a lot america's problems come back to the basic fact that we 1) have barely had united government for the last 30 years and 2) it has been basically impossible to pass normal legislation for the last 20
Reposted from
The Fig Economy
The transformative promises are a product of an electorate that wants to have an elected autocrat in charge (or thinks we already have one), and the disappointment when they don’t happen is a product of those promises’ contact with mere reality.
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Dems had enormous majorities for a tiny time under Obama (a filibuster proof one) they just ran out of time.
US Democracy = RIP.
Our great mistake was failing to kill the Senate when we killed our slavers.
Because of that, we let too many slavers cling on, & they’ve kept the Senate yolk on us to return us to the active enslavement with RFK & Musk
See @mattyglesias.bsky.social on Secret Congress
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-rise-and-importance-of-secret
I'm asking not prescribing. My USA systems of government are limited to what gets globally reported. Which misses most of it.
Given for example in voter turn out initiatives all the coverage seen in the UK makes it look like black voters organise and work hardest at it. So it might be expected similar in other local efforts.
It's basically impossible to get a treaty through the Senate. So we get a ton of executive agreements that aren't actually binding.
It's why the Supreme Court matters so much. It decides things that the chamber is encumbered to do. They not court should have definitively legislated many things, like abortion.
For the majority of them where it's just top up money with heavily embedded, expensive life styles, they're the ones too afraid to do their job and take a risk.
I’m probably inviting backlash here, as a non-American, but coming from a country that has memory of several violent rebellions in living memory (China), it’s hard to see how there will be change without some form of popular uprising.
That institution has to die.
2. House Districts capped at 250k people per rep
Who should just do the best for the nation and resign. Not fool themselves that they are waiting for the point they can make a difference and be counted or other delusional BS reason.
But I also think that we, as voters, have been somewhat lazy. We let 2 parties control the primary and election process without much pushback.
@lindastevens.bsky.social
This thread is an interesting read. But largely not understood by outsiders like me.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained
More difficult to gerrymander, EC closer to pop vote and representation closer to their constituents
... so without changing the constitution we could go as high as 11,000 members