Democracy Has Taken a Beating, But Americans Are Not Going Gently Into That Good Night
We often encounter suggestions that the will of the American people is constantly frustrated–and there’s a great deal of evidence to support that, given issues like 94% of voters favor stricter background checks for prospective gun owners and 70% oppose arctic oil drilling, yet Congress consistently replies with a yawn when asked to do what its constituents clearly want.
This might suggest that the U.S. political process is completely broken. But is it really?
Republicans, who generally oppose gun control and favor opening up lands and oceans to oil exploration, are taking a horrific shellacking at the polls. It seems the overall tenor of American politics has shifted radically since the 2016 elections, now that we’ve seen what 12+ months of the Trump administration actually looks like, and what it produces in terms of policies that, generally, are antithetical to core American values: fairness, rationality and science-based thinking, compassion, honesty, consumer protection, race-blindness, equal justice, as well as reason and stability in dealings with foreign nations.
Case in point, from this article:
The GOP has now lost 35 legislative seats since President Donald Trump’s inauguration just over a year ago, following Democrat Mike Revis’s victory Tuesday in a special election for Missouri’s state House of Representatives. The 27-year-old beat Republican David Linton by 3 percentage points in the race to represent the state’s 97th district in Jefferson County, which Trump won by 28 points in 2016.
Revis’s victory over Linton, who campaigned on an anti-choice, pro-gun agenda, “will undoubtedly send another shockwave through the GOP as we continue to run the best candidates focused on addressing local issues and improving their neighbors’ quality of life,” Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told the Huffington Post.
At this point, the grim reality of Trump is hitting home for the common American. What once was a campaign slogan is now a nonstop slap in the face: the nonstop lies, and anti-science/anti-intellectual positions, the overt racism, the emotional instability, the corruption, the tax scam, the nonstop attempts to delegitimize the free press and the U.S. law enforcement, the provocation of nuclear war, the labeling of political opponents as treasonous, and the blatant, ongoing obstruction of justice. We’ve seen it, and we don’t like it; in fact, we hate its ugly guts.
As I’ve told my friends overseas for years: “We’re stupid, but we’re not that stupid.” Perhaps this in an indication that I’m right.
Craig,
You seem to be confusing ‘elected representative government’ with some more idealized concept of “democracy”.
Government policy can’t be conducted at the whim of pollsters. “Democracy” , can’t be decided by the daily whim of public opinion as measured by the loaded questions of polls.
But you are correct in your assumption the voting intentions of America, like most western nations, are fickle and tend to swing back an forward always returning to the centre. In bi-caramel or tri-cameral systems, voters tend to hedge their bets and rarely give any single party control of all branches of authority.
Although often inefficient and frustrating, by this means voters impose checks and balances to prevent radical or excessive power.
Curiously, for all his faults, President Trump has proven to be one of the most “democratic” of US Presidents. He seldom receives enough credit or recognition for his insistence on reducing the practice of rule by Presidential fiat or decree, insisting on forcing the legislative branch do it’s job. ( it will be interesting to see if this continues when he faces a more hostile legislature).
Trump is on pace to sign more executive orders than any president in the last 50 years. https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/13/politics/donald-trump-executive-orders/index.html
You write: “It will be interesting to see if this continues when he faces a more hostile legislature.” Where Trump’s going when he faces a more hostile legislature, given the likely ensemble of data on obstruction, collusion and corruption/money-laundering that will be available by then: prison.