[fvc-wat-disc] Hard to remember this describes a democracy

[Jay Judkowitz]

This is all absolutely correct and a big part of the reason I left the US.
Without electoral reform, Canada risks sliding down the same path.  We need
multi-party democracy that forces coalition and consensus building rather
than winner take all, zero sum game politics.  Ironically, having many
"factions" and shifting temporary per-issue alliances is exactly what the
men who wrote the Constitution intended.  Sadly, this was lost somewhere
early on and few Americans bother to read the Federalist Papers to
understand why it was such an important concept.

This week's Congressional election where the guy who beat up a reporter won
the election is an amazing example.  Not only did people still vote for him
because he was in their "tribe", but they excused rather than condemned the
behavior, even blaming the reporter who was beat up.  This is the logical
extension of the two party system.

On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 10:29 AM, Jennifer Ross <2jennross at gmail.com> wrote:

> The Economist Intelligence Unit is a good analytical arm of the Economist
> magazine.  Here, they are reporting on Trump and impeachment.
>
> Second, Congress is highly polarised. There are various measures to assess
> the ideological positions of Democrats and Republicans, but according to
> the DW‑Nominate estimate, produced by two academics, Keith Poole and Howard
> Rosenthal, Democrats are drifting towards more liberal positions and
> Republicans, especially, towards more conservative ones. The two parties
> now sit further apart than at any point since the survey began in the
> 1870s. Polarisation matters because it means that the parties are less
> likely to co-operate on any given issue, including impeachment. In our
> view, this means that House Republicans are less likely to vote Mr Trump
> out. (It also means, we think, that Democrats are more likely to push for
> impeachment, but we do not believe that they will have this opportunity.)
>
> This is because of our third reason: we expect Republicans to hold on to
> their House majority at the November 2018 mid-term elections. The party
> holds 238 seats, with 218 needed for control. This sounds like a relatively
> slim advantage, especially given that governing parties tend to lose seats
> at the mid-terms. But gerrymandering and redistricting mean that few House
> seats are genuine contests. According to the Cook Political Report, only
> 23 seats are considered "highly competitive". Political polarisation also
> makes it more likely that seats will not shift from one party to the other,
> as the ideological change required would be greater. Unless there is a
> major, broad-based swing against the Republican Party over the next
> 18 months, the Republicans will be in a strong position to keep the House.
>
> http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1655471549&Country=United%
> 20States&topic=Politics&subtopic=Forecast&mkt_tok=
> eyJpIjoiTm1ZMVlXSmhNekZtTnpjMSIsInQiOiJiZmowbDNCSE9ZTU9xK1gz
> OUZmWjg5VExkWE1zWlJCUnN1WmhtS0RlWHNDc212TUVuQXU3dmg1TEV2Rlps
> VHdiamVWWFZjR3JYbkZHSXFlRlNmNTJ5U052NnZcL01OSXU4bXp0R2RiTmx1
> TXdyQ2swbWlwb3FGZU5KRGFCTkc2aUsifQ%3D%3D
>
> But yet this kind of destructive hyper-partisan behaviour, caused by the
> electoral system, is "serving us well" and something else would be
> "radical."  Okay, yes, in Canada we aren't quite here yet--but we only have
> less than 100 years to go by straight number of years as a country--and in
> the real world we are only a decade behind.
>
> Jenn
>
>
>
> --
> No other Western democratic country concentrates as much political power in
> the hands of one person as Canada does with her Prime Minister.
>
> _______________________________________________
> This is the fvc-wat-disc mailing list
> Post a message: fvc-wat-disc at listserv.thinkers.org
> Unsubscribe: http://listserv.thinkers.org/mailman/listinfo/fvc-wat-disc_
> listserv.thinkers.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.thinkers.org/pipermail/fvc-wat-disc_listserv.thinkers.org/attachments/20170527/39ee1cfd/attachment-0002.htm>