Howard Fineman on Ed's show keeps peddling the notion that

[Skidmore]

America is an evenly divided nation. Ugh.

[mucifer]

1. yeah well it's kinda true

[Fawke Em]

2. It is because of the propaganda, unfortunately.

:/

[elleng]

6. It WAS, I think,

before repugs became insane; now, I'm not sure. I do think most Americans are 'middle of the road,' not extreme in any direction.

[dems_rightnow]

3. It is pretty evenly divided

Why does it upset you that he says it is?

[truedelphi]

4. That slicky CIA rat spent a huge proportion of Newsweek's pages

Helping to swift boat Kerry. I have no idea why Keith Olbermann or Ed ever turn to him for his slime ball opinion!

[Honeycombe8]

5. I've been hearing that for years. # of Democrats & # of Republicans are about equal.

That's why independents and moderates are so important.

You can see why Democrats have problems, when yu consider that the Democratic Party has many more moderates than the Republican Party has, and Republicans are much more likely to fall into line and vote Republican, even if they have to hold hteir noses.

[Flatpicker]

7. It's fair

To say that.
Though I'm concerned that Progressives will be out bred by "Full Quiver" families in the future.

[TheKentuckian]

8. It is for electoral purposes even if not true in real numbers

Between the hold on low population states in the Senate, same for the electoral college, and toss in the gerrymandering and that is what the system churns out.

Popular numbers are of limited impact on our setup when not roughly evenly distributed.

[truedelphi]

9. Over thirty six million people live in California - yet

We have TWO senators.

When a person considers that in 1789, there were only three million people in the entire USA, and many of those were kids, and many of the adults (women, slaves) could not vote, it really is perplexing that nothing gets done on this issue.

[TheKentuckian]

10. It is unfortunate and undemocratic but not surprising the issue persists

The only way to change it in the context of the system would mean the low population states would have to freely surrender their advantage or balance or whatever you call it depending on perspective.

I think the House should be expanded quite a bit too. It is just too many people per district and representation becomes far too remote but we can't fix that either because the system won't allow it without deep interest in both parties in reflective representation and it isn't really even a majority position in even one.

Probably the country will proven unmanageable or become something utterly contrary to what we have espoused to be.