Discussion: Big Bang Theory Of Polarization: How Gridlock Has Remade Our Political Process

Discussion for article #233930

Our system will survive. I think we just need to look at what Ornstein and Mann have said so eloquently:

My prediction: extinction level event for the Republican party. They are going to go so far off into the woods from now and until November 2016 - and possibly beyond for some cycles to come. The party will be forced to realign, reconfigure, rebrand, or reboot itself using new components. Yes, yes they will have a lock on the House, state and local level offices for a long time, but nationally as a brand they will fry themselves out with extremism. Itā€™s been building for years.

The most pressing existential threat I see to our country is outside money in elections, campaign finance, lobbying, and dominant influence of the powerful and the wealthy business and individuals. Itā€™s the most corrosive of all.

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I think the article is a bit over the top. I could eventually see something like a convention coming into play but there would be a huge backlash if it were only conservatives. They would be in effect trying to make a culturally pure sort of country, or ideologically pure. That would be the main issue.

The impose your will when you have control is hardly new, but any supermajority is not going to be as good as on paper. For the Dems there were many conservative Dems. The GOP may do better with it but they would have to win in many blue states. But the insanity of the GOP seems to reach regardless of the state.

Weā€™re way beyond Lawrence Lessigā€™s ā€œfailure of integrity.ā€ If our political process was a bridge it would have already been condemned.

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Iā€™m not very sympathetic to the argument that the American system worked fine until one of the parties went bonkers. Basically thatā€™s true, but itā€™s insufficient to justify saying that the system isnā€™t a problem. A truly rugged system would continue to at least carry out the basic functions of government (appropriating yearly expenditures, paying the bills) even if little got done in other areas. The US fails that test.

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Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat more or less agrees, suggesting we may be entering a period of ā€œconstitutional decadenceā€ where executive overreach is tolerated.

As soon as we elect a Republican president, of course.

Count me among the doomers.

The demographic problems of the Republican Party will, he hopes,
eventually force it to reach beyond their partyā€™s government-hating
white conservative base and restore a less polarized atmosphere.

This is fine in theory, but there seems to be no general diminishing of the GOPā€™s influence happening. Quite the opposite in fact. And there are multiple reasons: gerrymandering, the innate skewing of political power to low population, rural states, voter suppression, a crazy-ass electoral system, unengaged voters, among others. It appears to me that the demographic shifts, on which the hopes of progressives are pinned will take a very long time to force the GOP into a new, more tolerant phase.

In the meantime, we have Global climate disruption, increasing income inequality, a failing infrastructure, a growing trend toward oligarchy and plutocracy? Do we have the time to make the needed changes and adjustments? The problem is the lag time. How long will it take for a sense of reality to overcome ā€œour cherished, but misguided, beliefsā€, while, in the meantime, damage continues to accumulate? By 2050, for example, coastal flooding on the East Coast of the U.S. will very likely be a major problem. There are already early warning signs.

By the time it takes for us to get our act together as a Nation, the damage may be irretrievable. I think it may be already. Iā€™m with Yglesias on this one and Iā€™m very worried. Not for me, but for my daughters and their generation. Time is not on our side.

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As a professional historian, I do feel ā€“ not surprisingly ā€“ that this debate is too prone to miss the larger historical context.

Firstly, people underestimate how bad things have been in the past, how divided and polarized we have been before.

Secondly, and more importantly in the present context, people are not looking enough at the broader historical reasons for the present divisionsā€¦ and thus they are failing to see that they will likely not last forever. We are witnessing a classic historical moment of change anxiety. A sizable minority of the country is gripped with fear, horror and general panic at the changing complexion (literally) of the country. They are retreating into violent reactionary solutions and desperately refuse any compromise, convinced this is the last stand to save ā€œtheirā€ America.

But the reason they are so desperate is the very reason this wonā€™t last forever: they are demographically fading, and they know it. In most of the country, they are already a minority. They exercise outsized power because their fear and anger leads them to vote while others are disenchanted and apathetic. But eventually they will fade. Their ā€œno compromiseā€ reactionary panic will become obsolete and a new national consensus will begin to emerge.

Meanwhile, I have little sympathy for the pining after parliamentary systems. Can you imagine if we had one now? We would not have just a tea party wing of the GOP, but an actual tea party PARTY, along with god knows how many other small conservative factions struggling to maintain a stable coalition. And we wouldnā€™t have an independent president to maintain basic function. You think this is bad? Try that.

(For those, incidentally, who note that the biggest threat, climate change, is going to go unaddressed while all of this sorts itself out ā€“ theyā€™re right. That is the biggest danger. Which is why the pressure should be through the consumer sector: make green energy profitable, and businesses will adopt it. We can achieve more that way, for now, than through Washington - though obviously the Democratic WH should do everything it can.)

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People (on all sides) talk about a constitutional convention as if once called, anything that comes out of it comes into force by dint of having been approved by the convention. But just like amendments made by Congress, any changes would still have to be approved by 3/4 of the states, which remains a near-impossibility in the current climate.

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Lots of uninformed people complain because the two parties ā€œare the sameā€. Seems like this is a sort of a solution to that ā€œproblemā€.

Conservatism is a failed practice but it does support the ultra rich and in turn they support it. Where would either be without the other?

In theory, conservatism sounds OK, but the politicians just use that theory to get elected and then its bye bye, c-ya, wouldnā€™t want to b-ya. Bush was supposedly conservative and his administration too. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, conservative, I donā€™t think so. The quest for Bin Laden that was just a veil to get to Iraqā€™s oil, which also failed btw, conservative, not in the least.
Romney, the oh so conservative icon, not! Neo-cons are the most wasteful group of politicians known to man, exactly how much more could they misrepresent themselves?

The needed change is right there for all to see. Its the failed ideology of the right and the failure of the right to recognize and admit that they are wrong despite the proof. Like addicts, they have to want to see the truth on their own, we canā€™t force it upon them as they will only get more stubborn and entrenched out of petulance. We are not dealing with superior brains, we are dealing with obstinance. Obstinance as a career that pays very well in fact. So there is a big key, remove the financial incentive and the only reason to be in governing is to govern, not as a vehicle of wealth.
Citizens United assured that gridlock would be sustained because it made not governing profitable. Considering the plight of the conservative base, this was likely always the intended purpose. They canā€™t win based on the facts or the numbers so wreck it all and just go for the money, their true God.

Is this idea partisan and part of the gridlock? Not if you look at the root causes of this newly initiated obstruction. All the way up to Dummy Bush and through, the government functioned, then Bush destroyed the whole concept of small government, fiscal conservatism and being war tough. This forced the conservatives to either admit their egregious errors or to go into full defensive mode. Barack Obama gave them a much needed distraction. Their base was half way to pissed before they knew why. So, admit nothing, blame everything else but the real causes and go with a burn the house down strategy if anyone dares point a finger at them. The base was on board because they just donā€™t like the black President, so by hook or by crook, weā€™ve got gridlock. And just because its sinking America, ā€˜conservativesā€™ could care less, they are getting elected and rich.
This is the vicious cycle. Politics based on winning ideas has been replaced with PR campaigns that cost hundreds of millions and reap hundreds of millions. The same money recycles to produce the same results and governing is the victim.

Gridlock is the effect, unlimited cash from unknown (sort of) sources, is the cause.

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Or couch potato Democrats could just get up off their asses and vote.

ā€œThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensityā€ - William Butler Yeats

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This is the best response I have seen.

Regarding a parliamentary system, it depends on the ability of the electorate to immediately remove a government that is determined as illegitimate from power in some form of snap election. That is so foreign to American traditions of fixed terms in a federal/State system that I see no way to ever change to a parliamentary system. It would require the total failure of American government at all levels and across the entire nation simultaneously.

Overall I think nothing will chamge much, except for continued gridlock until we get all private monies out of politics -local and national. The influance of the voter continues to diminish, replaced by ballots with various presidents printed on them.
If Repubs gain control of the whole show then weā€™ll experience the ā€œGreat Leap Backwardsā€ to a misanthropic conservative nervana. Which, btw, none will like except the oligarchs, but by then itā€™ll be too late for Joe six-pack to achieve any sort of grassroots change that doesnā€™t involve insurrection.
The 1%'ers are in the process of changing our system of government, as we speak, into a sort of laissez faire Fascism. All under the rubric of a ā€œRepresentative Democracyā€.

By that time Iā€™ll be watching it all as an expat.

Everyone reading this article should ALSO read ā€œThe Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDRā€ by Jules Archer.

Summary: Corporatists enamored by the the Italian and German governments of the 1930s attempt to persuade Marine Gen. Smedly Butler to lead a veterans revolt on Washington, turning the presidency into a figurehead office and putting Butler in charge of the White House.

Butler blew the whistle on these guys ā€“ the DuPonts, J.P. Morgan and others ā€“ and the result was Congressional hearings.

Thank you.

Parliamentary systems are prone to terrible instability when there is extreme polarization. They work best when various parties are close enough together to work out stable coalitions in multiple configurations. Our current ideological divide would, to my mind, be worse in a parliamentary system than in our constitutional setup. Even the possibility of snap elections can easily lead to extremely weak govā€™ts prone to constant collapse (see Italy).

Iā€™d rather weather the current GOP cultural angst lunacy in the system we have.

I disagree with the demographic premise. IMHO, the decline of democracy is more due to plutocracy than demographics. As elections become more and more expensive, the number of potential candidates is reduced to those acceptable to a very small number of deep pocket donors, who in turn are indebted to those money interests Think Crassus financing Julius Caesar for the consulship. As the machinery of state is co-opted for the benefit of the few, the populace, and the voting process, is manipulated for the benefit of one faction or another. Ultimately the system becomes vulnerable to demagogues on the one hand and disengaged cynicism on the other. Some form of dictatorship may be the only way to break the deadlock. History is full of examples of democracies decaying in this faction. We are just arrogant enough to think it canā€™t happen here, that we are exceptional. But of course it can and if nothing changes probably will.

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By 2050, there are also predicted population-clearing, super-droughts over much of the American West. And since the catastrophic impact of inexorably locked-in climate change affects more than the USA, by 2050, there will also be population movements around the world that will be at least an order of magnitude greater than are dreamt of in our secure-the-borders philosophy.

Such fun!

As an external observer, I think the US problems could all be solved with comapratively easy and entirely bloodless change:

Change the redistricting process to create electorates that are actually fair.

Thatā€™s all that needs to happen. If the Republicans werenā€™t guaranteed the House they would be forced back towards the centre and actual governance could take place.

I know thatā€™s not easy to do, policically, but it seems easier to achieve that a miltiary coup, for example.

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Yesā€“
Early to bed;
Early to rise;
Get off your ass;
And organize!