Hacker News Reader

Comment by freeflight | Hacker News Reader

From the outside, it's been glaringly obvious that the US has had a very nasty partisanship problem for quite a while.

In other democracies opposing parties manage to build a government and, mostly, work together for the "common good", there exists cooperation even across some of the largest ideological rifts.

That kind of cooperation seems impossible in the US, it's like the two big parties have no other purpose but constantly opposing and obstructing each other, often out of sheer principle, every chance they get.

Even tho their actual ideological positions ain't that far apart.

View on HN

They fight bitterly so that we won't notice they're so similar. If we did notice that we might wonder about alternatives to Coke-and-Pepsi.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”. This quote comes to mind.

This is an oft-repeated platitude that isn't actually true. Do they have some troubling aspects in common, yes, but their differences are so vast that to regard them as the same as absurd.

https://bothsidesarenotthesame.com/

I scrolled down. I didn't see anything about war or defense, which is the primary USA screw-up of the last twenty years. There's nothing about The Drug War, which is the primary USA screw-up of the last 50 years. So yeah, they're the same.

There was something about "War on Terror". I think they're trying to imply something about civil liberties or something. There were some 2013 links about Guantanamo. Well I'm not going to take their word for it, so I googled "Guantanamo vote". The first sentence of the first link is, "Tuesday's Senate vote was 91-3."

Yeah, that's what I thought.

> I scrolled down. I didn't see anything about war or defense,

Well you didn't look hard enough, ctr+f "war", but even if that were the case, will you address the litany of issues displayed on that page or are you suggesting that none of those issues matter, so who cares how each party votes?

> There were some 2013 links about Guantanamo. Well I'm not going to take their word for it, so I googled "Guantanamo vote". The first sentence of the first link is, "Tuesday's Senate vote was 91-3."

What are you talking about? Post some specific links so I can verify what you're saying.

I'm saying I have priorities as a voter. I've been watching both heads of the mainstream party long enough to know what they are. A few random links from 2013 aren't going to convince me that my priorities aren't important.

The google search was still open in another tab. This is what I was talking about:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senate-bill-would-ban-g...

Everyone has priorities. The point is that both parties are not the same just because you don't care about anything except your own priorities. Most people care about at least some issues listed on that page, you are the outlier.

Sure, but even for those priorities which I share with that page it's fairly misleading. Old links, mischaracterized links, cherry-picking procedural votes instead of judging each session of Congress by what got done during that session, etc. Obama could have closed Gitmo at any time, simply by vetoing one of the eight defense appropriations bills that kept it open. In his first two years, he could have also simply asked Reid and Polosi to keep that rider out of the bill.

"From the outside, it's been glaringly obvious that the US has had a very nasty partisanship problem for quite a while."

I don't recall Pelosi saying that she wanted to make Bush a "one term president". I don't recall Daschle refusing to even hold a hearing on Bush's Judicial nominees.

Their primary election constituencies demand it. Arguably a more democratic process in the primaries has given more power to fringe voters who show up, and taken power away from the elitism but stabilizing process found in caucusing. As the motivated extreme participants win primaries, you see polarized general elections, and polarized governing strategies.

Whatever complaints you have about elected officials, they represent a constituency of rabid primary voters, and a lot of PAC money.

Either improve primary election participation; or eliminate primaries (next to impossible, the parties own the state defined election process which includes the primary system) in favor of range or preferential voting or even old school run offs; or revert to party elites having more say in primaries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com