But Sea, you tried. Most are content to sit back and whine.
Respect.
I have respect for everyone who is engaging in discourse like this (that means everyone in this thread and others like it). Even those who I think are kooks, AT LEAST they are taking the time to give a shit and make
the attempt to inform themselves and to stake out a position.
Even if everyone was being kooky but paying attention we'd get more done than we do now. I mean all told we have about 50% of the people who don't vote. At the most we will get 80% is people to vote (unless we legally require voting like Australia has, which I think is a fucking wonderful idea).
The problem is half the country is absent from this process and districts have been so badly gerrymandered that we're not really getting a truly representative government.
There weren't so many democratic congressional blowouts that it makes sense for the president to win by more than 2% of the total reporting vote and for the house to still be so overwhelming Republican. It might make sense for them to still have a majority. When we're talking 100million total votes, though, that's a huge margin.
So there are some things that stand in the way of self government, but the tools are there in each state to nominate an appropriate candidate of one's own choosing--caucuses be damned.
Honestly at this point we'd almost be better off just letting one of the sides (pick one) take over and do things their way. This government by half measure is not working. Big economies need steady but firm hands. This is anything but firm. We're wishy washy and all over the place.
I personally think the democrats would do a better job and I also think the republicans had their shot with Bush, that it worked out terribly (economically speaking), and that they should be willing to say to themselves, "Hey, our policies didn't really work out the way we thought they would." and let the other side have a go. That's how it would work between two friends right?
If we try it your way and that doesn't work, can we try it my way now? If your friend asked you this what would you say? Better yet--what, your idea having been incorrect, would it make SENSE to say?
I HOPE that either side would take the opportunity to alter some of the rules of government once they had the power to do that such that we wouldn't end up at impasses like this one quite so much. Reduce the need for a supermajority to conduct day-to-day business, or get rid of the idea of a supermajority altogether. Word kinda sounds dumb anyway.
Put in term limits for congress and other sense-based changes like these.
I think the first party to realize they can make a change by backing reform of THEMSELVES will take control of the car, because there is overwhelming support for these changes. Then we can look to stuff like tax reform etc., first we need to have a government that governs.
