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Comment by VincentEvans | Hacker News Reader

Congress also possesses a variety of tools to limit obstructionism if it so desires.

But a more important point - is that congress is a tool of democracy itself and is a reflection of the attitudes and desires of the populace. If populace no longer has the aptitude to apply its rights to elect the government that serves its interests - then it will experience the consequences of such negligence and learn from them, which is also its right.

Refusing it that right is something much worse - authoritarianism when an individual or a group gets to pick winners or losers.

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I think that's a very simplistic, idealistic view of how the US government works. In reality, the populace is very limited in what changes it can make and which people can realistically become elected. Our electoral system, entrenched two-party system, as well as the prevalence of gerrymandering, all come together to ensure that.

Well, that’s just like, your opinion, man. (Big Lebowski, i think).

Well, sure. Ultimately most things posted here are just our opinions. Kinda a pointless thing to reply with, though.

A few decades ago it didn't seem realistic that someone like Barack Obama could be elected President. And yet it happened twice. Our system has some flaws but a bit of idealism is still warranted.

I think this accentuates the reality though.

Remember when Obama won? The Republican Party was at a morale nadir, and they rallied together under the banner “1 term president”. They fought every single thing.

Mitt Romney had to oppose his own Medicare plan, which the democrats adopted so that they could find common ground.

Obama winning was probably the last gasp of the system working as it was intended. There are plans upon plans to ensure the system can never do that. That agencies are weakened, courts are stacked, local elections won, media narratives perfected. It’s tempting to say this is to ensure the “libs” lose, but that only plays back into a narrative and camouflages the issue.

Effective, logical government is itself the problem.

I think that someone is paying attention to the details, to the org charts, to the minutiae of laws, and making a coordinated effort to move things in a single direction.

I dont think what you described counts as idealism anymore.

I don't think that really contradicts what I said. Social attitudes change over time; that's not in dispute. The US is still pretty racist, but has gotten less racist over time. I think things like that absolutely are causes for idealism.

But Obama was still one of a very few options Americans had the opportunity to elect. He ended up in the primaries largely without the involvement of the vast majority of the country. My point isn't that things don't get better, just that we don't get a lot of choices, politically.

(Though if Trump wins this fall, and the right succeeds in their plans for their government "makeover", I think that will set back the "things getting better" train for decades. Hell, our hard-right SCOTUS majority is already unraveling that.)

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