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Dutch Wrote:Does all of this help this country? I guess not. In no time we will make sure that we get an even worse President, if we don't change our "system", such as "electing" people without lots of "money" involved and other stupidity as well create solid laws about on how to govern.
Sorry but I've not got the impression that an Biden will fix these lousy rules and laws here; just go on with the "old corrupted laws" and "broken" rules. Trump is laughing all the way to the bank, because of it.
I'm not sure what would fix this country.
The fact remains it takes a lot of money to run a campaign, successfully. And the larger the scale, the more expensive it becomes. Now, for President, who needs to run in all 50 states...that can add up to a heckuva lot of money.
Even talk about public financing of candidates has problems...who decides who qualifies for public funding, and how much is divvied up among how many candidates?
Frankly, my own opinion is that far too much attention and emphasis is placed on a Presidential election...because it is the "sexy" job, as it were...but the truth is Congress has far more effect on the lives of everyday Americans than most Presidents (with the exception of Trump noted here...because his bad effects were felt and continue to be felt...in anti-Asian hate crimes, in anti-LGBTQ legislation, in vote suppression laws, etc, etc.)
HR 1 is a good place to start, because, for one thing, it does away with gerrymandering and creates independent commissions to do the map redraws. As it stands now, out of 435 Districts, only 72 are "competitive" meaning that they have a PVI of less than D+5 or R+5.
Meanwhile, 127 districts are higher than R+10, and 116 districts are higher than D+10. These are basically the "totally safe" seats where a complete lunatic fringe candidate can win if they are on the ticket of the favored Party. So, 243 seats of 435 are filled with people with absolutely no incentive to negotiate or compromise. A further 120 seats have very little reason to, either (these are the ones that are higher than D+5 or R+5)
So...363 of 435 seats are filled with people who have little or no incentive to do anything but hold their Party line on everything. So there's 72 seats in the range considered "competitive" but, really, competitive seats would be D+2 or R+2 or less. 36 seats fit that description. So, you have a situation where between 8 to 17 percent of seats are even competitive.
This is what leads to the hyperpartisanship we see now. What we need are more competitive Districts. Now, obviously, because of self-sorting and other factors, it is not always possible to make Districts very competitive...for example...try to draw a competitive district in Philadelphia, Cook County, IL, LA County, or Oklahoma. Not likely.
BUT...if we can get enough competitive seats drawn elsewhere...it prevents the fringes from having a lot of influence, and forces a more balanced approach...because you still need to make enough people come along with you to get anything done.
Instead of 8-17 percent, we should have 50-60 percent of these seats be competitive. And independent redistricting is the only way to get there.
This, of course, does not address the Senate, which, by its very structure is inherently unfair...in that 700,000 South Dakotans have the same two Senators that 41 million Californians have! How does one address this? It would absolutely require a Constitutional Amendment...one which never would be ratified by the requisite number of states...who would be giving up the unequal share of power they currently enjoy.
So maybe the starcture of our government needs radical change...for example, House passes bills...President can veto...senate can override a veto. Something like that. But it again would require a Constitutional Amendment that never would get ratified. So we are stuck in a box of our own making...and we will not be easily extracted from it.
HR1 is only a start.