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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I find it frankly bizarre that you can suggest that parliamentary systems are superior to presidential systems because of their ability to avoid deadlock, and mention a deadlocked parliamentary system in the same breath. It's literally the exact same problem (government divided to the point where they can't do anything because various factions refuse to work together), just in different forms because of the differences in the structures of the governments in question.
Looks like Trump is the final herald of the long-awaited polarity flip in US politics
. The Democrats are currently looking like their best plan is to hoover up the Romney voters and the business class, since white labor is pretty firmly in the Trumpocrats' camp now, while big business leaders recognize the need to spend money on the poor (to support the consumer economy) and the self-evident need to punch fascists.
I, for one, like the idea of the Democrats fully becoming a traffic light party
.
edited 11th Feb '17 9:52:06 AM by Ramidel
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You can provide a constitutional provision to resolve the kind of deadlock that occurs in a parlimentary system by forcing new elections if a coalition cannot be formed. Usually that sort of deadlock eventually resolves itself, but in a presidential system, the deadlock between the executive and legislative branch is more or less untenable due to the fact that both are elected by the people, and derive their power independently of one another.
The idea that white labor is loyal to Trump is honestly quite ludicrous, as is the notion that a party of the elites wouldn't just end up turning into the establishment Republicans (who have long since lost control of the party). Trying to become a party of plutocrats will only increase the alienation of the left, which in Germany is likely to lead to the dreaded Red-Red-Green coalition coming to power if the center fails to regain legitimacy.
In the United States, that means white labor will increasingly be pushed into Trump's corner, and possibly also Hispanic labor if they end up following the trend of the Irish and Italian Americans before them by gradually becoming accepted as "white", making that sort of pivot a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Meanwhile black labor will becoming increasingly despondent and disillusioned, and voter turnout will plummet back to pre-Obama levels of civic engagement.
Having to choose between regressive social policies from the now labor based GOP and regressive economic policies from the democrats is pretty much the worst case scenario for everyone, and will lead to the country continuing its trend towards the right.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:03:07 AM by CaptainCapsase
I'm not sure that white labor is all that loyal to Trump either. Many journalists documenting those communities have noted that many of them are expecting their conditions to improve, that's why they voted for him. If Trump cannot noticeably improve their lives in the next year or so, they are going to get disillusioned. They may not vote democrat but won't turn out for him either.
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It shouldn't unless you personally are a member of the plutocratic class (and even then, it makes you a blatant case of Moral Myopia), because such a coalition will basically be the Republicans without the social conservatism and climate change denialism. They might give a few trinkets to labor in the hopes of pacifying them, but after a good year we'll be straight back to deregulation, privatization, and neocolonialism.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:09:28 AM by CaptainCapsase
Which is why people are saying that their strengths and weaknesses are different, not simply that one's better than the other.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Lolwut? Presidential systems are even worse at giving power to minority parties than parlimentary systems; even with FPTP voting the UK and Canada have relevant (if regionalized) minority parties. They obviously have to coalition with a major party, but they at least have a say, whereas in a FPTP Presidential system, you're basically screwed as a minority party because the top office only has room for one, and you'll only act as a spoiler by running candidates for it.
And yes, deadlocks are resolved by new elections, but in Presidential systems those new elections will come several years down the line, compared to a parlimentary system in which, if a coalition government cannot be formed, a new election is held almost immediately, which means deadlocks get resolved rather than sitting around for years unaddressed. That's due to the fact that in Presidential systems, both the president and the legislature are elected by the people, and thus there's no obvious and unambiguous condition for new elections to be held; in a parliamentary system, that condition usually is the failure to elect a PM within a set amount of time, which is unambiguous, and immediately obvious.
I am not asserting that a parliamentary system would solve many of the United States' problems (a parliamentary proportional system on the other hand...), but there aren't any clear advantages to a presidential system, and a few clear advantages to a parliamentary system, so in a world where we can change anything about the American political system, it's an obvious change to be made along with many other changes.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:19:59 AM by CaptainCapsase
I smell sitcom!
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Would it really though? Such a coalition would still include the more economically progressive elements of the Democrats. I don't see why things that are good for businesses necessarily have to suck for everyone else. I don't think this is a zero-sum game. Is it Moral Myopia on my part? Maybe. But I still don't think it has to be that way.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison![]()
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As soon as the majority flips in a parliamentary system, they can toss out the entire rest of the government and do whatever they like. This isn't possible in a presidential system, because terms of office deliberately don't line up, so at any given time you have some of the old guard and some of the new faces serving together, and quite probably blocking each other's moves.
The Democrats have been the minority party for the last six years, but they still had some power in the federal system because they held the presidency, so the majority party couldn't just ram whatever they wanted through the legislature and have it come to pass. That sort of thing can't happen in a parliamentary system, because as soon as the Democrats lost the majority in 2010, the Republicans would have given Obama the boot and then done whatever the hell they felt like.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:23:54 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Yes, but in a proportional system (or on the local level in many FPTP systems) it's exceedingly hard to actually get a majority in parliament without forming a coalition with another party, which necessitates compromise. Executive power is also far less concentrated in a parlimentary system, whereas in a presidential system the executive branch is highly centralized by necessity. The difference is between a system of checks and balances between and a system of highly distributed power, and historically speaking, the latter has generally been more effective at avoiding breakdowns of constitutional democracy.
This is a seperate problem from the factors that give the GOP a very strong position in our government, namely heavy gerrymandering, an electoral system that favors rural areas, and a First Past the Post allocation of votes.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:31:02 AM by CaptainCapsase
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I imagine there is some fear that bringing in all of these Center and Center-Right Liberals marginalize or even push out (intentionally or not) the Social Democrats and other members of the Left-Wing of the Demoratic Party, which would mean less of a voice for economic justice and labor stuff in the Democratic Party platform.
Whether that occurs or not (or even if the attempts to woo the center-right succeeds) remains to be seen.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:30:43 AM by Mio
Bingo; that's the big sticking point; presidential systems are more prone to dictatorships and civil wars, as the history of our own country (an untenable executive-legislative standoff over slavery spiraling into a constitutional crisis basically describes the American Civil War's political origins) and that of Latin America provides many examples of.
edited 11th Feb '17 10:36:32 AM by CaptainCapsase
That's a waaaay more complicated issue than just counting how many presidential systems have had civil wars and become authoritarian regimes, though. I'd love to see some actual in-depth analysis on the subject, but correlation is not causation, and simply comparing the numbers isn't anything like enough evidence to come to the conclusion that parliamentary systems are more stable.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.@Capsase: No, the choice is between centrist economic policy and regressive social and economic policy. Remember that the current wave of plutocrats are well to the left of labor right now - the white working class is only okay with social programs so long as they are restricted to white people. That was the driving force behind the Dixiecrats: not to stop social programs or lower taxes, but to make sure that as little of the New Deal and postwar social programs went to black people.
The plutocrats, with certain exceptions, are coming to realize that their interests include pushing up the economy. Insurance companies like Obamacare, for example - they might want to have "high-risk pools" that subvert the point of it, but they loooove the individual mandate and the government subsidies. Likewise, Silicon Valley tends to support minimum wage (doesn't hurt them one bit...), as do a lot of companies that aren't Wal-Mart. (Wal-Mart is exceptional in that its interests still align with the Republican Party, but we know why - it thrives by targeting the poor as both a workforce and customer base, and it needs to keep 'em poor. Same with the prison industry.) And nobody in the business world wants actual immigration enforcement.
Of course, business interests can't be the entire source of Democratic power. They need to bring minority voters into the coalition by specifically addressing their problems (instead of going Sanders and trying to make everything work through economic theory), as well as making sure that the intellectual class don't get suckered by con artists like Jill Stein.
Business interests tend towards right-libertarianism in regards to economic policy. That's the issue; there will be more regressive taxation, top level tax cuts, privatization, and so on in such a coalition, because the stoplight coalition is the quintessential neoliberal government.
Either the GOP will shift to a populist, pro-worker (but exclusionary) economic policy, or they won't and business interests will remain in their corner. You aren't flipping Romney Republicans without capitulating to them on economic issue, which means embracing supply side economics, union busting, and so on.
Stoplight coalitions will simply make the disillusionment on the left worse. You won't gain back working class minority voters by promising to address their issues and doing nothing for them in terms of the very real economic hardships they face in addition to discrimination, they'll eventually get wise and stop voting in meaningful numbers, or even flip to the GOP if a future Republican candidate happens to be a young, charismatic, Hispanic American.
Either you unify labor across racial lines with an agenda of both social and economic justice and revive unions as a meaningful power base, or we continue regressing towards an increasingly oligarchic system, not meaningfully different from what Trump is moving is towards.
edited 11th Feb '17 11:38:24 AM by CaptainCapsase
I'm pretty sure Trumpery with all of his planned tariffs and zero-sum-game idea of trade hurts businesses in the long term too. This could drag some Romney Republicans into our camp. I'm of the opinion that a Stoplight Democrat coalition would be unstoppable I'll admit that such a coalition would work directly in my own interests
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison
A stoplight coalition won't work in the modern political climate; the left will not tolerate further regressive economic policy (and you aren't getting Romney voters without embracing supply side economics and all that entails), and working class minorities voters will not tolerate being left in poverty (albeit slightly less crushing poverty) even if a token few of their number are allowed to join the ruling class.
It's either red-red-green (to continue using the German metaphor, though in American terms that means center, left-wing, far-left) or fascism, and if history is any indication the (center-right) Romney voters will readily embrace the black flag and jackboots in order to stave off the red hydra.
edited 11th Feb '17 12:09:04 PM by CaptainCapsase

edited 11th Feb '17 9:46:41 AM by CaptainCapsase