Bipartisanship, Dems with no ideas

[Riddil]

Wasting way too much time at work today, but eh, what the hell, I can spare a little time to post. (Start a new position in 3 weeks, so I'm "short-timing" my current position) ;-)

Watching the news channels this morning and the responses to the State-of-the-Union address really highlights exactly what's wrong with politics today. The whole thing is a mess. There's a few themes you always here from Republicans:

- Why won't the Dems stop their bipartisan tricks and work with us?
- We're the only ones with ideas, the Dems don't have any original thoughts. All they do is insult our wonderful plan-for-the-future.

And the Democrats always say:
- The Republicans preach bipartisanship but everything they do is an effort to force their agenda down our throats.

*sigh*

When are they going to get it in their minds it's NOT "us vs. them". The current state-of-affairs is easy to figure out.

YES, capitol hill is bipartisan, has been for years. Because of that the party-in-power is able to force their agenda. Since Repub's control both houses of congress and the presidency, it means they can constantly try to push their agenda, and all the Dems can do is try to derail it. (ie, Social Security reform).

The Dems *can't* have any ideas for two reasons: 1) Anything they put out there will get shot down. No one will fight a war they know they'll lose. 2) These people ARE individuals. Dems don't always agree 100% with all dems, just like Repubs don't agree 100% with all Repubs. But since we have a damn 2-party system, in order to get anything to pass you MUST meet two requirements:
1) Your party must be in power
2) You must force your party-in-power to enact the changes that the leader of the party dictates

Since the Dems aren't in power there's constant in-fighting as they try to establish dominance, and wait for the pendulum of power to swing back their way. Then we'll have the exact same rule-by-insanity... only with a Ass in charge instead of an Elephant.

I'm really starting to think that we'd be better off if we had a multi-party system like other countries. At least then the political parties would be forced to work together to try to accomplish the common good, instead of their own self-serving interests.

(The BEST case would be a 0-party system, but that ain't happening).

Frustrating.