Comment by intended

1 year ago

Bipartisan efforts are what makes Congress work.

It’s this loss that plagues Congress.

Bipartisanship is what was jettisoned by the republicans to ensure that they would always be able to blame democrats for the failure of the government.

Even during Obamacare, when they adopted a Republican plan, Romney had to distance himself from it. Despite all the efforts for Bipartisan outreach - for all the concessions, the republicans couldn’t stand with the dems.

The Dems must always be wrong.

Bipartisanship means you have to spend more effort to get more people on your team.

Partisanship means you just have to get on board with one party.

So how is bipartisanship the problem?

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intended

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dgb23  1 year ago

Looking at this mess from far away in Switzerland.

I'm so glad we have a consensus democracy. We're a small country but I don't see any reason why a more moderate, consensus based system couldn't be adopted by larger ones. In fact I think this centralization of power around one person doesn't scale.

I'm also glad that we have the direct vote in order to reign in our government whenever they overreach or turn too far away from our interests. That seems much harder to implement in larger countries, but it's an excellent tool to course correct a government.

hammock  1 year ago

Why so two-party system?

  • drivers99  1 year ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

    > political systems with single-member districts and the plurality voting system, as in, for example, the United States, two main parties tend to emerge. In this case, votes for minor parties can potentially be regarded as splitting votes away from the most similar major party

    If a third party grows it will either shrink again as voters realize they are splitting their vote against their biggest common opponent, or the third party replaces one of the two existing parties. Either way, you get two main parties.

    • unethical_ban  1 year ago

      I don't normally "this" a comment, but "this"!

      The most effective single thing to promote a multiparty system is to switch to ranked-choice or approval voting (if staying with single-member districts) or to switch to multi-member districts with some kind of proportional representation. That would be where, say, everyone in Texas votes for their preferred party, and the 34 seats get allocated proportionally to party results.

      Honestly, implementing Ranked Choice is the best compromise.

        * Meaningfully improves the ability of minor parties to succeed
  * Removes the concept of "wasted vote" so that citizens can vote their conscience
  * Electoral results are more informative of the positions of the electorate
  * Candidates have to compete more on ideas and policies than attacking opponents
  * Conceptually easier to understand than other systems
  * Maintains single-member districts (I don't like this, but I think trying to change the House to multi-member districts is too radical for us)

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