the two-party system. nothing is more obviously called for. these are some silly people. all of them on each side just yap the same empty phrases and hope they can successfully blame the other, the super-committee debacle being the latest example. anything that preserves the two-party system is a mistake, and even with approval ratings in single digits, the two parties have a hundred ways to keep anything from outside from coming in. people just have to hop off. i hope ron paul launches. elizabeth warren is a plausible outside force. folks like that must see that they can't actually accomplish anything important inside these empty-yet-oligarchic organizations. just to say the obvious, nothing in the constitution enshrines the two-party system. i'm not sure how, in a world of extreme fund-raising, in a media environment that just keeps running in the same loop of talking heads, in a world of gerrymandered districts, you can break these wretched, useless country clubs. but they make a joke of the idea of democracy. plus if you could break the two-party system, you might get john kerry off television.
what i like about the current moment is how close the visions of government really are, how everyone sops up wall street money, how around-the-edges the debates are in relation to the parties' extreme opposition to each other. it's a devastating combination: they can't even rescue the state capitalism they all embody. it's comical.
