That said, remember that the rules here require you to avoid attacking other posters here, including with a contemptuous tone. The comment above has too much attack and too little substantive content.

Understood Ampersand. I certainly don’t want to lower the tone of discussion. I have to admit that I have a very low threshold of tolerance for the re-writing of history. I considered RonF’s earlier comment as amounting to a personal attack, so I’m afraid I got a little personal in return. I’ll try to watch it in future.

The conversation was over a long time ago, since you lack the elementary integrity to either stand by or amend your statements. Your attempt to reframe your reference to our “present immigration crisis” wouldn’t convince an intelligent 12 year old.

WB,

I agree that you’ve won this debate on the merits of the arguments. (Sorry, Ron.) I really appreciate your posts, and hope you’ll continue leaving comments at “Alas.”

That said, remember that the rules here require you to avoid attacking other posters here, including with a contemptuous tone. The comment above has too much attack and too little substantive content.

enator Obama introduced legislation in January 2007 to offer a responsible alternative to President Bush’s failed escalation policy. The legislation commences redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007 with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008 — a date consistent with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s expectations. The plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces. If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the 13 benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met.

This benchmark stuff, to me is not a legit plan to end the war.

You need to catch up on your research, W.B. There’s also the little matter of Al-Queida terrorists. And Irish and numerous other nationalities. Perhaps you think that the current problem consists only of Mexicans, but I never said that.

W.B. I’m not even reading the rest of your post, or any other posts by you. I’m tired of you putting words in my mouth, even after I’ve called you on it a number of times. This conversation is over.

No, it’s not. I was talking about everyone coming into America. I did not specifically cite any one nationality or a specific reason for coming, or even whether or not they were immigrants (as opposed to illegal aliens). To say that I cited “Mexican economic refugees” means that you are claiming I referred specifically to that group of people, which I did not. You are trying to narrow what I was talking about to fit one specific group of people. That’s not valid.

Let’s see what you actually said.

You’re right. Americans pretty much think that our political system is the best in the world and most of us can’t understand why other countries don’t adopt it. Think about our present immigration crisis. What we are seeing is that huge numbers of people come to the U.S. every year to live. Many of them abandon everything to come here. Some even die. Yet they keep coming. In the face of that, to tell us that what we have isn’t working and we need to change it has a hard time getting traction.

Our “present immigration crisis” consisting entirely of massive illegal immigration from Mexico, this is a direct reference to the same. This makes my criticism entirely valid. Note also that you specifically cited our “political system” as the motive for such immigration.

I was countering your assertion that the Mexican economy cannot provide jobs. I’ll agree that it presently does not, but I strongly question the concept that it cannot. It’s entirely possible that it could, if proper reforms were made in Mexican society

Again, if what I said was factually correct you had no business suggesting that it wasn’t so. Further, I was responding to your suggestion that such immigration rendered criticism of our political system moot, a point that you seemingly have forgotten that you ever made. The causes of Mexico’s economic problems are not germane to this.

I view the things you cite as ignoble acts, not ignoble values, contradicting the actual values we were founded on and that we have paid a heavy price for.

Well, you can choose to view things anyway you like but that won’t make it so. The fact is that white supremacy and male supremacy informed the framing of our constitution as surely as notions of personal liberty.

Which is why I suggested no such thing. What the Civil War did was to end slavery. It certainly did not end state-supported racism. But what the Constitution did provide, especially after the post-Civil War amendments, was a way to legally end state-supported racism by an appeal to the law instead of war. It didn’t happen as fast as it should have. But it did happen. Meanwhile, in plenty of other countries, such things (including outright slavery) still exist with no way to end it via an appeal to law.

Again, let’s look at what you actually said.

The U.S. was founded on noble values. As was noted at the time by British commentators on the issue of slavery, their expression was often deficient and contradictory - welcome to humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, the slave-holding evangelist of liberty noted this when he said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” He was prophetic; those errors and in some cases outright hypocrisy have often been exposed and paid for in blood (e.g., the Civil War)>.

This certainly reads like a blanket exculpation. The reference to “errors” is reminiscent of old style Soviet apologetics. It’s quite a reach to call an institution consciously imposed for its profit potential an “error”. However, it is ambiguous, so I will accept that you didn’t intend to suggest that the civil war settled all the issues raised. Of course, that means that the bill hasn’t yet been paid in full.

Yes, yes, a few times, due to our discussions, too long a discussion for this thread, and finally only from what I read in the media.

I have lived in both white and black communities. I have voluteered in campaigns for both white and black candidates. It is my experence that black and white folks attach very different meanings to the same terms. For example, when white folks talk about racism, they usually view it as an individual moral failing or character flaw, whereas black folks see it as a systemic evil. This is much in the same way that men take a view of sexism as a question of personal conduct or prejudice whereas women are more likely to view it terms of cultural, institutional or policy barriers limiting women as a class. One of the privileges of being considered white in the US is the luxury of being able to ignore race. A privilege unavailable to the non-white. This conceptual and experiential division is reflected in both our media discourse and social discourse. I suggest you google some national polling data on the divergence of views between whites and blacks.

And once again, I did not make that assertion. Nowhere did I say that the current system is direct election of the President. What I did say was that the American public did not want politicians and legislators electing their chief executive. In fact, the Constitution specifically forbids Federal legislators or anyone getting a Federal paycheck or holding any kind of Federal office from serving an elector. So unlike under a Parliamentary system, politicians do not elect our chief executive.

And once again, let’s look at what you actually said.

But I also think that in the American psyche there is a need to have a winner and a loser, and that people want to back a winner or at least have a direct say in it. If you have a multi-party system, then often there is no majority party; there is no winner for people to back. In a Parliamentary system you’d then have the politicians/legislators selecting the winner instead of the people directly,, and damn few Americans, with their gut-level distrust of politicians, want that.

Now that sounds very much as though you are saying that US voters select the the President by direct election in contrast to a parliamentary system. Otherwise, your use of the terms “direct” and “directly” would appear meaningless.

Regarding your point about Federal office holders and employees being banned from acting as electors. This hardly excludes them from being politicians. We do live in a Federated system and there is nothing in this law as stated that forbids State officeholders from serving as electors.

Hm. Perhaps I misunderstand the Parliamentary system. If so, I apologize. Help me out here. It is my understanding that in a Parliamentary system I would elect a local representative from a given party. He or she, in turn, would vote for the standard-bearer of their party as Prime Minister. Thus, when voting for my local MP I would have a problem if I like the candidate for party “X” but would rather have party “Y”s standard-bearer for PM, as a vote for an MP of party “X” is essentially a vote for the candidate for PM of party “X”.

What you are doing here is attempting to change the ground of the discussion. Your initial objections revolved around the indirectness of the process and the idea that politicians, rather than voters, choose who the head of the executive will be. In point of fact, the Parliamentary Party Leader is chosen by the party membership in a process internal to the party. The Party leader is then elected PM if the party is successful in the national contest. Said election being largely ceremonial in the same sense that you ascribe to the electoral college. Since there is zero likelyhood that the voters are unaware of who the party leader is, the suggestion that they do not elect the PM has exactly the same validity as saying US voters don’t elect the President. That is, technically correct but absent a radical departure from precedent, practically irrelevant. A distinction without a difference.

You seem to recognize this yourself, in as much as you now wish to argue that Parliamentary party’s don’t allow for ticket splitting. This is certainly true but has no bearing whatever on the discussion up to this point. Your 11th hour introduction of it suggest that neither this argument or the ones raised earlier are central to your view. You appear to be shopping for arguments that support your bias. Said bias growing out of your previously noted dependence on a mythology of what the US ought to be, rather than a hardheaded analysis of the US as it actually has been and is.

I sometimes vote for dems, but I’m out of luck this time around as I wont vote for anyone who supported the war initially or is supporting it now. My standard for evaluating that is that dem politicians need to be advocating for congress to cut war funding, the only step that can actually end the war.

curiousgyrl, I believe Barak Obama also meets those criteria.

No, it’s not. I was talking about everyone coming into America. I did not specifically cite any one nationality or a specific reason for coming, or even whether or not they were immigrants (as opposed to illegal aliens). To say that I cited “Mexican economic refugees” means that you are claiming I referred specifically to that group of people, which I did not. You are trying to narrow what I was talking about to fit one specific group of people. That’s not valid.

The causes of Mexico’s difficulties were not and are not relevant to the discussion,

I was countering your assertion that the Mexican economy cannot provide jobs. I’ll agree that it presently does not, but I strongly question the concept that it cannot. It’s entirely possible that it could, if proper reforms were made in Mexican society

You say that the “U.S. was founded on noble values” as if it were’nt equally accurate to say that it was founded on the ignoble values I listed above.

I view the things you cite as ignoble acts, not ignoble values, contradicting the actual values we were founded on and that we have paid a heavy price for.

That you suggest that the ideal of white supremacy ceased to be an issue with the ending of de jure slavery is a stark indicator of just how much a prisoner of received mythology you are.

Which is why I suggested no such thing. What the Civil War did was to end slavery. It certainly did not end state-supported racism. But what the Constitution did provide, especially after the post-Civil War amendments, was a way to legally end state-supported racism by an appeal to the law instead of war. It didn’t happen as fast as it should have. But it did happen. Meanwhile, in plenty of other countries, such things (including outright slavery) still exist with no way to end it via an appeal to law.

Do you ever talk issues with them outside the workplace? Do you have personal relations with any of them that include shared confidences? How often have you eaten in their homes and met their families? Do you know for a fact that when you speak of unity and division they attach the same meaning to these words as yourself? What exactly unifies Americans? Which politicians are dividing America? Finally, do you have any certain knowlege that the views of your circle of acquaintences reflect those of their communities?

Yes, yes, a few times, due to our discussions, too long a discussion for this thread, and finally only from what I read in the media.

Which ignores the question of why you asserted that Americans prefered direct election for the Presidency when you knew very well that no such election exists under our system.

And once again, I did not make that assertion. Nowhere did I say that the current system is direct election of the President. What I did say was that the American public did not want politicians and legislators electing their chief executive. In fact, the Constitution specifically forbids Federal legislators or anyone getting a Federal paycheck or holding any kind of Federal office from serving an elector. So unlike under a Parliamentary system, politicians do not elect our chief executive.

In both the U.S. and Parliamentary systems the parties choose their standard bearers in advance of the general election. In both cases the electorate knows in advance who will be heading the executive dependent on the outcome of the election. This is a distinction without a difference.

Hm. Perhaps I misunderstand the Parliamentary system. If so, I apologize. Help me out here. It is my understanding that in a Parliamentary system I would elect a local representative from a given party. He or she, in turn, would vote for the standard-bearer of their party as Prime Minister. Thus, when voting for my local MP I would have a problem if I like the candidate for party “X” but would rather have party “Y”s standard-bearer for PM, as a vote for an MP of party “X” is essentially a vote for the candidate for PM of party “X”.

Now, this happens, all over America. In my own district I often have not voted for the same party for my Representative as I have for President. And you can find examples of that all over America where a district votes for one party locally and another for President. If you couldn’t, it would be highly unlikely to get (for example) a Democratic House and a Republican President. Whereas in a Parliamentary system, especially one with only one house in the legislature that’s democratically elected, if one party has an outright majority I don’t see how you could ever have a PM not of that party (presuming party discipline is maintained).

In the U.S.’s system, you are much more able to vote for the person rather than the party for both offices. People often do. I have voted for a lot more Democrats for the House and Senate than I have for President. The result does not seem to be the same.

No. But you said “Citing economic refugees from Mexico as a validation of the existing political order …” when, in fact, I did not cite either economic refugees or Mexicans. You put words in my mouth that I did not write.

Only if you intended to exclude them from your assertions about immigrants. If you did not exclude them, you included them, which means my criticism is perfectly appropriate.

True. But what it does do is point to whose job it is to solve the problem, and it’s neither America nor the American public. When people abandon a country in millions because they can find no opportunity there, there is a fundamental problem in that country that it needs to solve.

If it were true, you really shouldn’t have claimed that it wasn’t. The causes of Mexico’s difficulties were not and are not relevant to the discussion, unless you’re pushing the idea that “American Values”, as defined by our political institutions, are synonymous with a particular brand of economic ideology. If that’s your position, you need to explain and support it rather than assuming it.

So, then, it’s hardly “sterile rhetoric”. It’s quite live and relevant, unlike your previous statement about “the sterile rhetoric of values.”

The U.S. was founded on noble values. As was noted at the time by British commentators on the issue of slavery, their expression was often deficient and contradictory - welcome to humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, the slave-holding evangelist of liberty noted this when he said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” He was prophetic; those errors and in some cases outright hypocrisy have often been exposed and paid for in blood (e.g., the Civil War). But the fact that the U.S. has sometimes fallen short of it’s ideals does not invalidate them or the effort to meet them. And it hardly makes their domination of political debate in this country a “sterile rhetoric of values”.

Except that the above is a perfect example of such sterility. You simply ignore facts that do not comport with your favored mythology. You say that the “U.S. was founded on noble values” as if it were’nt equally accurate to say that it was founded on the ignoble values I listed above. Or, as a noted British commentator said at the time, “Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negros?” Morever, we did not simply fall short with such ignoble ideals, we wrote them into our constitution. That you suggest that the ideal of white supremacy ceased to be an issue with the ending of de jure slavery is a stark indicator of just how much a prisoner of received mythology you are.

Nope. I work with members of most of those groups and have the opportunity to talk to them about the issues of the day. Certainly there are divisions; there always will be. But like many other people, they see that this country will be best led when it’s leaders focus on what unites Americans instead of trying to take advantage of what divides them just to get and stay elected.

Do you ever talk issues with them outside the workplace? Do you have personal relations with any of them that include shared confidences? How often have you eaten in their homes and met their families? Do you know for a fact that when you speak of unity and division they attach the same meaning to these words as yourself? What exactly unifies Americans? Which politicians are dividing America? Finally, do you have any certain knowlege that the views of your circle of acquaintences reflect those of their communities?

True. Which is one reason why the original system was found unsatisfactory and was changed. In talking about a winner/loser dichotomy I’m speculating as to why the Constitutional system has ended up being expressed as a two-party system. It obviously wasn’t designed as such.

Your speculation took the form of situating the cause in the “American psyche” which, along with “American ears”, is the sort of mythological construct that seems to permiate your thinking as a substitute for hard data.

No. But with very few exceptions (none of which has affected the winner) the Electoral College electors have followed the popular vote of their state, which satsifies the American electorate.

Which ignores the question of why you asserted that Americans prefered direct election for the Presidency when you knew very well that no such election exists under our system. As for whether this ” satisfies the American electorate”, that is an assertion subject to much debate.

Yup. But those were very rare exceptions. Americans are willing to accept such actions when we have a disputed election, since there has to be some system to resolve disputes. But a Parliamentary system would cause every single election for our Chief Executive to be determined in such a way. That’s what the American public does not want.

In both the U.S. and Parliamentary systems the parties choose their standard bearers in advance of the general election. In both cases the electorate knows in advance who will be heading the executive dependent on the outcome of the election. This is a distinction without a difference.

I will add “the American public” to “American psyche”, “American ears”, etc. on the pile of hollow symbols which you apparently fill with whatever content suits you, unless you provide some hard data to support your assertion.

Come now, W.B., I’m obviously talking about the winner of an election.

Not all that obvious. I find your arguments ambiguous and contradictory to the point of incoherence for all the reasons cited above. If I misconstrued your intent, it would hardly be surprising.

I’m not sure what you mean here; I’m not familiar with the term “unitary executive”. If you’re asking if I want to see the Executive power dominate the government, the answer is “No.” I wouldn’t trust any one person with that much power, including the current President.

On this much at least, we can agree. I suggest you google unitary executive. What you find might be an eye opener.

No. But you said “Citing economic refugees from Mexico as a validation of the existing political order …” when, in fact, I did not cite either economic refugees or Mexicans. You put words in my mouth that I did not write.

The Mexican economy is, in fact, not producing sufficient jobs for the population. Theorizing about the reasons for the short fall doesn’t alter the fundamental reality. Neither does it alter the factual nature of the statement.

True. But what it does do is point to whose job it is to solve the problem, and it’s neither America nor the American public. When people abandon a country in millions because they can find no opportunity there, there is a fundamental problem in that country that it needs to solve.

Yes, the US was founded on values. Some good, some bad, some in complete contradiction to one another.

So, then, it’s hardly “sterile rhetoric”. It’s quite live and relevant, unlike your previous statement about “the sterile rhetoric of values.”

The U.S. was founded on noble values. As was noted at the time by British commentators on the issue of slavery, their expression was often deficient and contradictory - welcome to humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, the slave-holding evangelist of liberty noted this when he said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” He was prophetic; those errors and in some cases outright hypocrisy have often been exposed and paid for in blood (e.g., the Civil War). But the fact that the U.S. has sometimes fallen short of it’s ideals does not invalidate them or the effort to meet them. And it hardly makes their domination of political debate in this country a “sterile rhetoric of values”.

Evidently, “blacks, women, working people, the poor” are not “Americans”, or else they lack “American ears”, since it’s certain that they don’t consider such talk “incessant.” Or is it your view that such people don’t actually exist, except as phantoms ginned up by the left?

Nope. I work with members of most of those groups and have the opportunity to talk to them about the issues of the day. Certainly there are divisions; there always will be. But like many other people, they see that this country will be best led when it’s leaders focus on what unites Americans instead of trying to take advantage of what divides them just to get and stay elected.

The winner/loser dichotomy you speculate upon did not exist under the original constitution. There could be as many as four candidates for President and that office, as well as the Vice Presidency, were allotted to the 1st and 2nd place candidates respectively. That is how the Federalist, anti-slavery John Adams came to have the radical anti-Federalist, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson for his Vice President.

True. Which is one reason why the original system was found unsatisfactory and was changed. In talking about a winner/loser dichotomy I’m speculating as to why the Constitutional system has ended up being expressed as a two-party system. It obviously wasn’t designed as such.

We did not then and we do not now have direct elections for President and Vice President. We vote for electors to the electoral college who, as a matter of constitutional law, are free to vote for whomever they choose.

No. But with very few exceptions (none of which has affected the winner) the Electoral College electors have followed the popular vote of their state, which satsifies the American electorate.

Until 2000, any disputed Presidential election was decided entirely by legislators and politicians, as was the case in the disputed election of 1876.

Yup. But those were very rare exceptions. Americans are willing to accept such actions when we have a disputed election, since there has to be some system to resolve disputes. But a Parliamentary system would cause every single election for our Chief Executive to be determined in such a way. That’s what the American public does not want.

Further, under constitutional theory, there can be no absolute winner in US government since each branch is co-equal in order to limit and constrain one another.

Come now, W.B., I’m obviously talking about the winner of an election.

Or do you embrace the radical notion of the “unitary executive”?

I’m not sure what you mean here; I’m not familiar with the term “unitary executive”. If you’re asking if I want to see the Executive power dominate the government, the answer is “No.” I wouldn’t trust any one person with that much power, including the current President.

Gee, I don’t remember mentioning Mexico. Of course a great many of them come from Mexico. That stands to reason; they’re right next door. Logistically, you’d expect a bunch of them to come from Mexico. But they come from all over the world. The two people in my department who just gained their citizenship came here from Eastern Europe, not Mexico. Plenty of people come here from elsewhere than Mexico; they are not coming here because of problems in Mexico.

Are you trying to suggest that you intentionally excluded the largest single immigrant group from your sweeping fabulation concerning the motives of immigrants? That hardly seems credible. Perhaps you just forgot about the Mexicans because you were focused on your two co-workers? I agree that their reasons for immigrating likely had nothing to do with Mexico and everything to do with problems in their own countries. Problems that can’t be assessed because you don’t bother to tell us what countries they came from.

The problem in Mexico is not that the economy doesn’t provide jobs to people; it’s that Mexican social structure prevents them from providing their own.

The Mexican economy is, in fact, not producing sufficient jobs for the population. Theorizing about the reasons for the short fall doesn’t alter the fundamental reality. Neither does it alter the factual nature of the statement.

“The sterile rhetoric of values”? The United States was founded on values. I can think of nothing more sterile than rhetoric without values, based solely on the perceived self-interests of whatever ethnic or economic groups people happen to be in. The worst divisions in America come from people who push politics based on race, religion or economic status instead of on American ideals. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in the world who think that American ideals are not at all peculiar.

Yes, the US was founded on values. Some good, some bad, some in complete contradiction to one another. A few examples: Slavery, conquest, genocide, male supremacy, white supremacy, child labor, social privilege, ad nauseum. The divisions you complain of were present in our system at it’s inception. There is no need to “push” a politics based on these failings. Such politics are intrinsic to our history. The idea that they are the product of perverse partisanship is a tale suitable to the nursery. In politics, there is nothing more sterile than the substitution of abstract fables for concrete realities.

It’s not our espoused values that other nations find peculiar. Rather, it is the manic hypocrisy with which we tout them. BTW, how many countries have you visited?

Naturally? How? I don’t see how you get this conclusion from what you’ve presented up to this point in your post.

I think the mythological character of your post provides a fine example.

The issue of values speaks to the point of this thread, perhaps. The Democratic party, with it’s seemingly to American ears incessant talk about groups (blacks, women, working people, the poor) gets the left’s support because it’s language is closest to that of the left. But even then, they have to pay homage to American ideals or only the radical left would ever vote for them, and they’d die out and be supplanted by another party.

Evidently, “blacks, women, working people, the poor” are not “Americans”, or else they lack “American ears”, since it’s certain that they don’t consider such talk “incessant.” Or is it your view that such people don’t actually exist, except as phantoms ginned up by the left?

But I also think that in the American psyche there is a need to have a winner and a loser, and that people want to back a winner or at least have a direct say in it. If you have a multi-party system, then often there is no majority party; there is no winner for people to back. In a Parliamentary system you’d then have the politicians/legislators selecting the winner instead of the people directly, and damn few Americans, with their gut-level distrust of politicians, want that.

The winner/loser dichotomy you speculate upon did not exist under the original constitution. There could be as many as four candidates for President and that office, as well as the Vice Presidency, were allotted to the 1st and 2nd place candidates respectively. That is how the Federalist, anti-slavery John Adams came to have the radical anti-Federalist, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson for his Vice President.

We did not then and we do not now have direct elections for President and Vice President. We vote for electors to the electoral college who, as a matter of constitutional law, are free to vote for whomever they choose. Until 2000, any disputed Presidential election was decided entirely by legislators and politicians, as was the case in the disputed election of 1876.

Further, under constitutional theory, there can be no absolute winner in US government since each branch is co-equal in order to limit and constrain one another. Or do you embrace the radical notion of the “unitary executive”?

None are so easy to manipulate as the credulous who think themselves wise. Likewise the incoherent.

Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles.

Actually, that’s not true. In fact, the American system recognizes that thare are a number of distinct and conflicting interests, and that a pure nationwide democracy that would require all issues to be handled with a single national legislature would not be able to meet them. But they found a different way than to group people by race or gender or employment choices.

LWM, I looked at the first book review you quoted. Yes, it’s true; the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It was never meant to be. That’s explained in every class on U.S. history, so it should be no surprise. And I agree that it’s not desirable, for the reasons noted by W.B Reeves above. So our founders did choose to divide up the country into groups. To do so, they chose the groups that were already in existence; geographical. They recognized that urban states had different interests than agricultural ones, that large states had different interests than smaller ones, that Northern states had different interests than Southern ones, etc. So they made the U.S a federated republic. Then they preserved the very high degree of sovereignty those states already had. That way, the different states could work out their interests for their citizens in different ways.

Those on the left should be grateful for this. Consider, for example, that if it were not for that state sovereignty, there would ge no such thing as single-sex “marriage” or civil unions anywhere in America.

The book review states (and there may be danger in judging a work from a review, I recognize):

“The Constitution is one of the most revered documents in American politics. Yet this is a document that regularly places in the White House candidates who did not in fact get a majority of the popular vote. It gives Wyoming the same number of votes as California, which has seventy times the population of the Cowboy State. And it offers the President the power to overrule both houses of Congress on legislation he disagrees with on political grounds.”

Wyoming gets the same number of votes as California? In the Senate, yes. But that’ll come as a surprise to the one Representative and the 3 Electoral College voters that Wyoming gets. And while the President can overrule both houses of Congress, they can in turn overrule him. In fact, they can even remove him if they’ve got the goods. The idea is that by dividing up the powers of the government no one branch can dominate; a good thing, in my mind.

American politics is hardly a mystery.

1) Duverger’s Law

You can google it and the Wiki entry is good enough.

Electoral College has to go, Prof. Levinson (blogs at Jack Balkin’s Balkinization, all law professors) and others have even argued that we may have outgrown our undemocratic Constitution :

Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It)

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Undemocratic-Constitution-People-Correct/dp/0195307518

If you live a red state, no matter who you vote for, it’s a wasted vote. The farthest right candidate is going to take it.

2) The Overton Window

Eisenhower would be a liberal Democrat and “cut and run traitor” today.

Corrente had a good post on The Overton Window

http://www.correntewire.com/tags/overton_window

3) There really wasn’t much of a difference between George Bush and John Kerry. It only seems that way here in America:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection

That’s one big huge tenuous empirical claim you’ve got there.

Go ahead and argue it. I would argue that people come to America because people are more likely here than in any other place in the world to be able to profit from their own efforts without the State either taking that profit away or preventing them from putting forth that effort in the first place. The massive instablility in most of these countries comes from their own internal faults, not our foreign policies.

W.B. Reeves:

Citing economic refugees from Mexico

Gee, I don’t remember mentioning Mexico. Of course a great many of them come from Mexico. That stands to reason; they’re right next door. Logistically, you’d expect a bunch of them to come from Mexico. But they come from all over the world. The two people in my department who just gained their citizenship came here from Eastern Europe, not Mexico. Plenty of people come here from elsewhere than Mexico; they are not coming here because of problems in Mexico.

The Mexican Economy has a surplus population for which it cannot provide jobs.

I don’t buy it. I rather suspect that the Mexican economy could provide jobs for it’s population if it’s elite wasn’t choking the life out of the country though avoiding taxes, corruption, and various other illegal and immoral practices. If you could start and operate a business in Mexico without having to pay bribes and with the same chance to keep your profits as the elites have you’d see a lot stronger Mexican economy and a lot fewer people sneaking across the border. The problem in Mexico is not that the economy doesn’t provide jobs to people; it’s that Mexican social structure prevents them from providing their own.

Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles. … This is a major reason why so much of our political debate revolves around the sterile rhetoric of “values ” and what constitutes “American” as opposed to “unAmerican” or “anti-American” sentiments.

“The sterile rhetoric of values”? The United States was founded on values. I can think of nothing more sterile than rhetoric without values, based solely on the perceived self-interests of whatever ethnic or economic groups people happen to be in. The worst divisions in America come from people who push politics based on race, religion or economic status instead of on American ideals. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in the world who think that American ideals are not at all peculiar.

Naturally, this tends to create an extremely malleable and easily manipulated electorate.

Naturally? How? I don’t see how you get this conclusion from what you’ve presented up to this point in your post.

The issue of values speaks to the point of this thread, perhaps. The Democratic party, with it’s seemingly to American ears incessant talk about groups (blacks, women, working people, the poor) gets the left’s support because it’s language is closest to that of the left. But even then, they have to pay homage to American ideals or only the radical left would ever vote for them, and they’d die out and be supplanted by another party.

I wonder myself about the two-party system. I agree that there are institutions in American society that push that. But I also think that in the American psyche there is a need to have a winner and a loser, and that people want to back a winner or at least have a direct say in it. If you have a multi-party system, then often there is no majority party; there is no winner for people to back. In a Parliamentary system you’d then have the politicians/legislators selecting the winner instead of the people directly, and damn few Americans, with their gut-level distrust of politicians, want that.

I’m sorry, but this is just absurd.

You needn’t be sorry Debbie. It is absurd. However , that such arguments are treated as reasonable and even compelling by otherwise intelligent people is illustrative of the ideological blinders that our system imposes. Citing economic refugees from Mexico as a validation of the existing political order only works so long as you exclude every other possible factor. We are so conditioned to the notion of our own superiority that we are prone to not recognize any fact that contradicts the assumption of our nation’s exceptional nature.

The Mexican Economy has a surplus population for which it cannot provide jobs. As a result there is rampant poverty. The US has a high demand for cheap labor and employers who aren’t terribly fastidious about how they acquire such workers. Between the two is a porous, open border. Illegal immigrant labor would seem to be a given under such circumstances. Perhaps only in the US would someone ignore the basic realities in favor of “exceptionalist” hagiography sprinkled with soppy Horatio Alger sentimentalism.

From my point of view, progressives haven’t devoted nearly enough time and energy to reforming the Democrats. I’m thinking about the past thirty or so years, during which the christofascist right took over the Republican party, and progressives tried (and failed, for reasons explained above) to set up third parties. So I guess it seems to me that that ‘bottom line’ you’re looking for, when progressives disengage with the Democratic party, was reached decades ago — and the mess we’re in today is in part due to that disengagement.

But I guess I don’t understand praising them or campaigning for them as the least worse alternative, which is what I see quite a bit on American blogs.

Well individual bloggers would have to speak for themselves. I personally think that any support for Democrats that doesn’t clearly state the provisional and partial character of that support is a mistake. Of course my view isn’t the predominate one. In general there are systemic reasons underpinning the phenomena that puzzles you. People here addressed those in various ways , from the purely instrumental (reform the electoral system) to the social/cultural/historic (the lack of an independent, self sustaining left political culture, my own view.)

I can only re-emphasize what I think is the key insight that all these perspectives share: that there is no effective mode of national political expression outside the institutions of the two party system. The US political system does not, at bottom, recognize the existence of conflicting interests within the body politic. Our parties don’t operate in the fashion that parties do in Parliamentary Governments. They function as electoral coalitions. Rather than recognizing the existence of distinct and conflicting interests requiring distinct political representation, our system assumes that all “legitimate” interests can be composed in a broad civil or national consensus based on peculiarly “American” values or principles. (The most outstanding institutional expression of this is that we draw no line of separation between the head of state and the head of Government, thus equating transient, partisan political leadership with the fate of the nation as a whole.)

This is a major reason why so much of our political debate revolves around the sterile rhetoric of “values ” and what constitutes “American” as opposed to “unAmerican” or “anti-American” sentiments. For all our vaunted pragmatism, US politics has been and remains driven by extremely ideological, not say mythic, assumptions. (Query: how often will a NZ politician attack an opponent for having “un-NZ” or “anti-NZ” views?) Our system, as it has evolved, is predicated on the the notion that there can be two sides to the story but only two. Further, it assumes that the two sides must agree on the essential fundamentals of the story.

A great many people who qualify as left on the US political spectrum don’t really question these assumptions. You’ll notice that a lot of left bloggers will spend time arguing that the right are “traitors”, etc. This isn’t just throwing the right’s rhetoric back in their faces. When a national politiy is based on a set of articulated ideals rather than ethnic, religious or linguistic unity, the content of those ideals and their interpretation are the primary ideological battleground. Consequently, every question, social and political, is viewed through this distorting lens. Issues of social and economic equity are’nt addressed on their merits but in terms of how they comport with an idealized notion of “American” identity oustensibly handed down from the founders. The debate about values is actually a debate about the character of the US and each citizen’s individual sense of their identity as “Americans”.

Naturally, this tends to create an extremely malleable and easily manipulated electorate. Challenging the duopoly upsets not just the instrumentalities of the system but the citizenry’s whole political and personal sense of themselves. Since there is no independent left political culture external to existing institutions, Democratic Party Liberalism becomes the default position.

All of this is complicated by the practical reality that the GOP coalition has embraced constituencies that can rightly be described as fascist in character. There is a very real impulse towards “unity” at all costs, as well as a fear of any rhetoric or positioning that would place the left outside the established fiction of “national consensus.”