A bit of perspective

I thought this was profound. We focus a lot on what is happening here, it is interesting to see what is happening abroad. This video, if not downright shocking is interesting to say the least. I am suprised at the manner Hannan addresses Brown with, and more astounded with the numbers he lists off.

Party ID ... leave it at the exit poll

The 2008 congressional election was candidate centric not party centric because of low congressional approval during the voting week. you ccan find this info here and here. the week of the vote, congressional approval was between 17 and 21 % yet members were elected by large margins. if we look at our own data, from wisconsin it might help narrow things down a bit. I can't find any data regarding congressional approval from WI, but i can look at the voting data for our congresspeople. remember the national approval of congress is pretty stinkin low. the winning percentages however are pretty high the lowest win percentage is 54% - you can see the representatives vote percentages here. Why is this? why are the approval ratings ranging from the mid 50 to the high 70's if the congressional approval is low? in 7 of the 8 districts that we have here, the incumbents won. the 8th district had no incumbent. this bucks the trend that was displayed by a democratic takeover of congress, because the seats didnt change, even though we all thought congress was doing a pretty craptacular job! how can this be? I think that we have to separate the congressional races from congress as a whole. when people vote in congressional races, the focus is on the candidates, not the entire body. gerrymandering aside, if the district voters vote sincerely, and they feel their particular congressperson is doing a good job, then there would be little cause to change the rep. hence the incumbency advantage. but if this is the case, and people do get frustrated with congress as a whole, why do we see national shifts in party majorities? are some voters different than others? do some take their frustration with the majority party out on their congressional rep? that's not very nice. how can we explain this duality? i find this interesting, however unsolved by my data. I will muse on this more and update this.

I'll out minority you ... oh wait this is congressional politics, not grad admissions

... too far? there's no limit to sarcasm ... anyhoo

This week's installment:
"Focusing on the US Congress, what is the role of a minority party in a democracy? In particular, you might consider trying your hand at an explaining the seemingly unending calls for bipartisanship from certain corners of the chattering class OR consider why 214 of the Republicans even bother to show up to work every week since they can't really stop the legislative juggernaut that is the Democratic coalition."

I think that the role of a minority party in a democracy, very simply, is to prevent tyranny from a majority party. Afterall, just because a party is in a majority does not mean that it represents the entirety of the country. Furthermore a minority party can be expected to generally be a voice of comparable "reason" to provide opposition to the majority party. one reason, if any is that the majorities in congress have always been narrow meaning that for a majority to rule uncontrolled would mean to alienate half of the country. furthermore, should we look at the structure of congress, we have to realize that congress is not a majoritarian body, but in effect a super majoritarian body of sorts, because of the senate. the senate needs a supermajority of votes in favor to pass a bill, while the house only needs simple majority. because a bill has to pass both the house and the senate the bill needs to reach a supermajority to pass. a minority party can still block a bill by preventing the supermajority vote in the senate. that's where the calls for bipartisanship come from, that;s why the republicans bother showing up to work.

Finally! a simpler set of questions! a shorter blog! holy crap!