Even if you're not the sort that pays much attention to politics (given the nature of politics in recent years this would perhaps be understandable) you'd have to have been living under a rock to have missed our most recent debacle of dysfunction.
House Republicans recently held the entire nation hostage over their dislike for the Affordable Care Act, more aptly known as "ObamaCare". Having failed to defeat it via democratic means, having failed to defeat it via the Supreme Court, they decided to try defeating it through tyranny. And though the effort failed miserably, it is certainly not cause for celebration.
Regardless of where you personally stand on the ACA, or our current President for that matter, the fact that such an event occurred shines an unflattering light on the systemic problems in our electoral process.
There are many who would agree with me that this country desperately needs campaign finance reform. And the problem isn't voters, rather it's the process that vets those who we are even allowed to vote for. In the last election cycle less than 150,000 individuals comprised over 90% of *ALL* campaign monies spent by all sides of the political process, whether they be Democrat, Republican, or Independant. Just on the presidential election alone this was over $2 Billion Dollars. And though it is true that the Obama Campaign did a better job at grassroots money raising, when combined with all spending by dems and republicans that 90% still stands.
We have in essence ceded our democracy to the wealthy and elite, because *THEY* get to decide who gets to run for office, because it is primarily from them that the money flows. And *THIS FACT* is what has driven our entire countries slide towards.....Conservatism. Clearly conservative extremism, such as witnessed a few weeks ago would have been impossible 40 years ago.
So how did the extreme right gain so much power? It is because we don't really have a progressive left anymore. Granted, Nancy Pelosi is a nut (as are many of her ilk), but she's not a progressive lefty by any stretch of the imagination, despite Republicans attempts to paint her into that corner. Rather, our entire politics has shifted, drastically in my view, to the right regardless of party.
How did this happen?
Much of this begins in the late 1960's and the changes that occurred in the Democratic leadership during that time frame. While perhaps it is an oversimplification, it can be said that it culminated with George McGovern's utter dismissal of Labor. And though the influence of Labor was beginning to decline (and in some senses rightly so, due to abject Labor Union corruption) McGovern's move with the Democratic Party is really what began the long slide towards dismantling the Democratic Party's liberal base of power.
Now, elections still need to be held and candidates still have to raise money to run for office. So after the collapse of labor, the dems still had their hands out, like any good politicians would. And who came in to fill the void? The wealthy and elite, i.e. the ones who already controlled much of Republican finance.
This became evident to me during the Reagan Administration, when we began this wholesale experiment in Trickle Down economic theory. Prior to Reagan, much of our countries economic politics revolved around Keynesian theory, a fact we generally owe to the Roosevelt Administration which led to many decades of skyrocketing growth in both GDP and middle class incomes and standard of living. And yes, during this era the wealthy were taxed at progressive rates far far higher than they are today.
What fails to bubble to the surface for the wealthy who were still wealthy in this era.....is that they were still far wealthier than the average American in spite of this fact.
It doesn't take a genius to see that 30 years worth of conservative economic ideology has destroyed the middle class, at least so long as you either pay attention to the numbers or happen to be an average non-wealthy American. So why don't things change? Why can't we right this ship? Why?
It's primarily because of my earlier statements. The 150,000 elites that run our electoral process aren't suffering. They've done well. In some cases obscenely well. Obscene because their gains in wealth and power came with a real cost, that being the well being of an entire country.
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