Spit-balling compromise ideas in today's political climate

Politics and religion
41

Because on the areas where you are interested in getting stuff done you have a reasonable negotiating partner to help you get it done. You hammer out a deal with them and you get an incremental step but you don’t have to fight every wedge issue with crazy people who are offended when non-white people might benefit from a thing. And occasionally, you might be able to vote for one of them over an extremist from your own party, because you know you aren’t handing all the power to crazies from the other side by doing that.

Also, the party’s positions would not be a set of milquetoast half-measures. They would be mostly a different mix of principles selected from both sides of the aisle. It would be less about saying, “Hooray for 1% higher minimum wages!” and more about pairing UBI with military investment and 2nd amendment rights (or something - might be the opposite).

All the parties would be minority parties, so the one that is willing to work with either side would wield enormous power to set the agenda and define the Overton window.

42

Just split it up by population density. We keep the cities, they keep the rest. We all keep the national parks.

43

Strangely, some good stuff gets done despite the absence of a reasonable negotiating partner (the ACA), and some bad stuff gets done unilaterally by the unreasonable negotiating partner. Since I don’t want centrist or right-leaning compromise, a scheme that makes it possible to get some centrist and right-leaning compromise isn’t that attractive to me. Anyway, that’s what I meant by my example: What compromise is available from centrist idealists is largely not worth having.

No, I doubt this very much. If the American system had the levers to empower a third party, such a scenario would long since have materialized and stayed in place over long periods of time. Any quick look at American history shows that isn’t the case. For whatever reason, our system is constructed in such a way that there are no levers for minority parties to wield in order to share power as there are in Parliamentary systems. You cannot become President by brokering an agreement between members from multiple parties elected to the House.

44


https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/wisconsin-conservative-admits-hed-shoot-sister-face-trump-know-passionate/

45

In theory at least, there is a loophole. If three truly viable candidates ran for president and split such that no one candidate had a majority of the Electoral College, then it would be the House that elected the president.

Of course, at present, with no viable third party, the House would elect a Democrat or a Republican. But if a third party were to also become competitive in number of House seats, that all could change.

An obvious negative to this theoretical possibility would be widespread dismay at the the perception that this takes the decision out of the hands of the public. Americans generally see democracy as being the vote for president, and if most presidential elections were thrown to the House, there would be some serious disillusionment. But that could be a positive thing, too, in that this obsession with presidential elections at the expense of House, state, and local elections really works against democracy – everyone so focused on this once-every-four-years circus that they hardly notice the elections where their vote matters more, where they are not one out of 120 million voters. More liberal attention directed towards the House elections, and the state elections that determine districting, could really go a long ways to strengthening our political position.

46

Not safe for work.

47

Yes, fair enough. But if the US has been basically a two-party country for 240 years, there’s a reason for that. If a new party comes along and is successful, it will be successful by supplanting one of the two existing ones. It seems vanishingly unlikely to me that there will be any extended period of time with 3 parties or more vying for power. After all, if a substantial portion of the electorate is not being served by either party, one or both of the parties will move and realign to try to co-opt them; and because the barriers to entry for a new party are so high, that is far more likely to happen than for a new party to emerge victorious.

48

I think you are likely to be right.

The only thing to give me doubts is my background as a (retired) media teacher. Major developments in communications technology have a long history of profoundly undermining long established arrangements. Television wacked our system in one direction, and now a cocktail of newer technologies are wacking it in still another (with the rather ahistorical perceptions of those coming up on a network television society causing us to experience the new technologies through a really weird lens).

Anyway, at this point both political wings unite and activate vote mostly by uniting against the threats posed by the other wing, and the new technologies make this far easier than in the past. But I sometimes wonder: Will we end up with a substantial portion of the population believing both messages, that both the left and the right are enormous threats? If so, a third party might make headway, not by splitting the difference on policy so much as by saying they would protect the nation from the threats posed by both partisan wings. This, of course, would be a difficult message for either existing party to co-opt.

I’m not saying this is the most likely course of events, but it seems possible, given the tools each party now has for convincing the general public that the other side is evil.

49

I dont want to compromise with Republicans. Look at them.

They are a shrinking minority only kept in power by illegitimate subversion of the US constitution and they all know it.

So fuck them all. We dont need them.

50

Yes, this. The idea that what hasn’t been done in 240 years can’t be done now is just a misguided view of the predictive value of history. It is far easier to raise money than it’s ever been, it’s far easier to get your message out and to find people who want to hear it, and we are in a far more partisan time than normal. All of these factors make for new possibilities.

51

Anything can happen, and eventually will, but I wouldn’t bet that this particular anything happens soon. Point to some examples where the enhanced communications capabilities have produced the political result you’re aiming at. I mean, if it’s likely now, surely it’s happened in one state or another already, or something like it has happened. Where? Or is wanting some specific examples or testable predictions just a misguided view? Hell, just lay out a manifesto you think would split off a substantial number of voters, and identify those voters.

52

I already did this in a couple different ways. And others have pointed out multi-party systems that exist elsewhere. Since nowhere else has the US Constitution and national history and makeup, this isn’t really a situation where we can point to an unambiguous experimental result. There is literally no comparable situation so any evidence would be based on something with clear differences to the current US. Likewise, it would be impossible for you to point to clear-cut examples of failed centrist third parties under the same conditions, or to back up your claim that any successful party would have to crowd out an existing one. The best we can do is say that many other places have more than two viable parties and there is no example of more than two viable parties under the US constitution. That’s great, but both points are pretty irrelevant to my point.

Note that I didn’t say this third party was likely or inevitable. It’s not likely because the barriers to creating it are high. But it’s a possible solution to the problem of extreme partisanship and media bubbles crowding out the ability of voters to get the actual facts before voting. Your claim that it is impossible is unsupported.

53

I don’t believe I have even one time said it was impossible.

Of course they exist elsewhere, because different political structures exist elsewhere. Parliamentary systems, as one example, actively reward minority third parties by giving them leverage to wield power that generally doesn’t exist in our system.

US history is strewn with the carcasses of failed third parties, and the two parties we have are actually successful ones which crowded out earlier ones. You can say that those people just didn’t do it correctly if you like, but I think it would be better to acknowledge that what you’re talking about is probably hard to do and unlikely to be successful, and to try to understand why.

Maybe you did, but if so I missed it. I’d like to see some examples of centrist party platforms you think would find broad appeal. What’s the proposal on taxes? On social spending? What is the hook that will draw people away from the party they currently support?

In any event, I only mean to say that the idea that we will be saved by a centrist third party seems unlikely. And for me, it’s undesirable, because IMO the problem we have now isn’t that both parties are wrong; it’s that one of them is mostly wrong, and one is mostly right; but that the wrong one is artificially advantaged in elections.

54

Relative to all this discussion of third parties, I present the latest Freakonomics podcast:

The gist is that our system is set up to make it very difficult for anyone to break into the R/D duopoly. Further, the system drives the two parties we have to further and further extremes. The last part of the podcast talks about suggestions for improvement: ending gerrymandering, non-partisan single-ballot primaries, and ranked-choice voting. Those changes would at least make it feasible to run as a third party candidate, and encourage the R/D candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters.

55

Here’s the massive problem with all talk of third parties and “compromise ideas” in the current US political situation: nobody has laid out any ideas that deal with the reality of how extreme and yet how unified the GOP is.

In the current climate, 3rd parties and compromises are going to hurt the Dems way more than the GOP, and in our tightly divided system in crisis, that would be catastrophic. That reality is why all the folks here who want some sort of compromise are getting such heavy pushback from liberals like myself.

If you really want compromise and/or a 3rd party, come up with some ideas that would split meaningful numbers of votes away from the current GOP, without being terrible ideas or worse than the current situation.

There’s one issue where some compromise is possible, gun regulation, but the problem is the people who consider guns a vote-changing issue are the hardest core NRA types, and the GOP voters who might be open to that compromise consider guns a pretty minor issue compared to the economy etc. So a gun compromise isn’t going to peel any meaningful number of votes off the GOP.

And in my view, there just aren’t any issues, any ideas better than the current F’ed situation, that would work. What kind of spending or taxing or military or health care compromise or gay marriage or education or foreign policy idea is going to split voters away from the GOP?

Really, what? Don’t make vague “Oh I said so earlier” BS statements. If you have ideas that would work, lay them on us. If you don’t, yeah, you got nothin’.

There may come a time, after the GOP has been broken politically, that compromise and/or 3rd parties will be a good way forward. But right now, if you advocate 3rd parties or compromise, what you are advocating in reality, in the conditions that currently exist, is increasing and entrenching GOP power, and destroying any Democratic hope of restoring sanity.

The time and circumstances are not right for this discussion to be helpful.

56

I didn’t and wasn’t planning to say anything of the sort. My argument isn’t “people keep trying to form third parties the wrong way,” it’s that the time may now be ripe for a third party formed along the specific lines I laid out to achieve something meaningful as a way out of the current political crisis. I think it’s naive to believe that the way out is anything simpler like convincing the country to wake up and start ignoring right-wing punditry.

Not unless something happens to change the current system. The party isn’t just going to magically break, and if the only solution needed is for liberals to vote harder, like vehemently vote against the GOP or something, then of course we don’t need to discuss solutions. We just need to get our strenuously voting faces on.

I laid out an organizing principle for a 3rd party that would have a plausible route to breaking the power of the GOP: prioritize balanced support across demographics, offering enough to Evangelicals, non-college whites, various minority groups, women, etc. to keep them from breaking strongly for another party. This means offering something to racists and something to the people they are racist against, but the whole idea is based on there being a spectrum of views within these groups. If you take away the most-offensive ideas, you will be able to get support from people by simply offering them bigger benefits on the policies the other groups aren’t so invested against. Instead of looking to win over gun nuts or gun haters, you look to defuse that issue and win over people who want better mental health care. Instead of going for strong pro-life or pro-choice advocates, you try to reduce teen pregnancy or make it easier for people afford kids. These are just random examples- the point isn’t these specific policies it is to use the idea of avoiding wedge issues to allow useful policies to shine through.

If history teaches anything it’s that rules that have been broken stay broken. To fix things something major has to change to reset the norms and establish a new paradigm of checks and balances. My idea of the kind of third party that would accomplish this is just one way it could work, but it would require people like Bloomberg, Kasich, The Rock, and other national-level politicians and stars to actually want a party as opposed to just wanting to run for President without winning a tough primary.

I know it’s unlikely - I said that when I first suggested it. The far more interesting question is whether this would actually be an effective solution and if not what else would be (aside from Armandogeddon)?

57

How about this: Third party adopts Democratic party on most issues, but also adopts NRA position on Gun Control, and is completely against the right to choose (anti-abortion). That way the single issue voters on those two issues can choose the GOP or this third party, but they might come over if they like some of the other issues that they hadn’t thought about before since they were single issue voters.

58

That position is both so vague as to be meaningless, and also fanciful wishful thinking in the extreme, and it’s also morally very questionable IMO.

Let me be clear. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. There are very real divides in this country that cannot be bridged in the middle.

On abortion for example, Evangelicals have a strong religious belief that abortion is murder and will not accept “try to reduce teen pregnancy or make it easier to afford kids” as solutions. The Dems have been offering reductions in teen pregnancy for decades with no takers on the other side. And the GOP voters aren’t going to be in favor of any meaningful policies to make it easier to afford kids b/c that would cost money and require higher taxes.

On the gun issue, how do you “defuse” the issue and “win over people who want better mental health care”? Again, any meaningful boost to mental health care will be expensive and opposed by the GOP, who fight tooth and nail against even tiny tax increases. And, again, how the HELL do you “defuse” the gun issue? Regulate guns? That would certainly not defuse GOP voters. Refuse to regulate guns? That would certainly not defuse Dem voters.

I understand that you have a concept of “balanced support across demographics”, but as a practical matter, that is not possible in the current political circumstances. For one thing, “offering” people things tends to cost money and/or require significant changes in the law, and there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

As for breaking the GOP, one key thing to keep in mind is that a big part of the GOP’s current position is that it has a great deal of political power; it can deliver for donors, and it can tilt the playing field such that it can wield majority power with a minority of votes (as in the Senate). Reducing the GOP’s power is going to reduce it’s attractiveness to donors, and also it’s ability to win elections by suppressing votes etc. It’s not an easy prospect by any means, but a series of significant electoral setbacks is going to hit the GOP hard. Just leveling the playing field on gerrymandering with governor-ships and ballot initiatives is going to help. Breaking the GOP is a generational political effort but it is both necessary and also the only option that can, as a practical, matter, pull this country about the drain it is currently circling. Wishful thinking about balance, especially when that balance is tainted by “offering something to racists”, is not helpful.

59

Thank you for handing political dominance to the GOP for the rest of our lives.

Really - no GOP folks are going to adopt Dem issues on gay rights, immigration, prison reform, publicly funded universal health coverage, the necessity of higher taxes on the wealthy, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Your proposal will peel off the more culturally conservative Dems, and give the GOP an unbreakable lock on many more political offices than they currently hold

A centrist 3rd party is just a bad idea, at this time, and in these circumstances. We just have to suck it up, vote Dem, and push against the GOP. Trying to force an option that isn’t going to work just worsens our current mess.

60

Why is Sharpe so sexy and intelligent? Thanks for all of your correct replies here which have saved me from having to write my own intemperate screeds.