Can we change the thread title to something a bit more appropriate?

"I don't like when people talk in their outside voices"

Or maybe, "Let's only kill some people"

Really, I'm open to suggestions.

 

The end of the Cold War began it really destroying bipartisanship because there wasn't a clear and present danger to the country but the rise of cable news particularly FNC and the internet/talk radio killed it. If a pandemic cannot bring them together, nothing will. We could have aliens try to invade us (wouldn't know why they would, entire planet is a dumpster fire) but even that would not bring them together. Trump would most likely to negotiate a deal that in exchange for a Trump Tower on their home planet, he gave them ours.

 

There's bipartisan support for big corporations, like SOPA. Oh and for continuing the 9/11 military authorization powers. Oh and...

The end of political parties would just make things much, much, much worse.

 

I think bipartisanship requires a basic level of mutual respect and trust between the two parties which simply does not exist in the US. There is a distinct lack of mutual respect and trust within each party. The idea of effective bipartisanship also assumes that there will be issues which transcend politics and which go to heart of basic humanity. One such issue you would think is the preventable slaughter of innocent children. Unfortunately, the Sandy Hook shooting showed me that no such issue actually exists. If there was ever an opportunity for some kind of bipartisanship that was it. What could possibly be worse than that? Certainly not even deaths of over 70,000 citizens in a pandemic apparently.

 

Politics is a zero sum game. You fight to win, you fight to ensure that the other party's opposition to your ideals is so futile that they cease fighting. This is why the west wing ruined the minds of a generation or more, politics is not about having the best argument or Obama's "team of rivals". You do this to get what you feel is right and is deserved for people and then be done with it. A game of parties replacing one another and having to compete like terms are baseball innings is horrific for the people whose wellbeing is dependent of what inning it is.

You should not want to hash things out or come to a compromise, when you do so it should be because you have no other choice so its the lesser of two evils. Democrats get Fed over cause they keep pretending the reublicans are their friends, and that the goal of their party is to meet in the middle as opposed to fighting to the death for their constituents.

That's from Luke Savage, though he has a more specific bipartisan piece that sums it up
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/01/the-curse-of-bipartisanship

 

This was brought-up and elaborated at least once in all of my political science and public administration classes. Getting rid of the parties won't change human nature, it's basically the same thing as throwing all your cash in a bonfire to end income inequality. It's like the saying "Trump is the symptom not the disease." Except political parties aren't even a symptom.

It'll be hard to summarize, but here it goes. Political parties are how politics just naturally organizes, it's an emergent system. The Founders also didn't like the idea of parties, tried to avoid it in the Constitution and create other checks and balances, Washington openly denounced them (while also supporting one). But they happen. Look at Nebraska... did you know political parties are illegal at the state/local level in Nebraska? Are their politics more responsive, not corrupt, not divisive? No. Even if they can't have parties in name, by human nature they work around it, it's a farce. But let's say that politicians truly stopped behaving like in political parties. Then it becomes a party of each politician's self-interest against everyone else. Coalition-making to help bills get passed are much more difficult, you're restarting from scratch and trying to find out where each other person generally stands on each and every bill (to not do that would mean there are still parties). Keeping the status quo and the inclination towards conservatism would be much stronger. There would likely be more corruption, with deals being made even more on self-interest than on ideological agreement. And then there's elections. Voters. I don't think you'd be surprised that most voters aren't very politically-informed, and more than half don't know who represents them in Congress. Getting rid of parties wouldn't help this, it would just make it worse. If you don't have time to research every candidate on all of the issues, which even the most-informed usually don't research every single name on the ballot (or even know every single name on the ballot before they vote) but political party is a signal to broad ideological coalitions and their policymaking/governing style and who they most seek to represent. Without parties, voters would be making even less-informed choices.

In short, getting rid of political parties is not only against human nature and political nature, it also decreases efficiency, increases gridlock, obscures democratic decision-making, and doesn't solve anything while only causing more problems. Truly getting rid of them is more utopian than ending government or creating world government, more utopian than ending money and scarcity, more utopian than ending death. It's a nice idea, but the resurrection happening tomorrow is more likely and less contradicting to human nature. Heck, if the existence of God and heaven and angels was definitely true, unless God made their opinion known on absolutely everything imaginable, I'd be surprised if the angels in heaven didn't have some form of political parties. (which would make Lucifer the nonpartisan independent who didn't want to work with the system )

 

Seems like not a lot of people are in favor of bipartisanship or cooperation across the aisle.

I guess the actions and behavior of some politicians makes it all the more difficult to care about it.

It’s depressing, but I guess I have an idea of what people think.

 

It goes beyond just current politicians. It is not something to hope for at any time. You want to beat those diametrically opposed to what you deem morally good

 

Have you read the posts, and tried to understand others' points of view?

 

Yes.

I’ve seen some good arguments against bipartisanship.

I was honestly just trying to see if it was just me who wishes it didn’t come to this. But I’ve gotten a good sense of why opponents of it think the way they do.

 

I'm not an opponent of it at all, I wish there were was more bipartisan support for initiatives which affect us all but there just isn't. It's become the new "world peace" - an ideal with no pathway to reality.

 

I think bipartisanship is a good thing... if both parties have a common goal in helping as much of the American people as possible.

Instead we've got a Republican party that's happy to wreck the country as long as their rich donors stay rich and a conservative base that don't care if their own lives improve as long as they get to "own the libs". Its why Trump is so popular with the Republican base, he's of one mind with them on always blaming others for their problems rather than trying to actually improve things.

Gridlock and crumbling infrastructure favor the Republicans' antigovernment stance so they win by obstructing all legislation when they're out of power. When they're in power, they just pass tax cuts for the rich and deregulate so regular people suffer more then shift back to obstruction when they're eventually out of power.

Why compromise with a group like that? We've seen how they treat others when they're in charge, when power eventually shifts again, no point pretending they'll negotiate in good faith.

 

The problem isn't with the concept but how to practically do it when the other side response is '**** off' or something impractical like 'in return, we want to gut all air pollution restrictions'.

 

@Emperor Ferus I think the issue here is that the ideal of bipartisanship requires both parties to be working in good faith for the well-being of the populace. For decades this has demonstratably not been the case for a particular party.

so instead of
A: There is a problem here is my plan to help
B: I have a different plan to help, let’s work out a compromise that can satisfy both our ideologies.

we get
A: There is a problem, here’s my plan to help.
B: That’s nice, but I’m just going to call you a socialist and continue locking children in concentration camps k?

That’s where we are now.

 

A perfect summation of the current problem.

We've become a country of 'against', rather than 'for'. Candidates that actually excite people with their ideas, like Bernie Sanders, get torn down because capitalism/tax cuts/deregulation/donors is much fun than actually solving problems.

 

Thoughts to my post @Jedi Merkurian ?

 

I don't think that's really a response to all of the points in my post?

 

That was an addendum at the end, I went into many other points for the main chunk of the response from the political science perspective.
I also don't think it's cynical to say human nature is to be cooperative and organize into groups.

 

In hindsight, you were right on the money with this post @tom

 

Republicans have some serious chutzpah. Obama spent his presidency trying to reach across the aisle and compromise, while Republicans kept slapping away the olive branch and moving the goalposts to manufacture disagreement. Then they elected Trump and pursued their completely one-sided agenda, and then accuse Democrats of being the extreme partisans. No, no, no, and no. These people can go straight to hell.