Partisanship

[Phier]

With the crushing defeat the democrats have suffered last night, the cries of partisanship, how bad it is, how horrible it is for the country, etc are at an all time high. Obviously, mostly from the losing party.

Why can't we just work together?
We are Americans first!

etc etc etc.

This sounds good but I want to take you through a thought experiment here, lets say you have a legislature which is 50 atheists and 50 fundamentalists Christians.

They work just fine together on getting the roads built, or traffic signs put up but then the Christians want to build a $50 million dollar mega church using public funds.

The atheists say no.

The Christians then say ok lets work together and compromise, the government will only fund 50% of the Church and the rest will come from private donations.

The atheists say no

The Christians say well how about 15% come on! We make up 50% of the population, thats not asking for much!

The atheists say no.

Now we get into the partisan squabble etc.

The point is that if you oppose something solely because its supported by the other side, regardless of what it is, that would be a partisan issue, one where the politics is trumping reason.

But on fundamental philosophical differences, there should not be this sort of compromise. These compromises have solely put us into a giant hole of debt over the years. Its why you get the 'demcrats and republicans are the same' laments. They have been, sure one is committing financial suicide sooner than the other, but both were going down the same path.

Partisanship isn't good, but PRINCIPLE is.

[Vizsla]

Was the concept behind the balance of powers to force horse trading, hopefully resulting in a workable consensus?
Or was the balance of powers designed to ferment small-minded opportunistic partisanship, preventing anything useful getting done?

It seems like the average voter hates the former and the latter is a bad idea during a disaster.

[Adar]

On a rational level I agree.

The problem is the partisanship where people use misinformation, name calling and obnoxious behavior.

[Dr. Croccer]

If there's no political cooperation, there is no such thing as proper politics. It's just the ''one sheep and two wolves'' problem which leads to political stagnation. Hell, your own political founders invented that notion, and your own country is the best example of it: Of two political parties so opposed and dogmatic that major political breakthrough is rare and reform from either direction lagging. Such as healthcare. The current Medicare and Medicaid system is poorly functioning and increasingly expensive. Both sides want to push through their own reforms, and counteract attempts by the others.

Shouting ''but their values are so different from ours!'' isn't an argument. There's no reason why 49% of the population should be oppressed because the other 51% have a slight minority. It's pointless, and leads to the aforementioned political stagnation. Concensus democracy is both more practical and fair.

It's not principle, it's dogma. It's willfully ruining your own country because of petty squabbles.

[Armenum]

The democrat/republican divide is not only a political one, but also a cultural one. Just look at the political map and you clearly see Northeast/West Blue, and rest of the country red (excluding Chicago and a few exceptions here and there). There are people who've grown up in more liberal states/societies and thus they will have a different notion of how America should be and American politics in general. The way I see it democrats and republicans may be able to work on a few things, but in general they can't, thus progress is very slow and tortuous in the US, ripe with conflict and division. I think the fundamental American political system should be reformed.

[Phier]

Try urban poor, immigrants, and neo-yuppies.

Thats why Chicago is blue and everything around it is red.

[Armenum]

Try urban poor, immigrants, and neo-yuppies.

Thats why Chicago is blue and everything around it is red.

Well all the largest and most important culture, political, and economic centres are democrat so keep that in mind. It's all the rural places outside that are republican. Most of it just farmland.

[Phier]

Well all the largest and most important culture, political, and economic centres are democrat so keep that in mind. It's all the rural places outside that are republican. Most of it just farmland.

Thats because the people that actually make it an economic center live in the burbs, voting republican.

[Dr. Croccer]

I'm sorry to rock the boat here but:

The dumber we are, the more likely we are to vote Republican. That’s a fact. Indisputable and irrefutable. Ok, Im being deliberately provocative and I fully recognize that the country has many, many smart Republicans. But the figures don’t lie - voters in blue states (2004 Presidential election) are on the whole smarter than voters in red states. So I pose the question at the end of this analysis: why?
The following chart is derived from the 2004 Census Report On Educational Attainment. The full report, from which I stripped this data, is here.
I added to that report the way the state voted in the Presidential election of 2004, and I then calculated the number of people per state with the level of education specified. (This information came from the 2004 Census - I divided the over-25 population in each state by the percentage of graduates to come up with the numbers.)
I then tallied the numbers of people with the specified level of education and divided by the total red or blue population to derive an overall percentage of people with either a college or high school education across the country, broken down by party.
The result, as you will see below, is very telling. In states that voted for Kerry, the average percentage of college graduates is 30.177%.
In states that voted for Bush, the average percentage of college graduates is 24.932%.
If we assume that a college education is an indicator of intelligence, we can then hypothesize that the average voter in a blue state is 21% smarter than the average voter in a red state. (24.932 x 121% = 30.168). Ok, that's silly. I retract.
The disparity between Republican states and Democratic ones is smaller when one analyzes the High School results. Red states had an average of 83.145% High School graduates, compared to the blue states’ 85.903% average graduate rate.
It is interesting also to note that red states occupy the bottom 10 places in the state ranking, and only 2 of the top 10. (Colorado, of course, bucked the national trend by voting for Democratic control of both its House and Senate, while still inexplicably voting for Bush - and Colorado has by far the largest percentage of graduates, at 45.7%, some 9% ahead of Hawaii at #2.)
Seriously for a moment, do you think that this does, to some extent, explain why education suffers major cuts under Republican administrations? Are the Republicans afraid of a more educated populace?

RED STATES:
Total Number Over 25 – 97,180,000
Total Number H/S Grads – 80,801,000
Total Percentage H/S Grads – 83.145%
Total Number College Grads – 24,229,000
Total Percentage College Grads – 24.932%

BLUE STATES
Total Number Over 25 – 91,201,000
Total Number H/S Grads – 78,345,000
Total Percentage H/S Grads – 85.903%
Total Number College Grads – 27,522,000
Total Percentage College Grads – 30.177%

http://www.watchblog.com/democrats/archives/005153.html

...And here is another thing: On average, Republicans are poorer than Democrats! Just go figure. When it comes to economics, it should be pretty simple. There are two basic political attitudes, and you would expect them to correlate with how rich a person is: you would expect both the rich and the poor to vote their pocketbook. The rich would vote for lower taxes and for the government to butt out, i.e. Republican, conservative. The poor would vote for more re-distribution of wealth, more government services, i.e. Democratic, liberal. But, lo and behold, it’s the opposite! Even though there is a lot of overlap, the statistics are clear: The average income of the 100 million or so Republicans is LOWER than that of the 150 million or so Democrats!

This oddity can be explained, of course. The first thing we should understand is the enormous regional variation in democratic and republican support. There are red states and there are blue states. And as it so happens, “blue America,” (E.g the East Coast and my beloved Left Coast) is more urban and richer than “red America,” and it is also way more liberal. And as we all know, the Deep South has become the bastion of Republicanism. And of course the Deep South is the country’s poorest region. The other red states are mostly in the Rocky Mountains and in the Midwest - again, rural, poor, and culturally conservative. So at the aggregate level, richer states are more democratic and poorer states are more republican.

In an article titled, “Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state,” (Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Sept. 2007), Andrew Gelman et.al. Reconcile the facts I just mentioned with our common-sense expectation that poorer folks should be voting Democratic: Indeed, within states, that is precisely what happens. Furthermore, the authors write, the “slope (statistical jargon for “relationship”) is steepest in poor, rural areas. That is, in poor rural areas, the poor are much more likely to vote for the Republican candidate.” In other words, the authors, write, “income matters more in “red America” than in “blue America...For example, in rich states such as Connecticut, income has a very low correlation with vote preference.”

http://european-americanblog.blogspo...cher-than.html

[Phier]

Mr. Croccer I know blogs are a big thing now, but you might want to get some better research on who is who. While obviously there is a lot of Republican voting in rural areas, also more college graduates are Republican than democrat.

The average tea party member is more educated and wealthier than the average American as well.

You don't know America at all, and have a political bias, but you might want to look into it more.

[Armenum]

The average tea party member is more educated and wealthier than the average American as well.

You have proof for that? From what I seen the tea party members seems dangerously uneducated, along with other politicians that follow a similar ideology. Plus I don't see how some of these rural folks are qualified to be in a federal government. There should be some qualifications set for God's sake.

[Claudius Gothicus]

The average tea party member is more educated and wealthier than the average American as well.

I don't want to sound provocative but that doesn't mean that they are not more stupid/ignorant.

I mean, I could have PhD and still fail to understand economics and politics.

[Cougar109]

Mr. Croccer

The average tea party member is more educated and wealthier than the average American as well.

I believe it was you who stated higher education and greater wealth doesn't make an individual smart as you tried to reason with me that Obama wasn't necessarily smart because of his higher education and greater wealth. Just throwing that out there because I'm not quite sure if you're taking this the direction I think you're taking it.

[Phier]

I believe it was you who stated higher education and greater wealth doesn't make an individual smart as you tried to reason with me that Obama wasn't necessarily smart because of his higher education and greater wealth. Just throwing that out there because I'm not quite sure if you're taking this the direction I think you're taking it.

Eh, wealth and education are not always, and often not directly tied. But when people want to call the tea party stupid you only have to look at the NYT's own survey which showed them to be both better off and better educated than the average American.

In the last 20 years the liberals have tried to paint themselves no longer as 'for the workers' but 'better' than Republicans, and gone with the whole 'Republicans are stupid' mantra. They seem to forget what the real democrat base is when they attempt to portray this.

[Dr. Croccer]

Mr. Croccer I know blogs are a big thing now, but you might want to get some better research on who is who. While obviously there is a lot of Republican voting in rural areas, also more college graduates are Republican than democrat.

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010...polls/#USH00p1

The average of Democrat voters who are college graduate or higher is 46%, that of Republicans 51%. A rather small difference of 5% of the population. Similairly, whilst it's certainly true that there's more support for the Republicans from the wealthiest, in terms of absolute numbers most of their supporters are lower middle class to upper middle class, the same with Democrats, really. The former inch towards the rich, and the latter towards the poor, for obvious reasons, but both are minorities on the large scale. The difference even at the

The average tea party member is more educated and wealthier than the average American as well.

I think there's a bit of a distinction between an official Tea Party member, who were the ones polled, and the far larger demographic which support them often without direct involvement in the political structure of the the movement.

You don't know America at all, and have a political bias

You would have a point if this wasn't your response to 90% of posts by non-Americans, regardless of their validity.

but you might want to look into it more.

I did and the notion that Republicans *overall* are more educated than Democrats is rather weak. The difference in education is very low, and the overrepresentation of the rich in Republican circles is nullified by the fact that the vast majority of the supporters come from the middle class.

[Phier]

@DC - So republicans are slightly better educated and slightly wealther than the average democrat.

Kinda makes that first blog post seem sorta silly now doesn't it?

The big difference between red and blue states are the urban poor which push democrats over the top. This is why Chicago is very blue, while all the suburbs are very red.

[JNS]

The big difference between red and blue states are the urban poor which push democrats over the top. This is why Chicago is very blue, while all the suburbs are very red.

Yeah cause nobody at all happens to live in urban chicago
Chicago population From Wiki:
2.8 million
metro area 8.3-9.7 million (depends on the data used.. the "urban" pop is stated as the low number, 8.3 million)
illinois state- 12.9 million

[Phier]

Yeah cause nobody at all happens to live in urban chicago
Chicago population From Wiki:
2.8 million
metro area 8.3-9.7 million (depends on the data used.. the "urban" pop is stated as the low number, 8.3 million)
illinois state- 12.9 million

Sense, this makes none, please restate your point formatted in such a way to be readable.

[Dr. Croccer]

@DC - So republicans are slightly better educated and slightly wealther than the average democrat.

Kinda makes that first blog post seem sorta silly now doesn't it?

The big difference between red and blue states are the urban poor which push democrats over the top. This is why Chicago is very blue, while all the suburbs are very red.

Nice red herring to distract attention away fom your own, even more outrageous claim.

Republicans are slightly richer and better educated. By a margin of at best around 20% of less than 20% of the population in the former, and even tinier in the case of the latter. On the whole, the differences in education and income of all Republicans and Democrats are almost insignificant.

[Jingles]

Tea party? Educated? Tee hee!



...by the state you fools! BY THE STATE.

Goddamnit.