Friday, March 12, 2010
Article of the Day
A disgrace for the Democrats, by Michael Tomasky, is an interesting piece. The real reason I'm posting it here, though, is that the writing style reminds me of Lokys (...That's a joke, except not really...). Anyway, logical as the argument is, it proceeds from a premise I disagree with strongly: Tomasky believes congressmen should do,in their opinion, what's in their constituents best interests, even if their constituents don't want it: because, if they did want it, there would be no risk of not being reelected. I believe all your votes need to be cast on a referendum basis: every congressman, senator, and president should say to himself before every vote, "if this went to referendum in my district, what would the outcome be?"
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While i agree there is a flaw in his logic, i believe the flaw lies elsewhere, that is that his contention is basically that passing this bill will make it popular. His analysis obviously not passing this bill looks terribly for democrats and will kill them at the elections so for self preservation it's only common sense that they should pass it. This bill has always been vastly unpopular and democrats/liberals have always contended it's unpopular because people don't understand it. We haven't done a good enough job explaining it/republicans and insurance companies have subverted the message/etc. So once the bill is passed everyone will see how awesome we are and we'll be popular again. I think it's the opposite, people don't like the bill because they (get this) don't like the bill. And as bad as not passing the bill is, passing it is just as bad if not worse because people hate it.
To be totally honest i think the cards have already been dealt on the healthcare issue. Whether the bill passed or not no longer matters people who don't like it will vote republican regardless of what happens. The only real issue now is the economy. WIll the economy pick up, or can the democrats at least convince people that it is getting better. If not, they are up shit creek. If yes then enough people will forget about the healthcare bill that it won't be that big of a deal.
As far as simply governing by referndum, i don't agree. If that's what you want we should just have a direct democracy where people vote on everything through the internet (which i could be wrong but i think is more or else what perot was suggesting. Possibly minus the internet because it was so long ago? i don't remember.) People elect someone who they believe has their best interests at heart, and while he should be completely contrary to their wishes presumably a congressman should have intelligence/access to information/time/other qualities not all his constituents have that make him qualified to make decisions on their behalf. If you don't like him, don't send him back it's that simple. ("Demand? Who are you to demand anything? i run this town. You're just a bunch of low-income nobodies!" "election in november election in november" "what? again? This stupid country.") The vast majority of americans despise congress and think all congressmen should be voted out, and yet the vast majority of congressmen are voted back in every time. You don't like it, actually vote them out for once.
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