Short and Sweet Blog

Have you heard?  We recently had an election.  Although there is disagreement about what the electorate meant by voting as it did, the results are in.  Approximately 25% of the Democratic delegation of the house of representatives was voted out of office.  The Democrats went from a previous 257 – 178 majority to about a 243 – 192 minority.  Likewise of the formerly Democratic senate seats up for election  31% were turned over to the the Republicans.  A number of other Democratic seats in both the house and senate were narrowly retained, mainly in blue states.  Seems like a pretty big “statement” to me but I admit to a a point of view about such things.

The question of why the election turned out this way is, as all political questions are, an open one since the people vote for a whom and are not required to have a valid reason for why they did so.  Is this dramatic swing at least possibly the result of what the Democrats did in ramming through a permanent health care entitlement, a far-reaching financial reform bill and passing a hugely wasteful stimulus bill resulting in spending even more money more quickly than the previous group of drunken sailors?  There are at least two possibilities to choose from.  First, this historic election result could have been caused by a public unnerved and possibly unhappy by the passage of these three major bills which were enacted with virtually no input or support from the opposition party?  Second, this historic result could have been a mere blip on the screen caused solely by a punitive impulse on the part of an electorate understandably impatient for a turnaround in the economy even though the cause of the bad economy was solely the policies of the preceding government?  Which is it?

Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats

One of my favorite political characters already answered this question for herself last Thursday.  After a day or two she finished mulling the meaning of the vote.   Concluded the Speaker, the election represented a mere immature tantrum by the people. Therefore she decided to throw her hat in the ring for leader of the now minority house Democrats.  In a democratically delivered Twitter announcement soon to be former Speaker Pelosi explains her view this way:

Our work is far from finished, . . . .  As a result of Tuesday’s election, the role of Democrats in the 112th Congress will change, but our commitment to serving the American people will not. We have no intention of allowing our great achievements to be rolled back.

Wow, she, in her broad minded and ever forgiving way, will continue to take the part of the immature and tantrum-throwing American people who just put her out of her speakership.  She is really nice, isn’t she?  She wants to be minority leader so she can continue to “serve” the American people.  Her way of doing this is, apparently, to dig in with her Democratic brethren in order to protect  their “vision” of what is best for the immature American people.  She labels these bills, presumably mostly the health care bill, as “our great achievements.”  And according to her, she’s up for the fight to keep it.

Healthcare, once implemented, cannot be undone.  Ms. Pelosi knows this.  The use of the inertia of legislation is what Ms. Pelosi is seeking.  As her “reforms” are implemented insurance policies will be changed.  Insurance companies will go out of business because the model for that business, which requires that the insurers be allowed to design their own policies and choose the people whom they will insure, will pass into history.  People will drop or otherwise alter their coverages waiting for the government to pick them up.  It’s like a bell which cannot be unrung.  When you undertake such a massive and permanent political change in the country and you fail to obtain the the consent of not just a bare majority but of a large majority of the governed to implement it, what is the difference between that and acting the tyrant.  The will of many has not just been ignored but has been permanently thwarted by the kind of activist government represented by Ms. Pelosi’s ‘achievement’ and her intention to engage in guerilla war to protect it. 

But what if she is wrong about the message.  What if an actual majority of the electorate really was sending the message that they want to undo the health care bill which has already apparently resulted in increases in insurance premiums for at least some of the “people?”  How is it that we can characterize what she will be doing then, if she has indeed misread the results?  Well, in that case she would be deliberately thwarting the will of the very Americans she says she serves, wouldn’t she?  Huh?  And she knew in two days what the will of the people was!!!!! That is an impressive act of analysis on her part. 

I am afraid to say that I believe she takes this position after a two day reflection period solely in order to validate her political agenda and so-called achievements.  But that wouldn’t be a very nice thing for her to do, would it?  That would amount to a punitive reaction on her part, albeit not an immature one I’m sure, against the very people she says she serves.  Her political “skills” got health care enacted when a majority or near majority was wholly unwilling to accept it.  She did not do enough, apparently, to convince them that her idea was a good one, she just caused it to pass through manipulation of the political process.  I suppose that this is understandable given her memorable quote:

But now that it has been passed and, perhaps, rejected, what to do?  How could the people who Ms. Pelosi wants to serve have sent a clearer message at any juncture that they were unhappy with a big government takeover of 16% of the economy?   They appeared at the town hall style meetings with politicians ready to protest and ask hard questions so often that the Democrats stopped having such meetings in public where they could not control the agenda.   They wrote letters, jammed switchboards and did everything they could peacefully do to tell their representatives that they didn’t want it.   They lined the streets near the capitol in D.C. the day it was to be passed asking Congress to desist.  It passed anyway.  Then they voted at the very next election and in historic numbers to “throw the bums out” and as a result many of those who had voted for it will be gone from the next congress.  It appears to me that in order to justify her protection of her achievement and her legacy Pelosi deliberately misinterprets the vote of the electorate as a mere temper tantrum seeking to cloak her naked self interestedness in the mantle of the protector of the people.  That’s like a waitress taking your order and bringing you something  else to eat because “it is better for you” and then charging you for it even though you sent it back.  It’s just a plainly arrogant thing to do.   

This is an object lesson for voters for all time.  Your vote is important.  Elections have consequences.  When you elect people you actually lose all control of them until the next election.  In the meantime all sorts of mischief can be perpetrated, even permanent changes in our way of life.  So be careful not to vote for someone who thinks you’re an idiot because, even when you vote them out, they’ll be convinced they’re smarter and better than you are and should be in control of your life anyway.  It’s as simple as that.  Forewarned is forearmed.

This entry was posted on November 9, 2010 at 12:07 am and is filed under Clash of Worldviews, Political Economy. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.