Politico.com headlines it's announcement of the Brown win in Massachusetts special election"Forces of change." Seems to me that backers of Brown voted for the status quo--no change in healthcare. And given that Senate procedures now make supermajorities required to get anything done, Massachusetts voters have now made the representation of the majority will moot, along with adding another voice to Congress that will spout the patriotic cant that torture is not torture when Americans do it, the urban legend that global warming is a hoax, and the nativist rhetoric criminalizing low-paid immigrant workers. Imhofe will have a friend.
But, that's what Madison and Hamilton and other founding fathers bequeathed us. A political structure designed to thwart majority will and allow only incremental change--except, curiously, in the area of foreign policy, where our government has engaged in radical imperial ventures, for which our elected representatives have tolerated a drastic expansion of executive powers. And the majority has gone along with those ventures, at least until too many dead start coming home. I wish Madison could see us now; I wonder what he'd say?
Another thing. Check out the sign in the picture: "It's our turn for a change." "Our turn?" Just one year under a Democratic President and Congress and Republican and independent voters act as if they've been marginalized for decades? Since 1980, the first time I was able to cast a vote for president, I've lived under 20 years of GOP presidents (Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.) and 9 under a centrist Democrat (Clinton) and the current (pragmatic?) Democrat. The GOP either had parity with the Dems or the majority in the Senate from 1999-2008 and in the House the GOP had the majority from 1995-2006. I know, it's the reeling economy that's given voters the jitters about the party in power, and I agree that there are lot of valid concerns about health care, environmental, and immigration reform, but, please, opponents of Obama, stop acting as if you're long-suffering victims of liberal Democratic domination.
