Hacker News Reader

Comment by umilegenio | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to reform when many Americans are in an abusive relationship with their own party. A Pew poll in 2017[1] showed that the majority of the most partisan supporters choose their own party because they hate the other one, rather than they like their own. You cannot make reform on destruction and hate. There is little positive energy to create really new proposals.

[1] https://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/8-partisan-animosity...

View on HN

And this is doubly sad considering how both parties are/end up in significant agreement about the US' huge military presence abroad, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulated campaign finance etc. Which are subjects where most US citizens hold the opposite view to the bi-partisan near-consensus.

On the issue of campaign finance, there is the matter of the McCain-Feingold Act, as it was informally known. Senator John McCain tried for years to advocate for something of its like but was energetically blocked by his own party, such as in the 105th Congress when McCain gathered the support of <all> 45 Democratic senators and a few GOP allies, but still not enough to break a GOP filibuster on the bill, thus killing it.

It was around 2002 that there was sufficient political atmosphere for McCain to gather the support of nearly all Democrats and 11 GOP allies for the bare minimum of 60 votes to beat a GOP filibuster.

The bill had restrictions on: (1) soft money, or money meant to promote issues or parties, (2) hard money, or money meant for specific campaigns or candidates, (3) advertising in proximity to an election, and (4) foreign contributions.

President George Bush declined to take a stance and signed the bill into law without comment.

It was challenged by Citizens United, a conservative non-profit, challenging whether they could be restricted from airing political ads near the election date, and it was overturned 5-4 by the US Supreme Court conservative majority along known party lines.

All parties have their failings, but it would be a mistake to think that a vote for either party is equally meaningless with regards to campaign finance. In the GOP, it's only McCain and a scant few allies who paid for this issue. The Democrats as a whole spent severe political energy and opportunity on campaign reform, while McCain spent his own political currency against the energetic opposition of his own party.

I'm talking about a constitutional amendment to severely limit spending on elections, public funding for elections, non-exclusionary public debates, and perhaps Instant-runoff (ranked-choice) or other voting resolution mechanisms.

PS - Buckley v. Valeo made it clear that a regular weak-sauce bill wouldn't do.

I’m talking about which party has burned serious political opportunity for this issue at all. Alternatively we could say Obamacare is weak sauce and cannot do the trick for American health, but it’s also a reflection of a history of which party burned political opportunity in exchange for an issue.

That McCain’s legacy withered so soon after suggests the inadequacy of his reach, not that a vote for the GOP, which worked so tirelessly to filibuster McCain, is the same as a vote cast for Democrats. It was only until Enron and after his presidential run that McCain had the window to gain the bare minimum 60 votes to stop his own party from filibustering his bills to death.

And now we hear that the GOP are the same as the Democrats on campaign finance reform. Okay.

That will happen when only two parties matter.

I'm a Democrat, but it's only because I'm a leftist and in the US, the Democratic party is "the left" and voting for any other party under the current system would only be implicitly supporting the party I disagree with more than my own.

I have some "friends" who will only vote trump, because the dems are talking about increasing restrictions around guns. Some people just have one issue they care about above all else, even if that is harming them

Which is odd given that Trump himself has talked about increasing restrictions for guns. Because Democrats and Republicans tend to support gun control.

Unfortunately decades of NRA and Republican propaganda have taught gun owners that no Democrat or liberal owns a gun or supports the Second Amendment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com