How healthy or unhealthy is political debate in the USA?

How healthy or unhealthy is political debate in the USA? Give it a grade:
A. Excellent. It's very healthy. Politicians put country ahead of personal interests. Disagreements with other politicians are honest and respectful philosophical differences. They stick to the issues instead of personal attacks and diligently make an honest effort to get their facts straight.
B. Good. It's fairly healthy. It's mostly like above, but occasionally when tempers flare personal attacks happen and someone might on occasion get a fact or two wrong.
C. Fair. There's a mixture of honest debate and personal attacks and a mixture of politicians getting their facts right or wrong -- if wrong, it's due to sloppiness, not deliberate misrepresentation.
D. Poor. It's unhealthy with more personal attacks than honest disagreement. Facts are gotten wrong most of the time, either due to sloppiness or deliberate misrepresentation.
F. Failure. Most political discussion consists of personal attacks with very little substance with facts deliberately misrepresented for personal or party gain to the point where representative government is failing in the USA.

Complete failure. Talk about "class warfare", we've degenerated into "partisian warfare" to an extent I've never experienced in my life before. It's almost a non-shooting civil war at this point. Bullets are next, I fear.

Pre-Bush43 and Obama, Fair. Now, poor.

It's more or less an echo chamber mostly.

It's complete failure. Not only is it built upon spin, hyper partisan rhetoric, stump speeches, and avoidance of saying anything important; but the entire system is also entirely closed down to prevent proper political competition of ideas. "Debates" are staged, the press is controlled and too partisan, the People not thinking about anything other than the attacks going on. That's why most debate ends up with "Well X is better than Y". Well gee thanks! Doesn't tell my why X is good, only that at best they both suck.

Complete failure for many reasons. Politicians of all stripes pander to the extreme elements of their constituency and are afraid to say anything that might piss them off, no matter how logical or factually accurate. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that a huge chunk of their job (as they see it) is to figure out how to raise enough money to get re-elected from the second they get into office, which makes them beholden to the people in a position to give them that money. Various interest groups pump so much disinformation into the media that it'd be almost impossible to figure out what the facts actually are (regarding any given situation/theory/bill/idea/etc) even if the media could be relied upon to provide actual information rather than parroting the most insipid talking points they can find while creating trumped up conflicts in order to justify the 24 hour coverage they need viewers and sponsors to pay for. And this is not to mention the increasingly severe, shrill, and irrational polarization of the body politic.

In short, it sucks all over the place.

It's a complete failure. I don't even talk about politics in person anymore because it gets very ugly. It usually turns into rich vs. poor, black vs. white, gay vs. straight, worker vs. boss, ect.

Well, that's an easy question.

Ikari said:

It's complete failure. Not only is it built upon spin, hyper partisan rhetoric, stump speeches, and avoidance of saying anything important; but the entire system is also entirely closed down to prevent proper political competition of ideas. "Debates" are staged, the press is controlled and too partisan, the People not thinking about anything other than the attacks going on. That's why most debate ends up with "Well X is better than Y". Well gee thanks! Doesn't tell my why X is good, only that at best they both suck.

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What he said ^^

Phantom said:

It's a complete failure. I don't even talk about politics in person anymore because it gets very ugly. It usually turns into rich vs. poor, black vs. white, gay vs. straight, worker vs. boss, ect.

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I agree, it used to be you could carry on a decent conversation about politics if you wore different stripes...not today....and ill tell you who I blame

I blame moveon.org and Mediamatters and the far left for their nonstop attacks on GWB...the codepinks who instantly disappeared when Obama got elected...etc etc....and now the teaparty which is the same thing and doing the same thing as the far left did ....but they are the far right....both of them can kiss my grits...I want no part of either of them.

I voted total FAIL....worst ive ever seen in my lifetime and im older than most of you...

It's the worst it's been since the late 50's and into the 60's (remember that in 1963, prior to November 22nd, it wasn't too uncommon to hear people calling for the lynching of the President). But there's an added element of willfull ignorance and anti-knowledge/intellect/education that is quite disturbing.

It's excellent! The sunny disposition of everyone involved warms my optimistic heart.

lpast said:

I agree, it used to be you could carry on a decent conversation about politics if you wore different stripes...not today....and ill tell you who I blame

I blame moveon.org and Mediamatters and the far left for their nonstop attacks on GWB...the codepinks who instantly disappeared when Obama got elected...etc etc....and now the teaparty which is the same thing and doing the same thing as the far left did ....but they are the far right....both of them can kiss my grits...I want no part of either of them.

I voted total FAIL....worst ive ever seen in my lifetime and im older than most of you...

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So true. But so many are taken hook, line and sinker into this traveling show.

Not unlike the carnies at the carnival. Everyone knows their games are fixed but look at the lines of people playing it......lol I am a strong right winger, I am a strong left winger, I am a fricking idiot.

I wouldn't vote complete failure until potential candidates come under serious threat of bodily harm. There are many oppressive nations where throwing your hat in the ring also meant throwing in your life.

I think our political discourse is fair.

Yes, there is plenty of fighting, name-calling, and misinformation on both sides. But I think this behavior is over-emphasized in the media.

There is still penty of honest discussion and compromising going on, particularly in the subnational level. But even the feds get it right; remember that for every high profile bill that we see in the news, there are many more that move smoothly through the system.

It could be much better, but I don't think we've hit the bottom yet. Hopefully we can figure out how to fix it before we get that far.