We were divided long before impeachment | Three Things Thursday
February is off to a cold (and frankly, depressing) start — for a number of reasons.
But I suppose it’s nothing a few cozy three things can’t fix… right?
We’ll see. Here are three things to think about this week.
Our Executive Director, Nick, tweeted this earlier this week, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. For however divisive, and however disgusted the impeachment proceedings may have made you feel, the truth is that we’ve been living in this cesspool of political division for a while. It’s not just a result of the last four years, it’s been an ongoing process, and something that’s been created over time.
A Gallup poll from September shows that there is an 87 point gap in approval of Trump between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans think he’s doing great, while Democrats don’t. While it’s wild that Democrats and Republicans could be living in such vastly different realities, it’s crazier that that’s only one point higher than the previous record under Obama — and Obama didn’t even face impeachment.
This division cannot become normal in our country. We cannot let partisan politics and plays for powers become the defining element of our political system. We are one nation, united.
ICYMI - the Iowa caucuses were an… unmitigated disaster. At the time of this writing, the results are still not in. And while a lot of the issues with the caucus are due to an untested app (we’ve long been fans of secure, paper ballot recording methods), a lot of the issues are also due to how Iowa was running the election. As we’ve all long known, caucuses aren’t a great way of determining elections.
Turns out, forcing people to take time out of their busy Monday evenings to stand around in a school gym for hours isn’t the best way to run things. Instead, Iowa should try using ranked choice voting. RCV maintains the key element that makes caucuses worthwhile — namely, the ability to realign your support if your candidate doesn’t make the threshold.
Our deputy director, Tyler, wrote this great blog that breaks down why caucuses are pretty awful, and how RCV could have helped Iowa deliver a result faster, more accurately, more privately, and with better representation of the electorate as a whole.
I don’t care where you come down on the impeachment debate, or on the Iowa caucuses. We can all agree — it’s been a bad week for our nation and our political system.
If there was ever a sign that you are destined for more, this is it. Don’t stand on the sidelines anymore. Get involved repairing our political system and putting voters first; and get paid for it.
Check out DemocracyJobs.org, a new platform we helped launch that brings together all of the jobs from all of the organizations within the movement. Find a job that best suits you, and go for it. We need you. We need your talent. We need to fix our country.