Reddit reviews It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism

Too true. Since the late 70's the media arm of the GOP has done an excellent job at demonizing the words Democrat and Liberal. They're literally used as general derogatory descriptors in Texas.

EDIT: For those saying or insinuating that the left is equally guilty of this, not by a long shot. Of course Democrats will take any opportunity to disparage all Republicans even if it's only some of them behaving badly - but that's not what I'm talking about. The GOP has honed this craft to a fine art through talk radio and various propaganda outlets which masquerade as "news." It was a brilliant strategy, really:

Step 1) Portray "government" as the problem to everything

Step 2) Drive home the message that Democrats/left are the party of government

Step 3) Ensure that government cannot actually function in order to fulfill Step #1

Step 4) Win elections by pointing to #1 and #2

The dysfunctional, hyper-polarized political environment that we find ourselves in now is not equally the fault of both parties and one party has clearly done a better job at whipping it's base into a frothing fury over the last 30 years.

Two good books (one from a long time ex-Republican strategist) if anyone is interested in learning more about how we got here and what can be done to change it:

The Party is Over

It's Even Worse Than it Looks

You are incorrect. The Republicans have become radicalized. Democrats have not. R is the party that deserves 80% of the blame. You can read it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465074731 AND here

https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Branch-Congress-Institutions-Democracy/dp/0195368711

Recall that Obama reached out to them early in his term and was rebuffed. Also, recall that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell had a meeting to plan out tactics deliberately designed to obstruct.

Recall that my argument was about USSC obstructionism not any of the lesser courts. Stick to the topic, please.

It has nothing to do with being "fiscally responsible", it has everything to do with obstructionism and radicalism. Being fiscally responsible is a cheap codeword that means "cut govt programs" and "make America weak".

Indeed, if that was the case then why are the Rs OK with spending 58 Billion more on the military BUT not spending on domestic programs such as healthcare?

I do agree that a Market oriented approach, like the kind that was modeled on RomneyCare, is the better approach.

Edit: words

It's just a load of bullshit that the Democrats ever had ANY political good will from the Republicans. A group of major Republican thinkers, including Mitch Mcconnell, met right before Obama was elected and stated publicly that their number one priority was to see that Obama was a one term president.

If you seriously think that the Republicans ever had any intention of helping Obama or the Democrats or that they had any ounce of support for bipartisanship you just weren't paying attention.

Edit : I suggest you check out the book by Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann It's Even Worse Than it Looks They are a Democrat and a Republican, very well respected in Washington, who make the point that Republicans never had any intention of working in a bipartisan fashion.

>My issue is that I don't understand why or how things got so polarized on this side.


I highly recommend It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. Two respected and moderate political scientists go into the specifics of why American politics have become so polarized. I think we're just seeing that polarization on an intra-party level on the Democrat side more recently, though.

I wanna give a shout out to one of my favorite books and the last book I read as a polisci undergrad before a graduated a few years back. It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Mann and Ornstein. It's a breakdown of congressional politics and asymmetric polarization, and how we've come to such a hellish political gridlock today.

It was the last polisci book I read in college and it really brought together a lot of ideas and trends I noticed and studied, and prepared me to identify the causes at the root of Trump's rise.

I also recommend It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

There are a few ways the minority party can hold up change. This is because of the setup of the US system.

1. One party holds House, other party holds Senate, or vice-versa.
   
   Because the House and Senate have to agree on legislation to send it to the President, if both sides vote along party-lines on most issues (as is today) and suck at negotiating (as is today) then there is no way to get the bill into law. That's because the House can simply refuse to vote on a bill passed by the Senate, or vice-versa. This was originally implemented way back when the US Constitution was written, in a compromise. The more populous states wanted the House of Representatives to be the legislature's style, since it is based on the population size of each state (so, for example, California has far more members than most other states, since it's the most populous). Other states with smaller populations didn't want to be left out of the decision-making that could affect them, powerless to stop the majority-populous states who had different needs/wants, so they preferred a system like the Senate (each state has 2 Senators). They were combined to create the bicameral system you see today, with two houses elected differently (Senators statewide with longer terms, House members in their districts) to ensure that the "tyranny of the majority" did not take over. That means that a district's wants can still be heard through its House member, and not overruled by the rest of the state.
   
   
2. One party holds Presidency, House or Senate (or both) held by non-supermajority other party.
   
   In this case, the Presidency can stop laws being implemented that they do not like, though this isn't as easy or politically clean. If the House and Senate both pass laws, it gets sent to the President, who can veto the legislation. Initially this was used quite rarely, but over time it has changed from something that Presidents use to dispute the constitutionality of a proposed law or something like that, into something that Presidents use to not implement policies they think are bad (usually, really bad). The House and Senate can override a veto, because the US supports the idea of popular law overriding a single executive (aversion to tyrants and kings and all that), but they need a 2/3 vote in both the House and the Senate. This is incredibly hard to get on a party-line issue, though it can happen in other cases. Usually it never gets to that, because it would be far too embarrassing for a President, and they'd usually back down first, or the House/Senate wouldn't bother if they know they can't beat a veto.
   
   
3. One party holds at least 40 seats in the Senate, and the other holds whatever else.
   
   In this case, the Senate can be held up quite a lot through a procedure called "filibustering", which many people have heard of. Basically, it's a way of stopping the Senate from moving forward, by invoking the need for additional debate. It's been used quite famously by some, including for speeches that last upwards of 10 hours, meant to hold up legislation long enough that a recess has to be called, that legislators simply give up, etc. The filibuster can basically indefinitely hold a bill, and it requires 60 votes to invoke cloture, which means to allow the bill to move on. So basically debate can be extended however long, unless 60 Senators agree to shut it down. The filibuster wasn't used until 1837, a full 30+ years after the Constitution was written, though it was made possible by a rule change in 1806 when the US got rid of what it considered a redundant rule. Cloture was added much later, in the early 1900s, to combat the filibuster tactic, though it needed a 2/3 vote to invoke back then (not 60 as today, which is 3/5). Basically, neither side wants to give up their ability to use a filibuster, no matter how much they hate it.
   
   This is all very different from the system in the UK, you're right. The UK has a much more fluid system, where the ruling party gets to rule outright and just change things. Some have argued that the US needs to implement more parliamentary-style procedures if people will abuse the filibuster and other similar rules. Two authors (on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum) argued this point in a book that was quite interesting.
   
   We can get along this way, but the more polarized the US legislature gets, the more difficult it is to get along. It wasn't always like this. Legislators used to agree on more issues and only have one or two areas of big disagreement that they couldn't work out. It's not working that way anymore, for whatever reason. The system is quite difficult to work in, and the lack of bipartisanship is only making it harder. Not sure how it could be fixed besides playing nicer, unless the people in charge decide to change their own powers, which is quite unlikely. You could imagine the headlines now: "XXXX Party Seizing Power; Abolishing Filibuster/Veto/Other House".