"Republicans are evil!"
"Obama is a tool!"
"The Senate is impotent!"
"The Blue Dogs lost us the House!"
"We must support the President!"
"We must challenge the President!"
I don't come here much. When I do I see the same ranting over an over, month after month. Here's a revelation for you: you're wasting your time. Not that the issues discussed here are unimportant. Not that your passion is not admirable. But you are wasting your time.
The reason the same arguments get voiced here day after day, year after year is that you are all arguing in the context of the current political system. You know, the mythical "two-party" system? Our "representative democracy"? Newsflash: If we ever had that kind of system, it died a long time ago. We have a plutocracy with the veneer of a representative government. It doesn't matter whether a politician calls himself a Democrat or Republican, they all work directly or indirectly for those who control the money. Even the "good guys" (can you count them on one hand these days?) ultimately need money, and lots of it, to gain and hold office.
As long as this situation exists, you can blame the individual politicians or party for our bad government, or agrue until you are blue in the face about one political tactic or another, but you are looking at the symptom, not the disease. The problem is that our political system is broken. If you could elect the perfect President/Congressman/Senator, or even a large group of them, they would get chewed-up and spit out by the system at the end of the day. Electing "more and better Democrats" won't change things, unless the system is changed.
Someone once wrote that the stages in the the life of a politician in Washington are idealism, pragmatism, greed, and corruption (of course some skip right to the greed and corruption). The driving factor is that for any elected person or group of people to have the opportunity to have a positive impact on our country they a) need to get elected and b) stay in office long enough to gain the positions of power to make significant changes. Both of these require LOTS of money. In this past election cycle many races saw record amounts of money spent. Politicians are constantly looking for their next funding source. It's like a wild animal having to constantly hunt for food to survive. Not only does that not leave a lot of time for good governing, it is fertile ground for corruption.
Two things can change this:
- Campaign finance reform
- A new political party
I can hear the snickers now. And you're right, these are longshots. #1 has been tried many times over many years without luck. Chalk that up to trying to change the system from within the system. #2 has actually gotten some traction lately (see the Tea Party). Set aside the philosophical diffences with the TP for the moment. You have to acknowledge that they have had an impact on the Republican party. It will be interesting to see if they have any impact on the actual policies now that they are part of the Washington machine. I think we need to emulate thier approach (minus the craziness).
Regardless of what you think of those suggestions, we should at least acknowledge that the political discourse that goes on here is wasted time and energy as long as we have the same political system. Until that changes, nothing else will. You may resume your bickering now.