The Big Divide Between Biden and Trump Supporters

[Belsnickel]

(05-25-2024, 04:08 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: You can label one side all you want, but both sides have good ideas and bad ideas. 

I don't say that isn't the case. I prefer a healthy democracy with many ideas being debated in the legislature.

(05-25-2024, 04:08 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Both sides are destroying Democracy with their unwillingness to compromise with each other. As far as i can tell, this started peaking during Bush's terms. 9/11 pulled everyone back together for a while but then right back to doing the same thing again.

You see it all the time, with Bills coming out of the Senate that favor D's policies and get shot down in the House, then vice versa, House R Polocies shot down in Senate.

Somehow both sides have lost the idea that they are supposed to compromise, that's what a Democracy is about. 

That isn't what a democracy is about. A democracy it about accountability. It is about the people being the ones holding the government accountable either directly or through a representative system like we have. There are several problems, though, that have led to the uncompromising situation in our Congress.

First, there has been an effort to put more power into the hands of the executive. This has been ongoing for a long time, to be honest. While we have the oldest continual constitutional government in the world, it is often viewed by political scientists with three different stages. The first being our original constitution, the second being the post-14th Amendment version, and then you have the post-New Deal era. The post-New Deal era is really where we see the growth of the executive branch kick into high gear and it continued to be that way through the years with more and more authority vested in the hands of the POTUS as the branch grew.

Second, representation in Congress has remained stagnant. We have has 435 Representatives in Congress since 1912. Since that time, we have seen a 253% increase in population in this country and we have added two states. So, in 1912, the average number of citizens each Representative represented was 219,161. Now it is 772,752. Added to that, because of gerrymandering and some of the rules governing these seats, legislators are choosing their constituents rather than the constituents choosing their legislators. Which brings me to number three.

You pinpoint the Bush era, which is correct in many ways. The Bush era was wen we saw a pause in some of the Gingrich style rhetoric, which then got cranked back up to 11 after the good feelings faded. Then, in 2010, the GOP took on the Karl Rove strategy. This was an effort by the GOP to focus on state house races. You see, at the more local levels the Democrats had tended to perform better. This was because the votes were not as diluted and so many state houses and governor's mansions were Democratic leaning. But the GOP made it their mission to reverse that so they could control redistricting and thus give themselves favorable positioning for the House of Representatives. This is why there is such a disparity between the distribution of parties in the House and among the voters casting votes for their Representatives.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying this is fraudulent. It's working the system, nothing more. But what has resulted in from this trifecta of issues is that we have a House of Representatives that is not actually representative of the people. Each member of Congress has a huge number of constituents to represent, and many of those Representatives have views in direct contrast to nearly half of their constituents because the map was drawn to take advantage of that and because the two-party system makes it nigh impossible to have someone able to adequately represent the people. And on top of it, because Congress has been so deadlocked, each party wants to give more power to the executive when their person is in the office, and complain about executive overreach when it is the other person exercising the same power they imbued the office with and, because of the Electoral College, there is little accountability to be had for the POTUS, either.

A lack of compromise in Congress is not the problem, just as Trump is not the problem. They are both symptoms of democratic backsliding due to policies aimed at limiting the voice of the people. This is not a "both sides are the same" issue because they are not. Only one side, and specifically one segment of one side, is overtly taking actions to undermine our democratic system. There are plenty of Republicans who feel the same way about this that I am articulating here, but they are being run out of the party in favor of the MAGA contingent. They have been throwing up warning flags for years, these more traditional Republicans, but now they are called "RINOs" by those that are willingly abdicating their role in our democracy.

The MAGA movement is a radical, anti-democratic movement. There is no other way to say it. I specifically say the MAGA movement because it isn't conservative, it isn't Republican, it is its own thing and it has coopted the right wing in this country to capitalize on the division that has been growing for the past 30-ish years and the increasing tribalism existing in our politics.