In the US we dont trust simple majorities to decide things. Would you argue that we should?

Should a simple majority decide who the president is?

In the US we dont trust simple majorities to decide things. Would you argue that we should?

Should a simple majority decide who the president is? — frank

This question strikes me as a strained attempt to bring about a discussion about the electoral college. In the UK, they elect representatives who then pick a prime minister, which seems even further removed from a directly democratic system.

Regardless, I'm fine with the current system of both countries, and do believe the decisions of elections represent the will of the people, controlled by various rules designed to protect minority interests or whatnot.

Do you think that every member of the House and Senate should be elected as an at large representative of the entire nation? I mean we do wish that each vote from each representative represent the entire will of the nation don't me? We don't want to disproportionately advance the interests of some small district in some far away state somewhere, right?

This question strikes me as a strained attempt to bring about a discussion about the electoral college. — Hanover

John Oliver did a show about how Brexit was really too technical to put to a simple majority vote. He showed actual British people complaining that they didn't have the background to decide the issue.

So it's not crazy to say that British voters might have been somewhat bamboozled with lies since the average British person wouldn't have a super informed opinion.

My point to you was that it would be bizarre if the US put a question like that to the public without at least requiring a 2/3 majority. Am I wrong?

but I do think there's some denial in this thread that perhaps the voters actually voted exactly as they wanted, as they believed, and they did it with their eyes wide open

You may be right, as I am clearly on one side of the argument. I would like to debate it with someone on the other side but they haven't turned up. I don't think that you would be able to say that I don't understand the arguments though, or don't rehearse them.

I would point out that there are probably as many different forms of Brexit as there are leave voters. The referendum was perhaps too simple a proposition and one which Cameron assumed would vote to remain. He didn't consider that it would go the other way and was intending to use it as a way to silence UKIP which was poaching his support. There was no detail about what Leave would mean, which resulted in 2 years of squabbling about what leaving meant in terms of future trade, legal and citizen circumstances that we would get.

Now we have an election which Johnson called "the Brexit election", surely the impasse should have been broken by a confirmatory referendum. But it is widely acknowledged among commentators that the result would probably go the other way. This means of deciding the way forward on Brexit confuses the vote with other election issues and disenfranchises many voters who would like their vote to indicate the view on the issue of Brexit. For example, nearly everyone I know of my own age voted remain and all of them, except two, live in safe Tory seats, so they were disenfranchised in the decision on "the Brexit election". Also, now that Johnson has a large majority, he is at liberty to bring on any kind of Brexit he likes with no redress to the electorate, or effective opposition in Parliament.

So when push comes to shove, I expect he will put party before country again and push his new converts under the bus. But these people might be the very people he needs to keep onside if he is to save the party. — Punshhh

I don't think Boris is from the party-first mould. I think that he sees himself as Churchill did - above party identities and able to appeal to the people over the top of that loyalty. So far he's being proved right. There will be much trumpeting of investment in the Northern Powerhouse I'm sure, as he seeks to fulfill promises to the ex-Labour voters, but it will be interesting to see if he coughs up for HS2, considered a vital part of that project, but hugely expensive.

He also faces a test on Brexit phase 2. The only realistic route to meeting his Dec 2020 target for an EU trade deal is maintaining close alignment in standards and tarifs with them. The ERG won't like that, but he now has the majority to say f*** you to them. The problem is that if, as he has previously shown, he wants a US trade deal, that approach with the EU won't satisy Trump at all. If he does want to appease Trump and depart from EU standards his loudly promised EU deadline looks unfeasible. However history to date shows that once he's made a promise, he'll do almost anything to keep it, so maybe he'll choose the EU over Trump if it comes to it. No doubt voters would want him to too. And who knows if Trump will even be around in 2021?

This is a way longer answer than you deserve so Happy Christmas (or Hannah’s Car, or whatever).

Broad generalizations in either direction aren't informative and tend to do no more than reflect the opposing ideologies of the winners and losers. The winners will almost always say "The people got what they wanted" and the losers will very often say "The people were duped". Any decent analysis is going to look much deeper than either non-answer above to the question of what happened in a given election.

Re that, this latest UK poll is a nice one to analyze because of its dual-layer nature and the strategies that were taken advantage of to maximize political outcomes, particularly by the Conservatives (Labour might as well have been trying to minimize political outcomes though that was as much to do with the rock/hard place they were stuck in as incompetence). So, the dual layers were Brexit and everything else and they were interwoven in a complex way. The "everything else", which is normally all there is, can be sub-layered into party personality and party policy. First, the party personality or party "brand" is normally led by and embodied in the party leader and can be anything, but in this case the choices showed an unusual level of polarity (Boris’s brand was the (alpha) male—loud, forceful, closed, active. And Corbyn’s, as @un pointed out, the female—quiet, restrained, open, passive). Second, the party policies are the functional aspect of the election outcomes and in judging whether or not the voters acted in a rational/self-interested manner are all that matters. So, if you can roughly determine self-interest by demographic according to a reasonably refined number of social and economic criteria and then look at voter behaviour, you can form a credible thesis as to the extent to which voters acted rationally, and the inverse, which is to what degree they were manipulated/deceived into acting irrationally (leaving out for simplicity’s sake cases where they were simply mistaken in a way that did not at all depend on political influence).

But even here, we’re over-simplifying things, and Brexit is useful in making clear how. So, voters can be manipulated into voting against their best interests by, first of all, obscuring/masking a policy, so they vote for a policy that's in not in their interest because they think they’re voting for something else or voters can be manipulated into wanting a policy that’s not in their interest so they get what they want but it has a negative effect on them down the line in a way they may or may not become directly aware of.

From a strategic point of view, it’s better to make voters want a policy that’s not in their interest rather than to simply temporarily mask a policy that’s not, as in the latter case the deception is immediately revealed upon policy implementation whereas in the former the negative outcomes can be drip-fed and gradually spun so that voters may find it hard to discern what’s happening and the extent to which they are responsible for it vs. the extent to which it was a deliberate manipulation. Of course, that’s harder to achieve and takes a more sophisticated level of deception, but given the current deregulated, polarised, and diverse state of the media landscape and the technological tools available to inject ideology at an almost surgical level, it’s as doable as ever.

So, there’s a bunch of abstract, how do we tie it to the this election? Well, first a caveat, we’re dealing with a first-past-the-post system in the UK rather than a PR system and that determines to a large extent how the results are viewed, and yet both systems are accepted as being vanilla democratic. To give a quick example of this, the SNP killed it in Scotland; they got something like 80% of the seats, and the other three major parties had to share the crumbs of the remainder between them. The natural interpretation (and the most dominantly purveyed one in the media) is that Scotland has overwhelmingly spoken in favour of independence, it’s a juggernaut that can’t be stopped etc. Change the format of the election to equally democratic PR and the SNP get less than half of the seats. Suddenly, the narrative drastically changes. What remains the same though are the political inclinations of the population. Similarly for Boris’s victory. A stonking roasting of the opposition and a huge mandate turns into a hung parliament under PR. If you think PR is fairer, and it just is in terms of pure percentages because as the name suggests, it’s more proportional, then that’s food for thought. But leaving that aside for now...

As mentioned above, the Brexit issue was interwoven with policy/personality. One very important point to make here is that the alpha male Conservative brand (personality) tied well into pro-Brexit feeling, which was often driven by a tough anti-immigrant, nationalist sentiment that bonded (and was one of the few things that could) class and geographic divisions. So, you had coherence there (and ancillary reach) which was added in emotional strength to by the fact that the Leavers who won the original plebiscite were faced with not a respected enemy but a bunch of namby pamby liberals trying to do them out of their victory (cue personal-historic associations in working-class leavers screwed by the neoliberal elite etc.). So, not only is the strength of emotion particularly intense in losing something you’ve fought for and fairly gained (from your perspective) in general, but in this case, among the personality type that was more likely to vote Brexit, the prospect was akin to an ideological castration by an enemy that was already threatening death by a thousand cuts. And this is what created the countervailing force necessary to smash through Labour’s red wall and ensure the Conservatives not just victory over but utter destruction of their traditional foe.

Getting back to the question at hand though, were voters manipulated/deceived etc? and breaking that down a little in light of the above. First of all, the brand/personality is always to an extent a deceit as its a deliberate strategized mask pulled over the policy platform, and it was reinforced by the vast majority of popular newspapers of the type read by Labour voters in its strongholds. But in concert with that, the dominant policy itself, Brexit, as mentioned above cohered perfectly with the brand anyway. So, to a very real extent the voters did get what they wanted and really wanted what they wanted notwithstanding the desire being much intensified by the Conservative/media alliance where it mattered.

On the other side, ill-feeling towards Corbyn was deliberately stoked and the conservative media cleverly managed to portray him both as a passive, weak, feminine figure and a dark socialist, anti-semitic, terrorist-loving threat. No mean feat. Again though, whether they had pulled this off to the extent they did or not, Corbyn was handicapped by conflicting wings of his party; roughly, the Northern wing, which leaned Brexit, and the Southern wing, which leaned remain. Seeing as the Northern wing was what the Conservatives needed for a majority, and potentially the angrier at an anti-referendum betrayal, it might have made more sense to have favoured that side, but the Remain camp fearing a Lib-Dem attack from the liberal flank made that impossible, and Corbyn was forced to sit incoherently on the fence without a strong message and without the strong brand to deliver it even if he had one. Recipe for disaster and as much a function of political reality as deception.

Last point, removing Brexit and brand and looking at regular and economic and social policies of the type that regularly take center stage in an election, did the defecting firewall voters (to take just one loosely-defined group) get what they voted for? Well, if you hypothesize that they simply prioritized Brexit and were willing to sacrifice themselves economically for that, yes. They went in eyes open. If you hypothesize that Johnson won their trust on Brexit and they believed his economic spin of his platform on that basis, probably not. So, it's complicated, and that’s just one group measured against an uncertain economic future under an unpredictable leader. But the more you dig, the more answers you get.

BTW, don’t dare tl;dr me or Santa won’t come down your chimney this year.

tl;dr: Yes. And no.

Regardless, I'm fine with the current system of both countries, and do believe the decisions of elections represent the will of the people, controlled by various rules designed to protect minority interests or whatnot. — Hanover

Ah, you mean how that significant remain minority doesn't get to remain?

Nice summary, I would add that the drip feeding of anti socialism poison goes right back to the origin of the Labour Party and has become endemic now everywhere except for the metropolitan socialist elite and the younger educated voter.

I predict a shift to the left as the demographic changes

I can't see the likelihood that the Tory's can recruit sufficient numbers from anyone under 45 years old, due to the fallout and rise of personal debt, and poor economic prospects amongst the young since the credit crunch. Also the gradual failing of the real economy and inexorable rise in the national debt. This is the existential crisis which the party faces and why I keep saying that the Tory's are struggling to save their party. Brexit was their latest effort, which has worked in that it brought an extra layer of support for them in the election from leavers who wanted to "get it done" and castrated UKIP/Brexit party. The next stage, although probably not intended, is the break up of the union, purging the SNP, leaving a strongly Tory little England.

Ah, you mean how that significant remain minority doesn't get to remain? — Benkei

I'm not sure I completely understand this comment, but I think you're saying I want to kill the minority. I deny that charge.

If I wanted to eliminate the minority, I would get rid of all districts and my vote would be watered down with the west coast votes and northeast votes, and we'd have a single party in all the US. That's not what I want, unless it benefits me somehow, in which case I'd be in favor of it, until it no longer was to my benefit, then I'd change my mind and pretend I never wanted things the way they were. You'd have some transcripts of me saying one thing on one day and another on another, but I'd deny I said what I said and half the people would believe me, or at least pretend they did, because they agree with what I'm saying now, but not before.

I can't see the likelihood that the Tory's can recruit sufficient numbers from anyone under 45 years old, — Punshhh

They'll just wait for them to turn 45 years old. Older people are more conservative because they like the way things were, even though things weren't like the way they remembered them. I can say this because I'm over 45 and I remember things being better even though they weren't.

, I would add that the drip feeding of anti socialism poison goes right back to the origin of the Labour Party and has become endemic now everywhere except for the metropolitan socialist elite and the younger educated voter. — Punshhh

Poison? The only poison has been fed to that metropolitan socialist elite and the younger 'educated' voter. It's their hubris, the idea that some of the previous supporters have been duped, that is the problem it. You have it totally the wrong way.

But by all means continue with it!

We wake up to the exciting (not) news that the cliff edge no deal is back on the table. Johnson is going to legislate to make it illegal to extend beyond December 2020. The idea being to crank up the pressure on the EU to capitulate. Talk about burning your bridges.

Well the evidence is there in print, the bias and attack of any consideration of socialism by the right wing media. I don't see any left wing media generating bias in the other direction which is being fed to the metropolitan socialists and the young. The magazine Socialist Worker, the only populist left wing paper I know of was desolved in April this year. There is one left leaning mainstream newspaper The Gardian, but this paper gives politically balanced intellectual analysis of politics and is only left leaning by contrast to the right wing papers which predominate. It is widely regarded as having the highest standards of reporting in the UK. Here are some of the front pages of high circulation papers in the run up to polling day. There is one tabloid facing the other way politically, the Mirror, but it doesn't criticise right wing politics.

Boris was, and is, more politically savvy than Corbyn. If they both had the same ideologies Boris would still win out because of this.

Anyway, doesn’t matter now. Boris has it and he’ll push Brexit through. He’s adamant about untangling the UK completely from EU rule - if he fails to deliver that he won’t last too long.

Well the evidence is there in print, the bias and attack of any consideration of socialism by the right wing media. — Punshhh

Oh the right wing media...is (ghasp) against a labour candidate? And it's ugly?

Goodness Gracious! How terrible!!!

How could they?

The magazine Socialist Worker, the only populist left wing paper I know of was desolved in April this year. — Punshhh

And could you think of a reason for this? Or is it a huge conspiracy?

There is one left leaning mainstream newspaper The Gardian, but this paper gives politically balanced intellectual analysis of politics and is only left leaning by contrast to the right wing papers which predominate. It is widely regarded as having the highest standards of reporting in the UK. — Punshhh

But?

And what is the problem you have with the Guardian when you say "but this paper gives politically balanced intellectual analysis"? Is that really the problem? Perhaps you don't notice how condescending you come out with your remarks here. It is as if the (right wing) tabloid papers made distinct people not to vote Corbyn. Because...they are more stupid than you. They could be just lied to and that was it. Nothing else. That if (when) the other side, at least in your opinion, goes with propaganda, lies and fake news, is then the answer to have your own equivalent of propaganda, lies and fake news? Would you think that would be the answer? Or perhaps you mean that the Guardian isn't leftist at all. It just looks like it because of the contrast.

If it would be just the right wing tabloid press, basically the it would just backfire on them and create more support for labour, just like Trump bashing just makes Trump supporters love their "God Emperor" even more. Yet when you have the most successful labour politician of the past giving interviews like the one below, you cannot deny that there is a very serious problem. I cannot think of a more damning view coming from a previous prime minister of the party:



You might think high of Corbyn, you might think he's even too moderate. But the simple fact is labour voters, just as euro-social democrats they relate to, aren't in the far left. They are far more closer to the center than people may not think. This is because the most vocal people in parties don't actually reflect the majority of the party. Hence in a right wing party the loudest are far away on the right and in a leftist party the loudest are the those on the far left. The so-called purists.

I predict a shift to the left as the demographic changes — Punshhh

Your graphic shows that it's the NHS what lost it. Once that's been privatised, the average age will drop and Labour will romp home, by natural selection.

Tbh when ever I see cries of ‘anti-semitism’ I assume they’re false. The reason being when I’ve looked further they are usually comments taken out of context and/or criticisms of the Israeli government.

Politics has always been a dirty game. It’s good to angry about this, but let’s not pretend to be shocked when these sort of ‘tactics’ are used.

Tbh when ever I see cries of ‘anti-semitism’ I assume they’re false. The reason being when I’ve looked further they are usually comments taken out of context and/or criticisms of the Israeli government. — I like sushi

Sure, but above with Blair you have a former leader of the Labour party saying: "The door was locked to those elements with a kind of 'not wellcome' sign on the door. And the truth is now because the leadership is from that tradition, the door is with a wellcome mat. And what's happened is you have had a whole lot of people come in to the Labour Party with these views" Later he says that singling out Israel "seeps into anti-semitism".

That's from a former leader of the party, a former prime minister. Not Labour's opponents.

The other thing is that the Brexit vote years ago didn't go by party lines. Roughly a quarter of the "Leave" vote was from voters that otherwise had voted for Labour.

Ok, I'm listening, but the original point I was making that you replied to was about a long term (over a 100 year period) stream of anti socialism dogma. I wasn't really referring to recent developments, but rather that recent developments sit on the top of an edifice of anti socialist dogma and prejudice, Comy', Marxist, Trotskyist. They will let the Comy's in by the back door.

I am aware of Blair's thoughts on this and accept that there is some anti-semitism in the Labour Party, but not as much as claimed by the media. The subtlety of the distinction between "anti-Israeli foreign policy" sentiment and "anti-Israel" sentiment. Has been exploited by critics and sometimes mistakenly blurred by those being criticised. This story is then blown up into some massive crisis by the populist media and lots of their loyal readers take it as read.

As an aside, the interviewer in the video you linked to, James OBrian, who has worked as a reporter on one of the papers I highlighted ( The Express) agrees with me on the media bias and the ways in which over years it turns their readers in the direction these lead them in. Also that it has effected the result of this election.

I agree that this was not pivotal in the result and that there were a number of other important factors, which we can look at.

Actually, I am not partisan, or a supporter of Corbyn particularly. I am actually a supporter of the Green Party. My beef in this is that I am anti-Brexit and Corbyn was our best hope if somehow stopping it.

My beef in this is that I am anti-Brexit and Corbyn was our best hope in somehow stopping it. — Punshhh

If he’d resigned several months ago, then yeah. If and buts don’t matter now.

He said, she said, don’t much care he was PM. Like every other human being he has his point of view, and I remember many within the Labour party complaining about him being too centrist/right-leaning ... so it therefore must be his fault then? - joke*

Doesn’t matter. The bigger problem was the disintegration of the Lib Dems. Popular vote - even under Clegg - was 6% less than Labour, but they had 200 more seats. The travesty was the negative propaganda surrounding the proposed overhaul of the electorate system by the Lib Dems.

Personally I don’t think ONLY the popular vote should determine members of parliament but it seems ridiculous to treat a marginal win in this or that county as a victory and shut out half of the population of that constituency.

I guess commonsense isn’t exactly synonymous with politics though.

Ok, I'm listening, but the original point I was making that you replied to was about a long term (over a 100 year period) stream of anti socialism dogma. I wasn't really referring to recent developments, but rather that recent developments sit on the top of an edifice of anti socialist dogma and prejudice, Comy', Marxist, Trotskyist. They will let the Comy's in by the back door. — Punshhh

Well, there might be reason why especially from the historical point of view people would oppose socialism. It hasn't been all dancing on roses and happiness. In my family, two of my great grandfathers were nearly killed by the Red Guard during our War of Independence. They were defined to be the 'class enemy' by the dictatorship of the proletariat, hence the violent side of marxism (and especially Trotskyism) is something really true and not something that "just got understood the wrong way". And my grandfathers fought the Soviets in WW2. Back then the Workers Paradise was intent on annexing my little country. (The other grandfather was a surgeon, so he didn't literally fight).

I am aware of Blair's thoughts on this and accept that there is some anti-semitism in the Labour Party, but not as much as claimed by the media. The subtlety of the disitinction between "anti-Israeli foreign policy" sentiment and "anti-Israel" sentiment. Has been exploited by critics and sometimes mistakenly blurred by those being criticised. — Punshhh

But this is politics 1.0. It's basically quite arrogant not to understand how the other side will take your views. A mainstream party ought to look at what it says.

My beef in this is that I am anti-Brexit and Corbyn was our best hope in somehow stopping it. — Punshhh

I'm not sure if he was your best hope. I put my hope on politicians that take extremely seriously and treat with respect the people who oppose them and think differently. Far too often we just dismiss the opposing views and start to believe our own biased views.

If he’d resigned several months ago, then yeah. If and buts don’t matter now.

Perhaps if a remain alliance had been formed and they had held back in their manifesto, which was seen as to good to be true. I lay the blame for a failure to do either of these at the door of Corbyn and McDonnell respectively.

"Labour party complaining about him being too centrist/right-leaning"

Yes, I regard Blair as Tory light, he just carried the Tory batton for a few years.


"Personally I don’t think ONLY the popular vote should determine members of parliament but it seems ridiculous to treat a marginal win in this or that county as a victory and shut out half of the population of that constituency."


Agreed, we need Proportional representation now. The tragic duplicity of this election is that Johnson used it as a solution to the Brexit stalemate, by calling it a Brexit election and campaigning on that ticket. Thus settling the developing questioning of the wisdom of the referendum and its result, as the reality was emerging. But in a way which conflates the issue with other things and disenfranchised millions of voters through the constituency system.

"I guess commonsense isn’t exactly synonymous with politics though."

It went out of the window this time.

I'm not sure I completely understand this comment, but I think you're saying I want to kill the minority. I deny that charge. — Hanover

No, I'm saying that in a winner takes all system like the US and UK there is no protection for the losing side at all. The UK people were hopelessly split over Brexit in 2016 that one side "won" over the other didn't represent the facts on the ground back then and the general election vote wasn't just about Brexit either.

And if the argument is that it was, I still fail to see a political mandate for Brexit with the Scots overwhelmingly voting for SNP. Together with the LibDems, who were pro-Remain as well, 52 of the Scottish 59 seats (88%) are against Brexit. 75% of voters voted for parties who campaigned on remain. So the Scottish minority is getting shafted.

Where exactly are those rules you mentioned to protect minorities then?

But this is politics 1.0. It's basically quite arrogant not to understand how the other side will take your views. A mainstream party ought to look at what it says.

Yes of course, but I don't know if you were aware, there is an equally pervasive issue with Islamophobia in the Tory party and opposition MPs repeatedly called this out, but it didn't cut through in the media and was repeatedly laughed off by Tory politicians. While the media couldn't stop talking about the media circus they had created around anti semitism in the Labour Party.


"I'm not sure if he was your best hope. I put my hope on politicians that take extremely seriously and treat with respect the people who oppose them and think differently. Far too often we just dismiss the opposing views and start to believe our own biased views."

Did you notice that Johnson and his team would say one thing and then the opposite in the next sentence, or the next day. Just repeat meaningless populist slogans constantly, ignore any kind of critical questioning. The problem for people who were opposed to Brexit, is that once article 50 was triggered there was a ticking clock, so all the government needed to do was distract and delay until the clock ran out.

Talking about views on the Brexit issue, can anyone name a tangible benefit to leaving the EU?

Where exactly are those rules you mentioned to protect minorities then? — Benkei

Eventually there will be a loss for one side or the other. That's inevitable. Either Britain was going to stay in the EU or they weren't.

Polarization typically leads to gridlock, not just a trouncing of the minority. When the Democrats controlled both houses and the White House, all they got through was half ass health insurance reform that has since been weakened. What really has Trump changed, even during the time when the Republicans controlled everything?

And what I've referred to above is when all houses were controlled by one party, but typically (as in now), one house is controlled by the other party, which then protects that party. And of course the courts serve as another protection. The reason the Senate rules of filibuster were changed which previously required 60% approval wasn't so much that they wanted to destroy the minority party, but it's that the minority party created complete gridlock. But still, to what great end? All the Republicans have ever achieved is the appointment of a right leaning Justice.

My point is that real change is very difficult to bring about in the American system, and it seems the same in the UK, where they've been bickering about Brexit long after they supposedly decided to exit.

They'll just wait for them to turn 45 years old. Older people are more conservative because they like the way things were, even though things weren't like the way they remembered them. I can say this because I'm over 45 and I remember things being better even though they weren't.

I gave my reasons for why that won't happen, in my opinion. Although I expect a proportion to switch for financial reasons like, pensions, or inheritance tax relief. But I see a loss of confidence in the usefulness of a free market capitalist model following the global financial crisis.

Also regarding change, our system is such that now Johnson has lots of power and can do almost anything he wants and no one can stop him for the next five years.

Talking about views on the Brexit issue, can anyone name a tangible benefit to leaving the EU? — Punshhh

It's probably as good an idea as the Scots leaving Britain, which is as much based upon their desire for independence and desire to lose their association with England than it is whether they'll actually economically benefit.

I think independence has value in its own right, even if means a loss of economic benefit. It's entirely possible that Canada, for example, would economically benefit if it ceded certain powers to the US, but I can fully understand why Canada wouldn't do that.

But I see a loss of confidence in the usefulness of a free market capitalist model following the global financial crisis. — Punshhh

Except that didn't happen following the Great Recession.

My point is that real change is very difficult to bring about in the American system, and it seems the same in the UK, where they've been bickering about Brexit long after they supposedly decided to exit. — Hanover

I'd say real change would be very much possible in the US if there would be a meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans. The system doesn't provide any protections for the losing party accept a filibuster. In other words, any 60% majority means you're scotfree to do whatever you like.

Except that didn't happen following the Great Recession. — Hanover

What didn't happen? The pick up in interest in heterogenuous economics and Marx and works from the likes of Pickety since 2008 clearly indicate a shift in economic thinking. At least in the Netherlands.