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America Needs a 'Metropolitan Party'
- earthtolazlo 9y agoWe already have a political party whose primary function is to represent the interests of well-off city dwellers. They're called the Democrats.
- devwastaken 9y agoPerhaps you could make a much more informative comment instead. Reddit is a nice place to just say things, but HN is nice because of information.
- 67726e 9y agoTo be honest, HN is not all that much better if you're not a fan of the chosen party and it's liberal inclinations. You just get brigaded to death.
- s73ver 9y agoIt's not really a chosen party. It's a flavor of some kind of techno-anarcho-libertarian capitalism.
- bluejekyll 9y agoDon't leave out the communistic-socialistic-opensource portion of the group, which has an awkward dependent relationship with the capitalistic group
- s73ver 9y agoTrue. In truth, there's probably more than one faction.
- MK999 9y agoOr shadowbanned.
- seizethecheese 9y agoPerhaps you could make a much less condescending comment. Reddit is a nice place to be condescending, but HN is nice because people are generally kind.
- griffinmmahon 9y agoThey're also called the Republicans.
- earthtolazlo 9y agoI'm not disputing that. My point was that this article is just a poorly thought-out mishmash of "centrism" and more representation for constituencies who are already very well represented on a national level.
- griffinmmahon 9y agoSure, agreed! But it's not like the two parties are all that different in that they both act on the interests of wealthy elites.
- s73ver 9y agoThe whole "both parties are the same" argument has been disproven quite a bit. At this point, it's just a sign of intellectual laziness.
- abritinthebay 9y agoI understand the reasons to feel that way but it will only entrench the divide more - which seems like a bad idea
- abritinthebay 9y agoI understand the r a son to feel that way but it will only entrench the divide more - which seems like a bad idea
- dpeck 9y agoWe need a system that allows for representation of minority opinion that isn't strictly tied to geography.
- s73ver 9y agoHow would one add a 3rd chamber to Congress with this kind of idea?
- krapp 9y agoBut geography is important. In the end, all politics is local and resources are finite. Why shouldn't the areas of the country where more people live, and where most of the infrastructure, finance and culture are, have greater political influence?
- flukus 9y agoWhy should 49% of people in those populated areas not be represented? That's what geographical representation gets you.
- bsilvereagle 9y agoAmerica was established as a federalist collection of states so that opinion and geography were intentionally tightly coupled. If you didn't like the prevailing opinion in your state, you moved to somewhere where your opinion was the majority. The federal government was not meant to have a significant impact in your day-to-day life. Your city and state governments were supposed to have the most impactful policies, which were supposed to be tailored specifically to the needs of your geographic locale. Somewhere over the past 100 years, states' powers have been eroded and we're left with a one-size-fits-all federal government which is failing to keep everyone happy.
- s73ver 9y agoAt the same time, for a number of issues that are generally regarded as States Rights, why should my rights change because I moved 10 miles? If I am a gay/trans person, why should my rights change? If I am a gun owner, why should my rights change? Some things should probably be nationwide.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jonathankoren 9y agoThe fact is, due to an 18th century hypothesis that didn't play out 228 years later, a metropolitan based political party is doomed in presidential politics. My city has more people in it, than the entire states, and yet it's political clout is diluted away. Seriously, the electoral college is an abomination that is only going to get worse with the long trend of urbanization.
- IncRnd 9y agoThe problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.
- jonathankoren 9y agoNo it is not. You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage. And even if it was true, who cares? The central thesis of the 18th century was that people would have more allegiance to their states rather than the national government, and that hasn't been true for over a hundred years.
- wtbob 9y ago> You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage. The majority of the country elects the President, because the United States are composed of the several States (not the people thereof), and the states elect the President. Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.
- s73ver 9y ago>The majority of the country elects the President Majority in what way? Not necessarily a majority of the people. > Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states. More people live there, though. So those states represent the views of more people. Under your system, someone in South Dakota would have a 1/750,000th of a say in their state's choice, while someone in California would have a 1/36Mth of a say in their state's choice.
- therpe1 9y agoAmerica needs to embrace "local government." That means devolving budgetary power to the states. The federal model has failed. The current system is broken. The people who pay the most into the system (highly productive cities) are the people who actually have the least voting power. Once people wake up and begin to understand what's really going on this will not last. 'Taxation without representation' tends to rub people the wrong way. End the Federal Highway/Farm/Energy Acts. Heck, even blow up Medicaid and Obamacare. Cut the military budget by 2/3. All of these enormously expensive federal "programs" are just elaborate means to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the wealthy and efficient urban counties and distribute them to the relatively poor and inefficient rural counties. None of it is fair and none of it is sustainable. This is one good thing that will come out of runaway polarization in America. As all trust dissolves and the two (highly geographically correlated) classes move apart this illusion of "one republic" acting in everybody's interests will fall away.
- rhino369 9y agoThis isn't a party, it's an interest group.
- engx 9y agoThe first thing Trump was supposed to do was introduce an Amendment for term limits (Washington Post). Cruz proposed one that would limit Senators to 2 terms and Representatives to 3 terms. This seems like an idea almost everyone would support and would do so much to move politics forward.
- bluejekyll 9y agoBut it needs to be passed by the current people there All 27 Amendments have been ratified after two-thirds of the House and Senate approve of the proposal and send it to the states for a vote. Then, three-fourths of the states must affirm the proposed Amendment. First step is to get Congress on board, and telling them to vote themselves out is unlikely.
- s73ver 9y agoEh. We have term limits in California. Hasn't done much good. And those terms seem kinda short. Once someone figures out what they're doing, they're almost termed out.
- neuland 9y agoAnother commenter mentioned that the Democrats are effectively the metropolitan party (and the "Clinton Archipelago" map [0] from this NYTimes article "Two Americas of 2016" [1] shows it fairly well). But, I think the article misses an even more important factor. what problems the government fixes is less divisive than how those problems are fixed. This how question is much more important in preventing Republicans and Democrats from working together. Both parties want to solve most of the problems that plague cities: housing, transportation, poverty, education, etc [2]. What differs is how they intend to solve those issues. The ideological underpinning of the right is to solve problems by reducing government involvement and/or increasing people's ability to be responsible for their own lives (and possibly suffer bad outcomes, deserved or not): deregulation of business, lowering taxes on high-end professionals and rich people, school choice, public-private partnership in infrastructure. Meanwhile, the left generally tries to increase outcomes universally, even for people who have made bad choices: increasing services used by the poor, focusing on public education that is accessible to everyone, investing in public transportation provided by the government (and with subsidies so that the poor can afford to use it). The difference is that the right doesn't address issues directly. I think this is because they don't think it's the government's problem in the first place. Rather, they try to fix the broader environment instead. Free from this ideological aversion to government, Democrats advocate for directly investing in the issue. [0] https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clinton-islands/af7a8cd53827480ea1547b3a5bfcea013c158609/clinton_v2-Artboard_6.png https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clint... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-two-americas-of-2016.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/t... [2] For people on the left who are unfamiliar with right-wing interest in these issues, AEI has tons of research and events on them. Granted, most Republicans are not interested in these issues. Edit: clarity
- Hnrobert42 9y agoLet's call it the District 1 Party.
- ghobs91 9y agoWhy do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide behind. Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate the populace than it does to inform.
- uiri 9y agoSo, first off, the article's headline and subheadline/abstract blurb talk refer to a party. What the article actually proposes is not a political party but a per-state nonpartisan group that approves/disapproves of politicians based on how their policies effect urban areas. Second off, the author presumes that local politics are nonpartisan because the stakes are higher at local levels than at state and federal levels. I think the actual reason is that running a campaign at the state or federal level needs a lot more funding. The support of a political party's machine is necessary in order reach all voters and convince enough of them to vote for you. Third, the author proposes to start at the state and local levels. The 50 most populous cities in the US are located in only 29 states (plus DC). A lot of states don't have cities. I would characterize the following states as not having any cities to speak of based on the size and density of their largest towns: Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. That's 17 out of 50; over 1 in 3 states.
- bydo 9y agoYou're looking at overall density but not actual population centers. Over forty percent of Maine's population is located in the Portland metro area. Over eighty (!) percent of Alaska's population is in the greater Anchorage area. Large and sparsely populated states consolidate more in city centers, not less, which is why it makes so little sense that rural residents have so much more relative worth to their votes.
- uiri 9y agoMy definition of "city" is stricter than most so perhaps a lot of Americans would disagree with me. Even taking that into account, perhaps I was not loose enough with my definition. Anchorage has a population density of 170 people per square mile. Portland, ME has a population density of 3,100 people per square mile. For reference, Providence, RI - not a megalopolis by any stretch of the imagination - has a density of over 9,000 people per square mile. I think it is a bit of a stretch to call either Anchorage, AK or Portland, ME "a city". They might be very nice suburban towns. They might have a high concentration of their respective state's populations. That does not mean that the voters in those places will want the same policy adjustments that voters in, say, Pittsburgh or Minneapolis will want.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- burntrelish1273 9y ago(I know it's flagged, but .02 cents). Sorta, not really. The traditional alignment had been D: cities-tolerance-open society, R: country-religion-traditional society but so many people live in cities now that it doesn't make sense to have everyone in one, giant party. Either another bikeshedding wedge issue or major issue will end up splitting the majority along (new/different) lines. With two interchangeable, heavily corrupted parties, Bernie and progressive need to split and make their own, viable party. Also, sensible R's like Lawrence Wilkerson gotta retake/remake/splinter off a party that puts common sense ahead of Freedom Caucus & fringe. Right now, the 800 lbs gorilla socioeconomic tension is (re)distribution of wealth (inequality). Whichever group tackles that realistically will capture the majority of independents... I don't think lies on this issue will endure, people will eventually wise-up. Bottom line: 2-3 viable parties are necessary for balanced, countervailing powers to operate correctly (balance of power) and prevent collapse into Rome-style end-game. If the elite continue to exclude the grassroots and corruption reaches titanic levels, they (or someone) will eventually be replaced a-la Korea.
- carsongross 9y agoWhat America needs an amicable divorce. (Several, actually.) Since that won't happen, America will eventually get a nasty one.