Tim Rutten sees in the Pew Research data evidence of the Californication of America.
Perhaps most troubling, Pew found that a majority of registered voters — and a stunning 79% of “staunch conservatives” — say they “prefer elected officials who stick to their positions over those who make compromises with people they disagree with.”
For generations, historians and political analysts have identified a predilection for pragmatic problem-solving over ideology as the defining — and distinctive — characteristic of American political life. Clearly, that’s a thing of the past, and with it, the impulse to bipartisanship. As we’ve seen in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing this week, that now extends to foreign policy too. In California, we’ve watched this shift away from compromise bring effective government virtually to a halt. It’s not an experience we can afford to repeat on the national level.
Still, a democratic system that disdains compromise has no way forward but the brutality of simple majoritarianism. In a society as diverse and divided as ours, that path is sown with its own perils.
I hadn’t thought of this comparison, but it seems correct to me. Our federal government is now showing the same dysfunction that California has been suffering from for at least a decade. In California’s case, it is the inability to increase taxes without a two-thirds majority. In Congress, it is the inability to increase taxes (or do much of anything else) without a 60-vote supermajority. It’s true that public attitudes have hardened and the parties have become more polarized as a result, but it’s the goddamned un-democratic rules that are at the root of the problem. Since when did simple majoritarianism become such an alien concept?
I’d be happy to try it as a Democrat. The problem is “What is the majority?” With the Democrats, the majority of the party members are slightly left of center, but there are plenty of Blue Dogs, and they ensure that even when the Democrats get a “majority” it is never a majority in favor of Democratic ideas. With the Republicans, they are more successful since their party discipline is stronger. Note that there was not a SINGLE VOTE from the Repukes opposing the repulsive HB 3, the “put women in jail for violating the tax code about abortions” bill.
So, again, just what is a majority in the Democrats in favor of, anyway?
I seem to recall Pelosi passing about a billion bills that the Senate ignored.
The rules blocking majoritarianism can stifle OUR views, but the chief culprit in all you describe is an awful double standard, unopposed and nearly unquestioned by the corporate-owned media.
Simple majoritarianism is immoral if the majority is illegitimate. Republican Party politicians, their base, and the medias which enable them consider a Democratic Party President and Congress past disagreeable, they are ILLEGITIMATE. To this fascistic mindset, the twin traumas of 9/11 and a nigg** President means that where Democratic majorities exist it is patriotic and morally neccessary to provide a bottomless well of bitter dissent and obstructionism.
Note, however, that majoritarianism is the Gospel to those same Republicans when they are in power. Read the Federal Government in 2003, the State Governments of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan in 2011, etc. In these places and times, majoritarianism is God. Oddly, however, Jesus wants majoritarianism in these same places torn down in the few areas where it opposes or blocks their radical agenda.
Look at Michigan’s current unilateral neutering of elected County Supervisors, City Councils and School Districts, for God’s sake. Look at the “Citizens United” judgement, which tore down a century of majority-passed campaign finance laws and is now allowing a distinct minority to drown out the voice of the majority.
In all cases, IOKIYAR. That is the new Golden Rule, and if you disagree, fu** you.