Since Clinton supported NAFTA (mildly), you weren’t betrayed - you weren’t paying attention. There were politicians that opposed NAFTA strongly - why didn’t you vote for Buchanan or Perot?
I think it’s good for politicians to ignore some demands. Especially stupid ones. After all, as a politician, if you’re not pissing somebody off–you’re probably not doing your job, right? Especially if you’re not pissing off your own party: just because you belong to a political party with one set of values doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for everybody. Even the people who didn’t vote for you.
Having said that, I think the good citizens of America–or the bad ones–would not be wrong in assuming that all of our politicians are total jerks. You don’t have to meet them to know this. Take Obama for example: seems like a nice guy. But what kind of man wants to take responsibility for millions of lives–and millions of really, really important decisions–along with the pressure of being a target for assassination? What about the pressure of his job destroying his family life?
I mean, who is does this guy think he is? Is this a man who cares deeply for a bunch of people he’s never met? That kind of supernatural selflessness doesn’t exist. So the question is, what kind of cocky workaholic thinks he knows what’s good for you better than you do? How much are they paying this guy? Personally, I would need more than whatever Obama is making to handle that kind of pressure.
So if our government is run by people who are in it for money, fame, and power, it’s probably not doing it’s job. But what can we do?
I guess we can sit around and do nothing. That’s pretty easy, especially if no one can pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with the principals of our government.
Or… REVOLUTION!!! I myself am too comfortable and lazy to bother, but you’d be surprised how many people, especially young people, are of the opinion that the whole system needs to be rebuilt from scratch. The only problem is that the revolution isn’t organized.
Admittedly I have not read the whole thread so this may have been said but the answer is easy.
Your recourse to a politician you do not like is to not vote for them the next time around.
You can go further in supporting other candidates via your vote, money and helping to convince others.
Sadly I think too many people do not pay attention which allows incumbents a big advantage which sucks but that just means you have to work harder to unseat them.
I wasn’t a Democrat back then. I was drinking the Free Market bullshit kool-aid back then. I voted for Bush Sr. It was my first Presidential election where I was eligible to vote.
Edited to add: there was also the example of George W “Read my Lips, no New Taxes” Bush.
If you plan on ignoring some demands, like “Read my lips, no new taxes”, then why promise to entertain them in the first place?
My issue here is we’re entering into a situation where no matter who it is that you put in office, they simply will not honor the more important aspects of their promises. You vote one liar out and another liar replaces him.
This presents a fundamental weakness in the system. If the voters want something but the wealthy 1% want a different path, that 1% has the power, through campaign contributions, to get their way no matter who you put in office.
If you elected 100 Bernie Sanders clones to the US Senate I’d bet money that the rich 1% would find a way to take political control of them. They always seem to find a way to get around the will of the people.
How do you beat this emerging problem without all-out revolution? And anyone don’t BS me by saying rebellion is impossible - it’s already happening in the Middle East.
This is one reason you vote for a candidate rather than a party.
In Wisconsin the voters are involved in a recall of 8 state senators. That would suggest there are things you can do if they lie to the people. You do not have to wait until the next election.
You do realize they are rebelling to get democracy right? Not against it.
Wisconsin will be an interesting test. They voted in politicians who did exactly what they demanded. It just so happens it’s the exact opposite of what gonzomax and Le Jacquelope.
When the next election comes in Nov voters will again get a chance to choose between two old white men. One will no doubt promise to bend over and take it from the unions. If voters want to reverse what was done, they can vote for a guy that will do it.
Otherwise the message seems to be that the politicians are doing exactly what voters demand.
Um no, that was Bush Sr.
The rub is figuring out what the voters in a country like the US are actually demanding…and whether or not whatever they are demanding is in the realm of reality. Often it’s not. Take the budget cuts. The voters DEMAND massive cuts…in items that they don’t care about (individually), or in items that make up a laughably small percentage of the budget…or in items that they don’t personally like (while fighting to the death for their own sacred cows). As every poster in this thread what THEY think needs to be cut from the budget and you are going to get a different answer from each one.
Basically, if the voting public really doesn’t like what a given politician they are voting for is doing, they the answer to your question is what most of the rational people in this thread have already said…vote them out. Seems simple enough, The rub, again, is that while YOU might think that your own wants and desires corresponds to the general public, that probably isn’t the case…IOW, what YOU want is not necessarily what the majority want. And even if it is, it might not be politically possible to do (such as large and meaningful cuts to the budget) because a president isn’t a king or emperor…and no one political party wields enough power and internal cohesion to simply ram through whatever they want. This point, for some odd reason, seems to be a difficult one for people to grasp, especially those of a more fervent political stance…left and right wingers in particular seem to have a hard time understanding this.
I can’t open your second link (it says registration is required, and I am to lazy to find an unregistered version), but your examples of Obama ‘betraying’ his voters are pretty weak and boil down to the standard left wing view that a president is king, despite the fact that he isn’t…coupled with the fact that the Democratic party is not a monolith of people moving in lock step with each other. There are conservative Democrats, moderate Democrats and liberal Democrats…and each of them has to worry about getting re-elected by their own constituency.
As for the Irish issue, like I said, I couldn’t open the link, but I’m not surprised that the people of Ireland aren’t happy with austerity measures…who would be? It’s not like they are doing them for fun, and they have a serious impact. However, just because the public may not like something doesn’t mean that it’s not necessary. From what I recall from the Irish situation, the government didn’t have a lot of choice. They didn’t do what they did to ‘save the banks’, but because they were having (and still are) serious financial issue. It’s easy to say ‘well, just nationalize all the banks and confiscate all those evil bankers money!’, but that’s not exactly realistic. The reality is that if Ireland didn’t have the money to keep all those programs it had going then their options (in the real world, as opposed to the one you live in) are very limited…or they have no options at all. And if the public doesn’t like that, well, not a lot you can do about it…they can vote out the folks telling them what they don’t want to hear and vote in ones who tell them what they do want to hear, but when the rubber meets the road the situation is what it is, and the new folks have to live in the real world just like the old ones did.
-XT
I don’t think you know what the word behest means.
I meant H. W., sorry.
In Bush Sr’s case (who I also voted for), that was an example of “circumstances now are different than they were when I made that promise”…and he got crucified for it anyway.
But the Tea Party feels betrayed also, because the people they voted for got through only 1/3 of the cuts they got promised and none of the rollback of things like HCR.
But the real answer to your question is that the reason politicians don’t do what the voters want is that most of them have at least a slight degree of responsibility. People can spout about what they want and don’t have to worry about the consequences. People can yell about not raising the debt ceiling to teach the big bad government a lesson, but when a Rep gets into office and has his aides tell him what would really happen, responsible ones will compromise.
The public is stupid, and the reason politicians “lie” to get elected is because the voters don’t take the truth very well.
In California the voters consistently indicate they are for more money for education and prisons and against the taxes to pay for them. They didn’t get what they wanted so they recalled Gray Davis to solve the budget problem. How did that work out?
So your belief is that people want things that inherently conflict with each other and this makes a perceived sense of betrayal all but impossible to avoid. That explains a lot of it.
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But the Tea Party feels betrayed also, because the people they voted for got through only 1/3 of the cuts they got promised and none of the rollback of things like HCR.
[/QUOTE]
My dad was actually ranting to me about that this weekend, talking about how the Republicans voted in have ‘betrayed’ the voters…and I was trying to explain to him the same way I tried to explain to Le Jac how our political system ACTUALLY works, as opposed to how some people THINK or WISH it worked. It’s ironic…the same kinds of gloom and doom that folks like Le Jac spout are also spouted by folks like my dad, even though they are coming from nearly opposite parts of the political spectrum. My dad was going on about how the country is doomed, that we’ll be a 3rd world nation soon, that our financial system is falling apart, etc etc…and I was seriously getting a feeling of deja vu from some of Le Jac’s earlier threads/posts. Even the isolationist theme was there, though a bit better grounded in reality (such as it is) than Le Jac’s constant rants about outsourcing/offshoring and tariffs.
-XT
Exactly. Polls in California show this over and over. Voters are like kids who want to match the lifestyle they see their parents having without going through the work for it phase. (My kids got this idea knocked out of them early.)
Some predictions of doom and gloom are correct. Krugman’s of the inevitable result of the housing bubble was optimistic, if anything. But the more facile the objection the more likely it is to be unrealistic. On one hand we have “throw up a bunch of tariffs, what can go wrong?” and on other we have “let the banks fail, what can go wrong?”
We’re definitely getting into Kornbluth territory here. Maybe the solution would be to require that any paper/magazine/website written at under an 8th grade reading level print happy news only. In those sites, say there is no deficit and mild unemployment. Those who can read and comprehend the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are ready for the truth.
Remember how everyone was laughing at Nouriel “doom and gloom” Roubini?
My, how quick everyone is to forget that.
The funny part about tariffs is that some of the fairy tales about how evil tariffs are, are simply untrue, like the Smoot-Hawley boogeyman. Plenty of facts show it did none of the harm that is blamed upon it. The damage that Smoot-Hawley gets blamed for was actually done by other factors, not the least of which was the Dust Bowl.