Now they notice? Voter efficiency (the number of voters needed to get a legislative seat) has an all-time high partisan divide, especially thanks to gerrymandering designed to ensure the party in power in 2010 can just
win everything this whole decade. The two "political parties" have effectively become regional groupings that set rural against urban.
The term "working class" has been racialized and regionalized to somehow refer exclusively to white people in rural states, even while non-white and/or non-rural people work most of the low-wage jobs in the country. Meanwhile, actual class politics is regularly preempted from above, preventing localities and states from improving their labor laws, health-care programs, or the like.
Norms around the Senate filibuster broke down years ago when it was changed into a mere procedural maneuver that allows for blocking literally anything without a supermajority. The bargaining process of nominating Supreme Court (and federal court) justices has turned into a stonewall.
Oh, and most so-called ballots in the United States don't actually have more than one candidate for each office, which contributes heavily to the >90% re-election rates for incumbents.
In short: we live in a de facto one-party state, with the only real variation being whether the Blue neoliberal capitalist party or the Red authoritarian nationalist/identitarian capitalist party has one-party control where you live.
And now the New York Times call it a threat to democracy?
The term "working class" has been racialized and regionalized to somehow refer exclusively to white people in rural states, even while non-white and/or non-rural people work most of the low-wage jobs in the country. Meanwhile, actual class politics is regularly preempted from above, preventing localities and states from improving their labor laws, health-care programs, or the like.
Norms around the Senate filibuster broke down years ago when it was changed into a mere procedural maneuver that allows for blocking literally anything without a supermajority. The bargaining process of nominating Supreme Court (and federal court) justices has turned into a stonewall.
Oh, and most so-called ballots in the United States don't actually have more than one candidate for each office, which contributes heavily to the >90% re-election rates for incumbents.
In short: we live in a de facto one-party state, with the only real variation being whether the Blue neoliberal capitalist party or the Red authoritarian nationalist/identitarian capitalist party has one-party control where you live.
And now the New York Times call it a threat to democracy?