Avoid gridlock, let states experiment

The people of this country just elected a president who says, and I believe him, that he wants to be president of all the people. The facts are half the people will never accept him as a legitimate president, just as half never accepted Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

In addition, the voters, by leaving the Senate in the hands of the Republicans, assured a dysfunctional federal government. Both Joe Biden and we the people have to assume that the Republicans will return to their policy of “no compromise, no cooperation.” They adopted that policy during the administration of Obama. It worked well for them. Why would they change now?

People like to blame the political parties, but folks, they represent us. Just watch what happens when a politician of one party suggests working with someone from the other. They are suddenly attacked by the voters of their own party.

We can either continue to do what has not worked in the past (insanity) or think of a new approach. We have arrived at the point, at the federal level, where both sides can either block the decisions of the other, or after the next election, undo most anything they did. Because of the division among we the people, we are left with ever-increasing power in the hands of the president and the courts. Congress is no longer able to do much of anything on the major social issues, and frankly that may be just as well.

I believe we need to start the process of returning control over the major social issues, as much as possible, to the state level. Let the states deal with things that affect us on that level and totally divide us at the national level.

In this area I would include things such as abortion, the role of religion in public life, minimum wage, drugs, guns, same sex marriage and much more. On issues too big for a state to deal with, such as health care, climate change and epidemics, let the states set up coalitions to deal with these things. The Democratic states have a far larger combined population than many other countries that have functioning governments.

This approach would require that the politicians at the national level, just stay out of these issues, which they are already doing for the most part. We just need them to make that public policy.

President-elect Biden is going to expend a lot of political capital trying to get the country to work together, and we want him to try. But that, for the most part, will go nowhere, and then the country will be even more frustrated. I would prefer that he take a major role in coordinating actions between the Democratic states in pursuit of Democratic values on local social issues. Let Trump, or whomever, work with the Republican states to pursue their vision.

Today at the national level, we have a system that allows a minority population, through control of the Senate, to dictate national policies. In a nation as divided as ours, that is a recipe for disaster. My suggestion would not fix that, but it would allow the majority in any state to control social events for themselves. At least we would have democracy at the state level.

Let’s let the two groups go their own way, and over time we’ll see what works and what does not.

So where now, folks? This problem did not start recently; it has been building for many years. Should we just keep fighting ourselves to gridlock for another generation or two or try something new?