"Fix" the system so a large percentage of the population can not do something as stupid as Trump again and a large percentage of the population will find another way to do something as stupid as Trump.
The problem is not the system, it is the people. We are evolving into a banana republic. The question for me is can the trend be reversed?
As the saying goes, make something foolproof and the universe invents a better fool.
The life cycle of all human made systems mimic biological systems. All human made institutions calcify and deteriorate, but some can reset several times before they completely fall apart. The Roman Empire became pretty corrupt at the end, but it lasted longer than any empire in the last 1000 years or more. The UK was the biggest empire in world history 100 years ago and the empire is gone, but the country still punches above its weight and while it's a political mess today with Brexit, it has survived.
I should have just gone to Wikipedia for the numbers ...at any rate, as a Canadian, I was pointing out that the US has one of the best systems of Government ever devised and from my point of view, I would be reluctant to dismantle it based on the results of one or two elections, even though, as you say, it's not perfect. Also, when just over 50% bother to vote, that is an even larger "disenfranchisement" than any monkey business with the electoral college.
The US system does need reforms. The checks and balances built into the system have helped, but the flaw in any system is it only works as long as everyone in power ultimately agrees to play by the established rules. Courts can order things illegal, but the president needs to obey those court orders and Congress needs to impeach and remove if those orders are ignored. Right now getting an impeachment on Trump would be a slam dunk, but even though probably most Senators would agree privately that Trump is guilty as hell, there would be no conviction in the Senate because too many Senators put party over country.
A lot of the polarization in the US has come about because of conservative media over the last 25 years. Canada doesn't allow Fox News because its way of putting spin on the news is illegal by your news guidelines. The US had a Fairness Doctrine about news from the founding of the FCC in the 1930s until Reagan.
Preserving the rights to free political speech is important and I think people should be able to voice their political opinions, but most of the public can't tell the difference between opinion and factual reporting. Back when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, news programs could opine, but a caption would appear on the screen saying "Opinion" or "Editorial". We need to go back to that.
I think we also need a legal definition of news and a valid news organization. A real news organization attempts to report facts accurately and when they get something wrong, they are quick to post a retraction. They also have a code of ethics that all their reporters need to adhere to and punish those who stray outside the guidelines deliberately. No real news organization ever gets the news 100% right, but they make reasonable efforts to do so.
If it wasn't for the polarization, Donald Trump probably wouldn't have had a chance, and if he was elected, Republicans in Congress would be more open to doing the right thing and removing him from office. The Democrats have become more tribal in response to the Republicans, but the Republican party has become a cult. They will burn down the country to serve what the party leader wants.
That is what happens right now. Our votes in NY, California, and Texas are worthless because we are "safe states". 4 or 5 swing states decide the election.
That is what is happening right now. That is why there will be a civil war or NY and California will secede, unless democracy is restored with a National Popular Vote Intetrstste Compact.
The idiotic Electoral College has one member per House representative plus one per Senator; the Founders created it along with the disastrous Senate because they had the Senate and the pro-Senate Connecticut group wanted it to be like the Senate. The so called Great Compromise which created the Senate worked temporarily. It has now failed. It must be fixed.
The Senate does not do that. The House does. Upstate NY has House reepresentaion, and no Senate representation, for example. The Rio Grand region of Texas has House representation and no Senate representation. The Central Valley of California has House representation and no Senate representation.
Each state is guaranteed one House member. That is sufficient. The Senate is just a venue for abuse and undemocratic tyrrany.
Even when the Senate has blocked what I thought was bad legislation, I think it was bad. People did not get to see how awful GWB was because his worst plans were filibustered. Had they seen them implemented, I think he would not have been reelected.
That is because you have never studied history. You are wrong!
They have actually done studies on which forms of government are more stable and less prone to coups and civil wars. Parliamentary systems like the UK are better than Presidential systems like the US... A lot better. EVERY other Presidential system has collapsed into dictatorship in less than 100 years, no exceptions. Every one modeled on the US has failed.
The US system failed too, during the Civil War... Britain abolished slavery without such a war. Actually it failed under Andrew Jackson as well, who ignored the Supreme Court to commit genocide against the Cherokee. The US system nearly failed again in the Great Depression, though FDR threatening Congress with unilateral dictatorship (yes, he did) was enough to make the Senate cooperate, and he did something similar by threatening the Supreme Court with expansion. Similar things have been necessary in UK history but always to address a deficit of democracy (like the House of Lords obstructing things).
Proportial representation parliaments (such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, India) are even more durable than single member district first past the post parliaments like the UK and Canada.
If you really want to represent everyone you need proportional representation.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were serious and responded before seeing the sarcasm tag! You got me.
Many states are very centered on one region. Even though around half the state's population is in Southern California and the second largest metro area in the country is there as well as most of that region votes heavily Democratic, the statewide offices are dominated by Bay Area people, and it's been that way for my entire life. The only Southern Californians to get anywhere beyond a House Rep have been Republicans: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon. When Southern Californian Democrats run statewide, they get trounced by Bay Area Democrats.
Washington State and Oregon have the same dynamic you were talking about. The center of power in Washington is the Puget Sound region and it's around Portland in Oregon. For statewide races, not much else matters. I have seen some candidates win three counties in Washington and carry the state because those three counties have the bulk of the state's population. In much of the west, you get outside the cities and there is a whole lot of nothing. The next county to our east is pretty good size geographically, one of the larger counties in the state, but only has 12,000 people.
The drawback of proportional representation is that the representatives could end up all coming from one part of the state. Washington could end up drawing all 10 if its representative from the Puget Sound region. The Republicans would be drawn from the richest Republicans in the state, who are all in East King County and mostly tech millionaires and billionaires. They will have the money to drown out the eastern Washington Republicans who are more in line with the national party. The east King County Republicans have more in common with Bill Weld than Mitch McConnell.
Personally I don't have a problem with that flavor of Republican, but the rural Republicans in Washington will feel even more left out than they do now. At least Eastern Washingtonians feel Don Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rodgers is "one of them".
Few recognize the cultural divisions in the US, but redrawing the state boundaries along cultural lines would probably help in some states. Many of the traditional battleground states are that way because they are made up of three different cultures. Maybe the cultures that really can't get along with one another should get a divorce. The reason the Senate worked during the Civil War is because the culture that had been fighting with the New England Yankees for control since the founding of the republic had walked out and let the Yankees control the Senate.
We are on the verge of a Russian or French Revolution scenario. The majority of the people have had their needs ignored for too long. Either we fix the system to be properly democratic, or within the next ten years, the bloody revolution starts.
Make no mistake: the majority, who also has a supermajority of the youth and of those of fighting age and a majority of the titans of rising industries on its side, along with all scientists, would win.
I would like to make the transition peacefully. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Trying to leave the undemocratic, broken system in place guarantees violent revolution, probably within 10 years. We are getting closer to the breaking point.
I have hopes we can pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I think it would take a lot of the pressure off, maybe put off the revolution long enough that the majority (gaining as younger people get older) could take 2/3 of the Senate and give us another 50 years.
We are to the point where a majority of Republicans support single payer health care and marijuana legalization, but it is bollixed up by defective Federal politics. Some states are pretty bad but Baker v Carr managed to fix the worst Senate-like problems, and there is no state equivalent of the Electoral College, so they are all healthier than the Federal situation.
As Nick Hanuer has pointed out, when cultures get this much disparity between the richest and the poorest, one of two things happen: the pitchforks come out, or the country devolves into a feudal state with the haves controlling everything. A few years ago I would have predicted the latter, but the new left are much more willing to fight and I think the former is becoming much more likely.
The New Deal era had problems, but it went a long way towards reducing the disparity. The US was a major industrial power at the time, so shifting income to production workers did it then, but we don't have that now.
Utopia for Realists goes into this in some depth.
