Politics 101

By Dave Anderson:

Ian Welsh summarizes politics 101:

Bad policy = bad outcomes for ordinary people.  Bad outcomes for ordinary people when you control the House, Senate and White House  make them figure they should try the other party.   (See, 2006, 2008).

Dem politicos need to get this tattooed on their butt, so when they pull their heads out for air, they can’t avoid seeing it.

The current Democratic bet is three fold.  The first is that there will be an internal Republican civil war that will cost the GOP numerous winning opportunities.  The prime example would be the NY-23 special election as the Teabagger+GOP vote was greater than the Democratic vote, but the Democrats won anyways.  The second is that the GOP is still fundamentally discredited and most swingable voters would be pinching their noses with three ton vises to vote for the GOP. 

Finally, the Democrats are making a bet that the bad policy that they are supporting is "good policy" for the swing money.  And they expect to see the swing money continue to back the Democrats which will be enough to either depress GOP turnout or get enough apathetic Democrats to turnout to hold a decent size majority next year. 

Comments

[Ian Welsh]

Well said. Yes, they are betting that they are lesser of two evils, the Republicans are borked beyond saving for at least another couple years and that the money they make through bad policy is sufficient to make up for the negative electoral effects of said policy.

[Joe]

Its worse than that Ian - this is not just about the next few years. This is not about dems exploiting republican vulnerabilities.

These 2 parties no longer represent Americans and we don't actually live in a democracy anymore. It is not a "representative democracy" because, as we have seen, the will of the people does not matter. Our choices at the polls are a sham.

The only real votes we have anymore are the dollars in our wallets and as long as we continue to "cast those ballots" by spending them with the corpocracy, nothing will change and we really don't matter.

Real change cannot happen at the ballot box - it will happen when we organize meaningful economic boycotts.

[GreenDreams]

Or let's say it is at best a "representative democracy" of corporate big-money interests. Sadly, they are apparently the only "voters" who count. If only we could effectively boycott the biggest money interests: insurance, fossil fuels and pharma, we would have a vote again.

The other possibility is undoing the fiction of "corporate personhood," which could be done by citizen referendum, but only state by state, as there is no federal process for that. Example: "for all purposes under the Constitution of [state] the term 'person' shall mean 'natural persons only'."