Suburban lifestyle is MUCH closer to urban culture than it is to rural culture, and nowerdays the lines between suburban and urban are pretty blurred, its not the 1950s anymore.
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RGacky makes a terrific point with the U.S. Senate. The population of California is greater than that of Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska,*South Dakota, Montana, Idaho,*Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Louisiana and*South Carolina combined. Nevertheless, each one of these states gets 2 members in the Senate. I did the math about a year ago, and the last time Republican senators represented an outright majority of the U.S. population was 1930. (Though my calculations might have been wrong - feel free to check me on this, people.)
Anyway, that has a tremendous distorting effect on the U.S. political system, and explains why the Democratic House majority was able to advance a more progressive agenda than that of the Senate on issues such as health care and climate change. It takes both chambers of Congress to get something done, though (plus the president), so the U.S. ends up with the least progressive policy between the two.
P.S. The U.S. is 79% urban - more urban than Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Though, to be fair, I do not know if that source is throwing the suburbs in with the urban areas; I'll find more when I get back from work this afternoon.
Suburban lifestyle is MUCH closer to urban culture than it is to rural culture, and nowerdays the lines between suburban and urban are pretty blurred, its not the 1950s anymore.
What Gacky failed to mention in his fantabulous point is that the Senate is much more Liberal than the House of Representitives. So the Government of the US is OVER represented by Liberals.
Maybe that's what you were saying in the last half of your post.
And theUS isn't 80% urban--get in a car and drive around.
That is just a recent event, historically the house has always been much more progressive, and its a recent event due to extremely low voter turnout and a extremely organized right wing.
He's not talking about land numbnuts, its people.
BTW, thats not even true, democrats in the house are much more progressive than dmeocrats in the senate, evne though the republicans run the house right now.
I agree
I agree with the answers.
All of them?!
That's how you conquer the dialectic. Both sides are right
Much more liberal? That's not what we saw in the debates on health care and climate change in '09-'10.
On health care, the House passed a bill with more generous subsidies, a government option to provide health insurance, and stronger regulations on how much money insurance companies could spend outside of providing health care. The Senate rolled every single one of these provisions back. Not to say that the House bill would have come close to solving the problem - but there's no credible way to say the Senate was "much more liberal" on health care. Meanwhile, on climate change, the House passed a cap-and-trade bill while the Senate did...nothing.
Then, if we rewind a bit, take a look at the Iraq War - in July 2007, House Democrats passed a bill to withdraw troops from Iraq, which the Senate blocked.
Fast-forward to today, and we're seeing 64 members of the Senate - including 32 Democrats - advocating steep austerity cuts (and upper bracket tax cuts) that are almost as unconscionable as what the House Republicans are calling for.
As these high-profile examples show, the Senate is consistently to the right of the House when Democrats hold both chambers. Even when the GOP holds the House, it's hard to say that a Democrat-held Senate is much to the left of House GOPers. The House tends to be the chamber where we see credible pushes for (unsatisfying, incremental) change, and the Senate tends to be the chamber that consistently upholds the status quo. In the case of the U.S. political system, that means upholding a right-wing status quo, regardless of the views of the general population.
What I meant to imply is that the design of the Senate is tilted so heavily in favour of rural areas that a given party can be competitive, winning the Senate back and forth, without ever actually winning the support of a majority of actual voters when taken in a national aggregate.
80% of the US geographic space isn't urban, but urban dwellers represent a majority of the US population. For example...the Sacramento metropolitan area (hardly a metropolis by any standards) has more people than the entire state of Montana.
THeres no way your human.
I agree all of this happens. And may happen alot, but there is low voter turn out because people don't get involved and aren't interested in self governance. That's not the corporation's fault--that's the voter's fault. It ultimatley is the citizen's responsibility to run America.
Yea the Senate is disproportionately rural--but the Senate is ahd has been more Liberal than the House for a long time. If the House reflects the mood of the country better than the Senate--we are a lot more Conservative than even I think.
And yes there are specific examples of the Senate being Conservative--but over all they reflect a stablizing effect on the government. They reflect the mood of the country. The job of the government isn't to go on and do Liberal thing--it is to do things that reflect the mood of the country. And they do that.
I'm not saying there isn't a level of corruption--but I'm not saying the American people are stupid sheep either. They can get their news anywhere you can get yours. And a lot of them turn on Fox. And for that matter the Tea Party--though manufactured by corporate interests--reflects a vision of America many of them approve of.
Thats not what it is, the fact is when people DO turn out to vote, even if they get good candidates, in the end the corporations are gonna run things, so why even bother? If you compare countries without the monied control of the political process you have a much higher voter turnout.
Its not corporations fault really, they are investing in politicians, its a good investment, its the systems fault.
For American to be a country of the people you need a damn near revolution, not just voting in the right guy.
No it has'nt, thats just flat out not true. Look at bills historically that the house passes vrs the Senate, the House has almost always been more progressive.
Not the population of the country, perhaps the corporations of the country, but not the population, just compare public opinion vrs public policy, its not just one poll, its ALL OF THE POLLS.
Unless you have some facts to back that up, I'm just saying your full of shit.
the democrats are the ones who are trying to SAVE capitalism
Don't ask: What would Jesus do? Ask: What would Zizek do?
Ya, Bud... you're going to have to provide evidence that the Senate is historically more "progressive" than the house, cuz it hasn't in my experience.
The only sense I can make of that post is that when you use "liberal" you mean just that, not the modern context of a leftist. Are you saying they are more iberal, as in more laissez faire, than the House?
The senate by its very nature is more conservative than the House. In my view, I think it was intentionally designed to be a conservative body. It gives equal representation regardless of population and has six year terms so that if the House was taken over by a far left movement the Senate could preserve the status quo. The only progressive I can think of in the Senate is Sanders, but the House has Kucinich, Weiner, Cohen, among others.
The Senate / House system was set up as a Higher / Lower body, in imitation to the House of Lords and the House of Commons (as they then were, obviously things have changed). Longer terms of 6 years (slightly shorter than the lifelong appointment to the House of Lords). More oversight power. Appointment power. It was designed to be the greater of the two houses. Why that should make it more conservative I don't know, perhaps because power corrupts and they were given more power. Perhaps because they are not as recall-able. Perhaps because they don't have to answer as directly to the people because they serve an entire state.
Democrats share this goal with Republicans. Republicans give the capitalist system what they think its leaders want, while Democrats give the capitalist system what they think it needs.
The Democrats are Capitalists too I agree.
The Democrats are Capitalists too I agree.
Was there really any doubt? I mean, occasionally, one or two of the most liberal ones (John Kerry) are accused of being socialists, but they are obviously capitalists.
Kerry a socialist!? That is funny, what do those people think of Kucinich? One of the few politicians I have respect for, by the way.
At some time they probably have called him one too. It's the greatest insult a Republican can thrown at a Democrat. "That's socialism!" To which I always reply (yelling at the TV) "Yeah, and?" or "Ha! If only!"
This is why I got rid of my TV back in 2006. I get my news via BBC Radio. It's better for my blood pressure.
