Attention Economy


Friday, April 21, 2023

America's Democratic Paralysis

We will hold the country hostage until our demands are met — once we know them
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/21/republican-debt-ceiling-standoff-holdup-satire/

Lionel Shriver:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-democrats-want-trump/
A hefty majority of Americans want neither Trump nor Biden to run again (in a November CNBC poll, 61 per cent wanted to be shed of Trump altogether, while an astonishing 70 per cent didn’t want Biden to bid for a second term either, including 57 per cent of Democrats). That would be me: please, please, can we move on from this presidential Groundhog Day? Yet so far, an even more wearying and more geriatric redo of 2020 seems on the cards. Sorry – this is functional democracy? How is this happening? Isn’t the main merit of this system of government meant to be that the majority of us get at least what we sort of want?
 
How ‘I despise, therefore I am’ locks in the political status quo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/12/republican-democrat-poisonous-partisanship/
George Will:
Foresight, it has been said, is a dream from which events awaken us. But until events teach otherwise, expect American politics to continue today’s remarkable condition: boiling but frozen. Polarization has produced stasis. In this century’s presidential elections from 2000 to 2020, 36 states have voted only for one party’s nominee.
 
Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/20/cleta-mitchell-voting-college-students/
 
America’s Redistricting Process Is Breaking Democracy
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/americas-redistricting-process-is-breaking-democracy
 
How gerrymandering makes the US House intensely partisan
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/25/politics/gerrymandering-us-house-partisan/index.html