America Needs a 'Metropolitan Party' | Hacker News Reader

America Needs a 'Metropolitan Party'

citylab.com

21 pointsmisnamed47 comments

Another commenter mentioned that the Democrats are effectively the metropolitan party (and the "Clinton Archipelago" map [0] from this NYTimes article "Two Americas of 2016" [1] shows it fairly well).

But, I think the article misses an even more important factor.

what problems the government fixes is less divisive than how those problems are fixed. This how question is much more important in preventing Republicans and Democrats from working together.

Both parties want to solve most of the problems that plague cities: housing, transportation, poverty, education, etc [2]. What differs is how they intend to solve those issues.

The ideological underpinning of the right is to solve problems by reducing government involvement and/or increasing people's ability to be responsible for their own lives (and possibly suffer bad outcomes, deserved or not): deregulation of business, lowering taxes on high-end professionals and rich people, school choice, public-private partnership in infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the left generally tries to increase outcomes universally, even for people who have made bad choices: increasing services used by the poor, focusing on public education that is accessible to everyone, investing in public transportation provided by the government (and with subsidies so that the poor can afford to use it).

The difference is that the right doesn't address issues directly. I think this is because they don't think it's the government's problem in the first place. Rather, they try to fix the broader environment instead. Free from this ideological aversion to government, Democrats advocate for directly investing in the issue.

[0] https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clint...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/t...

[2] For people on the left who are unfamiliar with right-wing interest in these issues, AEI has tons of research and events on them. Granted, most Republicans are not interested in these issues.

Edit: clarity

Those maps aren't nearly nuanced enough. There are a lot of blue voters in red areas and red voters in blue areas, both go unrepresented.

That's true. But, would you agree that there are very few conservatives in urban cores?

For example, I used to live in Washington, DC. Trump got 4% of the vote.

Fewer, but I'm not sure what the real number would be. If you're a conservative in an urban core you probably wouldn't bother voting. There could be a lot that would vote third party.

The first thing Trump was supposed to do was introduce an Amendment for term limits (Washington Post). Cruz proposed one that would limit Senators to 2 terms and Representatives to 3 terms.

This seems like an idea almost everyone would support and would do so much to move politics forward.

But it needs to be passed by the current people there

  All 27 Amendments have been ratified after two-thirds 
  of the House and Senate approve of the proposal and
  send it to the states for a vote. Then, three-fourths
  of the states must affirm the proposed Amendment.

First step is to get Congress on board, and telling them to vote themselves out is unlikely.

Eh. We have term limits in California. Hasn't done much good. And those terms seem kinda short. Once someone figures out what they're doing, they're almost termed out.

We need a system that allows for representation of minority opinion that isn't strictly tied to geography.

How would one add a 3rd chamber to Congress with this kind of idea?

But geography is important. In the end, all politics is local and resources are finite. Why shouldn't the areas of the country where more people live, and where most of the infrastructure, finance and culture are, have greater political influence?

Why should 49% of people in those populated areas not be represented? That's what geographical representation gets you.

America was established as a federalist collection of states so that opinion and geography were intentionally tightly coupled.

If you didn't like the prevailing opinion in your state, you moved to somewhere where your opinion was the majority.

The federal government was not meant to have a significant impact in your day-to-day life. Your city and state governments were supposed to have the most impactful policies, which were supposed to be tailored specifically to the needs of your geographic locale.

Somewhere over the past 100 years, states' powers have been eroded and we're left with a one-size-fits-all federal government which is failing to keep everyone happy.

At the same time, for a number of issues that are generally regarded as States Rights, why should my rights change because I moved 10 miles? If I am a gay/trans person, why should my rights change? If I am a gun owner, why should my rights change?

Some things should probably be nationwide.

Agreed that that was the intention, and that made a lot of sense when almost everyone was involved in some way of working the land/sea near their home.

Granted I don't think I have popular political opinions, but given that I have to be in at the very least a district where 50% + 1 of the people have similar approaches to problem solving means that it will never happen.

Obviously this slows down the introduction of new ideas and parties, and perhaps that's a feature and not a bug, but it does mean a total disinterest for many who feel that they'll never be represented in any meaningful way.

To counter some of the points here, this is certainly possible with a limited approval-based voting scheme with multiple openings per position.

For example, senators are elected in groups of three, and each person has two votes (max of one per person). This dilutes the voting power of the majority candidates if they try to run more than two people, and allows for a minority-view to have some representation.

So, first off, the article's headline and subheadline/abstract blurb talk refer to a party. What the article actually proposes is not a political party but a per-state nonpartisan group that approves/disapproves of politicians based on how their policies effect urban areas.

Second off, the author presumes that local politics are nonpartisan because the stakes are higher at local levels than at state and federal levels. I think the actual reason is that running a campaign at the state or federal level needs a lot more funding. The support of a political party's machine is necessary in order reach all voters and convince enough of them to vote for you.

Third, the author proposes to start at the state and local levels. The 50 most populous cities in the US are located in only 29 states (plus DC). A lot of states don't have cities.

I would characterize the following states as not having any cities to speak of based on the size and density of their largest towns: Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. That's 17 out of 50; over 1 in 3 states.

You're looking at overall density but not actual population centers. Over forty percent of Maine's population is located in the Portland metro area. Over eighty (!) percent of Alaska's population is in the greater Anchorage area. Large and sparsely populated states consolidate more in city centers, not less, which is why it makes so little sense that rural residents have so much more relative worth to their votes.

My definition of "city" is stricter than most so perhaps a lot of Americans would disagree with me. Even taking that into account, perhaps I was not loose enough with my definition.

Anchorage has a population density of 170 people per square mile. Portland, ME has a population density of 3,100 people per square mile. For reference, Providence, RI - not a megalopolis by any stretch of the imagination - has a density of over 9,000 people per square mile. I think it is a bit of a stretch to call either Anchorage, AK or Portland, ME "a city". They might be very nice suburban towns. They might have a high concentration of their respective state's populations. That does not mean that the voters in those places will want the same policy adjustments that voters in, say, Pittsburgh or Minneapolis will want.

It would be a terrible idea to give Portland any more power to swing things in the state of Maine than it already has. Already, there's some pretty big tensions because Portland and its suburbs can effectively dictate to the rest of the state - and the situations in Portland and Scarborough are quite a bit different than the realities of Fort Kent, or Rumford, or Calais.

It would be nice if we could give different areas greater levels of autonomy, but with the way that government funding structures work, that is unlikely.

We already have a political party whose primary function is to represent the interests of well-off city dwellers. They're called the Democrats.

Perhaps you could make a much more informative comment instead. Reddit is a nice place to just say things, but HN is nice because of information.

To be honest, HN is not all that much better if you're not a fan of the chosen party and it's liberal inclinations. You just get brigaded to death.

It's not really a chosen party. It's a flavor of some kind of techno-anarcho-libertarian capitalism.

Don't leave out the communistic-socialistic-opensource portion of the group, which has an awkward dependent relationship with the capitalistic group

True. In truth, there's probably more than one faction.

Perhaps you could make a much less condescending comment. Reddit is a nice place to be condescending, but HN is nice because people are generally kind.

They're also called the Republicans.

I'm not disputing that. My point was that this article is just a poorly thought-out mishmash of "centrism" and more representation for constituencies who are already very well represented on a national level.

Sure, agreed! But it's not like the two parties are all that different in that they both act on the interests of wealthy elites.

The whole "both parties are the same" argument has been disproven quite a bit. At this point, it's just a sign of intellectual laziness.

(I know it's flagged, but .02 cents). Sorta, not really.

The traditional alignment had been D: cities-tolerance-open society, R: country-religion-traditional society but so many people live in cities now that it doesn't make sense to have everyone in one, giant party. Either another bikeshedding wedge issue or major issue will end up splitting the majority along (new/different) lines.

With two interchangeable, heavily corrupted parties, Bernie and progressive need to split and make their own, viable party. Also, sensible R's like Lawrence Wilkerson gotta retake/remake/splinter off a party that puts common sense ahead of Freedom Caucus & fringe.

Right now, the 800 lbs gorilla socioeconomic tension is (re)distribution of wealth (inequality). Whichever group tackles that realistically will capture the majority of independents... I don't think lies on this issue will endure, people will eventually wise-up.

Bottom line: 2-3 viable parties are necessary for balanced, countervailing powers to operate correctly (balance of power) and prevent collapse into Rome-style end-game. If the elite continue to exclude the grassroots and corruption reaches titanic levels, they (or someone) will eventually be replaced a-la Korea.

Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide behind.

Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate the populace than it does to inform.

This isn't a party, it's an interest group.

I understand the reasons to feel that way but it will only entrench the divide more - which seems like a bad idea

What America needs an amicable divorce. (Several, actually.)

Since that won't happen, America will eventually get a nasty one.

Let's call it the District 1 Party.

America needs to embrace "local government." That means devolving budgetary power to the states. The federal model has failed. The current system is broken. The people who pay the most into the system (highly productive cities) are the people who actually have the least voting power. Once people wake up and begin to understand what's really going on this will not last. 'Taxation without representation' tends to rub people the wrong way.

End the Federal Highway/Farm/Energy Acts. Heck, even blow up Medicaid and Obamacare. Cut the military budget by 2/3. All of these enormously expensive federal "programs" are just elaborate means to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the wealthy and efficient urban counties and distribute them to the relatively poor and inefficient rural counties. None of it is fair and none of it is sustainable.

This is one good thing that will come out of runaway polarization in America. As all trust dissolves and the two (highly geographically correlated) classes move apart this illusion of "one republic" acting in everybody's interests will fall away.

The fact is, due to an 18th century hypothesis that didn't play out 228 years later, a metropolitan based political party is doomed in presidential politics. My city has more people in it, than the entire states, and yet it's political clout is diluted away.

Seriously, the electoral college is an abomination that is only going to get worse with the long trend of urbanization.

The problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.

No it is not. You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage.

And even if it was true, who cares? The central thesis of the 18th century was that people would have more allegiance to their states rather than the national government, and that hasn't been true for over a hundred years.

> You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having a say for the president, because acreage.

The majority of the country elects the President, because the United States are composed of the several States (not the people thereof), and the states elect the President. Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.

>The majority of the country elects the President

Majority in what way? Not necessarily a majority of the people.

> Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.

More people live there, though. So those states represent the views of more people. Under your system, someone in South Dakota would have a 1/750,000th of a say in their state's choice, while someone in California would have a 1/36Mth of a say in their state's choice.

> Majority in what way? Not necessarily a majority of the people.

The people are irrelevant, because the United States is composed of the States, not of the people. The majority of the states, through their electors, elect the President.

> So those states represent the views of more people. Under your system, someone in South Dakota would have a 1/750,000th of a say in their state's choice, while someone in California would have a 1/36Mth of a say in their state's choice.

Why care about the number of people represented? California is free to petition the Congress to split into smaller, South-Dakota-sized states if it so wishes. More to the point, California and South Dakota are individual sovereign states which are each part of the United States. They are constitutional equals. It would be unfair to give California forty-eight times the voice of South Dakota.

Frankly, I think our Constitution has a good balance: the People are represented in the House; the States in the Senate (which is why direct election of Senators is a catastrophically disastrous mistake); and states determine how to choose their electors. I'm in favour of constitutional amendments revoking the 17th Amendment and mandating that state legislatures appoint senators & electors.

"The majority of the country"? Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing people with acres?

The whole problem is the breaking it up by states, because states are quite frankly not that relevant. No one has allegiances to states. States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal government. They're basically counties.

The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other government on Earth has one of these things.

In 2016 the electoral college functioned exactly as it was designed, to stop the tyranny of the more populous states over the less populous states. You may disagree whether the ec should remain, but you can't say that it didn't play out in 2016.

> Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing people with acres?

Are you confusing the states with the people? The United States are composed of the several States, and the States elected Messrs. Bush & Trump in those years.

> No one has allegiances to states.

They ought to.

> States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal government. They're basically counties.

No, states are the sovereign entities which constitute the United States. The people did not ratify the constitution; the states did. Misconceptions like yours are why we should repeal the 17th Amendment, replacing it with one mandating that legislatures appoint their federal senators. Frankly, I'd love to see legislatures appoint electors, too. The people have a voice in the House; having voices in the Senate and in the Executive is too much.

"The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other government on Earth has one of these things."

I think you mean like the UN, where countries vote not citizens from around the world. According to your logic, the people of China should be able to force you and all other people around the world to do anything and enforce any law that they wish.

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