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It's astonishing how bad the US political apparatus is at making progress even on matters that easily fall within that 80%, though— healthcare reform, childcare

It's astonishing how bad the US political apparatus is at making progress even on matters that easily fall within that 80%, though— healthcare reform, childcare, higher education, common sense gun laws, infrastructure investments. All of this stuff should be a slam dunk to implement with broad coalitions no matter who holds which branches, and yet it's all been basically gridlocked for decades, and instead it's never-ending turmoil over meaningless nonsense like who uses what bathrooms.

mrtesthah 1y ago
A small number of extremely wealthy individuals have a vested interest in fomenting that division, because the solutions to those 80% issues happens to conflict with their business interests.
nebula8804 1y ago
Its not like the US hasn't done big ambitious things before: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Hell didn't they help develop some of the social programs for Post WWII Europe/Japan etc? Post Nixon the government really just got captured and paralyzed and so a generation has grown up not understanding that this is a deliberately broken government, not how a government can operate. Instead people have been raised to think that all government is just ineffective and naturally broken. The only people who actually get it are the subset of Americans who have traveled or lived overseas for some time. As of 2023 only about half of Americans have a passport so there is a large chunk that haven't seen anything else.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  >Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. These were one thing, The New Deal. Done by Democrats who had 90% control of congress, a hyper popular president, and 1 out of every 5 Americans was jobless. When the Supreme Court threatened to push back on The New Deal, FDR threatened that he could pack the court, and that threat carried weight because he actually had the congress to do so, and the public would have been on his side as well. The public wanted The New Deal. Then the Progressive Democrats got big support on the Civil Rights bill. That support was also used to force, through Federal power, a bunch of sourthern states to stop segregation and other literal racist bullshit. Many federal politicians blamed that on the Democrat party (which is untrue, both support and opposition to the Civil Rights act were bipartisan), and southern states have largely voted Republican since. Then Carter's "Lets do clean energy and a strong environment and do the hard things to make a good nation" were so thoroughly rejected by the American public that it is considered a huge political realignment, and the Democrat party responded by giving up, and adopting neoliberal policies because they were so fucking popular with the public, that they might as well get rich and elected. As a result, the Clinton years got us the damn Crime Bill. We also got the Nutrition Facts panel on food, and that thing is awesome in ways I think most people don't realize. Then, when Obama came close to having real power in congress, we got the ACA. If you want to see this nation do things, give the people who want to build things actual power. Give the Democrats actual damn power. Not "President and half of one house of congress". That's not how power works in the US system when you are following the rules. If the Democrats got 60 senators, 400 reps, and the president, maaaybe then they could get something done, but even then, the Supreme Court could trivially stop anything they tried to do. This is all intentional. It's how the American system was purposely designed. It's hard to build things on purpose.
asdff 1y ago
>healthcare reform, childcare, higher education, common sense gun laws, infrastructure investments. Funny you imagine there is consensus with any of that. The right doesn't want government healthcare. They don't want government sponsored childcare. They could care less about higher education. They want no gun laws. And they don't want black people to benefit from infrastructure. There is no forming consensus with that position.
- mikepurvis 1y ago
  Outside of the 24hr news bubble, I believe the reality is that there is a lot of common ground on these supposed hot button issues, for example on the guns issue alone there is broad support for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority--support-universal-background-checks-gun-licensing-assault-weapons-ban https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority--supp... But it's hard to make it happen when Fox paints any kind of gun measure as crazy leftist tyranny and then deep-pocketed fringe organizations like the NRA vow to punish any Republican who collaborates on compromise measures.
  - asdff 1y ago
    About the only thing there is consensus on between the parties, vs americans at large, is banning gun sales to the mentally ill. In terms of assault weapons ban there is a substantial divide between republicans and democrats. Your source shows this too. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/07/SR_24.07.24_guns_12.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024...

mrtesthah 1y ago

A small number of extremely wealthy individuals have a vested interest in fomenting that division, because the solutions to those 80% issues happens to conflict with their business interests.

nebula8804 1y ago

Its not like the US hasn't done big ambitious things before: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Hell didn't they help develop some of the social programs for Post WWII Europe/Japan etc? Post Nixon the government really just got captured and paralyzed and so a generation has grown up not understanding that this is a deliberately broken government, not how a government can operate. Instead people have been raised to think that all government is just ineffective and naturally broken. The only people who actually get it are the subset of Americans who have traveled or lived overseas for some time. As of 2023 only about half of Americans have a passport so there is a large chunk that haven't seen anything else.

mrguyorama 1y ago
>Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. These were one thing, The New Deal. Done by Democrats who had 90% control of congress, a hyper popular president, and 1 out of every 5 Americans was jobless. When the Supreme Court threatened to push back on The New Deal, FDR threatened that he could pack the court, and that threat carried weight because he actually had the congress to do so, and the public would have been on his side as well. The public wanted The New Deal. Then the Progressive Democrats got big support on the Civil Rights bill. That support was also used to force, through Federal power, a bunch of sourthern states to stop segregation and other literal racist bullshit. Many federal politicians blamed that on the Democrat party (which is untrue, both support and opposition to the Civil Rights act were bipartisan), and southern states have largely voted Republican since. Then Carter's "Lets do clean energy and a strong environment and do the hard things to make a good nation" were so thoroughly rejected by the American public that it is considered a huge political realignment, and the Democrat party responded by giving up, and adopting neoliberal policies because they were so fucking popular with the public, that they might as well get rich and elected. As a result, the Clinton years got us the damn Crime Bill. We also got the Nutrition Facts panel on food, and that thing is awesome in ways I think most people don't realize. Then, when Obama came close to having real power in congress, we got the ACA. If you want to see this nation do things, give the people who want to build things actual power. Give the Democrats actual damn power. Not "President and half of one house of congress". That's not how power works in the US system when you are following the rules. If the Democrats got 60 senators, 400 reps, and the president, maaaybe then they could get something done, but even then, the Supreme Court could trivially stop anything they tried to do. This is all intentional. It's how the American system was purposely designed. It's hard to build things on purpose.

asdff 1y ago

>healthcare reform, childcare, higher education, common sense gun laws, infrastructure investments. Funny you imagine there is consensus with any of that. The right doesn't want government healthcare. They don't want government sponsored childcare. They could care less about higher education. They want no gun laws. And they don't want black people to benefit from infrastructure. There is no forming consensus with that position.

mikepurvis 1y ago
Outside of the 24hr news bubble, I believe the reality is that there is a lot of common ground on these supposed hot button issues, for example on the guns issue alone there is broad support for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority--support-universal-background-checks-gun-licensing-assault-weapons-ban https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority--supp... But it's hard to make it happen when Fox paints any kind of gun measure as crazy leftist tyranny and then deep-pocketed fringe organizations like the NRA vow to punish any Republican who collaborates on compromise measures.
- asdff 1y ago
  About the only thing there is consensus on between the parties, vs americans at large, is banning gun sales to the mentally ill. In terms of assault weapons ban there is a substantial divide between republicans and democrats. Your source shows this too. https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/07/SR_24.07.24_guns_12.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024...