General Discussion

cthulu2016

(10,960 posts) Tue Oct 1, 2013, 04:38 PM Oct 2013

Is it the people's job to want to vote for a Party, or

is it a Party's job to get people to want to vote for the Party?

Of all the things the hippies have been blamed for, blaming the hippies (liberals, purists, progressives, lefties, reds, pony-wanters, etc.) for the government shut-down is the most comical yet. (Though all but certain to be exceeded in the future.)

The revisionist history of the elections of 2010 suggests that disloyal liberals, driven by infantile, unrealistic, self-righteous and narcissistic personality flaws, petulantly stayed home in a snit over Obama not being very liberal in office, resulting in the Republicans taking over the House of Representatives.

On the simplest level it is just a lie. There was no protest drop-off of liberal Democratic voting beyond the drop off seen in every off-year (non-Presidential) election since forever. Liberal Democrats were just about the only ones who DID turn out strong. But Reagan Democrats and relatively non-political folks who had voted for Obama in 2008 because it seemed a cool thing to do dropped off.

But even if we accepted the bizarre fantasy history of un-enthused hippies not voting... whose job is it to make people want to vote?

Not whose job should it be. Whose job IS IT... like, in actual political practice?

There is something odd in a view that the politicians did everything right, but the treacherous people were too lazy to vote for them, because, for a politician, getting people to actually vote for you is very much part of doing everything right.

It is very difficult to say that the Democratic Party and its leadership did everything right in 1994 or 2010 because doing everything right, politically, doesn't lose you the House.

Mistakes were fucking made. You don't lose the House in a landslide without mistakes being made.

So stop pretending that everything was done right but the exceptionally low character of Democratic voters (as opposed to Republicans) came to the fore.

An aside: It is possible that the ordeal of passing Obamacare was sure to lose the House, but was worth it. That is a potentially rational statement... that things that cost us the House in 2010 were worth it. I do not exclude that possibility. The 1960s Civil Rights Acts did cost us the south, but were worth it. So there is an argument to be made there that we did do everything right (morally and long term) but subsequently lost the House.