I know that political parties are important to the function of a democracy and all, but I can't help but LOATHE them, especially with the system we've got going in the United States. It's hard to have any warm and fuzzy feeling for Democrats and Republican when all I see are personal agendas. But, alas, they are a necessary evil.
For instance, after the House passed their version of health care reform, the Republican National Committee released this statement: "Today with help from their liberal House allies, President Obama and Nancy Pelosi finally got what they have been creating behind closed doors these past months -- a government-run health care experiment that will increase families' health care costs, increase the deficit, increase taxes on small businesses and the middle class, and cut Medicare." I'm not trying to be bias by only providing an example of a Republican attack on Democrats (believe me, I tried google-ing "examples of democratic bias" but the results were mediocre at best). This is just one example of many attacks commonly seen in Washington. Couldn't they just say, "this is what passed through the House and this is why we're unhappy about it"? Or is politics like a worse, adult-version of high school? If the latter, count me out.
Campaigns have become personal attacks which make the average voter feel like they're choosing the lesser of two evils instead of feeling 100% confident in their choice. No wonder we have lower voter turnout than some other democratic countries.
My suggestion (though not likely to ever happen) is to change our electoral system to proportional representation, a multi-party friendly system. PR is aimed at matching the percentage of votes per party to the number of seats that party gets in the legislature. We'd still have a few major parties, but imagine all the minor parties that would get a vote. So long manufactured majority! Hello coalition government! (can you tell I'm in more than one political science class? :] ) Well blog readers, thanks for listening to my fairly negative political babble! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
In the words of Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon on SNL's Weekend Update, "Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow!"
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I think proportional representation is an amazing idea. We're proud to say that we're all created equal, and that everyone should be treated as equals, but the system of government we use doesn't portray this very well. Not everyone is either a demorcrat or a republican, like you would assume according to our Congress.
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