18 ms·

"Seventy-two per cent of Republicans think that the Constitution is basically fine as is; seventy-two per cent of Democrats disagree." Of course this has nothi

• colinmhayes 4y ago
  > even in this polarized culture politicians could compromise Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform.
  • nvahalik 4y ago
    > refusing to compromise Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. The left moves so hard and fast to the left that even the right can no longer "refuse to compromise." If they don't, they are bigots at worst and uncultured, out of touch imbeciles at best.
    • TremendousJudge 4y ago
      As somebody not from the US, the mainstream "left" seems very right wing. When compared to the rest of the world, there is no left wing political party in the United States.
      • johnthuss 4y ago
        Wow, please give some examples.
        • PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
          The US "left wing" party does not (collectively) support: * nationalized health insurance * higher upper marginal rate income taxes * expanded public transportation * higher corporate taxes * unions/employee members of corporate boards * longer parental leave * more vacation time These and many other policies are common across other democratic nations' left-ish parties, and are actual policy in many of those nations.
          • nvahalik 4y ago
            I take it you haven't read the Party Platform, have you? Not sure that it really matters. As the #1 and #2 priorities of the Democratic Party right are allowing for the unrestricted killing of the unborn and supporting the alphabet-soup of sexual/gender spectrum.
            • funcDropShadow 4y ago
              But your #1 and #2 don't appear in most countries non-extremist left parties. Sure many other western democracies allow abortion in some form, but never unrestricted. E.g. in Germany you can abort in the first three month of the pregnancy if you have been to counseling. That makes it impossible to make a decision in a moment that you would regret later. Later abortions are legal only in life threatening situations. And the support of logically inconsistent and outright vile policies to favor the later letters of the alphabet soup are an American export.
            • deleted 4y ago
              [deleted]
            • antifa 4y ago
              > unrestricted killing of the unborn Not an accurate description of any democrat AFAIK. > supporting the alphabet-soup of sexual/gender spectrum Probably not priority #1 or #2, and if they were, not even an actually bad thing...
      • parineum 4y ago
        Every time... WE KNOW AND NOBODY CARES. We're talking about the US.
        • TremendousJudge 4y ago
          Well, this is an international forum, so I think it's a good idea to remember that many people reading are not from the same country and may have different interpretations of some terms. Also, maybe looking outside and gathering new data once in a while may put the problems you percieve your country to have in broader context, and help you find new solutions that actually work.
    • user3939382 4y ago
      • iconjack 4y ago
        It's interesting that a platform of pro-worker, anti-war, anti-censorship, which used to be central tenants of the left (and I would say the best of the left), now make up the core of Trumpism.
        • colinmhayes 4y ago
          trump isn't pro-worker or anti-censorship though. He's anti-censorship of himself/his people, but he's completely pro censorship of everyone else as can easily be seen on his twitter clone.
          • CalChris 4y ago
            He wasn't anti-war either.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • throw0101c 4y ago
      > Unfortunately the left has won in this regard. Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left: * https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/10/the-polariz...
      • nvahalik 4y ago
        I'm not disputing this, but I think there should be a clarification: By definition, someone who is conservative doesn't need to "move". Conservatism is about _conserving_ and subsequently not changing or moving. If the conservatives are becoming "more conservative" they are (or at least should be) _not moving_.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • throw0101c 4y ago
          > By definition, someone who is conservative doesn't need to "move". Conservatism is about _conserving_ and subsequently not changing or moving. Your dictionary definition and the practical real world are two different things. Especially when it comes to implementing policy (and the methods used to gain power).
  • BitwiseFool 4y ago
    >"Not when refusing to compromise is your parties main platform." This seems like a scathing indictment, but the point of a political party is to advance an ideological agenda. "Compromise" on bureaucratic issues is essential and acceptable, but you rarely hear about that. There are all sorts of issues that Republicans and Democrats refuse to compromise on - isn't that why people have divided themselves along these lines in the first place?
• randcraw 4y ago
  This likely boils down to how each party feels about the second amendment.
  • amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    It seems to me the problems with the second amendment are twofold: 1. It was written under the assumption that there would be no standing army, so the citizen militia would be the backbone of the defense of the nation. But that isn’t where we are today, unfortunately. 2. A large part of the US seems to believe that getting rid of guns would make the US less violent. I suspect they are completely wrong about that. Our National myth is about using violence to successfully solve problems, from the original revolution through our successes in several wars. So we are stuck with an extremely divisive issue which really has no impact on anything real.
    • no-s 4y ago
      > So we are stuck with an extremely divisive issue which really has no impact on anything real. The 2nd is a canary. Its song is the relationship between security and freedom. Should the canary die, then expect the invocation of the rule of sic temper tyrannis...HHOS. Let’s just leave it be and keep that impact theoretical.
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > It's a statement about each party's (dis)satisfaction with the current success of their party. This requires clarification. If our government was elected based on a "one person one vote" principle, Republicans would be nearly guaranteed to lose the presidency and Congress. Since 1992 there have been 8 presidential elections. Republicans only won the popular vote once (2004) but also won the presidency in 2000 and 2016. Similarly, if you look at Congress, especially the Senate, Republicans have outsized power due to the additional votes that those in less populated/rural areas get. The fact is that our Constitution reduces voting rights for those that live in populous urban areas and gives outsized voting rights to those that live in rural/sparsely populated areas. California has nearly 70 times the number of people as Wyoming, but they both get 2 senators. Even looking at the Electoral College, California only has 18 times as many electors as Wyoming, despite having 70x the people. This rationale/compromise may have made sense in the late 1800s, but it's difficult for me to see how this is a good thing now. I wonder how many presidential elections we can go where the "winner" receives fewer votes than the "loser" before people seriously question what the purpose of our democracy is. One other note, the equal-number-of-senators-per-state is the one thing that the Constitution explicitly forbids changing by amendment, the last clause of Article V.
  • 627467 4y ago
    Why is it odd that in a federalized country 1 person is not necessarily 1 vote? Look at the UN general assembly: votes of island nations with few thousand people are worth the same as another nation with 1B people.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      If the UN could make decisions with the sorts of impact on ordinary people's lives that the US Senate can, I think we'd see the problems with the UN structure too. The UN, however, is primarily a venue for the airing of grievances, the distribution of aid, and occasionally the finding of common purpose. It's not much like the US Senate, which consistently blocks legislation supported by a majority of the population.
    • amanaplanacanal 4y ago
• ijidak 4y ago
  Unfortunately, this tendency away from collaboration agreement has been trending this direction for the last hundred or so years. "But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here...For men will be...not open to any agreement" Wouldn't hold my breath on this improving. To the contrary .. It's going to continue to get worse.
  • ijidak 4y ago
    Meant to say *collaborative agreement
• barneygale 4y ago
  The US constitution could guarantee proportional representation, which would break the two-party hegemony and make compromise essential to success.
• advisedwang 4y ago
  It's not about party success. Conservative values generally mean trying to keep things the same. A hard to change set of rules supports this. Progressive values generally mean trying to make changes [to improve society]. Being able to change rules supports this. We should therefore expect conservative people to want a hard to amend constitution and progressive people to want a easy to amend constitution, regardless of whether or not they are in power. I expect this asymmetry to be visible in whether more ammendments are proposed (and ratified under) progressive or conservative regiemes.
  • buscoquadnary 4y ago
    > Progressive values generally mean trying to make changes [to improve society]. So I think you are technically correct on the definition of progressive and conservative but I would take issue that the progressive side is always trying to change things to better society. After all prohibition, legalized lobotomies, and eugenics we're a big part of the progressive policy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, of course so we're things like labor laws, income tax and other more ambiguous things like the direct election of senators. My point is not all movement is forward movement.
    • Georgelemental 4y ago
      The intent of the changes is to better society, even if we don't agree that that was the actual effect.
      • parineum 4y ago
        The intent of conservatism is to conserve positive aspects of society.
• chiefalchemist 4y ago
  The irony? Nowhere, that I'm aware of, is there anything in the founding documents about limiting choice to two parties. We can't keep filtering everything through a binary lens and expect to get anything but binary opposing views. The tool (i.e. The Constitution) is fine. The problem is at this point it's being used as a hammer and it's a screwdriver. Ya can't blame the tool for those who insist on misusing it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • funcDropShadow 4y ago
    Democracies that elect powerful presidents directly are usually two party systems. Only the indirect vote of the government through a parliament makes multi party systems more stable.
    • chiefalchemist 4y ago
      Nonetheless, there is nothing that stipulates two parties and certainly not the two parties we have currently. We're too top heavy and we're governed by a cartel. That's not The Constitution's fault.
• parkingrift 4y ago
  It really just boils down to how you feel about guns and abortion. It’s interesting that people want to restrict rights in one area, and expand them in another. The people and parties just disagree on which is which.
• Izkata 4y ago
  > Seventy-two per cent ..is one of those percentages that comes up in survey results so often that I can't help but distrust those results. It feels like something is being gamed to come up with that, and this one managed to get it twice.