John Boehner wants to sue Obama for "Not doing his job"

[Block]

I'm not sure I agree. I think you can point to CNN as the tipping point, where news started its slide into entertainment, which allowed for a coordinated message to start going out. You never would've had almost every conservative in the country moving in lockstep before then. The whole labeling of Rino didn't start til then too.

[Simon_Jester]

Elehru, in my opinion several of your proposed reforms are... rather ill-considered. At least one is outright stupid. I'm in a rush to wrap up this post, but if I have time this evening I'll go into it in more depth.

Chimera, the heart of the problem is that the Republican Party started pursuing a strategy of rounding up all the reactionary or semi-reactionary factions they could find starting around 1964-68. And they have their own pet corner of the 24-hour news cycle which has been methodically propagandizing that base, to make them more reactionary, more fearful of change and the Other.

So by now, there is a roughly 20-30% slice of the American electorate that is completely nuts, out of touch with reality to the point where they just do not and cannot perceive the world with any semblance of accuracy. And their nutsness does a lot to drive polarization all by itself.

Could you not introduce term limits for Congressmen? Would that be of use?

1) The Republicans explicitly ran in 1994 in their (successful) bid to take over Congress, campaigining on a platform called the Contract On With America. One of the planks was term limits. It conspicuously didn't happen. To be fair the Republicans tried to pass it in the House... once... and about 80-85% of them voted for it. Then the matter was dropped as the '90s rolled on.

Go figure.

2) The problem is not that Congressmen spend too long in office. The problem is that their districts are usually very firmly loyal to one party or the other, such that no event in national politics actually changes the outcome. This is why Congress has something like a 10-20% approval rating and something like an 80-90% reelection rate. Nothing a member of Party A can do in Congress will change the fact that his district is loyal to Party A. So if the member of Party A votes to blow up the government, he's still a member of Party A, and very few of his core voters will decide to vote for a member of Party B just because he's a horrible asshole who's sabotaging the government.

The people who are angry at him are numerous... but nearly all of them live in other districts. They are powerless to hold him accountable for his actions.

So incumbents become pretty much invincible, having secured for themselves what amounts to a pocket borough. It's not as secure as a real pocket borough, but it's pretty close because the party has the borough tightly under control.

Unless, of course, the incumbent gets knocked out of office by a primary challenger of the same party. Which in recent years usually results in him getting replaced by someone MORE fanatical and incompetent, not less so.

3) Practical upshot: kicking existing congressmen (or senators) out of office only matters if they are replaced by a different kind of congressmen. As long as the Republican Party keeps electing state-level representatives who are more afraid of looking weak than they are of failure to show basic common sense, we're not going to get a solution to the problem.

stuff

Look, I hear what you're saying, and I sympathize. I'm not exactly gung-ho about radical reform here.

But I do not accept the status quo anymore. I cannot. You can call that naive or idealistic or whatever you want, if you like. While obviously civil war or anything like that is silly, I think we probably have different definitions of what constitutes a disaster. Stagnation won't be the end of the world, no, the US will still be here, yes... but I'm a patriot, and I very much prefer the US that's there to be one I'm proud of. I take my citizenship pretty goddamn seriously, and if that's too naive for somebody, then fuck 'em, because I intend to be a citizen of this country whether they like it or not.

Great! In which case you need to take realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Let's hear that again:

Realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Complaining that what we really need is a massive, drastic change in the basic structure of government doesn't match any of the three key phrases I italicized. So I don't recommend it.

So you can say it's "mature" to shrug and accept it ("oh darn, things are bad, gee wiz what can little old me do about it. dunno, lol"), but I call that civic inaction. My argument is that the usual regurgitation of "write your representative!" is not effective and does not constitute civic action anymore.

Actually you're right about this in my opinion, but not for the reason you think. I read something interesting about this today as part of a larger article. The author is kind of foulmouthed and may be outright wrong about some things, but I think his perspective is worth considering.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/ ... ate_t.html

"The government shut down just shows that our government doesn't function correctly!" That's one interpretation, the other is that when a car starts to smoke, you pull over and fix it, you don't keep going till it explodes, though I recognize the explosion makes for better TV. What you're seeing is the ordinary back room realigning of interests and powers, but this time trying desperately to hide from a voyeuristic media that caters to a demographic, i.e. you...

The shutdown was the inevitable consequence of a government not permitted to compromise, smothered by the oppressive gaze of a kamikaze media that will kill itself and your country just to get a headline today. I'm starting to wonder if the reason it is always pretty white girls who get kidnapped is that the media is the one kidnapping them. And you blamed Bear Stearns for being too focused on short term profits? CNN's time horizon is your next micturition...

The media demands partisanship, conflict, opposing sides, but despite having 24 hours to fill will never, ever explain the interplay between complex issues, preferring to feature them in segments while hyping them to a crisis. Imagine trying to have sex always on camera, and always with a goat, and always with some know-it-all screaming at you,

"Get hard now! NOW! 8 seconds left! NOW! What's wrong with you?!"

"Jesus, can I take a minute and do this privately?

"Transparency!"

If Senator X "makes a concession" the relevant media will proclaim him a loser and a coward, they don't want representatives, they want cage fighters. There's no reward for compromise and there's no safe place to attempt it, either. This is 100% your fault, "I can't believe how stupid these people are!"...

If you want to know what political career disaster looks like, have an infinitely leggy ex-sorority girl in flesh toned Manolos sitting behind a glass table in perfect lighting announce to 50% of America that you were beat by an old woman from California or an old man from Ohio. "Ha ha, what a cuckold! Back to you, Kent."

You blame Congress? They are the ones who "don't get it"? When a representative democracy gets crippled by what amounts to a 3x3 magic square, it's not that they can't figure out the solution, the solution is easy, the answer is 15 and the five is a gimme, we just need someone to dare allow himself to be filmed putting the 1 on the left or the right or the center so we can finish the other 13 numbers and go bomb Syria...

I'm not saying the shutdown isn't a real problem, only that if the news came out only in weekly format, this particular shutdown wouldn't have happened. Or, said differently, if there was a government shut down at a time when the news came out only weekly, it would mean we were getting a new flag...

The problem with blaming the shutdown on Congressional partisans is that the partisans on either side know exactly what they want. When there are specific things you want, compromise is usually possible.

The public in the middle, however, don't understand politics, only emotions given to them by TV, and so their beliefs are cobbled together in real time, improvised, as they get "more information." One trending topic at a time, each vacuum sealed to prevent cross contamination. They don't look at things historically, culturally, humanistically, or even selfishly, there exists no system for interpreting "the facts." Compromise becomes impossible, as a simple example, when a "moderate" "thinks" there should be more restrictions on guns, they want gun owners to give up something they want very much-- in exchange for nothing. "But it's the right thing to do!" And the yelling starts, in HD...

Commonly, independents have a single personal issue, say gun rights or abortion, but no personal experience with other issues, and lacking any subjective starting point, they therefore believe that ONLY objectivity will give them the truth. The less life experience they have the better; the less they've seen of the world, the fewer people they've argued with (in person, where it is real and has real consequences like punches), the less frequently their water balloon worldview is tested by people with pins, the more they will cling to the premise that "facts" are what's important. In this way the one personal issue serves as a reference point which the propaganda exploits:

"Hey, gun advocates, did you know you like low corporate taxes?"

"I do?"

"Yes, because the people you hate are for raising them."

Consequently, raising corporate taxes is felt like an attack on the Second Amendment. "Liberals! Taking away our rights!"

As I said, I'm not sure I agree with him and personally I think that's a bigger problem on the right than on the left... but it's an issue on both sides and in the middle of American politics.

I think the observation that government shutdowns are related to the 24-hour news cycle is especially germane. Up until, oh, the 1970s, Americans normally didn't get news updates more than about once a day. Everything that happened the previous day, plus a few of the more confusing things that took multiple days to figure out, in one big thwack. The only thing being reported in real time was sporting events.

So there was no need for the media to keep drizzling information and commentary on us all the time. There was no obsessive reflection on whether this congressman was being cowardly or whether that senator might negotiate, and there was no need to treat politics like a prizefight... except, perhaps, in the culmination of a presidential race.

Now, politics-as-prizefight has taken over. The problem is that in a real prizefight, when you're beaten you are literally beaten, as in pounded on by a strong man until you can't get up anymore. Nobody looking at you is going to think you're a wimp; the mere act of climbing into the ring ensures some respect.

In politics, losers get no respect... and the losing side has no physical cue that they've lost, no equivalent to the boxer's bruises. As long as there is theoretically something they can do, some hostage they can take, to pursue their agenda... they'll try, because the alternative is losing and having the evening news go "haha, what a cuckold, back to you, Kent!"

And they'll keep pushing that line for days, repetitively and without bothering to do any in-depth analysis... because they need something to put on the news every thirty minutes for a week, and your decision to compromise rather than keep punching is the biggest news that happened that week. Repeating the same story over and over with slight variation in their choice of talking heads is easier than hiring real analysts who can explain why compromising was the smart move.

[Elheru Aran]

Crossroads is on target when he indicates the late 50s. This is when things started getting shaky for the conservatives at that time. Eisenhower's reforms in the area of civil rights started to overturn social norms that had been seen as right and proper by the right wing for centuries, and they started looking at reformer politicians within their own party kind of funny. This gets worse with Kennedy (a Catholic. Gadzooks!) and Johnson. When Nixon comes on the scene pandering to the conservatives, they decamped wholesale to the Republicans.

So you're looking at, oh, 50-ish years of the Republicans being the strictly conservative party of older white Christians who don't want social change, while the Democrats are the multi-racial, younger party that wants things to be better for everybody. That's pretty much how it is.

I'll shut up now... too many things to do today...

Simon, I'm aware that a number of the reforms I suggest are off-the-cuff, as indeed most of that post was. I've been distracted today, what can I say. If you'll point out what the stupid idea is and explain?

[Iroscato]

I see. Thank you all for taking the time to explain it to me. It's often more satisfying to have the knowledge come directly from an answer to a question than just reading it on Wikipedia or what have you, so I appreciate it.

[Phillip Hone]

Forgive my profound ignorance of US political history (I'm working on improving it), but HOW did things get this bad between Democrats and Republicans? It's literally like the US government is grinding to a halt, with two opposing equals refusing to give the other side an inch.
How did things get this ineffectual?

Long story short: It pretty much dates all the way back to the Civil War and before it, and it largely involves slavery and civil rights.

Bear in mind that the current Democrat=Left, Republican=Right thing is fairly modern (dates to ca. 50s, 60s). Back in the 1850s the fledging Republican party was the liberal party, with abolition being their primary platform. Democrats were the state's rights people supporting slavery. Then the Civil War ensues, and for a couple decades or so after that Republicans dominated American politics. However, a strong Progressive movement started popping up in the 18...70s? or so. The more radical Socialist elements were largely discredited after the assassination of William McKinley and various purges, but Theodore Roosevelt was a reformer President and got a lot of things changed.

Maybe this is a nitpick, and otherwise I really like your summary of what happened, but saying that abolition was the "primary platform" of the Republican party in the 1850s overstates it. Rather, they were centered on the more subdued goal of limiting its expansion, with the ultimate hope that limiting it from expanding into new states would ultimately lead to its demise. Of course, there were people like Charles Sumner who did favor abolition, and they were Republicans, but the party at that point was not really about abolition. Abolition became more central to it indirectly through the war.

[Maraxus]

Could you not introduce term limits for Congressmen? Would that be of use?

Yes it would. So would curing cancer, ending all war and either abolishing or universalizing religion among the American electorate. I'm not holding my breath waiting for any of these to happen though.

The hardest part of congressional reform is the proposed reforms have to pass a majority in Congress. That's why no one has fixed the filibuster yet, everyone figures they might need it sometime. So they're unlikely to vote for term limits on themselves, especially given how many are elderly and have been in position a decade or more.

Term limits are a TERRIBLE idea if you want to "fix" Congress. They don't make state legislatures any more effective and they have a deleterious effect on the body as a whole. You're removing people with the most valuable experience for essentially arbitrary reasons. It's really difficult to build the kind of long-term relationships between MoCs if they can't stay there for a while. Besides, why should constituents be limited on whom they should vote for? If a Rep or a Senator is popular enough to get consistently re-elected, shouldn't they be able to serve as long as they want? I happen to really like my Representative. She's a smart progressive woman who represents my interests quite ably. Why should I lose her as my Representative because you think Boehner's an a-hole?

(in no particular order:)

--Election reform. Eliminate gerrymandering. Eliminate the potential for outright fraud (see the current ongoing case with Scott Walker in Wisconsin). Regulate campaign donations far more strictly than they currently are. Strictly regulate campaign advertising; this one is more tricky with the free-speech thing, but it can be done, pass some law saying that "only the candidate's own campaign can actually produce advertisements" or something.

How would this work? how would you follow the Voting Rights Act without gerrymandering? What about in states that have particular communities of interest? What about city/county borders that don't follow any rational path?

How would you enforce that? Why don't people have a right to spend money on elections if they want to? You say "it can be done." How can it be done?

--Term limits. Something like 10 years House, 12 Senate, or however is best. You want to give Congressmen enough time in the office to have some influence on the governing process and get some experience with how the system works, but not so much time that they get entrenched in their position and attached to the cushy bennies.

Jeez. Party like it's 1994 over here. As I said above, term limits are an awful idea.

--Speaking of which: Eliminate a large portion of their benefits. Give them all a standard minimum of health care coverage; if they want more coverage, they can pay for it themselves (as you saw in my last post, most of them can afford it). For that matter, cut their pay. They're not there for the money, they're there to serve the nation. A minimum of free flights to and from their constituencies, and it's not going to be fucking first class. And another thing:

So you want people who already work like 80 hour weeks to get paid as little as possible. And live in a city that has one of the highest Cost of Living outside of NYC or the Bay area. And you want them to do this when they could be making millions in the private sector or in some lobbying firm.

This is a fabulous idea if you want the rich and only the rich to serve in Congress. It's an even better one if you want to give lobbyists even more power than they already have.

--Eliminate corporate and private lobbying as much as possible. Private citizens, if they want to advocate a cause, can organize to petition Congress. However, General Electric shelling out for a bunch of Senators to visit their new factory in, I don't know, Aruba? No.

How would you do this? How do you distinguish between "private citizens" (such as the Koch Brothers?) and less worthy subjects?

--Mandate that all bills have to be, oh, less than 500 words long and cover ONE subject. No add-ons. No pork barrel. No tacking amendments on to the end. And they have to be brought up, voted on, and pass/rejected within two weeks. No debating endlessly until nothing happens. All bills have to be pass/rejected by the end of the Congressional term. No leaving bills hanging in the air until they're conveniently forgotten the next term.

"And that's why I'm only going to allow SMALL bills! Three Pages! You'd have time to read that one over the dinner table!"

The annual omnibus spending bill alone covers practically every non-DOD related spending item in the US. You can't fund those departments if you're going to have dumb requirements like "Must be less than 500 pages! Only small bills! I don't like to read!" Do you have the foggiest idea of how legislating works?

--The most controversial thing: Have an option to shut down Congress and mandate elections. If Congress fails to function in some fashion (say, passing a certain number of bills in a set timespan, defaulting on the budget, etc), the President can invoke this with Supreme Court approval. Somewhat like the British system where the head of state can dissolve Parliament and order elections. While open to abuse, it allows the current President to stir the pot and see if things change. This one would require an amendment to the Constitution, though, I think...

Yes. This proposal that would radically alter how we work elections would require an amendment. I'm sure it'd be worth it though! All we need right now is more pot-stirring.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Great! In which case you need to take realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Let's hear that again:

Realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Complaining that what we really need is a massive, drastic change in the basic structure of government doesn't match any of the three key phrases I italicized. So I don't recommend it.

Well, yeah, that's the real trick, ain't it.

But you can't fix a problem if you don't correctly identify and diagnose it first. Is my bitching on an internet forum going to fix anything? No, of course not. I know that. But that in and of itself doesn't necessarily invalidate anything I said. Is my opinion useful? No, not necessarily, I know that too. But dismissing it out of hand because it's "complaining" doesn't really strike me as productive discussion.

Anyway, I agree with you that the US media is a problem. Now, I'm not convinced that it's the source of any problems. The CNN/Fox News/et al world is, I think, ultimately a pretty fleeting and insignificant problem, as annoying as it is right now. My generation doesn't give a rat's ass about 24-hour-news, meaning it has an inevitable death sentence already hanging over it, and the nail is further hammered into the coffin by its total reliance on an obsolete and dying communication medium (cable television). Yeah, CNN/Fox/etc are contributing to the political bullshit going on in this country, but it's in the same way a heckler on the sidelines contributes to an angry mob.

I still think the root issue is the fundamental organization of the legislative branch (or perhaps more specifically, the organization it has created for itself). There was a time when I thought "Oh, we just need to elect the right people using the right strategies" was a valid and attainable path to cleaning up Congress, but let's be realistic here: That's always been a ridiculous pipedream, perhaps best expressed by Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's a film all about hope in how one good, true, honest person can be elected to Congress and by the power of sheer goodie-two-shoesness right wrongs and make America better. It's a ridiculous fucking fantasy. A seductive one, one that Americans are brought up to believe in wholeheartedly, but a fantasy nonetheless. I think it (and the mindset which runs parallel with it) engenders this notion in the American populace that the problem is just the politicians. "Oh, if only x politician lied less, or y honest, good politician was elected, things would be better." It's a false premise, since it begins the argument by assuming the problems are the politicians in office and their intrinsic moral failures, rather than an intrinsic failure of the system in which they operate.

Now, I'm not saying you're making that argument, only that it's an argument which subconsciously runs through a pretty large swath of the American electorate. I see this type of cynicism in my parents and their generation: The politicians are bad, the system is good. I contend the opposite. There are a lot of pretty decent politicians, including some in Congress right now, but even if they had the sheer bloody-minded paladinhood necessary to remain incorruptible in the current climate, it's not like they could realistically do anything. Sure, there's tiny little bills introduced here and there that help out with niche issues (and boy do those politicians love trumpeting about how they got that little piece of insignificant, needlessly complicated legislation passed), but even a Senator is utterly powerless to effect any kind of positive outcome unless they bow and scrape and play the game of trading favors, riders, amendments, and party-line toeing to get in the right committees. To even begin to accomplish anything in the Senate (nevermind the House!), you have to corrupt yourself on Day 1. I see that as a fundamental, systemic failure.

I don't pretend to know how exactly to fix it. Which brings me back around to the original question I posed in this thread, half serious and half navel-gazing: Is there anything that can even be done (realistically) to fix a system which is, indeed, quite broke? Don't mistake me for some wide-eyed idealist: I have no interest in "reforms" which could never realistically happen. That engenders a deep cynicism, I'll admit, because it inevitably leads one to wonder if the system has become so broken that it can no longer be fixed at all. I don't really want to believe that, mind, but Cockbag McBoner's stupid little stunt (which I realize probably won't go anywhere and is little more than grandstanding: Like I said, the straw which broke the camel's back) has pushed me over a bit of a brink here. I feel like it's time to wake up and smell the coffee, and stop clinging to the delusion that "the system works."

[Patroklos]

How exact do you think your generation is not wedded to the 24 hour news cycle? Why do you think the 24 hour news cycle is in any way linked to cable TV.

Go load the homepage for The Huffington Post and News Busters and tell me how many articles were posted there in the last 24 hours about events within the last 24 hours.

[bilateralrope]

How would this work? how would you follow the Voting Rights Act without gerrymandering? What about in states that have particular communities of interest? What about city/county borders that don't follow any rational path?

The solution to that is obvious: Acts can be changed. At this point I'd say pick an algorithm that only looks at where people live and let that draw up the borders. Not saying that one interest group is more important than another, which is what you have to do any time they overlap.

Though I am curious: How does the voting rights act require gerrymandering ?

Though the solution I'd like to see would be the US switching to a proportional system where the number of politicians each party gets is determined by what percentage of the population votes for that party. Even if the system still keeps districts (eg MMP) the incentive for the major parties to gerrymander vanishes.

But I consider the US switching to a proportional system very unlikely.

[Simon_Jester]

[Reply to Bro-Cap way down at the bottom]

Simon, I'm aware that a number of the reforms I suggest are off-the-cuff, as indeed most of that post was. I've been distracted today, what can I say. If you'll point out what the stupid idea is and explain?

Sure.

--Election reform. Eliminate gerrymandering. Eliminate the potential for outright fraud (see the current ongoing case with Scott Walker in Wisconsin). Regulate campaign donations far more strictly than they currently are. Strictly regulate campaign advertising; this one is more tricky with the free-speech thing, but it can be done, pass some law saying that "only the candidate's own campaign can actually produce advertisements" or something.

Eliminating gerrymandering is rather impractical. Eliminating third party advertisement is REALLY tricky because you have to ban paid-for advertising without banning viral Internet videos (unless you want to totally shut down public participation in the national election debate) and op-eds (unless you want to ban media participation).

--Term limits. Something like 10 years House, 12 Senate, or however is best. You want to give Congressmen enough time in the office to have some influence on the governing process and get some experience with how the system works, but not so much time that they get entrenched in their position and attached to the cushy bennies.

This increases the incentive to find a lobbying position after they get kicked out of office, which increases the incentive to earn one. Also, in the current system many of the most practical and sane people in the Republican Party are the long-service congressional figures who predate the Tea Party, the Obama administration, Bush, and/or the Republican Revolution itself. If anything, it's the new guys who are the problem, and faster turnover in Congress wouldn't be helping us right now.

So this is a solution in search of a problem. But it's not actively stupid as such...

--Speaking of which: Eliminate a large portion of their benefits. Give them all a standard minimum of health care coverage; if they want more coverage, they can pay for it themselves (as you saw in my last post, most of them can afford it). For that matter, cut their pay. They're not there for the money, they're there to serve the nation. A minimum of free flights to and from their constituencies, and it's not going to be fucking first class. And another thing:

It's actually a really bad idea to have crappy pay for civil servants of any kind, or even mediocre pay for high-ranking ones, or anything less than pretty good pay at the highest level.

The reason is fairly obvious: the first thing a civil servant is tempted to do if he has a financial problem is use his position for personal gain. In ancient times most civil service positions carried NO salary... precisely because the official was expected to use his position for personal gain. It is only in recent times that this has changed... but it requires that civil servants get salaries and benefits at least vaguely commensurate with positions of comparable responsibility in the private sector.

Also, a number of those benefits are strongly correlated with the congressmen's ability to do their job, such as subsidized travel, having aides, pages, and staffers, and having security details. Remove the benefits and tell the legislators to make bricks without straw and things get worse, not better.

They're not serfs, you can't treat people with major decision-making power like Slaves of the People (TM) and expect it to work. It's completely contrary to both human nature and practical necessities.

--Eliminate corporate and private lobbying as much as possible. Private citizens, if they want to advocate a cause, can organize to petition Congress. However, General Electric shelling out for a bunch of Senators to visit their new factory in, I don't know, Aruba? No.

Hard to draw the line there, because there are a lot of organizations created by 'private citizens' to represent corporate backers. Ever heard of the United States Chamber of Commerce? If the ACLU has a right to lobby, why don't they?

--Mandate that all bills have to be, oh, less than 500 words long and cover ONE subject. No add-ons. No pork barrel. No tacking amendments on to the end. And they have to be brought up, voted on, and pass/rejected within two weeks. No debating endlessly until nothing happens. All bills have to be pass/rejected by the end of the Congressional term. No leaving bills hanging in the air until they're conveniently forgotten the next term.

This is utterly stupid for a mountain of reasons:

One, it doesn't allow for 'reconciliation' of conflicts between the House and the Senate. Sometimes they both want a bill but disagree on the details; your system doesn't have much room for bending the two bills and negotiating on them.

Two, it doesn't allow time for serious consideration of the consequences of a bill. Just doing a study on a proposed bill could take weeks or months, which is why a lot of bills spend a long time floating around in committee. If you want an example of a bill put together, voted on, and passed within two weeks... think of the Patriot Act. Which is a profoundly flawed document not just because it's long and complicated, but because it was passed in the concussed, fearful state of the nation immediately after 9/11. Which was the worst possible time for serious discussion of the relationship between freedom and security.

Three, there are a huge number of topics that simply cannot be compressed into five hundred words. For example, making a bill take legal effect as intended might require a large number of revisions to existing statutes, each of which requires its own paragraph. Closing loopholes may require further paragraphs.

Four, it doesn't allow for ANYTHING like a meaningful budget. There is no way to compress the US budget into 2500 bytes, which is about as much as you can get out of a 500-word document.

Five, there's no real reason for it. The 'advantage' of 500-word bills is that the layman is more likely to persuade himself he can fully understand the bill... but the problem is that because individual laws will say so little, a great deal will have to be left up to the interpretation and judgment of enforcement officials and the judiciary. I expect that this will cause the law to become harder to understand and predict, not easier.

Meanwhile, the other thing it's probably theoretically meant to do (avoid long debate on major bills) is arguably a BAD thing. Again, if a bill has far-reaching effects on the American people, I don't want the total duration of debate and discussion on the bill to be capped at two weeks. I think it is a GOOD thing that we take a few months to figure out how to implement a major policy initiative, because the consequences of half-assing such things are very serious.

--The most controversial thing: Have an option to shut down Congress and mandate elections. If Congress fails to function in some fashion (say, passing a certain number of bills in a set timespan, defaulting on the budget, etc), the President can invoke this with Supreme Court approval. Somewhat like the British system where the head of state can dissolve Parliament and order elections. While open to abuse, it allows the current President to stir the pot and see if things change. This one would require an amendment to the Constitution, though, I think...

This would definitely require a major amendment, because the US election cycle is hardcoded in the Constitution: there are literally NO provisions for changing the schedule to suit anyone.

That seems like a major failing on the part of the writers of the Constitution, leaving only one (feasible) way for the legislature to be reformed.

Call it a bit of shortsightedness. They didn't expect that a.) Members would hold office as long as they tend to have...

Actually they kinda did, or logically had to, because there was no explicit assumption by the Founders that term limits would be in place. Washington set a precedent for a presidential term limit by refusing to run for a third term... but he had ulterior reasons for doing so anyway.

b.) that they would give themselves as much power as they have,

That's bullshit, Congress was explicitly designed as the dominant branch of the government, with a relatively weak executive and judiciary to enforce Congress's laws and provide for the security of the nation. There is NO power held by Congress today that was not seriously intended for it by the Founders. Even gerrymandering was quite predictable and the Founders found out about it in plenty of time to correct it themselves...had they seen any need to do so, which apparently they did not.

and c.) that they've been a bunch of greedy bastards that see no reason to give up what they've given themselves.

If the Founders were too stupid to foresee that politicians would seek to secure power for themselves, then I see no reason to pretend that they were somehow wise but 'failed to foresee' how evil people would be. Hadn't they just got done fighting a war to establish independence from a government that they felt was exerting too much power over them?

They were avoiding the Parliamentary system where the head of state tends to have final say over what goes to some degree by writing in the whole checks-and-balances system.

That is bullshit. They were trying to avoid having a king by weakening the executive. They tried to avoid a parliamentary system by:
1) Making sure that the head of government was not drawn from the ranks of the legislature- but this meant a weak executive, see above.
2) Making sure the legislators all represented fixed territories (unlike members of Parliament who theoretically represented everyone in the Empire, including American colonists who had no vote), AND...
3) Ensuring that legislators came from territories of meaningful population size (unlike the 'rotten boroughs' of England, parliamentary districts that had once been populous and gotten to elect MPs, and since become virtually uninhabited, so now you could get elected to parliament by bribing like six farmers in an isolated patch of countryside to vote for you.

It is a complete failure to comprehend American constitutional history to think that the Congress was somehow supposed to be subordinate to the presidency or the Supreme Court. You're mistaking the way things are now for the way they were always intended to be... and then complaining that the system as designed doesn't work.

Where the hell did you get the idea that the Founding Fathers were worried about the danger of too much representative democracy and decided to entrust all power to one man to avoid that? It's like the bizarro-version of American history.

However there's been something of an end-run around that by Congress in modern years. If the President tries to interfere with Congress, they scream impeachment or obstruct legislation as much as possible.

Working as intended. Congress was always supposed to be the senior branch, and the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution actually worked out pretty damn well until the rise of the modern Republican Party in the mid-1990s.

So for roughly 90% of the history of our republic, having Congress possess power greater than or equal to that of the president has worked pretty well, and while it does provoke occasional crises it's quite common that in such crises the president is in the wrong, and it's a good thing that Congress rained him in.

You're perceiving this in a biased way, probably because you're taking your current dislike of Congress and assuming that Congress has always operated this way.

Basically, they've given themselves permission to be a huge pain in the ass to the President whenever they want, rather than working with him for the betterment of the nation.

They always did that, throughout the nation's history. And that was the point; they were the senior branch and they were supposed to slap the president down when he overstepped his authority, because the Founders were far more worried about the president setting himself up as a dictator than they were about the elected legislature somehow going nuts.

It only became a problem recently as the executive branch took over more and more responsibility for making sure the government actually functioned, while Congress became more and more of a political prizefighting ring thanks to the rise of modern media and polarized individual politics.

Is it any wonder, really, that in recent years Presidents have turned to just cranking out an executive order whenever they want something to happen? Nothing like Lyndon Johnson's manipulation of Congress is possible anymore.[/quote]

---

Great! In which case you need to take realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Let's hear that again:

Realistic and effective actions that are likely to solve the problem.

Complaining that what we really need is a massive, drastic change in the basic structure of government doesn't match any of the three key phrases I italicized. So I don't recommend it.

Well, yeah, that's the real trick, ain't it.

But you can't fix a problem if you don't correctly identify and diagnose it first. Is my bitching on an internet forum going to fix anything? No, of course not. I know that. But that in and of itself doesn't necessarily invalidate anything I said. Is my opinion useful? No, not necessarily, I know that too. But dismissing it out of hand because it's "complaining" doesn't really strike me as productive discussion.

What I'm somewhat dismissive of, I confess to that...

It's this mindset that we should start by wanting drastic change. What a lot of people here don't seem to understand is that Congress, working under pretty much exactly the current ruleset, worked perfectly fine for two hundred years. Yes, sometimes Congress did dumb or disagreeable things, but no more so than you expect from a major government. Yes, they sometimes clashed with the president- that's a design feature, the president is not supposed to always get his way.

But instead of hearing people say "I want to tinker with this machine," they immediately go over to mandating massive, complex changes to the way we handle Congress. Changes that mandate constitutional amendments.

And specific, complicated amendments, to boot. For example, to amend the Constitution to get term limits you not only have to convince people to agree that there should be term limits, but to agree exactly how long they ought to be. To create a federally mandated system of redistricting you have to come up with some precise system of defining what is and is not a gerrymandered district. That's not going to be simple.

This is NOT how you reform a system that has a good track record of working except for the historically recent introduction of a problem that throws a monkey wrench in the works.

Anyway, I agree with you that the US media is a problem. Now, I'm not convinced that it's the source of any problems. The CNN/Fox News/et al world is, I think, ultimately a pretty fleeting and insignificant problem, as annoying as it is right now. My generation doesn't give a rat's ass about 24-hour-news, meaning it has an inevitable death sentence already hanging over it, and the nail is further hammered into the coffin by its total reliance on an obsolete and dying communication medium (cable television). Yeah, CNN/Fox/etc are contributing to the political bullshit going on in this country, but it's in the same way a heckler on the sidelines contributes to an angry mob.

I'm not sure the supremacy of the blogosphere or whatever will solve the fundamental problem: the creation of a huge 'chattering class' of commentators who keep the public so in-touch with the actions of the legislature in real time that legislators fear the consequences of being seen to compromise by their own voter base. Because they can't actually close the doors and make an agreement privately; everything goes massively public and the chattering class just will not shut up about "OHMIGOD WHO IS GOING TO BLINK FIRST"

That's the real heart of the problem making Congress dysfunctional. They don't have nearly as much freedom to negotiate as they did fifteen years ago, let alone thirty or fifty.

I still think the root issue is the fundamental organization of the legislative branch (or perhaps more specifically, the organization it has created for itself).

Except that this organization WORKED for literally two centuries. It's only started to break down very recently due to a specific crisis that could easily be explained by almost anything in the world but the idea that there's been a major bug in the Constitution that's been waiting 200 years to jump out of the bushes and paralyze us.

Sure, there's tiny little bills introduced here and there that help out with niche issues (and boy do those politicians love trumpeting about how they got that little piece of insignificant, needlessly complicated legislation passed), but even a Senator is utterly powerless to effect any kind of positive outcome unless they bow and scrape and play the game of trading favors, riders, amendments, and party-line toeing to get in the right committees. To even begin to accomplish anything in the Senate (nevermind the House!), you have to corrupt yourself on Day 1. I see that as a fundamental, systemic failure.

And yet, that's how it always worked and it worked fine. Enormous amounts of stuff got done in an era when the Senate and House were no more transparent than they are today, and probably less so. Transparency has been increasing even as the dysfunction of Congress spirals out of control; isn't it more likely that transparency (and the media infrastructure that goes with it) is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution?

I don't pretend to know how exactly to fix it. Which brings me back around to the original question I posed in this thread, half serious and half navel-gazing: Is there anything that can even be done (realistically) to fix a system which is, indeed, quite broke?

Abolish the filibuster, which at this point does more harm than good because it allows the minority to be obstructionist and then evade responsibility for having paralyzed the government. Take back the House, which is probably going to happen gradually over time anyway. And even if it doesn't will almost certainly happen within two years of today's Republican party actually holding the power to enact its agenda.

Maraxus is giving you much more realistic advice than anyone else on this thread, because he's not viewing this as a purely intellectual exercise in "design my dream-legislature."

[Maraxus]

How would this work? how would you follow the Voting Rights Act without gerrymandering? What about in states that have particular communities of interest? What about city/county borders that don't follow any rational path?

The solution to that is obvious: Acts can be changed. At this point I'd say pick an algorithm that only looks at where people live and let that draw up the borders. Not saying that one interest group is more important than another, which is what you have to do any time they overlap.

Though I am curious: How does the voting rights act require gerrymandering ?

Though the solution I'd like to see would be the US switching to a proportional system where the number of politicians each party gets is determined by what percentage of the population votes for that party. Even if the system still keeps districts (eg MMP) the incentive for the major parties to gerrymander vanishes.

But I consider the US switching to a proportional system very unlikely.

Sure. The Voting Rights Act is one of the big pieces of civil rights legislation, and it regulates a whole series of election practices as they relate to people of color. It's also arguably the most important civil rights law because it sets basic requirements for minority representation. Congress ammended the law like a thousand times and the Supremes interpret it in a bunch of ways, but the three basic rules are this:

1. If a minority group (Blacks, Indians, Latino@s, etc) can form a reasonably compact majority within a district, the states must draw a minority-majority district.

2. You can't pack people of color into groups that would diminish their influence, I.E, you can't have a congressional district that is 100% Black just to make the other districts less Black.

3. To the greatest extent practical, people of color should be represented in proportion with their numbers.

So since districts have to give people of color representatives in Congress, and can't get rid of those districts unless they have a VERY good reason, you start getting weird-looking districts like this one. That District reliably sends a Black Democrat to Congress, one of two Black representatives out of 13 from North Carolina, 21% black state. Without that really wonky-looking district, Black voters would be severely underrepresented in Congress. Unfortunately, Black voters aren't concentrated enough to make a compact district like this one.

Your other idea about having a shortest splitline algorithm draw the lines has good intent but misses the point of Congressional districts. It's not new, of course. There are a bunch of people who have suggested this, but nothing really comes of it. In part it's because state legislatures obviously aren't going to take their own power away, but it's also in part because it's a bad idea.

This is a map of my beloved home state with shortest splitline algorithm, as compared to the one we actually have. The problem is that shortest splitline districts would have fewer people of color in Congress and completely craps on the idea of communities of interest. Ideally representatives should represent fairly narrow interests in Congress, or at least the communities in a district should be roughly similar. Shortest splitlines sacrifices a community of interest in the name of making the districts look nice.


As for proportional voting, I think it's a great idea. I just don't think it has any chance of ever passing outside of a few cities or counties. The American political system is very narrowly designed to suit two parties and has been VERY stable for a fairly long time. If anything could make the Dems and GOP fight ferociously against a common enemy, it'd be a serious push to get proportional voting on a federal level.

Kind of a shame, really.

[AniThyng]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

[Simon_Jester]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

It is also supported by experience.

The problem isn't that white voters will automatically always vote against blacks. It's that black Americans have a whole set of issues that are either irrelevant to whites, or on which they have different needs and interests than whites. But blacks also make up only about on eighth of the population, and even in states with a 'large' black population that only increases to 20% or so, up to 30% in the Deep South, with Mississippi being at the peak with 37%.

Black voters thus find that their interests are usually only upheld by politicians that go specifically out of their way to appeal to blacks. Not all such candidates are themselves black, but many are. And even if the candidate themself is white, it makes a huge difference whether they come from a district in which minorities are concentrated, or a district where minorities make up 10-20% of the population and it's easier to pander to white fears of "oh my god, CRIMINALS!" than to engage with and uphold the legitimate needs of African-Americans.

This is a map of my beloved home state with shortest splitline algorithm, as compared to the one we actually have. The problem is that shortest splitline districts would have fewer people of color in Congress and completely craps on the idea of communities of interest. Ideally representatives should represent fairly narrow interests in Congress, or at least the communities in a district should be roughly similar. Shortest splitlines sacrifices a community of interest in the name of making the districts look nice.

To give an example of what I think he means by that last bit:

Looking at shortest-splitline, there are several districts in California where urban areas are 'splitlined' with large chunks of rural hinterland. Or where rural areas of very different ecology and needs (say, desert versus fertile Central Valley) are being lumped together arbitrarily. While I don't think shortest-splitline districts are wrong as such, they certainly are (deliberately) drawn with complete ignorance of the demographics of the people being represented.

Imagine a state with two representatives, one large city, and a large rural hinterland. The shortest splitline that divides the state population in half will probably run straight through the middle of the city, dividing the state into two identical districts that (for instance) each represent 40% urban/suburban and 60% rural voters. In any given election the odds are good that both districts will elect the same sort of people; there's very little functional difference here between the representatives and the senators who are elected statewide. And in either case, the representative has no real incentive to fight hard for either rural or urban voters at the expense of the other, because the loss of votes among one demographic is going to be offset by gaining votes in the other.

A more flexible redistricting scheme as we know it would tend to divide the state into "communities of interest."

The farmers and other rural people in the majority of the state have certain common interests (agriculture, water and mining rights, federal subsidies of highway construction, mail service and so on) that are less important to the city-dwellers.

Conversely, the city-dwellers have problems that have relatively little effect on the rural areas (smog control, crime-fighting measures, certain kinds of employment programs, probably a lot of federal contracts associated with being the administrative center for that state... you name it).

So how do we create a system in which both groups feel represented? Simple. We cut out a big circle around the city and make that one district, and the rest of the state is the other district.

Which is, in its own way, gerrymandering even if it seems very logical and sensible.

The problem, of course, is that at the moment whichever party thinks it's to their advantage draws the districts as they please. So if the Republicans are in charge you get two splitline districts so as to dilute the political influence of urban voters (who are mostly Democrats). If the Democrats are in charge you get a district for the city and a district for the rural areas (because that was the Dems can lock in at least one seat should they lose power in the state).

[Siege]

Upthread I saw 'incorruptible paladinhood' spoken of in regards to congressmen. But that is essentially what the Tea Party is for their value set, and the results speak for themselves. Politics is compromise. When it isn't it becomes a race to the extremes. Be very careful not to conflate 'compromise' and 'corruption'.

Also I believe diagnosing the media as the core of the problem is incorrect. News channels only show 'cage fighter politicians' when politicians cater to that style and the public rewards them by viewing that content. Media cannot manufacture uncompromising politicians out of nothing.

My take would be that the US' problem is (large parts of) its electorate. If electorally significant numbers of people are consistently taking their information only from shitty TV and voting for shitty representatives then at some point De Maistre's 'every nation gets the government it deserves' kicks in. If I had to venture a guess I'd say that education is at the heart of the issue, but I'm not familiar enough with the USA to make definitive claims.

[Maraxus]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

Nah, just your notion of racial equality. To be sure there are a few parts of the country that will elect a Black congressman in an all-white community, but it can't be consistently counted on. People of Color aren't represented anywhere near as strongly as their numbers would suggest. There are roughly 40 Black representatives in the House, 35 self-identified Hispanic representatives, and 10 Asian representatives, out of 435. That means that Congress is ~9% Black, ~8% Hispanic, and ~2% Asian. The US, by contrast, is roughly 15% Black, 6% Hispanic, and 5% Asian, so all these people of color are already under represented.

Can you please explain to me why having people of color represent people of color flies in the face of any notion of racial equality?

[Patroklos]

The idea that the color of your skin somehow conveys a common experiance. Not that I follow along with this line of thought, but Democrats sure like to call Republican minority congressmen "Uncle Tom's" or the equivalent based on this idea. People are happy to warp identity politics to suit their purposes.

[AniThyng]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

Nah, just your notion of racial equality. To be sure there are a few parts of the country that will elect a Black congressman in an all-white community, but it can't be consistently counted on. People of Color aren't represented anywhere near as strongly as their numbers would suggest. There are roughly 40 Black representatives in the House, 35 self-identified Hispanic representatives, and 10 Asian representatives, out of 435. That means that Congress is ~9% Black, ~8% Hispanic, and ~2% Asian. The US, by contrast, is roughly 15% Black, 6% Hispanic, and 5% Asian, so all these people of color are already under represented.

Can you please explain to me why having people of color represent people of color flies in the face of any notion of racial equality?

Because ultimately that means race determines who you vote for. Look, I get it, I am also a minority in my own country and appreciate how it is to be "underrepresented", more so when our political parties are explicitly race based in a way that Americans probably find hilariously racist. I understand I still have much to learn in terms of western notions of social justice, but ultimately to me this boils down to " you can only count on your own race to speak for you" and even if true, is still sad.

[AniThyng]

This reminds me of a proposal to mandate that some arbitrary percentage of legislators must be women in my country. We use a first past the post Westminster system. I am not aware of how this was supposed to work in practice short of forcing political parties to rig contests where only women contested so we wouldn't have some fucked up situation where a male candidate must withdraw to avoid winning. A mandate to force a % of candidates to be women, maybe that I can see...

[Maraxus]

The idea that the color of your skin somehow conveys a common experiance. Not that I follow along with this line of thought, but Democrats sure like to call Republican minority congressmen "Uncle Tom's" or the equivalent based on this idea. People are happy to warp identity politics to suit their purposes.

The color of your skin does convey a common experience, certainly among Black voters. That's why it's so important to have people of color representing people of color; there are certain experiences that people of color deeply understand that no white person can ever fully grasp, regardless of how empathetic they may be.

Because ultimately that means race determines who you vote for. Look, I get it, I am also a minority in my own country and appreciate how it is to be "underrepresented", more so when our political parties are explicitly race based in a way that Americans probably find hilariously racist. I understand I still have much to learn in terms of western notions of social justice, but ultimately to me this boils down to " you can only count on your own race to speak for you" and even if true, is still sad.

Of course it does, or at least it's a big factor! Why shouldn't it, especially if you're a person of color? Members of Congress have enormous power to direct spending in their districts and push various topics depending on what their constituents want. People in general are way more comfortable talking about issues with people who look like them, and that's certainly true of people of color as well. Besides, people of color in positions of power intuitively understand certain things about the communities they represent; no white representative is likely to experience the little microaggressions that people of color face on a daily basis.

It's not that people can "only count on your own race to speak for you." Far from it, there are a couple of white Representatives who represent majority-Black or minority-majority districts and do a very good job at it. Broadly speaking, though, people of color receive better and more substantive representation when they're being represented by a Member of Congress who looks like them and shares similar experiences.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

I don't understand how. Are we* supposed to treat everyone as if they were equal? Yeah, sure; that will work until we hit the "as if" part. Racial equality for me means recognizing that some groups are unequal and giving special consideration to this fact. We can start treating everyone as if they were equal when they actually are equal. If this is a perfect and thus unattainable state, then we should still try getting as close to it as possible.

*When I say 'we', I generally mean 'white people'. People of color and minorities in general might have their own ways of dealing with it.

[Maraxus]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

I don't understand how. Are we* supposed to treat everyone as if they were equal? Yeah, sure; that will work until we hit the "as if" part. Racial equality for me means recognizing that some groups are unequal and giving special consideration to this fact. We can start treating everyone as if they were equal when they actually are equal. If this is a perfect and thus unattainable state, then we should still try getting as close to it as possible.

*When I say 'we', I generally mean 'white people'. People of color and minorities in general might have their own ways of dealing with it.

Exactly. The US is still largely run by and for white folks. Trying to be "color-blind" and "treat everyone the same" really just means that we're not acknowledging that people of color aren't treated very well at all and haven't been for a very very long time.

[AniThyng]

It seems like if that was our goal, instead of purely geographical districts, legislators should be elected at large to represent such groupings and interests instead.

I would actually be curious to hear an asian American take on it, since naturally being...uh...east asian myself They may be able to more closely relate the context to me. So yeah you got me on the point that similarity counts for something.

[Maraxus]

It seems like if that was our goal, instead of purely geographical districts, legislators should be elected at large to represent such groupings and interests instead.

I agree with you on that. People of color (and probably people in general) would be much better represented if we had at-large elections with proportional voting. Not sure how this would work since big states get more representation than small ones, but that's not a big problem.

The bigger problem is that we're mandated to use geographic districts and we'd have to amend the goddamn Constitution if we wanted to change it. Besides, there's no real push to switch to something else. People are just pissed at Congress (and rightly so!) but don't yet have a great notion to change our election system.

Maybe someday.

[Block]

The idea that only black districts will votein black congressmen and districts literally need to be gerrymandered to allow them send to fly in the face if any notion of racial equality.

I don't understand how. Are we* supposed to treat everyone as if they were equal? Yeah, sure; that will work until we hit the "as if" part. Racial equality for me means recognizing that some groups are unequal and giving special consideration to this fact. We can start treating everyone as if they were equal when they actually are equal. If this is a perfect and thus unattainable state, then we should still try getting as close to it as possible.

*When I say 'we', I generally mean 'white people'. People of color and minorities in general might have their own ways of dealing with it.

Exactly. The US is still largely run by and for white folks. Trying to be "color-blind" and "treat everyone the same" really just means that we're not acknowledging that people of color aren't treated very well at all and haven't been for a very very long time.

No. Treat everyone the same means just that, they show equal contempt for the poor of all colors at this point. Rich black men aren't treated any worse by the law than rich white men. By individual cops, yes, but the law, no.

[Simon_Jester]

Upthread I saw 'incorruptible paladinhood' spoken of in regards to congressmen. But that is essentially what the Tea Party is for their value set, and the results speak for themselves. Politics is compromise. When it isn't it becomes a race to the extremes. Be very careful not to conflate 'compromise' and 'corruption'.

Also I believe diagnosing the media as the core of the problem is incorrect. News channels only show 'cage fighter politicians' when politicians cater to that style and the public rewards them by viewing that content. Media cannot manufacture uncompromising politicians out of nothing.

Well, the argument is that the very existence of the media as we know it, as opposed to the media of the '70s and earlier, has changed the dynamic. Politicians will always do what they have to in order to get elected... but "what they have to do" is shaped by the media. On the one hand they can't have mistresses without getting in trouble anymore, but on the other hand, if they make a compromise with the other side their electoral base finds out they "folded" in a matter of minutes and hears it repeated for days, after weeks of buildup about "who will fold first?"

So the media coverage can still have an ancillary effect: by covering politics as if it were a gladiatorial match, it encourages the politicians to start applying a gladiator's standard of showmanship.

My take would be that the US' problem is (large parts of) its electorate. If electorally significant numbers of people are consistently taking their information only from shitty TV and voting for shitty representatives then at some point De Maistre's 'every nation gets the government it deserves' kicks in. If I had to venture a guess I'd say that education is at the heart of the issue, but I'm not familiar enough with the USA to make definitive claims.

Honestly I think this is true, but one has to concentrate on the parts of the process one can affect.

To an extent, we're getting the government we (collectively) deserve... but we also get the media we deserve, which is why the media becomes part of the problem. We act like a bunch of gullible morons with short attention spans who want nonsensical things, so it becomes profitable to treat us accordingly.

The idea that the color of your skin somehow conveys a common experiance. Not that I follow along with this line of thought, but Democrats sure like to call Republican minority congressmen "Uncle Tom's" or the equivalent based on this idea. People are happy to warp identity politics to suit their purposes.

As an empirical reality, it matters very little whether the politicians in question are white, black, or green, but to ensure minorities get representation, then the elected leaders must represent the minorities. Even if that sometimes means supporting their interests at the expense of the majority.

A normal politician will never make a decision that favors 20% of the population at the expense of 80% of the population unless someone offers them a very large incentive to do so. A politician whose electoral district contains double the normal proportion of minorities, and so is answerable to a voter pool that is 40% drawn from the minority, on the other hand...

Now, should skin color be used as a proxy for "will this candidate faithfully support the interests of minorities?" Arguably not. But the reason we have electoral districts that concentrate blacks and other minorities is not because it means they'll elect more black/Hispanic congressmen. It's so that someone will be elected from those districts who feels directly accountable to the minority demographic. Which otherwise wouldn't happen.

No. Treat everyone the same means just that, they show equal contempt for the poor of all colors at this point. Rich black men aren't treated any worse by the law than rich white men. By individual cops, yes, but the law, no.

And yet that sends a consequential message to blacks: Even if you become rich, and the odds are NOT in your favor... you will still be stuck with this label and with people treating you like an inferior.

Moreover, it's still not really true that poor whites are treated as contemptuously by the system as poor blacks, although there are certainly quite a few individual whites who are worse off than the average black.