
America Needs a 'Metropolitan Party' - misnamed
https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/04/america-needs-a-metropolitan-party/523065/
======
neuland
Another commenter mentioned that the Democrats are effectively the
metropolitan party (and the "Clinton Archipelago" map [0] from this NYTimes
article "Two Americas of 2016" [1] shows it fairly well).

But, I think the article misses an even more important factor.

 _what_ problems the government fixes is less divisive than _how_ those
problems are fixed. This _how_ question is much more important in preventing
Republicans and Democrats from working together.

Both parties want to solve most of the problems that plague cities: housing,
transportation, poverty, education, etc [2]. What differs is _how_ they intend
to solve those issues.

The ideological underpinning of the right is to solve problems by reducing
government involvement and/or increasing people's ability to be responsible
for their own lives (and possibly suffer bad outcomes, deserved or not):
deregulation of business, lowering taxes on high-end professionals and rich
people, school choice, public-private partnership in infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the left generally tries to increase outcomes universally, even for
people who have made bad choices: increasing services used by the poor,
focusing on public education that is accessible to everyone, investing in
public transportation provided by the government (and with subsidies so that
the poor can afford to use it).

The difference is that the right doesn't address issues directly. I think this
is because they don't think it's the government's problem in the first place.
Rather, they try to fix the broader environment instead. Free from this
ideological aversion to government, Democrats advocate for directly investing
in the issue.

[0] [https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-
clint...](https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/14/trump-clinton-
islands/af7a8cd53827480ea1547b3a5bfcea013c158609/clinton_v2-Artboard_6.png)

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/t...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-
two-americas-of-2016.html)

[2] For people on the left who are unfamiliar with right-wing interest in
these issues, AEI has tons of research and events on them. Granted, most
Republicans are not interested in these issues.

Edit: clarity

~~~
flukus
Those maps aren't nearly nuanced enough. There are a lot of blue voters in red
areas and red voters in blue areas, both go unrepresented.

~~~
neuland
That's true. But, would you agree that there are very few conservatives in
urban cores?

For example, I used to live in Washington, DC. Trump got 4% of the vote.

~~~
flukus
Fewer, but I'm not sure what the real number would be. If you're a
conservative in an urban core you probably wouldn't bother voting. There could
be a lot that would vote third party.

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engx
The first thing Trump was supposed to do was introduce an Amendment for term
limits (Washington Post). Cruz proposed one that would limit Senators to 2
terms and Representatives to 3 terms.

This seems like an idea almost everyone would support and would do so much to
move politics forward.

~~~
bluejekyll
But it needs to be passed by the current people there

    
    
      All 27 Amendments have been ratified after two-thirds 
      of the House and Senate approve of the proposal and
      send it to the states for a vote. Then, three-fourths
      of the states must affirm the proposed Amendment.
    

First step is to get Congress on board, and telling them to vote themselves
out is unlikely.

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dpeck
We need a system that allows for representation of minority opinion that isn't
strictly tied to geography.

~~~
bsilvereagle
America was established as a federalist collection of states so that opinion
and geography were intentionally tightly coupled.

If you didn't like the prevailing opinion in your state, you moved to
somewhere where your opinion was the majority.

The federal government was not meant to have a significant impact in your day-
to-day life. Your city and state governments were supposed to have the most
impactful policies, which were supposed to be tailored specifically to the
needs of your geographic locale.

Somewhere over the past 100 years, states' powers have been eroded and we're
left with a one-size-fits-all federal government which is failing to keep
everyone happy.

~~~
dpeck
Agreed that that was the intention, and that made a lot of sense when almost
everyone was involved in some way of working the land/sea near their home.

Granted I don't think I have popular political opinions, but given that I have
to be in at the very least a district where 50% + 1 of the people have similar
approaches to problem solving means that it will never happen.

Obviously this slows down the introduction of new ideas and parties, and
perhaps that's a feature and not a bug, but it does mean a total disinterest
for many who feel that they'll never be represented in any meaningful way.

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uiri
So, first off, the article's headline and subheadline/abstract blurb talk
refer to a party. What the article actually proposes is not a political party
but a per-state nonpartisan group that approves/disapproves of politicians
based on how their policies effect urban areas.

Second off, the author presumes that local politics are nonpartisan because
the stakes are higher at local levels than at state and federal levels. I
think the actual reason is that running a campaign at the state or federal
level needs a lot more funding. The support of a political party's machine is
necessary in order reach all voters and convince enough of them to vote for
you.

Third, the author proposes to start at the state and local levels. The 50 most
populous cities in the US are located in only 29 states (plus DC). A lot of
states don't have cities.

I would characterize the following states as not having any cities to speak of
based on the size and density of their largest towns: Alaska, Arkansas,
Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New
Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia,
and Wyoming. That's 17 out of 50; over 1 in 3 states.

~~~
bydo
You're looking at overall density but not actual population centers. Over
forty percent of Maine's population is located in the Portland metro area.
Over eighty (!) percent of Alaska's population is in the greater Anchorage
area. Large and sparsely populated states consolidate _more_ in city centers,
not less, which is why it makes so little sense that rural residents have so
much more relative worth to their votes.

~~~
douche
It would be a terrible idea to give Portland any more power to swing things in
the state of Maine than it already has. Already, there's some pretty big
tensions because Portland and its suburbs can effectively dictate to the rest
of the state - and the situations in Portland and Scarborough are quite a bit
different than the realities of Fort Kent, or Rumford, or Calais.

It would be nice if we could give different areas greater levels of autonomy,
but with the way that government funding structures work, that is unlikely.

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earthtolazlo
We already have a political party whose primary function is to represent the
interests of well-off city dwellers. They're called the Democrats.

~~~
devwastaken
Perhaps you could make a much more informative comment instead. Reddit is a
nice place to just say things, but HN is nice because of information.

~~~
67726e
To be honest, HN is not all that much better if you're not a fan of the chosen
party and it's liberal inclinations. You just get brigaded to death.

~~~
s73ver
It's not really a chosen party. It's a flavor of some kind of techno-anarcho-
libertarian capitalism.

~~~
bluejekyll
Don't leave out the communistic-socialistic-opensource portion of the group,
which has an awkward dependent relationship with the capitalistic group

~~~
s73ver
True. In truth, there's probably more than one faction.

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burntrelish1273
(I know it's flagged, but .02 cents). Sorta, not really.

The traditional alignment had been D: cities-tolerance-open society, R:
country-religion-traditional society but so many people live in cities now
that it doesn't make sense to have everyone in one, giant party. Either
another bikeshedding wedge issue or major issue will end up splitting the
majority along (new/different) lines.

With two interchangeable, heavily corrupted parties, Bernie and progressive
need to split and make their own, viable party. Also, sensible R's like
Lawrence Wilkerson gotta retake/remake/splinter off a party that puts common
sense ahead of Freedom Caucus & fringe.

Right now, the 800 lbs gorilla socioeconomic tension is (re)distribution of
wealth (inequality). Whichever group tackles that realistically will capture
the majority of independents... I don't think lies on this issue will endure,
people will eventually wise-up.

Bottom line: 2-3 viable parties are necessary for balanced, countervailing
powers to operate correctly (balance of power) and prevent collapse into Rome-
style end-game. If the elite continue to exclude the grassroots and corruption
reaches titanic levels, they (or someone) will eventually be replaced a-la
Korea.

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ghobs91
Why do we even need political parties anymore? I understand that it was harder
to transfer information back in the day, and so politicians aligning with
parties made things easier. Now that we have the internet and media, all
parties seem to do is serve as a marketing brand that politicians can hide
behind.

Without parties, each candidate would have to run on their own views, rather
than defaulting to whichever side they want to win over. Trump might be the
biggest example, a liberal elite from NYC who ran as a Republican because he
saw a weakness in the candidate pool there, and knew he could hide behind that
R to gather votes. It's just lazy and serves as more of a tool to manipulate
the populace than it does to inform.

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rhino369
This isn't a party, it's an interest group.

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abritinthebay
I understand the reasons to feel that way but it will only entrench the divide
_more_ \- which seems like a bad idea

------
carsongross
What America needs an amicable divorce. (Several, actually.)

Since that won't happen, America will eventually get a nasty one.

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Hnrobert42
Let's call it the District 1 Party.

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therpe1
America needs to embrace "local government." That means devolving budgetary
power to the states. The federal model has failed. The current system is
broken. The people who pay the most into the system (highly productive cities)
are the people who actually have the _least_ voting power. Once people wake up
and begin to understand what's really going on this will not last. 'Taxation
without representation' tends to rub people the wrong way.

End the Federal Highway/Farm/Energy Acts. Heck, even blow up Medicaid and
Obamacare. Cut the military budget by 2/3\. All of these enormously expensive
federal "programs" are just elaborate means to extract hundreds of billions of
dollars from the wealthy and efficient urban counties and distribute them to
the relatively poor and inefficient rural counties. None of it is fair and
none of it is sustainable.

This is one good thing that will come out of runaway polarization in America.
As all trust dissolves and the two (highly geographically correlated) classes
move apart this illusion of "one republic" acting in everybody's interests
will fall away.

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jonathankoren
The fact is, due to an 18th century hypothesis that didn't play out 228 years
later, a metropolitan based political party is doomed in presidential
politics. My _city_ has more people in it, than the entire states, and yet
it's political clout is diluted away.

Seriously, the electoral college is an abomination that is only going to get
worse with the long trend of urbanization.

~~~
IncRnd
The problem you identify isn't with the electoral college but with the
centralisation into the federal government of states powers in a way that is
directly against the federalist and Republican ideas of the constitution.

~~~
jonathankoren
No it is not. You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their
right to having a say for the president, because acreage.

And even if it was true, who cares? The central thesis of the 18th century was
that people would have more allegiance to their states rather than the
national government, and that hasn't been true for over a hundred years.

~~~
wtbob
> You're assuming that a majority of country should cede their right to having
> a say for the president, because acreage.

The majority of the country elects the President, because the United States
are composed of the several States (not the people thereof), and the states
elect the President. Frankly, I wouldn't mind every state having an equal
voice, rather than unfairly privileging populous states.

~~~
jonathankoren
"The majority of the country"? Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016
elections, or are you confusing people with acres?

The whole problem is the breaking it up by states, because states are quite
frankly not that relevant. No one has allegiances to states. States are
subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of the federal
government. They're basically counties.

The central thesis behind the electoral college simply didn't play out, and
holding up today is simply necrocracy. There's a reason why no other
government on Earth has one of these things.

~~~
wtbob
> Did you sleep through the 200 and 2016 elections, or are you confusing
> people with acres?

Are you confusing the states with the people? The United States are composed
of the several States, and the States elected Messrs. Bush & Trump in those
years.

> No one has allegiances to states.

They ought to.

> States are subordinate entities, that pretty much subsist on the largesse of
> the federal government. They're basically counties.

No, states are the sovereign entities which constitute the United States. The
people did not ratify the constitution; the states did. Misconceptions like
yours are why we should repeal the 17th Amendment, replacing it with one
mandating that legislatures appoint their federal senators. Frankly, I'd love
to see legislatures appoint electors, too. The people have a voice in the
House; having voices in the Senate and in the Executive is too much.

