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Comment by originalvichy | Hacker News Reader

I’m not from the US but I can see that this is yet another effect of two-party politics rotting your country. Centrists and pseudo-centrists are giving outright lies more weight by trying to be ”balanced and not biased”. Giving weight to someone’s lies just because they are led to believe that truth is always in the middle. This leaves all editorial responsibility to the reader. And when the reader sees that a media source is not publishing a story that they are violating their responsibility to give the unfiltered ”truth” to the masses so that they can decide its truthiness. A media source not being just a printer of statements beccomes a weakness.

The internet has a lot to do with this since the value of editorial practices does not exist online in the same sense. Bots and blue-checkmark-people give any story validity on twitter.

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I live next to Poland. They have a multiparty democracy and a serious turmoil in the streets now, because their polarization problem mirrors the American one very closely.

I think this is an effect of social media. It rewards the most extreme positions with likes and shares, hollowing out the former core of shared values.

While the two party system does have problems they tend to be vastly overstated (and are much more difficult to solve than the complainers want to acknowledge).

The problem is that US conservatives, both elites and ordinary voters, have become profoundly radicalized since 1964, and specifically since the Civil Rights Act (Edit: though the underpinnings for this started with McCarthyism and Brown v. Board - it was really the 1964 election that moved this radicalism into the white conservative mainstream, not just the Birchers.)

In that sense things are really similar to Weimar Germany, which was a multiparty democracy in which there were many viable non-Nazi options for conservative voters. Yet German conservatives across the board decided that a Nazi dictatorship was preferable to a democracy where socialists might win. In general it is very difficult to sustain a democracy when 40% of the electorate rejects the concept.

See Senator Barry Goldwater’s Southern Strategy. The Republican party won over the white southern votes that it craved, and all it had to sell was its soul. Rinse and repeat with the fundagelicals in the 1980s to establish an unshakeable base. From there it’s just a matter of persuading the rest of the country not to vote for anyone else.

Telling that you’re downvoted, but honestly the Overton window today would give even old Adolph a suntan. 50 years of the Republican party gently transitioning the US to a one-party state, with a spineless Democratic “opposition” content to normalize each new lurch to the extreme.

Democracy doesn’t die in the dark but on top of a stove: like a pot of gently simmering frogs.

> I’m not from the US but I can see that this is yet another effect of two-party politics rotting your country.

United States is perhaps the oldest continuously existing democracy [0], in has existed 244 years, and most of that time (about 200 years) it has been a two-party system. I don't think it's the two-party system that is responsible for the rotting now. Something else is going on.

[0] Well, we can debate how to define a democracy (an interesting and educational debate), and who is oldest still existing depends on the definition. But a good case can be made that it's the US.

Very debatable.

Democratic traditions in other countries long predate even the existence of the US; it wasn't the first with universal suffrage; it had a troubled history even after that till at least the 1960s, even before we get to any contemporary problems.

I don't know there is a legitimate claimant on the "first democracy" title, or even if we are there yet, but unlikely the US.

> first with universal suffrage

So depending on the definition of "country", the oldest existing democracy is either Finland (1906-) or Norway (1913-)?

Finland: Universal suffrage from 1906, as an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian Empire. Independent country from 1917.

Norway: Independent country. Universal suffrage from 1913.

Or maybe, depending on the definition of "suffrage": New Zealand: Women can vote from 1893, women can run as candidates for some positions from 1919, Women can run for all position from 1941.

Yeah, my view also is it's likely one of the smaller, less heralded countries. New Zealand a good contender. For the pre-universal democracies, Iceland has a parliament going back a thousand years.

> New Zealand a good contender

You don't give much weight for women to be able to be lawmakers themselves? As long as women have the right to vote male candidates to an all-male parliament, the suffrage is universal enough for you?

That's a good question (which highlights the difficulty of the definition), but yes, on reflection I think that it is up to those represented to determine who represents them (including constraints), not for us to engineer it for them looking backwards. So a useful (but imperfect) delineation is the year that most adults were allowed the vote.

Clearly, in this case everybody being given that power of determination from 1893 has worked out well for them on the female representation front looking at current stars on the global leadership stage.

> Something else is going on.

Money in politics probably as well.

The US isn't a democracy. Check the results of the 2016 election if you don't believe me....

Which is on purpose. We are a representative republic based on democratic principles, explicitly structured to avoid the “mob rule” tendencies of direct democracies. Which doesn’t make the Electoral College any more sensible, but here we are ¯\_(?)_/¯.

Who is the “mob” in this? The citizen majority?

> The US isn't a democracy. Check the results of the 2016 election

Almost every country has some unevenness in apportionment. Outside of some microstates that have only one electoral disrict, by your definition no country is a democracy today.

The electoral colleges have their criticisms but they prevent the largest cities from determining the vote for everyone.

No. Without the Electoral College, one vote cast in a coastal city would be equal to one cast in rural Wyoming. Instead, because Wyoming has more Electoral ballots per person than larger states like California and Florida, a vote cast in Wyoming is "worth" about three times as much as one cast in those larger states.

A concern about removing the Electoral College is candidates won't spend time campaigning in more remote, less populous states. A) We have broadcast media and the Internet, you don't need to spend a lot of time in those states. B) Getting rid of the Electoral College doesn't mean getting rid of the state caucus and primary systems, there would still be plenty of in-state campaigning to win those (though typically not by an incumbent president).

Wyoming is the least populous state. Of course they will have more electoral ballots per person, that was my argument. Less populous state will have more "votes" (electoral ballots) compared to the largest states.

You wrote, "they prevent the largest cities from determining the vote for everyone."

Why should people living in a less populous state have more influence on the outcome of an election than people in more populous states (or cities)?

If people living in large cities have more influence it's not because of where they live but because there are more people. More people, more influence; the Electoral College dilutes this principle of fairness.

> Instead, because Wyoming has more Electoral ballots per person than larger states like California and Florida, a vote cast in Wyoming is "worth" about three times as much as one cast in those larger states.

Anyone truly irked by this arrangement is free to move to Wyoming.

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