When Mehdi Hasan sat down with Jon Stewart last month, the roles were reversed. This time, the Emmy-winning host of The Daily Show was the one asking the questions — about corporate media, Gaza, Do…
The problem with this is you are screwing over liberal bastions (e.g. Chicago) in conservative zones. Or what about somewhere like New Mexico? We’d be grouped with Arizona and Texas? New Mexico is liberal and that’d kill us. The arrangement also gives even more power to sparsely populated sections of the country vs highly populated sections. It is almost like you are suggesting gerrymandering at a regional level.
Keep in mind that we already have regional representation - state governments. They don’t work great because of the lack of attention they get vs presidental elections. The here part is that states need to have power, but there are things they are insane to declare as “states rights” issues. How do we divide them up? I don’t know. We even have “majority agree” as you suggested via constitutional amendments.
I figure the division would resemble this picture. States with a fair chunk of territory straddling the dividing lines between regions can hold a popular vote, to decide which side they belong to. This roughly carves up the contiguous nation into 1/3rd portions, each having major centers in California, Texas, and New York. Obviously not perfect, but this should give all three some access to global trade and enough landmass to be useful. The important thing is for all three regions to be jockeying to be #1, but not quite succeeding, pushing each other to do better for their citizens, science, freedoms, and so forth.
In any case, my proposal makes a big assumption: that the current Constitution and Bill of Rights are replaced by a new version. It is my belief that it is likely for the United States to have a 2nd American Civil War. If that is the case, the political board as we knew it would have been overturned. Our Constitution is about 250 years old, invented in a time where the horse was the fastest mode of communication, and only 13 states existed. The framers were intelligent, but there was limits to their knowledge, simply because there wasn’t much precedent for the political order they engineered. After all, they tossed out the Articles of Confederation because they weren’t fit for purpose. The fitness and purpose of our current Constitution isn’t good enough for today’s world.
Rules to eliminate gerrymandering and the electoral college, formalizing popular voting, reworking the powers and limits of each branch, and so forth, would be needed.
The problem with this is you are screwing over liberal bastions (e.g. Chicago) in conservative zones. Or what about somewhere like New Mexico? We’d be grouped with Arizona and Texas? New Mexico is liberal and that’d kill us. The arrangement also gives even more power to sparsely populated sections of the country vs highly populated sections. It is almost like you are suggesting gerrymandering at a regional level.
Keep in mind that we already have regional representation - state governments. They don’t work great because of the lack of attention they get vs presidental elections. The here part is that states need to have power, but there are things they are insane to declare as “states rights” issues. How do we divide them up? I don’t know. We even have “majority agree” as you suggested via constitutional amendments.
I figure the division would resemble this picture. States with a fair chunk of territory straddling the dividing lines between regions can hold a popular vote, to decide which side they belong to. This roughly carves up the contiguous nation into 1/3rd portions, each having major centers in California, Texas, and New York. Obviously not perfect, but this should give all three some access to global trade and enough landmass to be useful. The important thing is for all three regions to be jockeying to be #1, but not quite succeeding, pushing each other to do better for their citizens, science, freedoms, and so forth.
In any case, my proposal makes a big assumption: that the current Constitution and Bill of Rights are replaced by a new version. It is my belief that it is likely for the United States to have a 2nd American Civil War. If that is the case, the political board as we knew it would have been overturned. Our Constitution is about 250 years old, invented in a time where the horse was the fastest mode of communication, and only 13 states existed. The framers were intelligent, but there was limits to their knowledge, simply because there wasn’t much precedent for the political order they engineered. After all, they tossed out the Articles of Confederation because they weren’t fit for purpose. The fitness and purpose of our current Constitution isn’t good enough for today’s world.
Rules to eliminate gerrymandering and the electoral college, formalizing popular voting, reworking the powers and limits of each branch, and so forth, would be needed.