[Pops]

I don't know how this will work out but lets try to discuss politics without partisanship. Straight partisan rants are prohibited - It's Obama's/Bushes fault!, Obama is a foreigner/Bush went AWOL! will be deleted. Don't waste your time posting a bunch of facts i.e. "proving" Hitler was/wasn't a racist - I'll just delete that too. Try to restrain yourself as well from the simplistic "throw the bums out" and "they're all a bunch of crooks" "they all work for the PTB" stuff. In other words try to think outside the talking points - or at least think.

This thread is about how extreme partisan politics is doing more harm than good because instead of compromise, whichever group gets control rams through all of their agenda sans discussion.

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To start, whadda ya think will be the effect of the tea party on this election?
I haven't been following individual races but historically this midterm would have been the 'pubs to lose, it always happens when one party gets control of 2 branches. The 'rats were facing an even harder uphill battle anyway because of the continuing sick economy but will the Partiers split the 'pubs vote?

I kind of think they could have an effect in some places but the "what have you done for me this year" feeling is high and since the 'rats have been in control I'm thinking they are gonna take it in the shorts overall.

One more thing, as far as congressional seats go, haven't many districts been gerrymandered to the point there really isn't much contest? Or is that a myth?

[Plantagenet]

as far as congressional seats go, haven't many districts been gerrymandered to the point there really isn't much contest? Or is that a myth?

Almost all the districts are gerrymandered, but the Republicans were so unpopular in 2006 and 2008 that a couple of dozen districts that voted for Bush in 2008 have democrats in Congress.

The Republicans might get most of those back, but they need to win in democrat districts and take about 40 new seats total for them to take over Congress---IMHO, they'll probably fall a bit short.

[Ludi]

To start, whadda ya think will be the effect of the tea party on this election?

I like to hope it will make more people more interested in the political system and more interested in getting involved and at least voting.

[efarmer]

There are people laced in among the partisans, and they are more pragmatic. They have their ideologies and philosophies and yet are able to sit down and work to match who they are and what they are trying to do with what they have to work with. Like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil for one example.

The system is biased right now for the unrelenting partisan, and to destroy the opposition and prevail, and to then pursue a pure ideology or philosophy and by the results of the pursuit, to deliver the goods. But the challenges are legion, the time required to destroy opposition, implement purity, and pursue results runs against the realities of the times and the patience available from citizens to allow it to take place and wait for results. It might be a plan for a new nation with time on it hands, but not for one that has mature institutions and populations that would not be afforded with time for new structures in the aftermath of chaotic destruction running ad hoc and open ended against the massive existing ones. Being broke is another little complication to throw on the heap.

We risk swapping polarized ideologies that are then strangled and thwarted in positions of power until they are hurled out by their opposition on the basis of their demonstrated failure in order to begin the next half of the cycle of dysfunction.

The Tea Party largely represents people who were courted by the Republican political tradition and have formed a sect of greater purity within it to seek satisfaction. If they are delivered as a wave of kamikaze zealots instead of a re-invigoration of the politics, they will have been betrayed by a party that has further broken the linkage between what it does and what it believes in. This is not good for the republic much less any groups within it.

We are all agreed on having our own defined and separate nation, I see no way forward short of cooperation, and this is only going to come when we stop destroying other Americans or painting them as our own mortal enemies.

Our politics has become so polarized that it is at this point a loophole for treason.

[Tanada]

Pops I firmly believe you are correct in essence, the hyper Partisans both Democrat and Republican are blinded by their faith in their party. Logic has no impact, their world view is whatever the party does is good, whatever opposes what the party wants to do is evil. This makes reasonable debate and discussion nearly impossible, no matter what the topic is. Their are many more reasonable people IMO than hyper partisan's, however the hyper on each side tend to drown out the honest debater's with their looped commentary on any and all topics of discussion.

Until we can recapture civil discourse we can not accomplish anything through discussion. I would love to hear any idea's you have in how to achieve that goal.

[Serial_Worrier]

Pops I firmly believe you are correct in essence, the hyper Partisans both Democrat and Republican are blinded by their faith in their party. Logic has no impact, their world view is whatever the party does is good, whatever opposes what the party wants to do is evil. This makes reasonable debate and discussion nearly impossible, no matter what the topic is. Their are many more reasonable people IMO than hyper partisan's, however the hyper on each side tend to drown out the honest debater's with their looped commentary on any and all topics of discussion.

Until we can recapture civil discourse we can not accomplish anything through discussion. I would love to hear any idea's you have in how to achieve that goal.

We're all partisans for some world view.

[Tanada]

Pops I firmly believe you are correct in essence, the hyper Partisans both Democrat and Republican are blinded by their faith in their party. Logic has no impact, their world view is whatever the party does is good, whatever opposes what the party wants to do is evil. This makes reasonable debate and discussion nearly impossible, no matter what the topic is. Their are many more reasonable people IMO than hyper partisan's, however the hyper on each side tend to drown out the honest debater's with their looped commentary on any and all topics of discussion.

Until we can recapture civil discourse we can not accomplish anything through discussion. I would love to hear any idea's you have in how to achieve that goal.

We're all partisans for some world view.

I totally agree, but you can be a partisan and have a discussion. When you are a hyper partisan however all you have are talking points on endless repeat, new data need not be entered because it will be ignored while the same talking points are regurgitated.

[Serial_Worrier]

I totally agree, but you can be a partisan and have a discussion. When you are a hyper partisan however all you have are talking points on endless repeat, new data need not be entered because it will be ignored while the same talking points are regurgitated.

The reason the hyper partisans can't avoid demonizing "the other" is because in the back of their minds they fear an open, reasoned debate would mean the destruction of their world view. So the demonization must never stop, lest that dangerous scenario unfold.

[Pops]

So the demonization must never stop, lest that dangerous scenario unfold.

Yea, so much comes down to "belief" - that thing you just feel beyond logic that precludes any concession to the Other Side or even entertaining another view.

The film Basil Boy linked The Century of Self does a good job explaining the way politicians since the 80's have really made voters self-interest the center point of their campaigns and of governing. That film ended talking about how politicians have given up on having a stance they stick with and that voters take or leave but instead govern by deciding what the voters want right now. Considering they use focus groups to decided policy just like CEOs use the groups to make the next quarterly profit looked good it's no surprise neither pols or corp's do long range planning anymore.

I can see that all over this election as candidates move to the right or the left (mostly right) depending on which way they see the winds blowing.

I'd think we should try to work on the things we can come together on Tanada - why for example, is this the time to tackle Don't Ask Don't Tell when we can't even agree on unemployment insurance compensation?

Basically I don't know really how to separate the things we can work together on from the things we just will never agree about - for that matter it seems we can agree on nothing today. When did that start in earnest, '94? Was it before that and I just wasn't paying attention?

Check out Century of Self, this is the last episode about Clinton/Blair, the whole thing is good.

[efarmer]

Okay Tanada, I think a start for discourse would be to take a television show that is widely viewed on both the daytime and evening time slots, and you run interviews with a wide spectrum of Americans, and ask them about what their greatest hopes and fears are, what they believe is creating their greatest challenges in their community and nation, what they think they can do about it, what they think the nation could do about it working together. But you leave the names of their political expression and religious expression out of the interview. Just a two minute peak under the hood of a different American chosen to flesh out the best cross section of a diverse nation. You put the videos on the web for people who don't watch TV (on youtube), and you put the audio track of the interview out for free on radio, NPR, or whomever else wishes to air it. You make sure you get rich and poor, rural and urban, all races and cultures possible. You put soldiers and their spouses on there for sure. You hook people up again where their political affiliations and their religious or cultural affiliations might be guessable, but they are not explicit on purpose. You just give the people a standard framework to flesh out and run a real American per episode after you introduce them.

You give people a little 2 minute bite of a real American like or totally unlike themselves to take in
and digest, and maybe roll through their mind a couple times over the next few days. You give people the chance to see each other for a minute or two while they are relaxed, and then you move on with the regular entertainment from Leno, or Letterman, or SNL, or NFL or whatever else their attention is directed to and you simply let it roll on from there. It must be a short and sweet running serial and not a grueling ordeal like meeting a huge new group all at once, and it should be part of a show that is pleasurable for people to watch and not be a demand for charity or action beyond the attempt to listen and understand for a short period.

Sort of like the ice breaker activity at a party, only we aren't exactly having a party right now,
are we? And yes, I do think Proctor & Gamble or Kraft or someone who sells things to everyone might even be willing to pop for the airtime, because it would be like nothing else on the idiot box, or radio, or web, or in the daily papers.

America is wired and wireless and printed and all hooked up, so hook us all up and let us take a peek in on each other in little installments and roll it around our minds and jabber it up some. We don't really know each other anymore, but what is worse, we think we do, and it is most often a cartoon version we have cobbled together because we do not find ourselves in situations where people just talk and other people just listen. I think in addition to being strange, new, and unique, it would be a huge relief.

[Sixstrings]

Pops I firmly believe you are correct in essence, the hyper Partisans both Democrat and Republican are blinded by their faith in their party. Logic has no impact, their world view is whatever the party does is good, whatever opposes what the party wants to do is evil.

I see this a lot on the left side of things, they call them the "Obamabots." And we saw blind party loyalty during the Bush years too, as Republicans passed some things that should have been anathema to the party base (like the Medicare drug benefit).

Seems like people have become blindly loyal to their particular party, even though the parties don't quite stand for what they used to. We don't really have liberals anymore, but rather Clinton-style "New Democrat" corporatists; how strange it is that Nixon was more liberal than any Democratic president in my lifetime.

And of course, the Republicans have always been corporatists. So that's what we have now, corporatist party A and corporatist party B. Supposedly the Dems were going to give the gitmo prisoners trials on US soil. I don't have a bleeding heart for those prisoners, but really you know they must be given a fair trial at some point -- it's un-American to imprison people forever without trial. But nope, Obama's done nothing on that point.

And although Obama was the anti-war candidate and Nobel Peace Prize winner, here we are still at war with no end in sight. And then there's the Bush tax cuts -- surely this is one thing Dems wouldn't just carry over from the Republican years? But no, looks like they'll just extend them.

So many other issues, like don't ask don't tell -- Obama could have ended that on day one. It's within his authority to stop discharging needed soldiers during wartime. But no, we're still dithering and both sides want to "leave it up to the military."

That's another trend I see, with both parties not standing for much anymore they're saying "leave it up to the military" more often.

I hope this post isn't too partisan for this non-partisan thread, but that's how I honestly see it -- just not much real difference between the parties. In my opinion, we need parties, not just one monolithic corporate / military industrial complex blob.

Oh, both parties favor the top 1%. That's something else they have in common.

EDIT: I forgot one. After all that interminable hand-wringing over universal healthcare during the campaign, the Dems end up passing the Mitt Romney plan! How can anyone tell me there's any difference between parties when after soundly defeating Republicans, the Dems actually pass the Republican plan.

[Pops]

Yea six, kind of partisan in the "they're all bums" sense.

So what to do about it the partisanship? EF as usual has a novel idea, using media to get to know one another again.

I was ruminating as I fed the ruminants this morning and I came to the conclusion we have passed up a couple of good opportunities to get people away from the us vs them attitude, Bush had an opportunity on 9/12/01 when we were as united as a country as at anytime in my life. Obama had an opportunity to do something huge as well just by stirring people that had given up or just never been involved in politics before.

Bush told us to travel and go shopping at a time people were aching to act - the Red Cross was overwhelmed with blood donors, which unfortunately, were not needed but we didn't know what to do. Obama too had legions of young people hanging on his words and I'd think just hoping to be able to take some next step after the election, but the next step didn't come. The presidency has taken on so much power and the people expect so much that when an opportunity to actually Do Something different comes along I think they are hidebound or maybe there are just too many levers needing to be pulled to keep BAU going.

Then there was Katrina, not Bushes fault necessarily, just an example of how a bureaucracy that recognizes no customer has no incentive - this is a good read about the difference between government and public efforts. Maybe there was a similar lack of incentive with the Leak.

Right now there are a huge number of people out of work, probably on both the young and old ends of the spectrum. Why not give these people something to do while they wait for jobs to trickle down, not necessarily a Works Project Administration, more along the lines of a public service commitment - pack up boxes at food banks, hoe weeds at city parks, give a red cross cpr course, I don't know.

I think where we're at is the peak of the gimme in government, of course people will want to pay no taxes and expect perfect unending services without ever a restrictions on their rights; whether it's a pure water supply and bridges that don't fall down and a military beyond compare or social services and environmental protection. Not to mention that any spending that doesn't directly benefit them is by definition waste.


So I guess I'm with EF, we need to reestablish the ties between us that make us more alike than separate, my idea is maybe more radical since I think given the choice we'd rather hang with those exactly like us and let the rest go somewhere else.

[Ludi]

Oh, both parties favor the top 1%.

The politicians might, their constituents don't, necessarily.

[Cid_Yama]

When did that start in earnest, '94? Was it before that and I just wasn't paying attention?

I believe it started with the creation of the Permanent Subcommitee on Investigations in the Senate in 1952. With the new authority to conduct investigations by the Senate comittee, Joseph McCarthy, it's Chairman, sought to purge the country of the left-wing, painting them as "communists", "traitors", and "spys". While at the same time attempting to crush the unions by focusing on "labor racketeering", painting the unions as organized crime. McCarthy even went so far as to release a list of books by leftist writers to be burned. President Eisenhower urged Americans: "Don't join the book burners. […] Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book."

1952 saw the election of Eisenhower, the first Rebublican elected since Hoover in 1928. The stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression was highly detrimental to the reputation of the Republicans and led to the election of FDR.

Eisenhower was the last of the "Jimmy Stewart" Republicans, continuing and expanding the programs of the New Deal and creating the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

At this time, like today there was a serious division in the Republican Party. Eisenhower opposed McCarthy, who had strong support from the far right and corporations. Eisenhower opposed and warned about the influence of the military-industrial complex. It was Eisenhower that declared Racial Discrimination as a National Security issue, leading to the Supreme Court decision Brown vs Board of Education, in which segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional.

Eisenhower's vice-president, Richard Nixon was excluded by Eisenhower as much as possible, seeing him as a member of the enemy camp.

Nixon ran against Kennedy in 1960 but was defeated. Because of the activities of McCarthy and the far right, the rubber band snapped back in the other direction, resulting in the liberal 1960's.

I believe that, had the 22nd Amendment not been passed, limiting the President to two terms, Eisenhower would have been elected to a third term and history would have been very different.

[Cid_Yama]

I have said before, I was a "Jimmy Stewart" Republican. Back then Eisenhower was considered a centrist. But with the continued purging of the left and moderates, Eisenhower's policies would now be seen as leftist, which isn't even close to what the left was prior to 1952.

[Tanada]

JFK was the last of the Jeffersonian Liberals to head the Democratic party, he was a great leader doing a lot of very good things for our country and going down in history as such. It is such a shame how his "Ask not what your country can do for you" ethic has been perverted into "Demand the country do everything for you to regress past grievances".

[PrestonSturges]

And was Ike was the last Jeffersonian liberal Republican ?