I feel almost like an anthropologist exploring unfathomable territory when I read about American electoral politics. No matters how much I read, it doesn’t make any sense to me.1
The Democrats are considerably to the right of the Labour party, the major left wing party in New Zealand (who I would never support, because they’re too right wing) and I suspect they’re also to the right of the National party, the major right wing party in New Zealand. I read people whose analysis is to the left of the Labour party in terms of the NZ political spectrum, and yet they still support this incredibly right wing party?
How much Democrat support for the war in Iraq is too much? How many women denied access to abortion are too many? How much Homeland Security is too much? How much welfare reform is too much? How many children dying from sanctions are too many?
I can understand taking a pragmatic approach and always voting for the least bad lizard.2 But for those who claim that they’re supporting something positive when they support the Democrats, when would you stop believing that? When would you say fuck this shit there are better ways to reach my goals?
My understanding of the issue – as a Canadian, fwiw – is that the system in the US is built so much around two parties that there isn’t really a choice. Everything from the way that primaries are held and run to the very basis of the discourse is predicated on the binary distinction.
When would you say fuck this shit there are better ways to reach my goals?
When there are? Yeah, the Dems are lizards too and barely any better than the Rep lizards, but what else is there to do? Stay home in a “none of the above” vote and people will, quite seriously, tell you that you no longer have any right to complain about the government (free speech, apparently, being dependent on having voted.) No third party candidate has a snowball’s chance on the national level and if you vote for one then Bush’s election becomes your fault because you didn’t vote for the scaly guy from Tennessee. (Why not blame Bush voters for Bush’s election rather than Nader voters? I’ve never quite understood that…ah, well, the past is immutable.) Move to New Zealand? How many US-Americans can you take before you start mining the borders? Though this sort of thing makes me wonder if it’s not time to say heck with it and abandon the US for whatever country will take me. Before the rush starts.
yes, my take as a us voter is that people of good conscience can disagree about whether to vote and whether to vote for dems, but not about whether voting is the primary direction for meaingful change. In this country, it clearly cant be.
personally,though i’d rather eat glass than vote for hillary for any office. she knew exactly what she was doing when she voted for the war. thats all there is to it.
For me it’s truly a lesser of two evils. This isn’t the PC thing to say, but I am to a large extent a “free rider” when it comes to American politics. I care about it. I know that in theory if they can fix the institutional disasters my daily life will eventually get easier, but my daily life is already overburdened and underresourced. I don’t have the time nor the energy to do much more than vote. So, I vote for the lesser of the two evils, even if I do think the Dems are *almost* as bad as the Republicans.
Because I’m so busy trying to keep myself afloat, I don’t have time to help build a new ship, even if it would help me in the end. If I stop treading water long enough to be of any use, I’ll drown before the ship is built. KWIM?
I suspect I’m not too out of the ordinary in that circumstance.
Maia, the US electoral system has a deep structural bias in favor of just two parties, and that’s how it has been almost universally from the founding of our Republic. The parties have failed and been replaced, though not for a long time. When one party has become untenable, it falls apart, like the Federalists after the War of 1812. But the transaction cost of that change is to let the other side dominate for a while; with our Constitution interpreted by lifetime appointees to the Federal Judiciary, that’s a steep price.
Because minor parties are untenable and major party replacement is costly, the preferred alternative is for an ideological or interest movement to fight for control of a major party. That’s what the Conservative movement did to the Republican party, beginning in 1948 with the defeat of Dewey, getting the attention of the public with Goldwater and finally winning with the election of Reagan in 1980. In fact, in my view, the third-party Green movement in the US has more to do with a gambit to scare the Dems and push support within the Dem establishment to the left than with a real attempt to replace them as counterparty to the Republicans.
So, in sum I would say that a lot of US liberals and progressives don’t support the Democrats, they support taking over the Democratic Party.
We’re not doing a good job of it. We have not yet had the grass-roots single-mindedness of the Conservatives. We need to get left-liberals into the minor leagues and build the bench: traffic court judges, school boards and dogcatchers. Then the twenty-five-year-old lefty dogcatcher can run for sherriff, then state assembly, then Congress. That’s how we do it. But we need to focus past 2008. None of these assholes (one of whom I will vote for and give money to), even if they win, will give us what we want. We can be no more satisfied with them than movement Conservatives were with Rockerfeller and Javits.
Dianne, is there a local lefty progressive that mostly represents your views and is suited to running for town trustee; school board; selectperson; lower-court judge; prosecutor; zoning board of appeals? Can you hold a fundraiser for that person in your house? Can you get petition signatures to get that person on the ballot? If you don’t know that person, can you be that person?
Maia, I hadn’t appreciated your first footnote. Perhaps the question I am answering is not the one you asked.
It’s left-wing people’s attitudes towards the electoral system that baffles me
I think that the vast majority of left-wing folks in the US aren’t nearly as far to the left as you think they are. That may be why you are baffled. The word “Socialism,” by itself, is a bogeyman in the USA. Single payer healthcare has been a non-starter for decades because that would be, gasp! socialism. Most american lefties have never heard of a guaranteed minimum income.
Frankly, Americans are the least politically educated and least politically interested people I have ever met. When I was in the boondocks of Spain, people were talking about USA politics & policy in depth and detail that you rarely find in the US.
Perhaps this will go some way towards de-baffling you.
The do-nothing democratic party base is well represented here. Well, pathetic historical revisionism aside, third parties and independents are about all the hope America has left. Most thinking people have already dumped the republicrat duopoly and are working hard for electoral reform, particularly IRV. Check out FairVote here.
Truth.
More truth.
So, how to fix this? I think we have to do three things:
1) Continue to attempt to take over the Democratic party. The netroots have been useful in this . . . not that it’s actually happened by any means, but I feel that we’ve made more progress in the past 5 years than we did in the previous 10-15, in terms of the Democratic party listening to its members.
2) Support and promote structural change that will enable third parties to become viable parts of the process, rather than just spoilers. IRV is part of this, but it also includes things like inclusion in debates and, less directly, a return to public interest broadcasting on network television.
3) Change the terms of the discussion, and convince people that we’re right on the issues. Whether it’s a winner-take-all system or IRV or Condorcet or whatever, if most of America disagrees with us, we’re just not going to get the support we want, period.
I am not a huge fan of the Democratic party. When I support them, I support them because I think they’re the best bet to get some of the stuff I want done done.
I support both making the Domcratic party more likely to do the stuff I like and making someone else (who is already likely to do the stuff I want) more able to do it.
—Myca
Thomas: I live in Manhattan. You can’t throw a brick in Manhattan without giving a latte liberal a reason to sue you. I’m reasonably pleased with my local politicians, even the ostensibly Republican mayor, and house representative. We’ve even got a half decent governor now. But they don’t affect things like whether the country starts an offensive war or the president declares martial law or not.
I kind of like Myca’s ideas. I believe that the neocons have done this in the Republican party- I know many a “Republican” who are not nearly as right-winged as is portrayed on issues like the war and even healthcare for all. But they have always been Republican so they vote that way (or they are single issues voters- mostly because of abortion- which means they won’t be easily persuaded to vote liberally). This is my perspective as someone in the middle of the US and whose social circles are mostly Catholics (hence the abortion issue).
Before the last election I swore if Bush won again I would move to Canada. I didn’t. But if Romney wins this time, well, we’ll just hope that doesn’t happen. but it is sad that I feel like abandoning my country rather than changing it from within. Which goes back to why I like the ideas here about starting with local change.
I wonder how many people who do support this as a/the main strategy for progressive US reform are members of PDA?
http://www.pdamerica.org/
How are the netroots supposed to produce organizational change within the party? What are the consequenes of Howard Deans chairmanship?
One thing the neocons did right for their cause that I think must be the prerequisites for Myca’s three pronged approach is builidng left/progressive organzation ouside of the electoral sphere; they did it wiht churches and thinktanks, for us it has to (also) be unions, grassroots women and POC groups, etc. etc.
Also, to address the original question, sadly I think that some of it has to do with rooting for a party the same way people root for a sports team.
“I’m a Democrat because my dad was a Democrat, and I keep rooting for the Dems because . . . um . . . WOO!” **Banner wave**
In my earlier post I addressed more why people would root for the Dems who specifically thought about it, but both for liberals and conservatives, I think that there are a lot of people whose identification with a party is more primarily cultural than idealogical.
—Myca
I think that there are a lot of people whose identification with a party is more primarily cultural than idealogical.
That’s part of it.
Another part of it is that belonging to/supporting a political party gives you 80% of the benefits of being an activist at about 1% of the cost. You have a team, you have a dog in the fight, you get to bond with your friends about the Chimperor or Shrillary, and you don’t have to think about any of it or go to dreadful marches in the sun or attend meetings where droning sociopaths play consensus Nazi. You just have to vote, and say “I’m a rock-ribbed Republican/loyal Democrat” when someone asks, which they rarely do.
Despite my disagreeing with many here on the desirability of certain political philosophies, I find common ground with the issues regarding the American electoral system.
Examination of the U.S. Constitution will find no mention of political parties at all. There was no intent to create them or give them any special rights. Our first President pleaded with his fellow citizens to forswear political parties, to no avail. The two party system is entrenched because while at odds over philosophies, the two parties are agreed that they don’t want anyone else to join the scrum. For one thing, in a two-party system there is always a majority party, and each party’s aspiration to reach that position overcomes any other consideration.
So, what you’ll find is that in many juristictions the laws favor established political parties. For example, in Illinois a candidate backed by an established political party (one that gets more than 5% of the vote, which 3rd party candidates rarely get) only needs 5,000 signatures on their nominating petitions for a statewide position, whereas a 3rd party or independent candidate needs 25,000 – something I think is unconstitutional.
Stay home in a “none of the above” vote and people will, quite seriously, tell you that you no longer have any right to complain about the government (free speech, apparently, being dependent on having voted.)
Don’t get confused about that, Dianne. For one thing, while I have heard people say that I wouldn’t represent it as a majority opinion. Observe that while most people don’t vote (a disgrace, IMNSHO), most people also complain about the government. For another thing, I believe that when people say that they are talking about it in a moral sense, not a legal one. It’s not a free speech issue.
Frankly, Americans are the least politically educated and least politically interested people I have ever met. When I was in the boondocks of Spain, people were talking about USA politics & policy in depth and detail that you rarely find in the US.
Well, Jake, I’ve never been to the boondocks of Spain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right. There are a lot of people in the U.S. who don’t pay attention to politics at all (and social policy questions, etc.). If you talk to them about this, they profess cynicism. I personally think that a great many people profess cynicism to mask laziness. They will not do any research before they vote; instead, they pick up on a few 30-second sound bites, or decide their vote on the race or gender of the candidate. I have had a number of discussions with my fellow citizens where I have been shocked at the lack of understanding of the basic mechanisms of how the American electoral system works, never mind the positions that it’s denizens hold.
One thing to note in American politics is that the mainstream media tends to cover political contests as if they were horse races. A great many of the stories are about who is leading who in the polls, with ancillary stories about how this will affect fundraising. Then we get stories about the sexual orientation of their children, what their spouses do for a living, etc., etc. Human interest stuff. Relatively few stories are about the actual positions of the candidates, and what various people think the implications of these might be and how they might affect people’s lives.
But who’s responsible for that? That’s right – the electorate. The media sells what people want to buy. Stories and shows tha look at the actual positions of the candidates in any depth usually don’t do well – i.e., shows that inform rather than entertain. It’s hard to blame the media for selling what people want to buy. Alexis deToqueville, a visitor to America from France in the early 18th century wrote “In a democracy you get the government you deserve”, and I think he was right.
There’s also rational ignorance to take into account. You can spend 10,000 hours becoming educated about the political issues – and you still only get one vote, and your life isn’t going to be any better. You’d be a lot better off spending those 10,000 hours at work, school, or with your family and friends – and so that’s what people do with their time.
My sister who lives there is visiting in a few weeks and told me that it’s getting harder to even vote Labor. Depressing there and here.
Maia, as you may have gathered from some of the responses here, the assumptions of US politics are fundamentally different from those in any country where a major party would describe itself as the party of “Labor.” In such countries economic and social class are considered intrinsic to politics. Not so in the US.
Often overlooked is the fact that the design of the US Government was originally conceived as a nonpartisan mechanism. The founders actually believed that it would be possible for politics to operate without the formation of parties or “factions”. Being a pre-industrial, agrarian based society that had expelled the traditions of aristocratic privilege along with the Monarchy, they did not foresee the rise of class divisions ushered in by the industrial revolution. They did recognize the existence of differing interests but saw these as being embodied in “free” local and state institutions which expressed the “popular will”.
To the degree that distinctions based on property were recognized, it was in the context of the ideology of a “natural aristocracy” based on individual merit. The ruling US political narrative, from it’s inception, has been hostile to expressions of “class interest” as such. Whereas in most of the world Rousseauian chestnuts such as the “will of the people” or the “National interest” are rightly seen as mythic cliches, since all societies are divided along lines of often conflicting collective interests, in US discourse they are treated as literal. The only legitimate collective interest is the “National interest” expressed through it’s federative state and national institutions.
This is why, in addressing issues of economic, racial and sexual inequality, the narrative is almost always conceived in moralistic, individual terms. These problems are not recognized as systemic in a societal sense but only in the cramped arena of political representation. This is why the response to critiques of existing, systemic inequality are so often met with protestations of personal virtue linked with accusations of “class war”, “race pimping” and “male bashing.” Once people possess the franchise, they are viewed as atomized individuals and questions of inequality are reduced to a matter of individual prejudice and character. The doctrine of natural meritocracy argues simultaneously that unequal outcomes are the result of personal inadequacy on the one hand and natural superiority on the other.
That this state of affairs is both deeply reactionary and deeply irrational is beyond dispute. It’s clear though, that the “two party system” as it has evolved is probably the one best suited to maintaining the status quo. It is completely in keeping with an attitude that seeks to limited the scope of party and faction which, by definition, limits the potential for radical change. It’s worth noting that every radical alteration in US society since the mid 19th century has been occaisioned by an actual or potiential existential threat to the ruling elites.
What all this means is that there is precious little room for the left to maneuver in this country. The structural roadblocks to a multiparty system replacing the current duopoly are manifold. The absence of any “legitimate” avenues of collective action outside of the duopoly militates against popular movements maintaining the independence necessary to become intergenerational vehicles for political or social change. There is no broad political culture to sustain the left outside of the political system. Obviously the solution is to create one but how?
Replacing the electoral college with a popular vote for presidential elections would be a start.
I actually disagree, as this would preserve the winner-take-all nature of our elections, and as long as that’s in place, the big 2 have an assured relevance.
I agree totally with Myca and Thomas: this is essentially a problem of our electoral structure.
Getting rid of the electoral college would help a little bit. The electoral college system empowers low population states and underrepresents big population states. While there are a couple small “blue” states (Delaware, Rhode Island), most of the effect of the electoral college is to give more power to rural voters, who are currently right-wing (in Idaho, Utah, Montana, etc.), and to underrepresent urban voters, including many people of color (in California and New York, not to mention D.C.).
But that’s not going to get rid of the two party system. The two party system is created by a combination of two factors: not only do we have a winner take all system, but we also have a Presidency.
If we had a winner take all system, but a Prime Minister, then we’d be like the UK – there would only be two viable parties in any district, but there would be less incentive to coordinate nationally. You could have, for example, the Welsh National Party and Labor be the two main parties in one district, while Labor and Tories were two real viable parties somewhere else. The professionals can sort out the coalitions to elect the Prime Minister; you don’t need a unified “brand” for national elections in the same way as you do for a Presidential election.
If we had a Presidency, but we had a proportional representation system in Congress, then we’d be like Brazil, or maybe France. You’d need a mechanism to narrow the Presidency down to only two viable candidates, but the legislature could accurately reflect the full range of opinion in the population: some Libertarians, some Greens, etc.
But we don’t have that, and tinkering at the margins, with the kind of rules RonF mentioned, won’t make any difference. We got an early draft of popular democracy, and I frankly don’t think it’s as well-designed as later systems, but I don’t think it’s worth the political time and energy to try to rewrite the Constitution.
The main strategies available are to recapture the Democratic party through voting in the primaries and donating to/campaigning for any candidate you can really believe in, and doing work outside the party system to try to shift public opinion leftward.
Stay home in a “none of the above” vote and people will, quite seriously, tell you that you no longer have any right to complain about the government (free speech, apparently, being dependent on having voted.)
“No right” here being a sloppy shorthand for a recitation of the story of the Little Red Hen. Because staying home and not voting is not a protest, really; it’s a lazy, childish refusal to look at your other options. It’s not as though you’re forbidden by law from voting either D or R, and if you’re going to throw your vote away anyway, why not vote for a third party? If it’s the Electoral College you’re upset with, why not work to support laws or candidates who will abolish it?
Maia, are you really trying to figure out how the US political system works, or is this another “you imperialist Americans are nowhere as evolved as us Kiwis” rant?
For this to be true there would have to be some consistent explanation as to how people in so many other democracies appear to value work, school, family, and friends less than Americans do. There should also be some means to isolate the ‘preoccupation’ of the electorate in a given cycle to see how much it actually affects turnout. Not to mention that in a nation of World of Warcraft and porn addicts, the presumption that the way people spend their time is organized around rationality and whether it makes their lives better is far from a sound axiom to start with. (You could argue that ‘to them’, obtaining Lv 40 swords +60 vs. evil characters and the latest wank stash represents the same value as improving one’s mind or volunteering to help others does for other people. But of course, this renders the whole theory into an empty squack box of tautologies and post hoc rationalizations, with nothing in the way of predictive power. Attempts to shoehorn politicized economic hypotheses into the democratic system always falls apart at the slightest level of scrutiny.)
It also empowers larger states by giving them a bloc vote. Someone who carries 50.1% of the vote in California, New York, Florida, and Texas is already more than halfway on their way to becoming the president – regardless of what the voters in the 46 other states think, or the 49.9% of those in the states s/he did carry who have been completely negated.
I find it really interesting that no-one has replied with a bottom line, which was kind of what I expect. I understand everything people say about voting for the Democrats, and can see why you would do it. I can even see the point of trying to reform the Democratic party (I wouldn’t do it myself, and don’t think that it would work, but can see why people might), but that means treating the right of the Democratic party as the enemy. It means being as vocal when the Democrats cave on Iraq, as you were when they stood up (part of the reason that I wrote this post, was because I was surprised by the silence of the American bloggers I read about the Democrats funding the war on Iraq). To make the question less abstract. Are there bottom lines people would have for voting for a Democrat representative to the Senate or Congress? Are there people who vote for the Democrats usually, but whose local representatives are too vile to support.
Radfem – Voting for Labour has never been an option for me. But voting for a party who will be represented in parliament is now right out, unfortunately. I voted for the Greens last time under sufferance, but their leader wrote that Clint Rickards had consensual sex with Louise Nicholas – so I’m not going to help him get into parliament. I may sit the next election out or vote for some really obscure party (there is a logic under our electoral system in voting for a really small party that you don’t actually support)
Mythago – That’s a rather inaccurate paraphrase. For starters, I would never use the word ‘imperialist’ to apply to American people. But to answer your question, I did want to know if Democrat supporters who read Alas had bottom lines.
Jake Squid – How left wing bloggers and commenters I read actually are, is kind of my question. It seems to me that I read quite a lot of radical analysis on American blogs, but the radical analysis will sit beside posts supporting the Democratic party, and I don’t understand it.
My bottom line would have to be: I’ll stop supporting the Democratic party/stop voting for Democrats when:
1) They cease to be the better option between the big 2 parties.
or
2) When we have a reasonable expectation of a party other than the big 2 being able to elect someone.
However, ‘supporting’ isn’t the same as ‘not criticizing’, either.
—Myca
When you wrote ‘bottom line’ I thought you mean ‘summary’ or ‘justification’. Not lower limit. Maybe it’s a language thing.
I sometimes vote for dems, but I’m out of luck this time around as I wont vote for anyone who supported the war initially or is supporting it now. My standard for evaluating that is that dem politicians need to be advocating for congress to cut war funding, the only step that can actually end the war.
I think that leaves me with Dennis Kucinich.
This doesnt make a whole lot of , or it least its not obvious that the media works this way. People dont buy individual stories, and there are other, in my view more plausible explanations for why political stories are reporte d in this fashion in the us.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f99/mcchesney.html
Maia, now that I understand better what you’re getting at, I’d say that the bottom line for most people on the left is whether or not the Democrat represents a less awful outcome than the Republican. In instances where there is nothing to choose between them, I’d expect that most leftwing folks would simply not bother to vote. At least this has been true in the past.
In response to Mythago’s provocative query to you, I’d say that if one believes that a healthy political leftwing is a feature of a mature democracy, one would have to conclude that the US does indeed lag behind.
Maia, I also find myself feeling totally perplexed reading American bloggers at times (although from a Canadian perspective). I’m currently taking a Canadian politics course, and one of the questions we’re talking about now is how to explain why the American political spectrum is so much narrower than the Canadian political spectrum (which is still to right wing for me).
There are a whole bunch of different theories about why the American political spectrum only encompasses liberalism with some authoritarianism on the part of the Christian fundamentalists, none of which are particularly relevant to this conversation. The point is that Americans are obsessively individualist, whereas it seems that Canada and New Zealand have inherited some of the collectivist political tradition that characterizes both feudalism and socialism. In the US, socialism remains a fringe ideology, whereas in Canada social democratic parties have formed provincial governments. My professor also pointed out that having social democratic parties (even when they have no chance of forming a government) pushes the more centrist parties to the left, especially when the economy isn’t doing so well, out of fear of losing centre-left voters or the votes of people who have been negatively impacted by an economic downturn. Having a more left wing political party also means that left wing ideas get some media play, and become part of national political discourse – something that seems to be totally absent in the US (with the exception of the blogosphere).
The sheer pointlessness of trying to reform the Democorporate Party is very difficult to calculate. However, the chances of any group of voters actually effecting change withing the Democorporate Party can be approximately expressed as:
Jack / Shit.
The (Anti-)Democratic Party exists to stifle progress, not encourage it. Example, Were it not for the Women’s Party pushing for suffrage, women would still be waiting for the vote.
Progess happens in spite of the democrats. Once you wrap your head around that, you’re on the right track.
Myca and W B Reeves – that’s what I mean by the Lizards. I understand voting for the Democrats as the least worse option. But I guess I don’t understand praising them or campaigning for them as the least worse alternative, which is what I see quite a bit on American blogs.
Curiousgyrl: I’m curious about Dennis Kunichich – until recently his record on abortion was so appalling. As far as I can tell the primary function of the Democratic party is to stop abortion becoming completely illegal. Call me a cynic, but his conversion seems linked to wanting to run for democratic party candidate for president, and not necessarily particularly genuine. Is there any reason to believe that it is genuine?
Maia, Kucinich’s views are closer to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Communitarian tradition than anything. I think it is pretty clear that Kucinich has made a choice of convenience. As for the Dems on abortion, the real party goal is to be the party most supportive of reproductive freedom while making as many concessions as possible: that way, abortion supporters have no better option, but the Dems can distance themselves from abortion itself, and from the need to deal honestly with teen sexual activity, both of which they are afraid to take a stand for.
In part, this is one of those “government you deserve” issues. As long as otherwise sensible Americans go all weak-kneed and Saletaneque over abortion, they’ll continue to only support abortion in the case of the famous three exceptions: “rape, incest and me.” This frustrates me no end. I’m for abortion on demand without apology. I want candidates who say, “choosing to be a parent is so important that nothing should interfere with that choice.” We don’t have them, and if we want them, we’ll have to build them.
Maia, yes, I see the DLC and other right-side-of-the-Dems politicians and groups as the surrender monkeys of the American spectrum: pathological defeatists who must be forced left or tossed out. I support primary challenges to the left of these people to do that. (Lieberman is actually a good sign; his general election victory despite losing the primary is sui generis in my view, and kicking him out of the party is a high-profile warning to others of his kind.
Maia, you’re right about Kucinich’s views on abortion, though I think his sincerity of belief in womens rights is less important than the political reality that he had to change his policy position if he was going to be left-wing candidate; Bill Clinton, I believe, was a sincere supporter of womens rights, but abortion access nevertheless eroded under Clinton.
That said, I’ve not really supported Kucinich as I am suspicious as you that a progressive takeover from the inside will be a successful strategy. In the past I’ve been a Green, but that strategy, too seems to have completely fallen apart,mostly., I think the result of incompetent politicking and internal warfare during the last bush election–in fact the major problem was that half the greens were scared into going back to supporting the Dems. One Green candidate suggested she woudlnt vote for herself, since she lived in a “swing state.” The whole show was pathetic.
This seems like a shame, since in three major green issues– corporate rule, environment and the war– left positions are more mainstream in public opinion now than ever before.
Truthfully I dont think a potentiallly successful left electoral strategy has existed in this country since Jesse Jacksons Rainbow Coalition, rallys for which I attended–as a toddler!
That said, I dont mean “dont vote, do nothing”–I’d like to see serious efforts both at reform of the dems and to build a third party to take over from the dems. Meanwhile I think building the antiwar movement and organization among women, workers and people of color will help on those issues and build a climate in which positive electoral change might be possible.
Laura:
Getting rid of the electoral college would help a little bit. The electoral college system empowers low population states and underrepresents big population states. … most of the effect of the electoral college is to give more power to rural voters, who are currently right-wing (in Idaho, Utah, Montana, etc.), and to underrepresent urban voters, including many people of color (in California and New York, not to mention D.C.).
One thing that is essential to remember about the Electoral College is that it’s function is not to represent the will of the individual voter on a national basis. Our Constitution was an agreement among 13 separate sovereign states, and it’s structure reflects the idea that the states were to handle as much of the governing power as possible and that they were to have control over the Federal government. This can be seen, for example, in the method by which the Constitution is amended. It’s not done by a national referendum, which would be dominated by urban locations. It’s done by states, and a super-majority of 3/4 of them are required to approve any changes. So while the Electoral College has quite a bit of population-based representation (81% of the votes in it are allocated on population), that 19% reflects the sovereign rights of the individual states.
This was actually a compromise. In the previous American government (the Articles of Confederation), unanimous approval by the states were required to pass laws and approve changes. There was no intent to give the population a direct voice in governance. When the present American legislature was being structured, the idea that the states would have no sovereignty was never even considered. Creation of our bicameral structure, where the population had a proportional voice in one house and the states had equal voices in the other, came about because the small states refused to join the union unless they had a way to keep from being overwhelmed by a coalition of a few large states.
debbie said:
The point is that Americans are obsessively individualist, whereas it seems that Canada and New Zealand have inherited some of the collectivist political tradition that characterizes both feudalism and socialism.
Remember that the U.S.’s government didn’t evolve from a previously existing government; it was created by a violent revolution. I think that might account for some of the difference. If you read through the various documents of the time you’ll see a studied and consistent rejection of central authority. The intent was and is to empower the individual. Americans had had quite enough of a strong central authority that could subvert individual rights.
This is why the language of class politics doesn’t play well in America, and why many Socialist themes fail. Socialists and the rest of the left tend to define people as members of groups and to see their rights, hopes and destinies tied to what groups they belong to. But Americans don’t define themselves that way; they see themselves ideally as individuals and subsume their group memberships to that. The American ideal is that your rights and achievements are tied to your own individual efforts and are not associated with what groups you may be classifiable into. Socialists advance the idea that regardless of your individual abilities and advancement your group membership limits what you can achieve. This is so totally against American principles, ideals, observations and experience that people just don’t accept it.
Thomas said:
I support primary challenges to the left of these people to do that.
There often are such challenges. But they rarely make it out of the primary, predictably.
RonF,
One of the theories about the differences between Canada and the US is the formative events theory – basically, the theory that many of the major differences between Canada and the US (and the US and most other countries) come from our very different histories. The US left the British Empire through revolution, Canada waited until the British decided they didn’t want to pay to defend their colonies. The American constitution was written all at one time – the Canadian constitution has evolved (the most recent evolution being the repatriation of the constitution in 1982, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms). There are other theories about our differences, but I don’t want to derail Maia’s thread.
My point in bringing this up is that one of my major frustrations when engaging in political debates with Americans (hard to avoid since there are so many of you on the intertubes), is that most Americans don’t seem to see beyond their own, very particular, frame of reference. And they treat is as common sense, when it’s really not common sense to the rest of us. I am having trouble coming up with a specific example right now, but I’ll keep thinking and come back to it.
To bring it back to the original post – what I’m trying to express is that, like Maia, I don’t get why so many of the progressive bloggers support the Democrats. I appreciate that many of them are very critical of the party, and of individual Democrat politicians, and are working hard to move the party to the left. The disconnect for me is that otherwise progressive people think that there is something worth reforming, because I don’t see there being much worth supporting before the relatively recent shift to the right.
Let me put it this way: I think that we have more of a chance of reforming the Democratic party than we do of making the Green Party viable.
Others disagree, and there’s no reason not to do both.
My point in bringing this up is that one of my major frustrations when engaging in political debates with Americans (hard to avoid since there are so many of you on the intertubes), is that most Americans don’t seem to see beyond their own, very particular, frame of reference. And they treat is as common sense, when it’s really not common sense to the rest of us.
You’re right. Americans pretty much think that our political system is the best in the world and most of us can’t understand why other countries don’t adopt it. Think about our present immigration crisis. What we are seeing is that huge numbers of people come to the U.S. every year to live. Many of them abandon everything to come here. Some even die. Yet they keep coming. In the face of that, to tell us that what we have isn’t working and we need to change it has a hard time getting traction.
As has been noted above, the general idea is that absent obvious disability, people who fail to achieve a workable standard of living in the U.S. generally have themselves to blame. The left is fighting against immigration restricts by giving us story after story of immigrants who come here with nothing and achieve success. The idea is to gain people’s sympathy towards these immigrants. But what it also does is undermine the idea (that is “common sense” to many inother countries but is really not common sense to Americans) that one’s membership in a particular group defines one’s destiny. If someone with nothing but the clothes on their back and no English skills can make it in America, then how does belonging to any particular group matter?
To say that one of the differences between the U.S. and other countries is that we were created out of a revolution, whereas others like Canada tended to evolve actually glosses over a point that I think is even more significant. You touched on it when you said “The American constitution was written all at one time – the Canadian constitution has evolved”. It has been famously said that the U.S. is the only country founded on a good idea. The U.S. was formed by a group of people who came to the U.S. as castoffs and discards and adventurers. In a short space of time they threw off their old forms of government (something many of them were looking to do when they came here in the first place) and then created a new government based not on a common nationality or origin but on a philosophical basis. Moreover, on a philosophy that stressed individual rights over the state, which was anathema to just about any government of the time and as an actual operative (vs. theoretical) governing philosophy was unique at the time. It’s unfortunately not particularly common today.
The set of ideas that we started with are seen as having been pretty successful. The sight of people flooding into our country against all odds tends to confirm that. Americans definitely do take them as common sense. What look like minor differences between the Republicans and the Democrats look huge to Americans. In both cases that’s because there is a certain set of underlying principles that simply are not up for challenge in the U.S. Those on the left would like to do so, but it’s a non-starter.
I will respond to this in more depth later, but this stuck out as something I wanted to respond to right away:
I’m sorry, but this is just absurd.
There are a whole lot of reasons that people come to the US, and many of them have nothing to do with your political system. I would argue that some of these reasons are directly related to the US economic and foreign policy creating massive instability in other parts of the world, resulting in large flows of migrants, some of whom end up in the US. Policies like the Third Safe Country act have also prevented many refugees from Latin America from coming to Canada to make refugee claims since they must pass through the United States, and are forced to make claims there instead. A portion of them would much rather make claims in Canada because they have a much better chance of being accepted.
But this really isn’t about where immigrants chose to settle (or how much choice they actually have), and I don’t think that it’s all that relevant to the current debate. The point that I am trying to make is that while the differences between Democrats and Republicans seem huge to Americans, as you have said, they are both variants of liberalism. Other countries have much wider political canvases. For those of us outside of the US, it is frustrating that given the limits of the electoral system you are working within, so many American progressives devote so much time and energy to reforming the Democrats.
Jake Squid – How left wing bloggers and commenters I read actually are, is kind of my question. It seems to me that I read quite a lot of radical analysis on American blogs, but the radical analysis will sit beside posts supporting the Democratic party, and I don’t understand it.
A big part of it is what is what debbie said about Individualism as the dominant paradigm in the US. There is very little sense of collectivism or community in US politics.
Combine that with the commonly accepted wisdom of the necessity of voting for the lesser of two evils and you can see why so many on the US left not only vote for the Democratic Party, but also vocally support it.
The US system is really strongly set up, at the present time, for two parties only to be competitive in electoral politics. That is partially due to the original framework, partly due to a few influential people in the very early 19th century and partly due to the 2 current dominant parties tightening things even further – especially over the last 80 years.
So, no, for most US leftists there is no bottom line where they will stop voting Dem. As long as they believe that the Dems are better than the Reps by even the tiniest little bit (note that I am not saying that is the case with the 2 parties right now), they will continue to vote Dem. And that is because they see no other option.
No matter how radical their criticisms of the Dems may be, they are not radical (or, perhaps, revolutionary would be a better word) enough to abandon their support of the Democrats.
Well individual bloggers would have to speak for themselves. I personally think that any support for Democrats that doesn’t clearly state the provisional and partial character of that support is a mistake. Of course my view isn’t the predominate one. In general there are systemic reasons underpinning the phenomena that puzzles you. People here addressed those in various ways , from the purely instrumental (reform the electoral system) to the social/cultural/historic (the lack of an independent, self sustaining left political culture, my own view.)
I can only re-emphasize what I think is the key insight that all these perspectives share: that there is no effective mode of national political expression outside the institutions of the two party system. The US political system does not, at bottom, recognize the existence of conflicting interests within the body politic. Our parties don’t operate in the fashion that parties do in Parliamentary Governments. They function as electoral coalitions. Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles. (The most outstanding institutional expression of this is that we draw no line of separation between the head of state and the head of Government, thus equating transient, partisan political leadership with the fate of the nation as a whole.)
This is a major reason why so much of our political debate revolves around the sterile rhetoric of “values ” and what constitutes “American” as opposed to “unAmerican” or “anti-American” sentiments. For all our vaunted pragmatism, US politics has been and remains driven by extremely ideological, not say mythic, assumptions. (Query: how often will a NZ politician attack an opponent for having “un-NZ” or “anti-NZ” views?) Our system, as it has evolved, is predicated on the the notion that there can be two sides to the story but only two. Further, it assumes that the two sides must agree on the essential fundamentals of the story.
A great many people who qualify as left on the US political spectrum don’t really question these assumptions. You’ll notice that a lot of left bloggers will spend time arguing that the right are “traitors”, etc. This isn’t just throwing the right’s rhetoric back in their faces. When a national politiy is based on a set of articulated ideals rather than ethnic, religious or linguistic unity, the content of those ideals and their interpretation are the primary ideological battleground. Consequently, every question, social and political, is viewed through this distorting lens. Issues of social and economic equity are’nt addressed on their merits but in terms of how they comport with an idealized notion of “American” identity oustensibly handed down from the founders. The debate about values is actually a debate about the character of the US and each citizen’s individual sense of their identity as “Americans”.
Naturally, this tends to create an extremely malleable and easily manipulated electorate. Challenging the duopoly upsets not just the instrumentalities of the system but the citizenry’s whole political and personal sense of themselves. Since there is no independent left political culture external to existing institutions, Democratic Party Liberalism becomes the default position.
All of this is complicated by the practical reality that the GOP coalition has embraced constituencies that can rightly be described as fascist in character. There is a very real impulse towards “unity” at all costs, as well as a fear of any rhetoric or positioning that would place the left outside the established fiction of “national consensus.”
For those of us outside of the US, it is frustrating that given the limits of the electoral system you are working within, so many American progressives devote so much time and energy to reforming the Democrats.
From my point of view, progressives haven’t devoted nearly enough time and energy to reforming the Democrats. I’m thinking about the past thirty or so years, during which the christofascist right took over the Republican party, and progressives tried (and failed, for reasons explained above) to set up third parties. So I guess it seems to me that that ‘bottom line’ you’re looking for, when progressives disengage with the Democratic party, was reached decades ago — and the mess we’re in today is in part due to that disengagement.
You needn’t be sorry Debbie. It is absurd. However , that such arguments are treated as reasonable and even compelling by otherwise intelligent people is illustrative of the ideological blinders that our system imposes. Citing economic refugees from Mexico as a validation of the existing political order only works so long as you exclude every other possible factor. We are so conditioned to the notion of our own superiority that we are prone to not recognize any fact that contradicts the assumption of our nation’s exceptional nature.
The Mexican Economy has a surplus population for which it cannot provide jobs. As a result there is rampant poverty. The US has a high demand for cheap labor and employers who aren’t terribly fastidious about how they acquire such workers. Between the two is a porous, open border. Illegal immigrant labor would seem to be a given under such circumstances. Perhaps only in the US would someone ignore the basic realities in favor of “exceptionalist” hagiography sprinkled with soppy Horatio Alger sentimentalism.
I would argue that some of these reasons are directly related to the US economic and foreign policy creating massive instability in other parts of the world, resulting in large flows of migrants, some of whom end up in the US.
Go ahead and argue it. I would argue that people come to America because people are more likely here than in any other place in the world to be able to profit from their own efforts without the State either taking that profit away or preventing them from putting forth that effort in the first place. The massive instablility in most of these countries comes from their own internal faults, not our foreign policies.
W.B. Reeves:
Citing economic refugees from Mexico
Gee, I don’t remember mentioning Mexico. Of course a great many of them come from Mexico. That stands to reason; they’re right next door. Logistically, you’d expect a bunch of them to come from Mexico. But they come from all over the world. The two people in my department who just gained their citizenship came here from Eastern Europe, not Mexico. Plenty of people come here from elsewhere than Mexico; they are not coming here because of problems in Mexico.
The Mexican Economy has a surplus population for which it cannot provide jobs.
I don’t buy it. I rather suspect that the Mexican economy could provide jobs for it’s population if it’s elite wasn’t choking the life out of the country though avoiding taxes, corruption, and various other illegal and immoral practices. If you could start and operate a business in Mexico without having to pay bribes and with the same chance to keep your profits as the elites have you’d see a lot stronger Mexican economy and a lot fewer people sneaking across the border. The problem in Mexico is not that the economy doesn’t provide jobs to people; it’s that Mexican social structure prevents them from providing their own.
Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles. … This is a major reason why so much of our political debate revolves around the sterile rhetoric of “values ” and what constitutes “American” as opposed to “unAmerican” or “anti-American” sentiments.
“The sterile rhetoric of values”? The United States was founded on values. I can think of nothing more sterile than rhetoric without values, based solely on the perceived self-interests of whatever ethnic or economic groups people happen to be in. The worst divisions in America come from people who push politics based on race, religion or economic status instead of on American ideals. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in the world who think that American ideals are not at all peculiar.
Naturally, this tends to create an extremely malleable and easily manipulated electorate.
Naturally? How? I don’t see how you get this conclusion from what you’ve presented up to this point in your post.
The issue of values speaks to the point of this thread, perhaps. The Democratic party, with it’s seemingly to American ears incessant talk about groups (blacks, women, working people, the poor) gets the left’s support because it’s language is closest to that of the left. But even then, they have to pay homage to American ideals or only the radical left would ever vote for them, and they’d die out and be supplanted by another party.
I wonder myself about the two-party system. I agree that there are institutions in American society that push that. But I also think that in the American psyche there is a need to have a winner and a loser, and that people want to back a winner or at least have a direct say in it. If you have a multi-party system, then often there is no majority party; there is no winner for people to back. In a Parliamentary system you’d then have the politicians/legislators selecting the winner instead of the people directly, and damn few Americans, with their gut-level distrust of politicians, want that.
why would people come for the political system when most wont ever be able to vote?
They don’t necessarily come for the political system (although there are some of them who do vote, and some cities that let them vote in municipal elections). They come for the benefits that the political system guarantees.
“the benefits that the political system guarantees”
That’s one big huge tenuous empirical claim you’ve got there.
Interesting comments.
American politics is hardly a mystery.
1) Duverger’s Law
You can google it and the Wiki entry is good enough.
Electoral College has to go, Prof. Levinson (blogs at Jack Balkin’s Balkinization, all law professors) and others have even argued that we may have outgrown our undemocratic Constitution :
Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It)
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Undemocratic-Constitution-People-Correct/dp/0195307518
If you live a red state, no matter who you vote for, it’s a wasted vote. The farthest right candidate is going to take it.
2) The Overton Window
Eisenhower would be a liberal Democrat and “cut and run traitor” today.
Corrente had a good post on The Overton Window
http://www.correntewire.com/tags/overton_window
3) There really wasn’t much of a difference between George Bush and John Kerry. It only seems that way here in America:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection
W.B. Reeves said:
Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles.
Actually, that’s not true. In fact, the American system recognizes that thare are a number of distinct and conflicting interests, and that a pure nationwide democracy that would require all issues to be handled with a single national legislature would not be able to meet them. But they found a different way than to group people by race or gender or employment choices.
LWM, I looked at the first book review you quoted. Yes, it’s true; the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It was never meant to be. That’s explained in every class on U.S. history, so it should be no surprise. And I agree that it’s not desirable, for the reasons noted by W.B Reeves above. So our founders did choose to divide up the country into groups. To do so, they chose the groups that were already in existence; geographical. They recognized that urban states had different interests than agricultural ones, that large states had different interests than smaller ones, that Northern states had different interests than Southern ones, etc. So they made the U.S a federated republic. Then they preserved the very high degree of sovereignty those states already had. That way, the different states could work out their interests for their citizens in different ways.
Those on the left should be grateful for this. Consider, for example, that if it were not for that state sovereignty, there would ge no such thing as single-sex “marriage” or civil unions anywhere in America.
The book review states (and there may be danger in judging a work from a review, I recognize):
“The Constitution is one of the most revered documents in American politics. Yet this is a document that regularly places in the White House candidates who did not in fact get a majority of the popular vote. It gives Wyoming the same number of votes as California, which has seventy times the population of the Cowboy State. And it offers the President the power to overrule both houses of Congress on legislation he disagrees with on political grounds.”
Wyoming gets the same number of votes as California? In the Senate, yes. But that’ll come as a surprise to the one Representative and the 3 Electoral College voters that Wyoming gets. And while the President can overrule both houses of Congress, they can in turn overrule him. In fact, they can even remove him if they’ve got the goods. The idea is that by dividing up the powers of the government no one branch can dominate; a good thing, in my mind.
Are you trying to suggest that you intentionally excluded the largest single immigrant group from your sweeping fabulation concerning the motives of immigrants? That hardly seems credible. Perhaps you just forgot about the Mexicans because you were focused on your two co-workers? I agree that their reasons for immigrating likely had nothing to do with Mexico and everything to do with problems in their own countries. Problems that can’t be assessed because you don’t bother to tell us what countries they came from.
The Mexican economy is, in fact, not producing sufficient jobs for the population. Theorizing about the reasons for the short fall doesn’t alter the fundamental reality. Neither does it alter the factual nature of the statement.
Yes, the US was founded on values. Some good, some bad, some in complete contradiction to one another. A few examples: Slavery, conquest, genocide, male supremacy, white supremacy, child labor, social privilege, ad nauseum. The divisions you complain of were present in our system at it’s inception. There is no need to “push” a politics based on these failings. Such politics are intrinsic to our history. The idea that they are the product of perverse partisanship is a tale suitable to the nursery. In politics, there is nothing more sterile than the substitution of abstract fables for concrete realities.
It’s not our espoused values that other nations find peculiar. Rather, it is the manic hypocrisy with which we tout them. BTW, how many countries have you visited?
I think the mythological character of your post provides a fine example.
Evidently, “blacks, women, working people, the poor” are not “Americans”, or else they lack “American ears”, since it’s certain that they don’t consider such talk “incessant.” Or is it your view that such people don’t actually exist, except as phantoms ginned up by the left?
The winner/loser dichotomy you speculate upon did not exist under the original constitution. There could be as many as four candidates for President and that office, as well as the Vice Presidency, were allotted to the 1st and 2nd place candidates respectively. That is how the Federalist, anti-slavery John Adams came to have the radical anti-Federalist, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson for his Vice President.
We did not then and we do not now have direct elections for President and Vice President. We vote for electors to the electoral college who, as a matter of constitutional law, are free to vote for whomever they choose. Until 2000, any disputed Presidential election was decided entirely by legislators and politicians, as was the case in the disputed election of 1876.
Further, under constitutional theory, there can be no absolute winner in US government since each branch is co-equal in order to limit and constrain one another. Or do you embrace the radical notion of the “unitary executive”?
None are so easy to manipulate as the credulous who think themselves wise. Likewise the incoherent.
Are you trying to suggest that you intentionally excluded the largest single immigrant group from your sweeping fabulation concerning the motives of immigrants?
No. But you said “Citing economic refugees from Mexico as a validation of the existing political order …” when, in fact, I did not cite either economic refugees or Mexicans. You put words in my mouth that I did not write.
The Mexican economy is, in fact, not producing sufficient jobs for the population. Theorizing about the reasons for the short fall doesn’t alter the fundamental reality. Neither does it alter the factual nature of the statement.
True. But what it does do is point to whose job it is to solve the problem, and it’s neither America nor the American public. When people abandon a country in millions because they can find no opportunity there, there is a fundamental problem in that country that it needs to solve.
Yes, the US was founded on values. Some good, some bad, some in complete contradiction to one another.
So, then, it’s hardly “sterile rhetoric”. It’s quite live and relevant, unlike your previous statement about “the sterile rhetoric of values.”
The U.S. was founded on noble values. As was noted at the time by British commentators on the issue of slavery, their expression was often deficient and contradictory – welcome to humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, the slave-holding evangelist of liberty noted this when he said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” He was prophetic; those errors and in some cases outright hypocrisy have often been exposed and paid for in blood (e.g., the Civil War). But the fact that the U.S. has sometimes fallen short of it’s ideals does not invalidate them or the effort to meet them. And it hardly makes their domination of political debate in this country a “sterile rhetoric of values”.
Evidently, “blacks, women, working people, the poor” are not “Americans”, or else they lack “American ears”, since it’s certain that they don’t consider such talk “incessant.” Or is it your view that such people don’t actually exist, except as phantoms ginned up by the left?
Nope. I work with members of most of those groups and have the opportunity to talk to them about the issues of the day. Certainly there are divisions; there always will be. But like many other people, they see that this country will be best led when it’s leaders focus on what unites Americans instead of trying to take advantage of what divides them just to get and stay elected.
The winner/loser dichotomy you speculate upon did not exist under the original constitution. There could be as many as four candidates for President and that office, as well as the Vice Presidency, were allotted to the 1st and 2nd place candidates respectively. That is how the Federalist, anti-slavery John Adams came to have the radical anti-Federalist, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson for his Vice President.
True. Which is one reason why the original system was found unsatisfactory and was changed. In talking about a winner/loser dichotomy I’m speculating as to why the Constitutional system has ended up being expressed as a two-party system. It obviously wasn’t designed as such.
We did not then and we do not now have direct elections for President and Vice President. We vote for electors to the electoral college who, as a matter of constitutional law, are free to vote for whomever they choose.
No. But with very few exceptions (none of which has affected the winner) the Electoral College electors have followed the popular vote of their state, which satsifies the American electorate.
Until 2000, any disputed Presidential election was decided entirely by legislators and politicians, as was the case in the disputed election of 1876.
Yup. But those were very rare exceptions. Americans are willing to accept such actions when we have a disputed election, since there has to be some system to resolve disputes. But a Parliamentary system would cause every single election for our Chief Executive to be determined in such a way. That’s what the American public does not want.
Further, under constitutional theory, there can be no absolute winner in US government since each branch is co-equal in order to limit and constrain one another.
Come now, W.B., I’m obviously talking about the winner of an election.
Or do you embrace the radical notion of the “unitary executive”?
I’m not sure what you mean here; I’m not familiar with the term “unitary executive”. If you’re asking if I want to see the Executive power dominate the government, the answer is “No.” I wouldn’t trust any one person with that much power, including the current President.
Only if you intended to exclude them from your assertions about immigrants. If you did not exclude them, you included them, which means my criticism is perfectly appropriate.
If it were true, you really shouldn’t have claimed that it wasn’t. The causes of Mexico’s difficulties were not and are not relevant to the discussion, unless you’re pushing the idea that “American Values”, as defined by our political institutions, are synonymous with a particular brand of economic ideology. If that’s your position, you need to explain and support it rather than assuming it.
Except that the above is a perfect example of such sterility. You simply ignore facts that do not comport with your favored mythology. You say that the “U.S. was founded on noble values” as if it were’nt equally accurate to say that it was founded on the ignoble values I listed above. Or, as a noted British commentator said at the time, “Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negros?” Morever, we did not simply fall short with such ignoble ideals, we wrote them into our constitution. That you suggest that the ideal of white supremacy ceased to be an issue with the ending of de jure slavery is a stark indicator of just how much a prisoner of received mythology you are.
Do you ever talk issues with them outside the workplace? Do you have personal relations with any of them that include shared confidences? How often have you eaten in their homes and met their families? Do you know for a fact that when you speak of unity and division they attach the same meaning to these words as yourself? What exactly unifies Americans? Which politicians are dividing America? Finally, do you have any certain knowlege that the views of your circle of acquaintences reflect those of their communities?
Your speculation took the form of situating the cause in the “American psyche” which, along with “American ears”, is the sort of mythological construct that seems to permiate your thinking as a substitute for hard data.
Which ignores the question of why you asserted that Americans prefered direct election for the Presidency when you knew very well that no such election exists under our system. As for whether this ” satisfies the American electorate”, that is an assertion subject to much debate.
In both the U.S. and Parliamentary systems the parties choose their standard bearers in advance of the general election. In both cases the electorate knows in advance who will be heading the executive dependent on the outcome of the election. This is a distinction without a difference.
I will add “the American public” to “American psyche”, “American ears”, etc. on the pile of hollow symbols which you apparently fill with whatever content suits you, unless you provide some hard data to support your assertion.
Not all that obvious. I find your arguments ambiguous and contradictory to the point of incoherence for all the reasons cited above. If I misconstrued your intent, it would hardly be surprising.
On this much at least, we can agree. I suggest you google unitary executive. What you find might be an eye opener.
Only if you intended to exclude them from your assertions about immigrants. If you did not exclude them, you included them, which means my criticism is perfectly appropriate.
No, it’s not. I was talking about everyone coming into America. I did not specifically cite any one nationality or a specific reason for coming, or even whether or not they were immigrants (as opposed to illegal aliens). To say that I cited “Mexican economic refugees” means that you are claiming I referred specifically to that group of people, which I did not. You are trying to narrow what I was talking about to fit one specific group of people. That’s not valid.
The causes of Mexico’s difficulties were not and are not relevant to the discussion,
I was countering your assertion that the Mexican economy cannot provide jobs. I’ll agree that it presently does not, but I strongly question the concept that it cannot. It’s entirely possible that it could, if proper reforms were made in Mexican society
You say that the “U.S. was founded on noble values” as if it were’nt equally accurate to say that it was founded on the ignoble values I listed above.
I view the things you cite as ignoble acts, not ignoble values, contradicting the actual values we were founded on and that we have paid a heavy price for.
That you suggest that the ideal of white supremacy ceased to be an issue with the ending of de jure slavery is a stark indicator of just how much a prisoner of received mythology you are.
Which is why I suggested no such thing. What the Civil War did was to end slavery. It certainly did not end state-supported racism. But what the Constitution did provide, especially after the post-Civil War amendments, was a way to legally end state-supported racism by an appeal to the law instead of war. It didn’t happen as fast as it should have. But it did happen. Meanwhile, in plenty of other countries, such things (including outright slavery) still exist with no way to end it via an appeal to law.
Do you ever talk issues with them outside the workplace? Do you have personal relations with any of them that include shared confidences? How often have you eaten in their homes and met their families? Do you know for a fact that when you speak of unity and division they attach the same meaning to these words as yourself? What exactly unifies Americans? Which politicians are dividing America? Finally, do you have any certain knowlege that the views of your circle of acquaintences reflect those of their communities?
Yes, yes, a few times, due to our discussions, too long a discussion for this thread, and finally only from what I read in the media.
Which ignores the question of why you asserted that Americans prefered direct election for the Presidency when you knew very well that no such election exists under our system.
And once again, I did not make that assertion. Nowhere did I say that the current system is direct election of the President. What I did say was that the American public did not want politicians and legislators electing their chief executive. In fact, the Constitution specifically forbids Federal legislators or anyone getting a Federal paycheck or holding any kind of Federal office from serving an elector. So unlike under a Parliamentary system, politicians do not elect our chief executive.
In both the U.S. and Parliamentary systems the parties choose their standard bearers in advance of the general election. In both cases the electorate knows in advance who will be heading the executive dependent on the outcome of the election. This is a distinction without a difference.
Hm. Perhaps I misunderstand the Parliamentary system. If so, I apologize. Help me out here. It is my understanding that in a Parliamentary system I would elect a local representative from a given party. He or she, in turn, would vote for the standard-bearer of their party as Prime Minister. Thus, when voting for my local MP I would have a problem if I like the candidate for party “X” but would rather have party “Y”s standard-bearer for PM, as a vote for an MP of party “X” is essentially a vote for the candidate for PM of party “X”.
Now, this happens, all over America. In my own district I often have not voted for the same party for my Representative as I have for President. And you can find examples of that all over America where a district votes for one party locally and another for President. If you couldn’t, it would be highly unlikely to get (for example) a Democratic House and a Republican President. Whereas in a Parliamentary system, especially one with only one house in the legislature that’s democratically elected, if one party has an outright majority I don’t see how you could ever have a PM not of that party (presuming party discipline is maintained).
In the U.S.’s system, you are much more able to vote for the person rather than the party for both offices. People often do. I have voted for a lot more Democrats for the House and Senate than I have for President. The result does not seem to be the same.
curiousgyrl, I believe Barak Obama also meets those criteria.
Let’s see what you actually said.
Our “present immigration crisis” consisting entirely of massive illegal immigration from Mexico, this is a direct reference to the same. This makes my criticism entirely valid. Note also that you specifically cited our “political system” as the motive for such immigration.
Again, if what I said was factually correct you had no business suggesting that it wasn’t so. Further, I was responding to your suggestion that such immigration rendered criticism of our political system moot, a point that you seemingly have forgotten that you ever made. The causes of Mexico’s economic problems are not germane to this.
Well, you can choose to view things anyway you like but that won’t make it so. The fact is that white supremacy and male supremacy informed the framing of our constitution as surely as notions of personal liberty.
Again, let’s look at what you actually said.
This certainly reads like a blanket exculpation. The reference to “errors” is reminiscent of old style Soviet apologetics. It’s quite a reach to call an institution consciously imposed for its profit potential an “error”. However, it is ambiguous, so I will accept that you didn’t intend to suggest that the civil war settled all the issues raised. Of course, that means that the bill hasn’t yet been paid in full.
I have lived in both white and black communities. I have voluteered in campaigns for both white and black candidates. It is my experence that black and white folks attach very different meanings to the same terms. For example, when white folks talk about racism, they usually view it as an individual moral failing or character flaw, whereas black folks see it as a systemic evil. This is much in the same way that men take a view of sexism as a question of personal conduct or prejudice whereas women are more likely to view it terms of cultural, institutional or policy barriers limiting women as a class. One of the privileges of being considered white in the US is the luxury of being able to ignore race. A privilege unavailable to the non-white. This conceptual and experiential division is reflected in both our media discourse and social discourse. I suggest you google some national polling data on the divergence of views between whites and blacks.
And once again, let’s look at what you actually said.
Now that sounds very much as though you are saying that US voters select the the President by direct election in contrast to a parliamentary system. Otherwise, your use of the terms “direct” and “directly” would appear meaningless.
Regarding your point about Federal office holders and employees being banned from acting as electors. This hardly excludes them from being politicians. We do live in a Federated system and there is nothing in this law as stated that forbids State officeholders from serving as electors.
What you are doing here is attempting to change the ground of the discussion. Your initial objections revolved around the indirectness of the process and the idea that politicians, rather than voters, choose who the head of the executive will be. In point of fact, the Parliamentary Party Leader is chosen by the party membership in a process internal to the party. The Party leader is then elected PM if the party is successful in the national contest. Said election being largely ceremonial in the same sense that you ascribe to the electoral college. Since there is zero likelyhood that the voters are unaware of who the party leader is, the suggestion that they do not elect the PM has exactly the same validity as saying US voters don’t elect the President. That is, technically correct but absent a radical departure from precedent, practically irrelevant. A distinction without a difference.
You seem to recognize this yourself, in as much as you now wish to argue that Parliamentary party’s don’t allow for ticket splitting. This is certainly true but has no bearing whatever on the discussion up to this point. Your 11th hour introduction of it suggest that neither this argument or the ones raised earlier are central to your view. You appear to be shopping for arguments that support your bias. Said bias growing out of your previously noted dependence on a mythology of what the US ought to be, rather than a hardheaded analysis of the US as it actually has been and is.
Our “present immigration crisis” consisting entirely of massive illegal immigration from Mexico
You need to catch up on your research, W.B. There’s also the little matter of Al-Queida terrorists. And Irish and numerous other nationalities. Perhaps you think that the current problem consists only of Mexicans, but I never said that.
W.B. I’m not even reading the rest of your post, or any other posts by you. I’m tired of you putting words in my mouth, even after I’ve called you on it a number of times. This conversation is over.
The conversation was over a long time ago, since you lack the elementary integrity to either stand by or amend your statements. Your attempt to reframe your reference to our “present immigration crisis” wouldn’t convince an intelligent 12 year old.
From Obama’s website, under “plan to end the war in iraq”
This benchmark stuff, to me is not a legit plan to end the war.
WB,
I agree that you’ve won this debate on the merits of the arguments. (Sorry, Ron.) I really appreciate your posts, and hope you’ll continue leaving comments at “Alas.”
That said, remember that the rules here require you to avoid attacking other posters here, including with a contemptuous tone. The comment above has too much attack and too little substantive content.
Understood Ampersand. I certainly don’t want to lower the tone of discussion. I have to admit that I have a very low threshold of tolerance for the re-writing of history. I considered RonF’s earlier comment as amounting to a personal attack, so I’m afraid I got a little personal in return. I’ll try to watch it in future.