Added one sentence to the second-to-last paragraph in a fit of cynicism.
Let's talk about the big ugly elephant in the middle of the living room, and why it's there. Maybe even how to get rid of it.
Not the Republicans, not the fact that the Democrats have been successfully painted as the party that can't get their act together, not the fact that the real reason the Democrats look so disorganized compared to the GOP is that the Democrats at least pay lip service to consensus, rather than being run as a top-down heirarchy, and not the fact that the lip service the Dems give to consensus is marginal at best.
Crossposted at My Left Wing and at home.
The elephant in the room is that there is little or no reason to vote in the United States. There are plenty of reasons not to vote, and some very good ones to vote against someone (which was practically the entire focus of the last presidential election). Simply said, if there were good reasons to vote, more of us in the country would be doing it. The non-voters are the customers who walk out of your store and never come back, without telling you why. There are a lot of them, and usually they're anything from annoyed to totally uninterested - but at best it's because whatever you had to offer just isn't what they want. Old ground, old topic, dead horse, whatever. I'm going to cover it again, because a 60-65% turnout of eligible voters is pretty pathetic for a country that is at war.
Think about that. at least seven out of twenty people who could have registered their opinion regarding what this country was going to do to other people, and how they felt about what we had done, had nothing to say, because what the political process had to offer them was just plain unappealing on one level or another. I know a great many of them had to have something come up, but there are only so many sick toddlers, missing children, lost car keys, and houses on fire that can exist in the country at the same time before Fox News decides to have a gleeful fit about it. The low turnout for the national elections is nothing compared to the miserable showing we have for most local elections, which is an interesting phenomenon, because it's related to why the national turnout is low, but only in part.
Now, when we are voting, the candidates are mostly irrelevant; we are voting for political parties. From the county Board of Supervisors to the President of the United States, in almost every election in the nation there are one or two choices. Gerrymandering has increased the number of single-candidate elections in the country, and apart from stinkers like Oliver North (the one man in Virginia guaranteed to not beat Chuck Robb at the ballot box) being defeated for a U.S. Senate seat, you could hold both candidates incommunicado for the duration of the election and the overall political map would change very little. If this doesn't worry you, think about what is implied: the people who decide which candidates will be backed by the parties themselves have near-total representation in every elected office in this country. Anyone who is not involved in that process, at whatever level, is effectively choosing which (of the candidates they have little or no vested interest in) stinks less.
There are many people in the country who do focus on this process, and give countless hours and dollars towards the goal of getting one person or another in office. Still, how many of these people found the candidate before they gained the backing of the party? Not many, and the example of Paul Hackett's treatment by the Democrats is illustrative of just what happens to those who approach the corridors of power without being properly vetted by the system. Keep in mind, these people are not being picked because they have perfect lives, there are few candidates for sainthood in politics. These people are allowed to run for office (yes, allowed) because as they were working their way up, they have proven themselves willing to embrace party loyalty, and not be too startling in the process.
So what about the reformers, or the wild-eyed, passionate citizens who want change? Look at the blogosphere, which was supposed to revolutionize both politics and the media, and is now fighting for its soul as the Powers That Be attempt to co-opt what supports the status quo, while marginalizing the rest. Again, look at Paul Hackett. Over and over we're told the same thing that we were told in 2000 and 2004 by the GOP: “get over it,” “move on.” Hackett was no prince, and the blogosphere isn't the Senate at its heydey, but Hackett's campaign was a populist one, and the blogosphere is the biggest town meeting ever held. It is an outrage that things which come directly out of the ideals of representative democracy are apparently intolerable to the democracy we live in.
This is the single most important issue in our country today. There are issues which are more important for personal life, for human rights, for simple decency, but it has been proven empirically that a small minority of this country has and is (and therefore can continue to) hijack the political process and direct policy in whatever direction they choose. It's more important than anything, because without it,
we have no control over the decisions that are made. Without the ability to fully participate in the political process, our opinions about what that process should produce are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you agree with those in power, if the next bunch that comes along with an opinion you don't like doesn't care what you think.
To use an analogy: yes, the car we're in is running. Yes, it sucks that the car is built for men and not women. Yes it's unnerving that the engine is on fire. Yes, the preacher the driver wants to hire as a faith-based mechanic is a scary guy. Yes, we drove off from the gas station without paying, and the nozzle and hose are still dangling from the tank. No, that park we joyrode through will never be the same. No, I don't know if those nuns who were walking through the park are going to Heaven. No, I have no idea what happened to that school bus we ran off the road, and at the moment I don't care, because we're going 90 miles an hour, and the driver is telling us to take off our seat belts. Not only that, his bud is busy disassembling the air bags and the anti-lock brakes so he can have more wiring for a monitoring system to watch what we're doing, most of the other passengers are either cheering him on or trying to figure out how to get him away from the wheel so they can have some fun too, and we're passing in a no-passing zone, right into the path of a bus, and there are more coming up behind it.
Can you tell yet why I believe in public campaign financing, instant runoff voting, and election reform in general, and why I think everyone else should be, too? Provided, that is, we still have a government that can be controlled at all.
I strongly suggest you look into them. Do some research to find out more about them. Saying you can do nothing is the only way to absolutely guarantee you can't.