. The Republicans are worse.

Chestbeating by Republicans aside, attacking Iran now would be impossible, and McCain knows that. It is a good way to score political points, but the US is in no capacity to fight another war.

Bashing left-wing critics is sadly something both parties do. Do you have any reason to believe that the Republicans would be better on civil liberties? The Republican party these days advocates the resumption of waterboarding suspects.

And Obama himself supports rendition to places where even worse stuff happens.

[Channel72]

According to your say so? After Obama vastly increased the commitment to the unwinnable war in Afghanistan and is still going to pay for a troop presence of tens of thousands of troops in Iraq? Pray tell, where would the Republicans expand the acticities to now?

While his record on civil liberties is lamentable, Obama is still a vastly superior choice than any potential Republican candidate. His scientific/environmental policies alone make this a clear choice. A Republican administration will outlaw stem-cell research, do absolutely nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and potentially place another right-wing idiot on the Supreme Court making it all the more likely that someday Creationism will find its way into public school curricula.

[stormthebeaches]

Tell me Thanas, what would you have American progressives do? Vote for a third party? Stand aside and let the teabaggers take over the entire country?

[MKSheppard]

Seriously, I can sort of understand why that was a good idea in the 1780s. Back then, there wasn't that much demographic difference among the colonies.

Um. No.

As of the 1790 Census; Virginia with 454,983 free population had 9.1 times the population of the smallest state; Delaware, which had 50,207 free population.

Here's a little chart.

All really important issues in the modern era of US society are determined at the federal level, and by federal politicians who appeal directly to the people, with the states as nothing more than unusually powerful provincial governments.

Incorrect. States have significant amounts of autonomy and freedom of action within the constitutional framework, and can pass restrictions more powerful than federal laws -- witness California's regulations on everything. It's why you have to read "the state of California has determined that this product causes cancer" on a bottle of water.

It's also worth noting that the states do pay for a significant portion of the National Guard apparatus.

While they obviously cannot pay for 300 x $2.5 million Abrams tanks; they do pay the majority of the paychecks for National Guard personnel; and the Governor of that state is the CINC of that state's guard, when operating in a non-federalized status.

(interesting aside; because the District of Columbia is not a state; the President acts as CINC for the D.C. National Guard -- usually, this is delegated to the Department of the Army.)

Interestingly enough; tensions are increasing between the Federal Government and the State Governors over control of the Guard.

Fun fact -- all 50 Governors objected to a law that changed the Insurrection Act; allowing POTUS to federalize the Guard over the objections of the Governor, even for an internal natural disaster versus overseas combat ops.

This was brought on by Bush trying to federalize the Louisiana National Guard during Katrina; but then-Governor Blanco refused to hand over control.

So instead Ted Kennedy and John Warner slipped in this change as part of the 439 page 2007 Defense Authorization Bill.

So now the States are creating their own militas, like the Virginia Defense Forces under direct control of the Governor.

But why should the half million people of Wyoming have a right to as much representation as the thirty-five million people of California?

California has 53 Representatives. Wyoming has one.

Also; I like how you leave out the fact that the House and Senate have unique powers assigned to each body as part of checks and balances:

• The House has the exclusive authority to initate revenue and spending bills.
• The House has the exclusive authority to initate an impeachment trial.
• The House choses POTUS if there is a deadlock in the Electoral College.

On the other hand; the Senate has some exclusive powers:

• The Senate approves Cabinet Members, Federal Agency Heads, Ambassadors, Supreme Court Justices, and Federal Judges.
• Treaties can only be ratified on a 2/3rds vote in the Senate.
• The Senate has the exclusive authority to convict a target of an impeachment trial.

The House holds that it has EXCLUSIVE power to legislate the funding of the federal government. Each time the Senate has originated an appropriations bill; the House simply refuses to consider it...so all the Senate can do is amend the house bill or outright reject it.

This allows the states which contribute the most taxes to the federal treasury (e.g. the big states) to control the appropriations process through the House; while giving some measure of protection to the smaller states via amendments introduced via the Senate.

Face it, our system is packed with measures that only exist because they appeal disproportionately to the 20% or so of our population that is still rural.

No, they exist as part of a deliberately staggered series of checks and balances that the Founders larded the government in as insurance against any one group of people from becoming inordinately too powerful.

[Serafina]

No, they exist as part of a deliberately staggered series of checks and balances that the Founders larded the government in as insurance against any one group of people from becoming inordinately too powerful.

That may well be, but it's outdated, was conceived for an utterly different society, without a lot of real-world experience to draw upon and apparently doesn't work very well.

Really, i don't get why US-americans rever their political system that much. It's deeply, inherently flawed due to the way it was founded and conceived. That was not the fault of it's founders, they had no way to anticipate how the future USA would look like, nor could they know all the mechanisms and challenges for a government.

Your political system is just two over hundred years old. You won't fix it by infusing new blood into a rotten corpse. You have to get rid of the corpse and adopt a new system.

[Thanas]

While his record on civil liberties is lamentable, Obama is still a vastly superior choice than any potential Republican candidate. His scientific/environmental policies alone make this a clear choice.

What great environmental project has he accomplished so far? He tried to sabotage the climate change congress at Kopenhagen (and succeeded), he has not managed to get any kind of CO2 emission reduction bill through the senate - in fact, he did not even fight for the last bill but quietly let it die.

A Republican administration will outlaw stem-cell research do absolutely nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and potentially place another right-wing idiot on the Supreme Court making it all the more likely that someday Creationism will find its way into public school curricula.

Notwithstanding the fact that he has done nothing on the enviromental front, the only good thing you can take from here is that he is not as much of a crazy fundamentalist. That merely makes him a do-nothing whimp or a powerhungry president who does not care much about civil liberties, hardly a ringing endorsement.

Note that nowhere have I disputed that Obama was a better choice than McCain. However, his absolute whimpyness has me convinced that Clinton would have been a better president, at least she has a reputation for not taking stuff lying down.

Tell me Thanas, what would you have American progressives do? Vote for a third party? Stand aside and let the teabaggers take over the entire country?

Quite frankly, where I in your position, I would honestly consider staying home in November. That might send the right message. Note that after Clinton was defeated, he actually became more of a fighter simply because he had to. Also, do not vote for Blue Dogs who do not share any ideology besides "I want to stay in power".

More importantly, get involved in the political fight. Donate to left-wing candidates, go to rallies etc.

[Einzige]

As the old cliché goes, I've said it before and I'll say it again: the reason for the repeated failures of the Democratic Party to tangibly advance the goals of "the Left" is because it has made no attempt to modernize its ideology (and rhetoric). Any Party that thinks the problems of 2010 are the same as those of 1912 or 1932 is going to fail, and fail miserably. We are far past the point that a government controlled by megabusiness can successfully reign in megabusiness. The State is the left and the corporation the right hand of the owning class, and the two are currently locked together in a death-grip. It will require a massive institutional failure on the part of the Democratic Party before a political organization representing legitimate change can take its place.

Both parties are ridden with internal contradictions, and have been since the duopoly formed in the 1850s. It just so happens that the Republicans, probably by virtue of being the younger Party, has managed to keep its tensions better-concealed.