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

[Sharon Sommerville]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for your perspective on how the US system is supposed to work and
today's reality.  Of course, our Westminister parliamentary system has also
been modified over the decades.  We now have a Presidential Westminister
parliamentary system with the bulk of the power resting in the executive
not the legislative branch of government and one of the reasons we need an
electoral system which will help to reverse those changes  and return power
to the legislature.

Kind regards,
Sharon

On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 9:13 AM, Jay Judkowitz <judkowitz at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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=eyJpIjoiTm1ZMVlXSmhNekZtTnpjMSIsInQiOiJiZmowbDNCSE9Z
>> TU9xK1gzOUZmWjg5VExkWE1zWlJCUnN1WmhtS0RlWHNDc212TUVuQXU3dmg1
>> TEV2RlpsVHdiamVWWFZjR3JYbkZHSXFlRlNmNTJ5U052NnZcL01OSXU4bXp0
>> R2RiTmx1TXdyQ2swbWlwb3FGZU5KRGFCTkc2aUsifQ%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.
>>
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