Four political parties

 

I think it is time to recognize there are actually four different political views being expressed these days, this reality does not fit neatly into the current political party structure. There is a Republican party elite, which has for a long time chosen the parties nominee but now it is being challenged by the rank-and-file who now want to control who gets nominated and elected to office and don’t think the elites are speaking on their behalf.

A lot of these rank-and-file members respond specifically to leaders who are authoritarian like Mr. Trump. That tendency more than their political beliefs control who they want to support. But they are also well to the right of the parties elites and vote accordingly. These two differences suggest why the Republican Party is effectively falling apart.

The Democratic Party suffers from similar sets of differences between that in the Democratic Party elites and a large part of the parties voting base. The left-wing part of the parties voter base does not feel represented by the choices made by the elites. In a lot of ways the differences on the Democratic side are a lot like the differences on the Republican side with the left wing group and a much more moderate group in the party. The left-wing group feels that their views are not adequately represented by the party elites.

All of this suggests that we would get a better sense of the country political views by breaking the two major parties into four so that all of these different beliefs actually have a chance to be represented in a general election. This would work best if we had ranked choice voting as our voting system so that in choosing the person that represents your view best you could also decide who you think would be your second choice and your vote would represent both a first choice and a second choice. Then all parts of the political spectrum would be recognized and people would be able to say what they would do if there choice didn’t get enough votes to have the possibility of winning.

I think there would be a lot to learn from the process of deciding who people’s second choice would be in this sort of process. It is certainly possible and maybe probable that people on the two extremes would support the other extreme person rather than the other candidate that is similar to them in their political beliefs. It is also quite possible that the two groups in the middle would see or feel that they had much more in common with each other than with either of the other two groups.

In all of this there is also the possibility of fourth and fifth parties. If ranked choice voting was put in place. In particular I think that the Libertarian party might try to stand on its own. It may be that the left-wing party would be a democratic socialist party.

This is a conversation we should’ve been having for a long time now, but this year the way the two parties campaigns have moved forward seems to be actually be moving closer to this reality already. but we do not have a voting system in place that will support this approach effectively. We should and would have a system supporting this approach if we adopted a ranked choice voting system.

Bars in bathrooms

my disability leaves me paralyzed on one side. In my case, it is the right side that is partly paralyzed. This means that in a bathroom I need a bar on the left side of the toilet. It would be easy for public places to install a second rail that can be lifted up and down in any Restrooms, and restroom stalls designed for handicapped people. This is one of a lot of small-scale accommodations that the ADA could and should require without costing facilities any real difficulty or outlay of funds.

this is a serious problem in hotel rooms, as well as in public spaces and I have encountered it in both contexts. In the hotel contact It is particularly important because some hotels only have rooms set up in the way that serves the needs of people with left side paralysis. We were in Washington DC this week and learned after booking a room in a Hampton Inn, where they told us the room would meet exactly the need, that it did not.  if they had been honest with us from the beginning it would have made arrangements at a hotel. I really did meet my needs.The people working the desk at the hotel told us that none of the Hilton owned Hotels in the Washington, DC area had any rooms set up that would accommodate somebody with paralysis on the right side. we ultimately ended up in a Marriott Renaissance Hotel that was set up properly for me.They also had  had an ADA coordinator, who was very interested in being helpful.