[stupac2]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=14611.msg156800#msg156800 date=1455851266]
[quote author=CornFed link=topic=14611.msg156799#msg156799 date=1455850010]I will tell you that I personally feel that he's been a divider, not a uniter

Why? What has he done, outside of being a Democrat, that's more divisive than what W did?
[/quote]

Not to butt in, but I couldn't seem to find where CornFed compared Obama's divisiveness to that of W.
[/quote]

Right but I think a statement like that only makes sense as a comparison. I mean, "politicians opponents don't like him" is hardly news, so calling someone "divisive" without a frame of comparison is utterly meaningless, unless you're bringing up specific actions that he's doing. For instance, if Obama were doing news conferences saying "McConnell is a big smelly doo-doo head who looks like a turtle and the voters in Kentucky who elected him are a bunch of inbred hicks", then sure, he's being divisive, but he's not doing anything like that. At least that I'm aware of.

Anyway I tend to think that if you're going to make a claim like that you should back it up, because what I think CornFed really means is "I don't like Obama". Which is fine, but if that's the case then trying to paper over that with statements about "divisiveness" (or whatever) is disingenuous. If you really think that Obama is actually unnecessarily divisive, you can't just assert it, you need to have some evidence.

Also, I think that polling evidence is meaningless here, because all that tells you is that our politics are becoming more polarized. It doesn't actually mean that there's anything about the presidents themselves causing this, just that ~50% of the population is going to hate anyone with a D next to their name and ~50% is going to hate anyone with an R next to theirs. And, really, that sort of reflexive hatred is stupid. I think that, on balance, W's presidency was disastrous, but that's mostly because of the Iraq war. He did a lot of good things, like his focus on fighting AIDS in Africa, that are wildly under-appreciated. There aren't many people in politics who are actually monsters and treating them like they are is dumb.


Switching gears, I'm fully aware that the US isn't going to suddenly switch to a parliamentary system. We're probably never going to do simple tweaks like ranked choice voting that could help moderate the system. I'm saying that I wish we had a system like that because I think that gridlock is bad. At any given time a country is going to face problems, and politicians are supposed to propose and implement solutions to those problems. But we're in a place where that's just not happening. Part of it is (as someone in here mentioned, I think) that voters don't know who to blame. In England you know that, if the Tories are in charge and making a hash of it, you vote them out. But who's to blame right now for the fact that we can't get anything done? Is it intransigent Republicans? Over-demanding Democrats? It's basically a Rorschach test, so you're just testing your priors. And it's even worse for low-information voters, who are really the only swing bloc left.

Now, are parliaments ideal? Of course not, short of finding Plato's philosopher king every form of government sucks, in its own special way. I recently read an article arguing that populist parties in Europe are undermining accountability by siphoning off enough votes so you can only make "grand coalitions", which reduce choice because now the two main parties really are the same. But I tend to think that the problems they have aren't as bad as ours, though that might just be familiarity.

And who knows, maybe our system will muddle through for a while and then get back to a state like the one we were in for most of the 20th century where there can actually be some cooperation so things get done. I'm not optimistic and don't really see the path forward, but predictions are hard.

[stupac2]

[quote author=stupac2 link=topic=14611.msg156800#msg156800 date=1455851266]
[quote author=CornFed link=topic=14611.msg156799#msg156799 date=1455850010]I will tell you that I personally feel that he's been a divider, not a uniter

Why? What has he done, outside of being a Democrat, that's more divisive than what W did?
[/quote]

Not to butt in, but I couldn't seem to find where CornFed compared Obama's divisiveness to that of W.
[/quote]

Right but I think a statement like that only makes sense as a comparison. I mean, "politicians opponents don't like him" is hardly news, so calling someone "divisive" without a frame of comparison is utterly meaningless, unless you're bringing up specific actions that he's doing. For instance, if Obama were doing news conferences saying "McConnell is a big smelly doo-doo head who looks like a turtle and the voters in Kentucky who elected him are a bunch of inbred hicks", then sure, he's being divisive, but he's not doing anything like that. At least that I'm aware of.

Anyway I tend to think that if you're going to make a claim like that you should back it up, because what I think CornFed really means is "I don't like Obama". Which is fine, but if that's the case then trying to paper over that with statements about "divisiveness" (or whatever) is disingenuous. If you really think that Obama is actually unnecessarily divisive, you can't just assert it, you need to have some evidence.

Also, I think that polling evidence is meaningless here, because all that tells you is that our politics are becoming more polarized. It doesn't actually mean that there's anything about the presidents themselves causing this, just that ~50% of the population is going to hate anyone with a D next to their name and ~50% is going to hate anyone with an R next to theirs. And, really, that sort of reflexive hatred is stupid. I think that, on balance, W's presidency was disastrous, but that's mostly because of the Iraq war. He did a lot of good things, like his focus on fighting AIDS in Africa, that are wildly under-appreciated. There aren't many people in politics who are actually monsters and treating them like they are is dumb.


Switching gears, I'm fully aware that the US isn't going to suddenly switch to a parliamentary system. We're probably never going to do simple tweaks like ranked choice voting that could help moderate the system. I'm saying that I wish we had a system like that because I think that gridlock is bad. At any given time a country is going to face problems, and politicians are supposed to propose and implement solutions to those problems. But we're in a place where that's just not happening. Part of it is (as someone in here mentioned, I think) that voters don't know who to blame. In England you know that, if the Tories are in charge and making a hash of it, you vote them out. But who's to blame right now for the fact that we can't get anything done? Is it intransigent Republicans? Over-demanding Democrats? It's basically a Rorschach test, so you're just testing your priors. And it's even worse for low-information voters, who are really the only swing bloc left.

Now, are parliaments ideal? Of course not, short of finding Plato's philosopher king every form of government sucks, in its own special way. I recently read an article arguing that populist parties in Europe are undermining accountability by siphoning off enough votes so you can only make "grand coalitions", which reduce choice because now the two main parties really are the same. But I tend to think that the problems they have aren't as bad as ours, though that might just be familiarity.

And who knows, maybe our system will muddle through for a while and then get back to a state like the one we were in for most of the 20th century where there can actually be some cooperation so things get done. I'm not optimistic and don't really see the path forward, but predictions are hard.