If the system is broken, what do we do to fix it???

[Ozymanithrax]

All over the site, I see people who are fighting to get people to vote for Democrats and those who say the system is irreparably broken and votes don't matter because Corporations have usurped the nation.

If it's broken, what do we do to fix it?

Any ideas are acceptable.

[MineralMan]

1. Educate locally. All elections are local.

It's that simple. Most voters vote without knowing why. Education solves that. Local people educating locally is how it all works. Get involved with your local Democratic organizations.

[Ozymanithrax]

17. Actually, I think politics works like religion in the maze of the mind...

People vote because that is what they believe, and it takes a singularly hard lesson to get people to change, and they hate school.

I take my children with me when I vote and hope they will emulate my action when it is their turn.

[Jkid]

32. Sad truth

Most politicians are wealthy and have law degrees. Democratic organizations tend to select them over any other potential candidate.

[timeforpeace]

2. Government seizure of the corporations.

[MineralMan]

3. Ain't happening.

And it won't happen for a very, very long time. It's a nice goal, but impossible to implement in this country.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. That amounts to a full blown civil war and won't happen.

I mean, massive support to Corporations has been labeled as "nationalizing the banks and auto industry." I don't know about you, but there was no nationalizing going on in the last year, or the last 50 years.

But if you want to nationalize all corporations, just how do you do it in a peaceful and legal manner that doesn't shit on the Constitution? Because I would like to see any way to do that except at the barrel of a gun. I am not prepared to murder my neighbors over politics.

[sharesunited]

24. Own shares in publicly traded companies and vote those shares according to your values.

[liberalpragmatist]

4. End the fucking filibuster.

It is enormously pernicious. And it is DEADLY for Democrats, far moreso than Republicans.

Because the Senate gives each state an equal number of votes, the Senate is already an inherently conservative body. Remember that in 2000, for example, Gore beat Bush in the popular vote, but only won 20 states to Bush's 30. That means that any Democratic Senate majority is inherently going to rest on members elected from more conservative states.

The filibuster makes this problem far WORSE and puts any progressive governance at an inherent disadvantage. Republicans can break a filibuster easily because there are more senators from right-leaning states. Democrats can only enact more liberal legislation by getting conservative members to break a filibuster.

And what makes the filibuster DEADLY for progressives is that it makes government crawl to a standstill. Progressives believe that government CAN work and that government MUST work to enact sweeping changes. The problem is that the filibuster makes that extraordinarily difficult and makes it so that Congress really can't ever pass major legislation. Which makes people cynical that government can't work, because it seemingly proves the point.

Keep in mind that if we didn't have to deal with a filibuster, (a) the stimulus would be larger, (b) we would have passed health care reform MONTHS ago, and probably with a public option, (c) we would probably have already passed cap and trade, (d) we'd have passed a jobs bill, and (e) we'd have passed college loan reform. Instead, everything is at a standstill in the fucking Senate.

We absolutely NEED to get rid of the filibuster.

[MineralMan]

6. To do that, we'll need a 2/3 majority.

Any other suggestions?

[liberalpragmatist]

10. Not exactly

The two/thirds rule only applies to rules changes mid-session.

The Senate can write its own rules at the start of each session with a bare majority, 51 votes.

Alternately, if the chair (the President of the Senate aka the Vice President), rules that the filibuster is out of order and unconstitutional, that can be sustained by a bare majority, ending the filibuster. That's the nuclear option, which the Republicans tried in '05 but failed when 7 Republicans defected, leaving them 2 votes short.

Now, it's still a very heavy lift. And I don't think it could happen right now.

When Tom Harkin and, ironically, Joe Lieberman, proposed ending the filibuster at the start of the 1995-1997 term, they only got 17 votes.

But getting to 51 votes is a hell of a lot easier than 67. And a sustained campaign makes it possible. Harkin has already said he will propose ending the filibuster again and while few think he'll succeed he'll almost certainly get more than 17 votes this time according to most Senate observers.

[MineralMan]

13. It still won't happen. It's a tradition thing. What might just be

possible, though, is a return to the filibuster as it was originally. That might just get through, and would have pretty much the same effect as ending it altogether.

[liberalpragmatist]

19. "It won't happen."

It's definitely a heavy lift. But a serious campaign to end it is very achievable if it can get to 51 votes. Both Harkin and Jeff Merkley have said that the filibuster has gotten so bad there have been informal discussions about doing something about it.

The old-school debate style filibuster may be easier to achieve, but it's still somewhat pernicious. Remember that even that old type of filibuster basically stalled civil rights legislation for decades.

[MineralMan]

27. Having marched in Selma in 1965, I know about civil rights

legislation. It took far, far too long, but it happened. In the same way, the things we are looking for now will happen. In 2010, we have a black President of the United States. I could not imagine that would happen in my lifetime in 1965, while walking across the Edmund Pettis bridge. And yet, here we are.

We are all impatient. In 1965, I could not understand why we did not understand the need for the Civil Rights Act. What was wrong with people? Finally, we had it, and decades later it has borne at least some fruit.

Societies do not change overnight. It is that simple. Expecting the impossible will assure you of disappointment, and that is all it can promise. Expecting to work your ass off to get small changes will result in satisfaction, eventually, if what you want makes sense.

[liberalpragmatist]

34. Agreed.

Except I don't think that abolishing the filibuster is really a "radical" change - just a return to the pre-1970s situation where filibusters weren't a common occurence. I'm not calling for amending the constitution - just changing a Senate rule, which has happened several times over the past century!

[Kalun D]

43. Filibuster

I'm cynical, I don't thing getting rid of the filibuster would solve anything. There's to many corp-a-dems, they don't want things like real health care reform, as evidenced by no-one really fighting for it.

but they damn sure passed big bucks for the thieving bankers and big bucks for more war. They passed that lickity split, no problem.

[Ozymanithrax]

9. Good idea but you need 66 votes in the Senate to end the fillibuster...

Do a whip count and show me where those 66 votes come from.

But, again, a good idea, though impossible.

[liberalpragmatist]

11. See above

You only need 51 votes at the start of a congressional term, when the rules are set. Typically they just carry over the old rules, but the 2/3 rule only applies to rules changes once the Congress has started.

[treestar]

21. That is a good point cogently made

Your second paragraph out to be some sort of standard response for the constant attacks on the Democrats for "spinelessness" and such.

[WeDidIt]

5. #1, amend the constitution to remove the electoral college

So long as the current methodology of picking a president exists, we will always have a two party system.

The requirement for 50% + 1 of the electoral college is what pushed us into a two party system at the federal level because only two parties can aggregate enough power to ever win the executive branch. This forces its way into the legislative branch since parliamentary procedures always require a majority caucus and a minority caucus, thus making it a perfect fit to match the two parties vying for the executive branch control.

If you want to change the system, you must start there. Anything else is just cosmetic.

[MineralMan]

7. Impossible. You need 2/3 of congress and

a bunch of states. There is no possibility of such an amendment. Next suggestion...

[liberalpragmatist]

16. Two possibilities

First of all, the Electoral College actually came very close to being abolished in 1969. An amendment to abolish it overwhelmingly passed the House, and polls of state legislatures showed that 3/4 were willing to vote to abolish it. This came after several electoral college scares - in 1960 and 1968, for example.

So it's not implausible that it could be amended again.

But the best way forward would the National Popular Vote initiative. The Constitution says states may apportion their electoral votes however they wish. The National Popular Vote initiative is a pact by states to commit to having their electors vote for the winner of the national popular vote - but the pact only goes into effect after states with a majority of the electoral vote join the pact. Five states have done so - Illinois, Maryland, Hawaii, Washington, and New Jersey. The pact would be enforced as an "interstate compact," which the constitution already allows and which are well-established in other areas. (States couldn't simply pull out in violation of its terms.)

It would still be difficult to enact, but it's far more practical than a constitutional amendment.

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

[WeDidIt]

20. Do it or the system remains the same

Plain and simple, nothing else will alter the two party system in the U.S.

[liberalpragmatist]

25. Actually what you really would need is proportional representation

We elect all our legislators via plurality vote in single-member districts. Countries with parliamentary systems that use those systems or presidential systems with a popular vote still have two-party systems because the same dynamic you describe still applies. Granted, the presidential system and the electoral college reinforce that, but removing them would still make the system basically a two-party one.

Most political science research shows that the major way to make a system multiparty is to use proportional representation. Multimember constituencies with members elected with smaller percentages of the vote (see the "single transferable vote" mechanism) or a party-list vote, where seats are apportioned based on the percentage of the vote a party receives.

[MineralMan]

28. That system has led to the USA having a black President.

I could not have imagined that in 1965 on the Edmund Pettis bridge. Truly. It's not the system. It's education.

[Tesha]

46. It's funny how, in your world, *EVERYTHING* is impossible.

That's probably why the people won't be buying-in to your world
much longer.

Tesha

[Ozymanithrax]

12. Mineral Man #7 is right. It is near impossible to ammend the Constitution.

You can also say that it would be equally impossible to hold a New Constitutional Convention because you need a majority of the states to do it, and they like the system.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. I don't think the system is the problem.

I think the systems works and the problem is the voters.

[MineralMan]

15. See my #1. That's the only solution.

Posting on DU sure isn't gonna do it. Talking to neighbors might just work. Caucus season is almost upon us here in MN. I probably won't be posting much here for a while. First caucus level meets Feb. 2. We got some stuff to do.

[Ozymanithrax]

18. Then who do we fix the voters?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. If I knew how to fix 'em, they wouldn't be a problem.

As long as the people of Connecticut vote for Lieberman, he'll be a problem. Same goes for Mass if they vote in Brown. Same goes for the voters in the states that give us 40 Republican senators.

If we could get 60 senators that would give us a single payer health bill, for example, then we wouldn't have problems.

[MineralMan]

29. Education.

[treestar]

22. I think that's true

Though I'm not sure the voters are really so bad - they just aren't anti-corporate and anti-capitalist to such a degree.

[Fumesucker]

37. The voters clearly indicated they wanted major changes in the last election..

And yet it's not really happening..

I don't blame the voters for that, I blame the politicians.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

47. They've gotten lots of change.

There'd be even more change if it wasn't for fucked up republican senators coming from states like yours. I blame the voters of Georgia.

[Fumesucker]

48. I have no control over what my fellow voters do..

Any more than I have control over what the politicians do.

But the Democrats have the presidency and a supermajority in both houses of the legislature, they are responsible for what they do.

I have multiple powerful reasons not to enjoy living where I do, my problem is I have even more powerful reasons for not leaving to go somewhere else. I am trapped on the horns of an exceedingly uncomfortable dilemma.

[JI7]

49. and Obama can't control other Senators either, the Dems are elected the same way Republicans are

by the voters in their state. not by appointment through Obama.

[Fumesucker]

53. I think Obama could have made far more use of "the bully pulpit"..

The president has a lot of power to set the agenda, if he uses that power.

FDR really tore into the members of the opposition party, "I welcome their hatred" was one of his lines when speaking of the "elites" of his day..

We need another FDR, not another triangulating Bill Clinton.

[notesdev]

26. Primary every incumbent

Let experience in DC be the Scarlet Letter. They got experience in screwing us all over.

Get in fresh faces, people with non-political backgrounds. Let's get people with backgrounds in engineering, medicine, and industry, and give the boot to all the lawyer-politicians.

And let's amend the Constitution to forbid Congress from passing any bill that has more words than does the Constitution itself, that ought to limit the mischief that can be done in the meantime.

[MineralMan]

30. Utter nonsense.

Come up with a practical suggestion and I'll listen. Come up with nonsense, and I won't.

[depakid]

31. It's a set of structural problems that are unfixable

because in the 21st Century, there's no way to pass the necessary amendments to take the corporate money out of the system or make the nation a representative democracy (either electorally- or in the upper legislative chamber).

[crispini]

33. Election Reform.

Publicly funded elections. Take the donation dollars out of the equation entirely. Arizona did it. Other states can too.

When elected officials are only accountable to voters, and don't have to scrabble around to get donation dollars to campaign, change will follow. It's that simple.

Get involved with or start a local Clean Elections group. That's what I'm doing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. kicked and recommended

[Nikki Stone1]

36. They can start by reinstating Glass-Steagall, putting the public option back in the health insurance

bill--although single payer would be far superior--and not having Obama meet with Uganda’s “Kill-The-Gays” Bill Author at the National prayer breakfast:

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/01/16/19603

In other words, we organized, we donated, we voted: the changes have to come from Obama now.

[KharmaTrain]

38. Shorten The Campaign Season.

These days no sooner does a rep win an election then they're out raising money for the next one. This year the average House seat will cost $1 million and Senate a minimum of $10 million. Much of it goes to the endless teevee commercials as well as a large non-stop campaign organization...pollsters and PR people. Millions get spent quickly and has led to a cottage industry of consultants and other hangers on who have found gold in them there campaigns.

THe British have the idea right...limit campaigning to 90 days before an election. No commercials, no polls...force the legislators to legislate, not campaign or fundraise.

[renegade000]

39. Organize grassroots demonstrations?

We can be like the "teabaggers", except sane...and hopefully with a less unintentionally hilarious name.
Then again, civility and rationality are not necessarily attention getting...maybe as a part of these demonstrations we should just move our internet flame-wars into real-life? :P

[voc]

40. Find People...

that have brass cajones and are incorruptible.
Elect them.
Then the rest will fall into place.
Good luck with that.

[Nikki Stone1]

41. It is NOT a grass roots problem: it's the people who get in office and their $$$ masters

THAT is the problem. The grass roots are just fine and people are smarter than people give them credit for being.

[Juche]

42. A vareity of things

Sadly, each will meet massive resistance from teabaggers and corporations.


* Public funding of elections


* Rebuilding the union movement. Unions do a huge job of increasing voter turnout among traditionally apathetic or GOP voters towards progressive causes. They also put hundreds of millions of dollars and volunteer hours into each election cycle.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/10/labor_law_reform_not_just_for_unions.php


* Organize progressive boycotts of companies that abuse the public trust


* Try to get right wingers to hate corporate fascism by letting them see how they are screwed over by corporate hegemony. I have heard of some wingnuts getting angry at insurance companies due to SiCKO. So if you can turn their rage away from liberals and towards corporations (to whatever degree possible), that might help.


* Change the filibuster rules to allow 50 + either the VP or 51st senator to get more bills passed


* More work and effort from wealthy liberals (Democracy Alliance, as an example)


* More R&D into framing and getting progressive messages out. People like Lakoff and Hartmann are good at helping people frame and get out their messages. Do this on both the top down and bottom up level. Progressives have always fought to make society more fair, just and inclusive while conservatives have always fought to make it more oligarchical, unjust and exclusive. If conservatives had gotten their way we wouldn't have medicare, social security, consumer protections, minimum wages, bans on child labor, women's voting rights, minority rights. Luckily progressive beat out the conservatives in all these areas. But conservatives still want to roll back achievements in all of those fronts. Even child labor. Thomas Frank was on Bill Moyer last night talking about how the GOP department of Justice under Bush had no interest in pursuing child labor abuses over the last 8 year. The conservatives even want to roll back child labor laws. Authoritarian conservatives are the biggest domestic threat we have after Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, coincidentally, is also an authoritarian conservative movement (xenophobic, religious fundamentalist, reactionary, aggressive, authoritarian, human rights and civil rights unfriendly, culturally regressive). Nobody in the media mentions that. So the biggest threats to our national well being are international authoritarian conservatives (Islamist terrorists) and domestic authoritarian conservatives (teabaggers and right wing extremists)

[Hannah Bell]

44. organize & resist. it's as simple & difficult as that.

[okie]

45. Good question

I think American liberals need to come to terms not with the idea that the system is broken, but that it simply does not work for the vast majority of us, and it's not intended to. Never was either.

I can think of a few things to say to this topic, but the one I would stress is American liberals need to seriously engage with the ideas of socialism again. You couldn't talk about the American left from around the turn of the century until shortly after Vietnam without talking about it's radical elements. I am very critical of FDR and the New Deal, nonetheless it's true that Americans were thrown some peanuts during the 1930s because there was a strong radical left that had a great deal of influence in the labor movement. Part of the reason for the moribund state of organized labor today has to do with the fact that the big unions have never had much use for ideas of class struggle. This must change, especially now that we find ourselves in a period of economic crisis.

[leeroysphitz]

50. Armed struggle. n/t

[LostInAnomie]

51. Change th maximum poltical donation to $1.

[Mari333]

52. I am at the point where I am gritting my teeth and waiting for the USA to learn

it has to get worse before the people wake up, it seems.
I dont think I will see it in my lifetime. it took many centuries for other imperialist warmongering nations to wake up from their insane ideas.

[happy_liberal]

54. Nothing we do will fix anything until we have fair elections

We have to start by getting the republican corporation's hands off of our voting systems.

Then we have to take back the media.

Right now the Republicans use the media to create the reality(everyone is mad at Obama, Democrats are going to stay home from the polls)...then they use diebold to fake the reality, then they use the media to cover up anyone trying to expose the phony elections.

They only let Obama win so they would have someone to blame everything on. After blaming him for everything, they will use the perceived anger to take it all back. The same evil bastards are all still hanging around, Cheney living next to the CIA with his stay behinds in all the agencies, putting his daughter on TV every day, Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, Jeb?, Gates is still in position, ...and their new cheerleader Sarah Palin. They will not stop until we stop them.

[suede1]

55. Public campaign financing.

[Lurks Often]

56. A few ideas

Term Limits, everybody is restricted to 12 years and to be eligible for pensions, medical and all the other perks of Congressional retirement, they must serve all 12 years (with a possible exception if they die in office to provide for any immediate family)

Campaign Finance reform: All campaign elections are limited to a specific amount (say 1-5 million for Congressional elections and 50-100 million for Presidential elections), with the challenger receiving 125% of the specific amount, also campaign donations can only come from people who reside within the state that the election is occurring in, with VERY severe criminal & civil penalties. All campaign donations over the specific amount are put toward reducing the national debt and can not be used for any other purpose.

Tie Congressional salary directly to the national budget, whatever % the country goes into the red, is the % reduction in their Congressional salary; if they run a surplus, then they receive a bonus.

Of course, none of the above will ever happen since 90% of Congress is perfectly happy with how things work now.