[TomMckenny]

Another perhaps core issue is whether the party in power gets there by majority will or is there due to legalisms, archaic power distribution and voter suppression. The party that people didn't vote for is not likely to run anything in their interest.

[aidenn0]

1. It's disingenuous to suggest that a party that regularly exceeds 45% of the popular vote is the party that people "didn't vote for"

2. The military boondoggles have continued uninterrupted since the collapse of the USSR almost regardless of who is in charge. G.W. Bush ran on a platform of not getting involved in foreign entanglements the way Clinton did, then Obama ran on a platform of not getting out of the entanglements that Bush got us into!

[pmiller2]

Re: military boondoggles, the US has been at war for over 222 years of its existence, at least in the sense that it was involved in at least one war in each of 222 different years since 1776: https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473

[pmiller2]

I know you’re referring to Bush v. Gore and the 2016 electoral / popular vote inversion, both of which benefited Republicans. We’re there any scenarios in recent history of the sort that benefited Democrats? I can’t think of any.

That said, the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College. This can be done either by Constitutional amendment, or by the agreement of a certain number of states [0].

What it wouldn’t fix is the huge body of campaign and election law and regulations that make it so there will always be exactly 2 major parties, starting with first past the post voting [1]. While Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem [2] practically guarantees we will have some paradoxical outcomes if we have 3 or more parties, even if we eliminate first past the post, I believe first past the post is one of the most anti-democratic practices we have in this country.

Finally, while this isn’t really a hard fact, it seems to me that parliamentary forms of government tend to last longer than presidential governments. Changing this in the US would be near impossible, requiring a Constitutional amendment, but it seems to me it is our best hope of lasting another 200 years.

—-

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

[epicureanideal]

Except that the electoral college was designed for a purpose, and that purpose might still be valid in the view of some people. A lot of Republicans for example, for similar reasons to why it was created in the first place.

Also, do you have any data points for presidential governments lasting less long than parliamentary governments?

[pdonis]

> the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College

This would certainly benefit the Democrats, but I don't see it as a "solution". It would give states without large urban areas even less political leverage than they have now. Presidential campaigns would not even bother visiting most states, since locking up enough votes in large urban areas (all of which are solidly Democratic) would be sufficient to win the election all by itself.

The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of the country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that purpose.

[blululu]

This gets into complicated issue in American Federalism about how do reasonably curtail democratic voting. Yes the basic idea of the Electoral college is to ensure a broad consensus and representation of the entire country. However if you look at how elections are actually run in the modern age, you see that the entire focus is on winning a handful of swing states (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania). California and Texas are only relevant for fundraising, no body ever bothers to campaign in Wyoming, Utah or Massachusetts. Essentially both parties are trying to game the system and appeal a very small subset of the electorate (swing state voters are far less than 49% of the populace). While there are benefits to something like the electoral college, the demographics have changed a lot in the last 240 years and we should honestly consider whether it is achieving its purpose.

[pmiller2]

> The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of the country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that purpose.

At that it succeeded. Instead, we have a minority running roughshod over the majority. Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%.

[pdonis]

> Instead, we have a minority running roughshod over the majority.

No, we have government that is more limited in what it can do because of lack of consensus between different parts of it (the President, Senate, and House). Which is exactly what should happen if the country is closely divided.

> Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%.

Which indicates that neither side has a majority, let alone enough of a majority to justify running roughshod over everyone else (which IMO is a lot more of a majority than just 51%).