whembly wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
"Here's a proposal that completely undoes you signature accomplishment and provides nothing in return. Now, will you sign it... or are you an obstructionist?"

Yep... 16 Senators who voted for Obamacare either failed to win reelection or declined to run for reelection and had their seats turned over to Republicans.

It's that toxic.

Co'tor Shas wrote:Although that means neither of them get everything their own way.

 Ahtman wrote:

whembly wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
"Here's a proposal that completely undoes you signature accomplishment and provides nothing in return. Now, will you sign it... or are you an obstructionist?"

Yep... 16 Senators who voted for Obamacare either failed to win reelection or declined to run for reelection and had their seats turned over to Republicans.

It's that toxic.

Either people voted on a single issue, which is stupid, or parties are pretending it was about one issue, which is stupid. Either way it is stupid.

DEFIANT IN DEFEAT: Obama tells GOP: MY mandate is bigger than yours http://t.co/OCPbN5j4ZV #tcot pic.twitter.com/J8xejzLK9S

— slone (@slone) November 8, 2014

 Ahtman wrote:

Co'tor Shas wrote:Although that means neither of them get everything their own way.

These days its all or nothing for everyone up there. All they have to do is give lip service to compromise, statesmanship, or bipartisanship. I blame the electorate more than them though. We created this atmosphere and picked these people and for the minor changes that occurred more stayed the same. It is a change to be sure, but in the end slightly red states got slightly redder and it isn't as control hasn't changed before. As mentioned before, "meet the new boss same as the old boss". So far it seems everything is staying the course of intractability, just now it will be louder and whinier.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
#whyallthehastags

I was just responding in kind to Ouze

I know, it's a (apparently bad) joke.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
One thing I am scared of is possible cuts to the NPS, like what happened under Bush. It's on multiple levels, first, they are very importing for protecting our historical monuments, both man-made and natural, as well as preserving our wilderness areas, and my father works their, and would not want him to get a pay cut or lose his job. Were not exactly well off to begin with. Firmly middle class.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If you're waiting on fulfilled promises then pick a number and wait in line. We're still waiting for the most transparent Administration ever, the reduction in foreign military adventures, rolling back the damage from the Patriot Act, and the closing of Gitmo

#whataboutism

#inconvenientfactthatOuzejustdoesntlike#toochuffingbad

 whembly wrote:

Unfortunately, low-information voter tends to be "single issues".

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Unfortunately, low-information voter tends to be "single issues".

Eh, that's not really true. Low information voters make choices for many different reasons. Sometimes its party identity, sometimes its candidate characterization, sometimes its multiple issues they know little about, and yeah, sometimes its a single issue they know little about. There is no pronounced tendency within that group, because it is broad and poorly defined.

 d-usa wrote:

One could also argue that our entire system is designed to be used by low-information voters since voters are supposed to elect people that know about issues, hence the whole "representative democracy" thing.

 dogma wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

One could also argue that our entire system is designed to be used by low-information voters since voters are supposed to elect people that know about issues, hence the whole "representative democracy" thing.

Well, voters are supposed to elect representatives who represent their interests. The system breaks down when the representatives start telling those voters what they're interests are, and those voters start believing them.

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If you're waiting on fulfilled promises then pick a number and wait in line. We're still waiting for the most transparent Administration ever, the reduction in foreign military adventures, rolling back the damage from the Patriot Act, and the closing of Gitmo

#whataboutism

#inconvenientfactthatOuzejustdoesntlike#toochuffingbad

Well, I could easily point out all the things that the previous administration promised and never delivered on - funding pell grants, tax cuts aimed at the working class, and so on and so forth. But ultimately #whataboutism is fething stupid and at some point you need to realize that doing it makes you look like a toolbox, so I'm not going to do that. My point was that it seems unlikely with Mitch McConnells historyit seems unlikely he is the man to fulfill what he says he will, 2 days or whatever ago.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
An interesting article on CNN about how this election cycle may not be what the "winning" voters were hoping for.

Spoiler:

If you were observing American elections from the outside, you might be asking yourself the following:
Can't these people make up their minds? Four out of the last five elections (2006, 2008, 2010 and now 2014) were "wave" elections in which one party won a sweeping victory. They elect a president of one party, then two years later almost inevitably give the other party a huge victory in the midterm election. Why do they expect things to change?
Good question. It's always dangerous to speak of a country of 319 million as having a singular will, or of an election expressing that will. That's particularly true when only about 40% of eligible voters show up for midterm elections. Like every party that wins, the GOP will claim that "the American people" have endorsed its agenda in full, and therefore if President Barack Obama stands in its way, then he's thwarting the public's desires.
We've established that the public is fed up with a Congress seemingly incapable of getting anything done. The trouble is that the voters -- unanimous in their abhorrence of gridlock -- just delivered a result almost guaranteed to produce more gridlock.
To be fair, there was one party assuring them that their votes would do just the opposite. Republican candidates promised voters that they'd stand in Obama's way, and also promised that they'd "get things done," sometimes in the same sentence. As The Atlantic's Molly Ball reported last week, "these two seemingly contradictory messages are at the heart of Republican Senate campaigns across the country. I've heard them from candidate after candidate."
Working with the next Congress President ready to compromise with GOP? Parties keep leaders on a short leash Obama and McConnell: The first test
It's one thing to vote Republican because it's the party that reflects your beliefs. But if you're voting Republican because you want to see Congress become more conciliatory and productive, you really should have been paying closer attention the last six years.
That's because obstructionism hasn't been an accident, or a reaction to moves on Obama's part that Republicans found objectionable. It was a strategy they employed from the outset. Literally on the day Obama was inaugurated, Republican leaders gathered over dinner and made a decision to oppose everything he proposed, to deny him both substantive progress and whatever political benefits might accrue to a president who looks like he's accomplishing things.
In 2010, Mitch McConnell explained to The New York Times how important it was to present a unified front of opposition to the President's proposals, because then the public would dismiss the debate as just partisan bickering. "Mr. McConnell spent hours listening to the worries and ideas of Republicans," the paper reported, "urging them not to be seduced by the attention-grabbing possibilities of cutting a bipartisan deal."
As political strategy, it was extremely astute and executed to near perfection. McConnell understood well that the President gets credit when Washington works and blame when it doesn't -- whether he deserves it in either case. So Republicans could pour sand in the gears of government and watch Obama suffer for it.

And it worked. What was the result of six years of unprecedented filibusters, debt ceiling crises, a government shutdown, 50 futile Affordable Care Act repeal votes, endless conspiracy theorizing and a dramatic increase in general buffoonery? Republicans took back the House in 2010, and have now taken the Senate.
Voters rewarded their misdeeds by returning them to power.
And now politicians in both parties are saying they want to come together to accomplish things for the public. The problem is that they don't agree on the things they'd like to accomplish. The argument isn't over means; it's over ends. That'll be even truer when the new Congress is inaugurated in January than it is now.
The new class of freshman Republicans in both the House and Senate is even more conservative than the existing GOP caucus (if you thought such a thing was possible), and to them, "getting things done" means slashing environmental protections, taking away health coverage from the millions who have obtained it through the Affordable Care Act and cutting taxes on the wealthy.
If those new representatives actually managed to turn those beliefs into law, the public would say, "Hey, we didn't vote for that!" And they didn't, even in this Republican-leaning year.
Voters in four deep-red states -- Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota -- used ballot initiatives to approve one of the Democratic Party's highest economic priorities, increasing the minimum wage. "Personhood" initiatives that would ban abortion failed, not only in the swing state of Colorado but in conservative North Dakota as well.
In other words, where voters had the chance to decide policy issues, they chose the Democratic position even as they were voting for Republican candidates.
So what do the American people want? They want to have their cake and eat it, too. As political scientists have known for decades, Americans are "symbolic conservatives" but "operational liberals" -- they like things like small government in the abstract, but they also like all the things government does.
They elect Democrats who try to accomplish complex policy goals, then turn around and elect Republicans when things don't work perfectly. They say they hate gridlock, then elect people who will give them more of it.
And two years from now, a whole new crop of candidates will barnstorm the country, saying, "Elect me, and we'll clean up this mess." And the voters (or at least enough of them) will, despite all evidence and experience, actually buy it.

I'm sure there are differences in interpretation of various elements in that article, but I think it does make some good abstract points. Dysfunction is the name of the game in D.C., and I don't think it will change with this latest round of elections. The Republicans will swoop in, thinking they can do anything they want, then find out they can't do anything they want because, gasp, there are still some Democrats in the way, and then we're back to gridlock and the PR game to see who wins in 2016. Then 2018, 2020, and so on.

I've said it before, not one of these politicians ultimately truly cares about the country's success. They only care about their own personal gravy train and the perpetuation of their political party's influence and power. They can freely run the country into the ground, and it won't matter because every one of them is rich enough, well placed enough, or otherwise is in a position to be completely unaffected by however badly they fail.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
An article I read on slate has a similar but different take on last tuesdays election. The Disunited States of America

That articles point is that there is a huge generational divide between current crop of senior citizens (when I voted on Tuesday there was maybe two dozen old people there and one other girl who looked my age), who overwhelmingly vote republican and my generation tends to vote democrat. Except senior citizens have high turnout at every election and my generation has much lower turn out at midterms than general elections.

So it possible going forward republicans win big every midterm, and then democrats win big during the general elections. Which is a bad sign for anyone wanting less gridlock in Washington.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:
An article I read on slate has a similar but different take on last tuesdays election. The Disunited States of America

That articles point is that there is a huge generational divide between current crop of senior citizens (when I voted on Tuesday there was maybe two dozen old people there and one other girl who looked my age), who overwhelmingly vote republican and my generation tends to vote democrat. Except senior citizens have high turnout at every election and my generation has much lower turn out at midterms than general elections.

So it possible going forward republicans win big every midterm, and then democrats win big during the general elections. Which is a bad sign for anyone wanting less gridlock in Washington.

Speaking generally, yeah, the older generations come from a time when voting really was seen as a civic duty, so they're more likely to vote than us lazy young'uns.

I do often wonder, though, what would happen if we had a way to vote electronically. Go to a website or a smartphone app or something. What keeps most people from voting is that you have to actually go to the voting place, and wait in line. Eliminate those obstacles, and there would be a lot more voters. But, it is not in the interests of the political machine to do this, as it would upset the balance.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I think some countries do that already. It's actually a great idea, gets more people to vote.

Relapse wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I think some countries do that already. It's actually a great idea, gets more people to vote.

It would make it a lot easier for people who work, for sure. What would be the economic impact, though, is something that probably should go into the consideration, plus the effect of government shutting down for yet another day.

 RivenSkull wrote:
Or making voting day a National Holiday. Problem solved.

 Peregrine wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Or making voting day a National Holiday. Problem solved.

Or here's a better solution: easy access to early voting. There's no reason to even have a single election day at all, just accept votes for a month and make sure you have plenty of voting hours right before the deadline.

Relapse wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Or making voting day a National Holiday. Problem solved.

Or here's a better solution: easy access to early voting. There's no reason to even have a single election day at all, just accept votes for a month and make sure you have plenty of voting hours right before the deadline.

That's what I do. No muss, no fuss.

Relapse wrote:
That's what I do. No muss, no fuss.

 Peregrine wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:
Or making voting day a National Holiday. Problem solved.

Or here's a better solution: easy access to early voting. There's no reason to even have a single election day at all, just accept votes for a month and make sure you have plenty of voting hours right before the deadline.

 Ahtman wrote:

Relapse wrote:
That's what I do. No muss, no fuss.

So voting is treated like using shampoo. Doing both does keep my hair thick and luxurious.

 RivenSkull wrote:



Yeah, that's also a great option. If only there wasn't an effort in a number of red states for the past few years that reduced the amount of early voting options.

Personally, I want the US to adopt the Brazil idea of voting: Mandatory. Have all of October open to voting, with Nov 4 being the final day and a holiday, and it's a requirement for all citizens.

But Government in our face Hur Dur

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 RivenSkull wrote:



Yeah, that's also a great option. If only there wasn't an effort in a number of red states for the past few years that reduced the amount of early voting options.

Personally, I want the US to adopt the Brazil idea of voting: Mandatory. Have all of October open to voting, with Nov 4 being the final day and a holiday, and it's a requirement for all citizens.

But Government in our face Hur Dur

I personally am a fan of how some European countries seem to do it:

No signs, no ads, no campaigning. Period. Not until 6 weeks pre-election.

IMO, that would "free up" all that time in between to actually do their "work" as opposed to campaigning for 4 years or however long their term is. (One reason I think that politicians are campaigning their entire term, is because of 24 hour news channels displaying EVERY decision they make as if it's a campaign year)