The Liberal Politics & Current Events Book Club discussion

We'll be reading It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the Politics of Extremism by Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein through the end of March.

This thread can be used to give book reviews as well as for a general discussion of the book. Please feel free to start a new discussion in the book club folder if you'd like to focus on specific aspects of or ideas from the book.

" Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger."

Yes, and until pigs learn to fly, we'll be doomed to have grounded pigs (and abattoirs). But pigs aren't going to learn to fly, and it's disingenuous of the authors to suggest otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent book, and it's refreshing to see anointed insiders reject the false moral equivalency between the parties that the media (even the non-manifestly-loony media) have been purveying at the behest of their corporate owners, but the truth is, we need a reinstatement of "the fairness doctrine," a literate and non-brainwashed electorate, and a parliamentary democracy, and we're not going to get any of them.