Hey, Conservatives. I just thought I would take a moment to talk to you about the midterm elections, because for some reason you’re getting the idea that events happened for reasons completely absent of reality. Therefore, as I know that you always listen to rational people explaining rational theories, I thought I would chime in with a little rationality.
There are some things you got right and some things you’re getting wrong. Let’s start with what you got right because everyone likes to hear good things about themselves. First, you are right that America was angry, pissed off and frustrated with politics as usual. In droves, people went to the polls and voted to “throw the bums out”. That anger was their way to show that they were angry, and if Washington wasn’t going to listen, they were going to make them listen, or at least stop paying for their hearing aids.
Lots of Democrats were thrown out of office, and lots of Republicans were given a chance to run the government. Okay, we’re on the same wavelength here.
Unfortunately, this is where reality sort of spins off on its own axle and falls apart. While the American people were angry, we need to kind of revist exactly what they were angry about.
First, Americans weren’t angry about social programs in America. Republicans tend to always be angry about these things. But it wasn’t Republicans that really voted the Democrats out of office. It was both Democrats and Republicans, meaning average Americans. The average American wasn’t upset that people were getting health care and the opportunity to survive through the Winter. They also weren’t upset that the government was spending money to get people back to work.
No, Americans were pisses off at government because government was helping out the wrong people. Who are these wrong people? The rich, the selfish, the people who don’t care one iota about the common folk of America. Americans saw the government spend a lot of money to bail out Wall Street, to help out banks and to rescue multi-millionaires from losing more money than they were already losing. The fact that almost none of the stimulus money actually went to help out the average American, other than through the usual trickle down crap theories, that upset Americans a lot. While the average American was trying to find a job, government was spending weeks arguing over how much money to protect from millionaires and billionaires with expiring tax cuts. The government seems willing to go into shut down just to make sure that the rich are taken care of, and the poor really don’t mean much to those who occupy office. Except in conversation, which doesn’t mean a lot when people have to actually pay their bills.
When the midterm elections came along, the American people were pissed that government was catering to the rich only. Yes, both Democrats and Republicans were bending over backwards to make sure the rich weren’t inconvenienced in any way, shape or form. The poor, well, they needed to fend for themselves because that’s generally how government feels they should have to handle their own affairs.
Most people didn’t even recognize what was going wrong with the Democrats in office when they had control of the entire government. Not once did they even act like Democrats, being almost indistinguishable from Republicans. THAT is what pissed off the American population that went through a previous election putting every Democrat they could find into office. When the American people discovered that it didn’t matter which party was in office, they kind of revolted and threw those people out, figuring the Republicans weren’t probably any worse.
Well, the Republicans need to figure out that the American people didn’t send them into office with a mandate to do things Republicans tend to do when they aren’t discussing politics. You know, the kinds of things they do surreptitiously behind the backs of everyone else, like reward the rich and screw over the poor. No, the American people sent the Republicans to Washington to remind the Democrats who they were supposed to be working for. That’s really it. The mandate the Republicans received from the American people was “do something different, but if you piss us off, too, expect to be accepting your own unemployment check.”
And the way things are going, there’s going to be a lot more unemployed politicians in 2012. Unfortunately, this will cause the Democrats to pull a Sally Field, thinking people like them, when in fact the people are still pissed off. The only difference is, they’ll realize they have nowhere else to turn.
And a pissed off electorate that has given up on both sides is a very dangerous animal. Once you give up on your government, there’s really not much else to do. Just ask all those Middle Eastern countries right now that are throwing out their leaders. They might have something interesting to say about it, if you could stop them long enough while they’re rioting in the streets.