Another commenter mentioned that the Democrats are effectively the metropolitan party (and the "Clinton Archipelago" map [0] from this NYTimes article "Two Americas of 2016" [1] shows it fairly well).<p>But, I think the article misses an even more important factor.<p><i>what</i> problems the government fixes is less divisive than <i>how</i> those problems are fixed. This <i>how</i> question is much more important in preventing Republicans and Democrats from working together.<p>Both parties want to solve most of the problems that plague cities: housing, transportation, poverty, education, etc [2]. What differs is <i>how</i> they intend to solve those issues.<p>The ideological underpinning of the right is to solve problems by reducing government involvement and/or increasing people's ability to be responsible for their own lives (and possibly suffer bad outcomes, deserved or not): deregulation of business, lowering taxes on high-end professionals and rich people, school choice, public-private partnership in infrastructure.<p>Meanwhile, the left generally tries to increase outcomes universally, even for people who have made bad choices: increasing services used by the poor, focusing on public education that is accessible to everyone, investing in public transportation provided by the government (and with subsidies so that the poor can afford to use it).<p>The difference is that the right doesn't address issues directly. I think this is because they don't think it's the government's problem in the first place. Rather, they try to fix the broader environment instead. Free from this ideological aversion to government, Democrats advocate for directly investing in the issue.<p>[0] <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clinton-islands/af7a8cd53827480ea1547b3a5bfcea013c158609/clinton_v2-Artboard_6.png" rel="nofollow">https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clint...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-two-americas-of-2016.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/t...</a><p>[2] For people on the left who are unfamiliar with right-wing interest in these issues, AEI has tons of research and events on them. Granted, most Republicans are not interested in these issues.<p>Edit: clarity
The first thing Trump was supposed to do was introduce an Amendment for term limits (Washington Post). Cruz proposed one that would limit Senators to 2 terms and Representatives to 3 terms.<p>This seems like an idea almost everyone would support and would do so much to move politics forward.
So, first off, the article's headline and subheadline/abstract blurb talk refer to a party. What the article actually proposes is not a political party but a per-state nonpartisan group that approves/disapproves of politicians based on how their policies effect urban areas.<p>Second off, the author presumes that local politics are nonpartisan because the stakes are higher at local levels than at state and federal levels. I think the actual reason is that running a campaign at the state or federal level needs a lot more funding. The support of a political party's machine is necessary in order reach all voters and convince enough of them to vote for you.<p>Third, the author proposes to start at the state and local levels. The 50 most populous cities in the US are located in only 29 states (plus DC). A lot of states don't have cities.<p>I would characterize the following states as not having any cities to speak of based on the size and density of their largest towns: Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. That's 17 out of 50; over 1 in 3 states.
(I know it's flagged, but .02 cents). Sorta, not really.<p>The traditional alignment had been D: cities-tolerance-open society, R: country-religion-traditional society but so many people live in cities now that it doesn't make sense to have everyone in one, giant party. Either another bikeshedding wedge issue or major issue will end up splitting the majority along (new/different) lines.<p>With two interchangeable, heavily corrupted parties, Bernie and progressive need to split and make their own, viable party. Also, sensible R's like Lawrence Wilkerson gotta retake/remake/splinter off a party that puts common sense ahead of Freedom Caucus & fringe.<p>Right now, the 800 lbs gorilla socioeconomic tension is (re)distribution of wealth (inequality). Whichever group tackles that realistically will capture the majority of independents... I don't think lies on this issue will endure, people will eventually wise-up.<p>Bottom line: 2-3 viable parties are necessary for balanced, countervailing powers to operate correctly (balance of power) and prevent collapse into Rome-style end-game. If the elite continue to exclude the grassroots and corruption reaches titanic levels, they (or someone) will eventually be replaced a-la Korea.
Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide behind.<p>Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate the populace than it does to inform.
America needs to embrace "local government." That means devolving budgetary power to the states. The federal model has failed. The current system is broken. The people who pay the most into the system (highly productive cities) are the people who actually have the <i>least</i> voting power. Once people wake up and begin to understand what's really going on this will not last. 'Taxation without representation' tends to rub people the wrong way.<p>End the Federal Highway/Farm/Energy Acts. Heck, even blow up Medicaid and Obamacare. Cut the military budget by 2/3. All of these enormously expensive federal "programs" are just elaborate means to extract hundreds of billions of dollars from the wealthy and efficient urban counties and distribute them to the relatively poor and inefficient rural counties. None of it is fair and none of it is sustainable.<p>This is one good thing that will come out of runaway polarization in America. As all trust dissolves and the two (highly geographically correlated) classes move apart this illusion of "one republic" acting in everybody's interests will fall away.
The fact is, due to an 18th century hypothesis that didn't play out 228 years later, a metropolitan based political party is doomed in presidential politics. My <i>city</i> has more people in it, than the entire states, and yet it's political clout is diluted away.<p>Seriously, the electoral college is an abomination that is only going to get worse with the long trend of urbanization.