The structure of the Federal government and the elections does not make it feasible for a third party. You would need a Constitutional amendment in order to force newly elected Presidents to form a coalition government. This would likely influence some of the party power balance in Congress in a positive way, creating some lines of communication between parties even if it is only an uneasy truce.
The only thing stopping us from having a better nation are the people who worship the Constitution like a fetish
It may not be perfect, but given the examples I've seen of "better nations", I'll take the Constitution, thankyouverymuch.
Nice strawman. They didn't say to get rid of the Consititution, just be open to taking advantage of its most powerful and important mechanism for ensuring it stands the test of time: adding amendments. Until the 13th amendment abolished slavery these amendments were pretty rare (2 in 74 years), but considering the Constitution was new that isn't surprising. The next 106 years saw 14 new amendments, or about 1 every 7.5 years. As of July 2021 we would have had one amendment in 50 years, and it was a very minor one that only affects Congressional pay increases.
We have many problems in our country which should be being solved by Constitutional amendments. Instead of having to rely on judges making obvious interpretations of civil rights laws from the early 20th century we should be writing our own new civil rights laws into the Constitution. But we have become too partisan to do that.
This is exactly it. During the last X decades where candidates released their tax returns at least 3 months before vote date, if we wanted this to become a standing thing that all candidates MUST do, we SHOULD have made it a constitutional amendment. Then it is no longer subject to the whims of each candidate. But we are now making the republicans die on this hill that they shouldn't want that due to Trump, despite it being good for everyone if this were the ca
I just asked myself... what would John DeLorean do?
-- Raoul Duke
green (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The structure of the Federal government and the elections does not make it feasible for a third party. You would need a Constitutional amendment in order to force newly elected Presidents to form a coalition government. This would likely influence some of the party power balance in Congress in a positive way, creating some lines of communication between parties even if it is only an uneasy truce.
The only thing stopping us from having a better nation are the people who worship the Constitution like a fetish
Re:green (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing stopping us from having a better nation are the people who worship the Constitution like a fetish object, unwilling to alter it.
It may not be perfect, but given the examples I've seen of "better nations", I'll take the Constitution, thankyouverymuch.
Re:green (Score:5, Insightful)
It may not be perfect, but given the examples I've seen of "better nations", I'll take the Constitution, thankyouverymuch.
Nice strawman. They didn't say to get rid of the Consititution, just be open to taking advantage of its most powerful and important mechanism for ensuring it stands the test of time: adding amendments. Until the 13th amendment abolished slavery these amendments were pretty rare (2 in 74 years), but considering the Constitution was new that isn't surprising. The next 106 years saw 14 new amendments, or about 1 every 7.5 years. As of July 2021 we would have had one amendment in 50 years, and it was a very minor one that only affects Congressional pay increases.
We have many problems in our country which should be being solved by Constitutional amendments. Instead of having to rely on judges making obvious interpretations of civil rights laws from the early 20th century we should be writing our own new civil rights laws into the Constitution. But we have become too partisan to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
> But we have become too partisan to do that
This is exactly it. During the last X decades where candidates released their tax returns at least 3 months before vote date, if we wanted this to become a standing thing that all candidates MUST do, we SHOULD have made it a constitutional amendment. Then it is no longer subject to the whims of each candidate. But we are now making the republicans die on this hill that they shouldn't want that due to Trump, despite it being good for everyone if this were the ca