Who's to Blame?

On Chris Bowers' blog post at Open Left, the projected woes of congressional Democrats in the upcoming election are discussed, with a view to assigning blame. The author blames delays in getting health care out of committee, as getting it passed and voted on would have gotten it out of the newscycle. He blames a group of Democrats that took $100B out of the stimulus bill, and another group that blocked mortgage cramdown. Finally, the Obama administration is blamed for not taking on banks hard enough or fast enough.

Agree with him or not, a certain theme kept occurring to me (beside the fact that assigning blame is more fun than coming up with solutions). The author's main thesis seems to be that the function of congressional Democrats is to get re-elected, thus keeping their majority. He doesn't seem to be concerned about whether the actions he wants to occur retroctively would FIX problems, but rather that the actions "would have resulted in a superior electoral position for Democrats than the one they currently face."

What matters more, trying to find the right thing to do, and fix problems, or to keep your image high in the minds of the voters, and hold onto the precious majority so that the "opposition" can't take a crack at screwing things up? The best thing that ever happens for either party is being in the minority when everything goes haywire, so that they can deflect blame and come out on top. Being in charge when everything goes to shit is a death sentence, because for damn sure Congress isn't actually going to be able to FIX THINGS.

Congressional approval is somewhere around 20-30%. Complete turnover couldn't possibly make things worse, and at least by getting rid of the good-ole-boys (and girls) who have been making connections and building their sleazy power constructs, the mass of corruption and incompetence would be gone. Of course, the problem is, that whenever this comes up, people may disapprove off all of congress, but they don't disapprove of their guy. "Vote out everyone else, but keep in Senator Doofus, he does good things for my state." With that attitude, nothing ever changes.

Well, guess what, you can't think like that anymore. Everyone has to go. If Senator Doofus is really a good guy, he can run again in a few years, and take another crack at it. When it's time to vote, vote against the incumbent. Vote against them in the primary, vote against them in the general election, vote against them in the run-off. Yes, it means not voting the straight party-ticket that you always do. Yes, it means voting for an asshole who says mind-bogglingly stupid things and has dangerous ideas. But you know what? The guy you like says stupid things too, and has dangerous ideas too, that's part of being human. The part of the system that works is that they need about 268 other people to agree with their stupidity in order to change anything, and how often does that happen? Too often, I know, but again, by dismantling the sleazy power structures, it'll be harder for them to put together a coalition of schmucks to scratch each others' backs and pass bullshit wastes of money. And, in the next election, vote out the asshole you voted in this time.

Everyone must go.