Edit holy crap I didn't realize how long this got. I have more to talk about in relation to Obama and negotiation but I won't do it now. No time and this is already too long.
If at all. Both sides are not interested in the overall picture (i.e. "how can we manage debt in a way that will neither strangle our economy nor make life even worse for the unemployed?") but only in accusing the other side (of being henchmen of the rich/stealing from the taxpayer) and pushing their own agenda (raising taxes/cutting government spending).
Part of democracy is compromise, but the Reublicans, and to a slightly lesser degree the Democrats, pretty much refuse to budge.
You need to change that slightly lesser degree to no compromise whatsoever. That is the crux of the problems. The far right Republicans that used to make up only a third or so of the Republican party now make up nearly all of it.
I'm sorry having to say this but the current gridlock is not only the fault of the Democrats or the Republicans but of a political construction, that doesn't seem to have room for more than two parties - both equally unfit to deal with the circumstances.
People often think, that a system with coalitions is faulty and slows processes down - but on the upside it also teaches parties to find compromises. It's a matter of political survival to find compromises. Neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats have to worry about political survival, because there is no challenger for them.
But on the long run they are losing the people, who get more and more tired of that style of democracy. It seems to me, that the USA are losing the political stability at the moment. There is an empty space of desinterest growing, the biggest party is already the party of the non-voters. But those non-voters surely also want to be politically represented and frankly I'm a bit afraid of what might come to fill the gap.
Germany is leading Europe off a cliff with their coalition because they won't look at what is happening with their relentless push for austerity. Even though all the economic data is teling them that it is not working they cannot back out now because their ideology won't let them. They also can't back out because they pushed it so hard and if they admit they are wrong then they will look like fools. It just has to work eventually right? Sure sounds like the current crop of Republicans again. I understand that the German people don't want to bail out countries like Greece but really they don't have a choice. In retrospect Greece probably shouldn't have been let into the Euro in the first place but you cannot let them leave the Euro now.
Vette boss is partially right about Citizen United by in reality all of those huge money donors seemed to barely move the needle in the last election. Karl Rove's big money Super Pacs were only about one percent effective. Even after all the money they spent funneled from all those anonymous billionaires they only got a one percent return on their investment. Anywhere else in corporate America, you know where the job creators are, Karl would be fired with prejudice. I would have fired him after a performance like that from my own business. Personally I don't think Karl believes in any of the values or positions he backs. He just found a relatively easy way to make money and it makes more sense to do what he does from the Republican side then the Democratic. How much in fees did he skim off the top of the 300 plus million dollars he spent? Of course Citizen United was a terrible decision that ignored a century of jurisprudence but on actually election day it didn't seem to matter much.
MacGuffin of course is incorrect. Our two party system operated like a collation setup for most of history until the current level of extremism among Republicans and somewhat among Democrats. The Republicans purged almost all of their moderates from the party in the past eight years. There are no more Rockefeller Republicans. In years past you had wings of both the Republican and Democratic party. Just to make the best example lets take abortion and gun rights which are two of the most divisive issues. Their were pro-choice Republicans a decade or more ago and now I don't think you could find one vocal pro-choice republican left in Congress. There were and still are a few pro-life Democrats but not very many. There are strong 2nd Amendment Democrats but you could barely find a Republican who would vote just to strengthen background checks in the current congress. The more moderate and conservative democrats were purged out by strong Republican challengers and not as much by internal primary challenges.
The Republican moderates lost on three fronts.
First anyone who wasn't ideologically pure would suffer a primary challenge first by smaller groups but after 2010 by tea party groups with unlimited money to collect nationally. There is where the real danger of Citizen United comes in during primaries especially closed primaries. Even compromising with democrats was seen as verboten. If compromise causes an all out Civil war type primary challenge then just communicating openly with Democrats could cause problems so no wonder the lines of communication between the parties are weak. This meant that even Republicans that weren't all that moderate but at least were pragmatic were in danger.
Second real moderate Republicans in Democratic leaning or strong Democratic areas lost because Democrats successfully tied them to the National Republican party. If you are a Democrat or Independent and happy with your incumbent, and remember when polled most voters are happy with their incumbent Senator/Representative but unhappy with congress as a whole, but worried about what his party affiliation then what are you going to do? You are probably going to vote him out or maybe not vote at all. This is of course reinforced with the inevitable ads about so and so voting with the party 92% of the time. These ads count on the fact that most people don't know how many boring procedural votes there are in congress where you are typically just voting with the party. They screw the average all up and can really make it seem like even a relative maverick is just a party shill. The better stat is to take all the votes where the party members voted >90 in block either for or against and see how often the Senator/Representative voted the other way. Compare that to the voting record on real key bills of consequence and not the naming of a park or a bridge after someone.
Third once those moderate Republicans were out instead of trying to challenger the new incumbent Democrat, who being an incumbent has all the vote disadvantages that the Republican who lost last time does, with a moderate republican they bring out a tea party member or equivalent. The tea party brings out the money and in a primary it is awful hard to win against massive amounts of money. You saw this in Connecticut for Senate in the past two elections. First Chris Dodd retires opening up a seat in 2010 and then Lieberman retires for 2012 and while he caucused with the Democrats he was really a moderate Republican ever since he lost that primary to Ned Lamont. There you had a variety of Republicans in the primary but the only two that mattered were
Linda McMahon and
Rob Simmons. Linda McMahon didn't really have tea party backing exactly but she was far from moderate and had plenty of her own money. Plus she was inexperienced and ran a pretty poor campaign. That didn't matter because Simmons who was a former House rep for CT got crushed by her money. He made more sense but he was more moderate and couldn't come close to matching McMahon's dollars.
Yes McMahon is the wife of Vince McMahon from WWE. McMahon got slaughtered in the general election by
Richard Blumenthal. She lost by over 12 points while spending some 50 million dollars of her own money. Now Blumenthal was the state AG for a decade and had huge name recognition so he was going to be a tough guy to beat. Still he had his missteps including giving several speeches, both during the campaign and years past, where he implied that he was a Vietnam Vet. He wasn't a Vietnam Vet.
He served in the Marine Reserves during the Vietnam era but never actually went to Vietnam. If this had come out a decade or two ago I think this would have ended his campaign but he was able to side step it. It helped that other parts of the same speeches seemed to reinforce that he served during Vietnam but not in Vietnam. He made a quick apology for not speaking clearly and his own former commanding officer backed up his reputation as a good Marine.
Ok so McMahon looses by over 12 points her first time around in 2010 to a guy who was going to be tough to beat but she out spent him almost five to one. Don't let her run again even against someone weaker she is going to have a tough time.
Roll up to 2012 and she runs again this time for the seat Lieberman is leaving. She only spends about 12 million this time or four times as much as
Chris Murphy but she still loses by over 12 points. This time in the primary she beats
Chris Shays another former House Rep from CT. I would have handicapped Shays as even money against Murphy and that was before Murphy's mortgage problems came to light. His problems were very similar to the problems that ended Chris Dodds's Senate career.
Again you had a
moderate Republican with experience who had a real chance against a non-incumbent democrat as they were running for an open seat but McMahon's money and more conservative credentials trumped all.
When I moved up to CT in 2005 there were three Dem house members and two Rep house members. Historically the first district leaned Dem, the 3rd and 4th district leaned rep and the remaining two districts were swings. Now all of them are Dem districts and fairly solidly so. After Shays lost his house seat in 2008 there were no Rep House members from New England.
Currently there are no House Members from New England that are Republicans and only two senators Susan Collins from Maine who is a moderate for sure and Kelly Ayotte from NH who is not a moderate.
In fact it is so bad in New England for the Republicans that in their updated map for 2013 they just left New England off.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/gop-map-congress_n_2434773.html
The flip side to this is that over the past few elections, but specifically the 2010 mid-terms, the Democrats lost most of their conservative blue dog members. They were replaced by very conservative Republicans. That polarized the parties even more. Pushing the democrats farther to the left and the Republicans much, much farther to the right.
There were fifty-four blue dogs in the House prior to 2010 and now there are only fourteen and most of those were replaced very non-moderate Republicans.
Map of Blue dogs prior to 2010.
Map of Blue Dogs after 2012 election.
In the 2012 election the GOP got 48.03% of the vote but won 53% of the seats. The dems won 49.15% of the votes but only 46% of the seats. There are three vacant seats now.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXElO_QdHZCbzJocGtxYkR6OTdZbzZwRUFvS3c#gid=0
The collations that the two major parties used to have with various caucuses between them have broken down. Now on the Republican side you have almost exclusively conservative to very conservative Republicans. The handful of moderates left or at the very least the pragmatists are too afraid of a primary challenge to try and worth with Democrats. On the Democratic side yes there are a few moderates left and even a few conservative blue dogs but because of the way the Republicans run the house they don't really matter. Sure you could pass a good bit of legislation with say 150-175 moderate to conservative dems plus another 50 or so of the remaining moderate and pragmatic reps
but that is almost never
going to happen. If legislation cannot be passed by a simply majority of republicans then it is not even going to make it to the floor.
That is the Hastert rule.
Boehner has broken it twice now just in the past few months so maybe finally things are starting to change. Boehner is not a ideologically fire brand though he plays one on TV. He is a pragmatist and a working house member but he is also a dyed in the wool pol so he always watches his back. Cantor is the ideologically fire brand who wants to burn the place down to get his way and if catches Boehner in the fire all the better. The question is how much will Boehner push to get things done while risking his Speakership and his career in the process? You can look at this as a purely selfish endeavor but there is another side to it. If Boehner were to push too hard and lose a primary challenge or be voted out as speaker then Cantor will step in. Cantor is not going to let anything get done and he will burn the place down to satisfy the far right members. That doesn't do Boehner any good of course because he loses his job and his power but it certainly doesn't do the country any good either. He has to push just hard enough to get things done but not so hard that he sparks a primary challenge. I do not envy him at all.
The root of the problem here is not a two party system, it has worked fine in the past. Our politicians no longer represent the people that elect them, instead they represent the corporations and special interests that influence them with money. Citizens United now states that money equals speech, the ones who give the most money are the only people who matter. This is why people don't feel like participating in democracy any more, they don't really matter.
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