Living in the time when majorities are too small

[Model35mech]

a time when small majorities lead to blackmail hacks by radicals?

I remember a time when the US democracy was taught to students in Civics classes as a game of compromise. But that no longer holds.

We've seen Sinema and Manchin obstructing the Democratic Party's goals in the waning weeks of Democratic control of both houses and the presidency. In that special window we might have wished to have been spent on getting everything that could be done, done.

And now we see a similar problem with intra-party obstructionism in the R's trying to elect a speaker.

It's a time of peculiar math. More and more equal representation of the left and right produces smaller majorities... under the old paradigm we might have expected legislators to recognize that and invoke compromise and cooperation that seems to become -more- necessary.

But, at least as it is represented in the media, we don't see an increase in compromise or sharing between the parties. What we see is that smaller and smaller majorities mean radicals have greater and greater ability to successfully obstruct projects/agendas of their own parties. Rather than promoting broad consensus on less radical bills, this hacking/highjacking/blackmailing of compromise maintains the politics of radical minority agendas

This obstructionism also seems to be confused with true leadership power. It isn't. Obstructing radicals are no more leaders of the legislative bodies than a hostage taking blackmailer is a community leader.

But they ARE opportunists, of the worst type. They exploit small majorities for radical advantage where, for practical math reasons, compromise ought to be promoted.

Yes, this is what our Democracy looks like. We either tolerate/endorse this as a feature, or find paths to bigger majorities, or evolve/accept systems of voting which protect against radical minorities blackmailing the will of the majorities.