Thoughts on the Election

People who are happy have no real need for politics. However, no such creature exists. People are always unhappy about something, and they want the government to either fix it or stop fixing whatever it is that they don't want the government fixing.

If you ask people what they are for, they are more likely to tell you what they are against. People are much less united about what they want, but they will unite in lockstep against something they oppose. However, there is a danger that, in their opposition, people will vote for something just as bad or worse.

This is why politics is so negative. There are distortions where politicians describe the other side as evil, far beyond any actual reality, because that is how they unite voters behind them. It might not matter that their side is also flawed, just as long as the other side appears worse.

So politics is primarily reactionary.

I repeatedly think to myself that nobody will believe the rhetoric that is being thrown around, but apparently they do. The roughly 10 to 20% of voters in the middle can be persuaded to one side or the other, mostly by things that they don't like about the current government. This middle group has the power to decide elections because everyone else is already committed to their side.

Of course, turnout is vital to an election. Often, a flawed candidate will simply not motivate their voters to show up at the polls.

I think that the political left is more united in its goals. If you ask 20 people on the right what they are for, you might get 10 different answers. However, even though the left doesn't always admit it, they seem more united in their goal of establishing some kind of socialism. They have kept their eye on the prize, and everything they say they want is just another incremental step in that direction.

Individual voters have no power to decide elections. Whether or not you show up to the polls will have zero effect on the election. For this reason, I feel that politics has become a spectator sport, where both sides hope their team wins and the other team loses.

It seems to me that maybe the incentives are all wrong. The federal government has become so powerful that I hardly care about or pay attention to local and state elections. For this reason, I like the idea I saw recently that we should go back to having senators appointed by the states. Although it is less "democratic," it would counterbalance having two branches of Congress elected by popular vote by having state interests also considered. It would also incentivize people to pay more attention to local and state elections.

The incentives are wrong because the system rewards people for voting for government spending. However, we are going bankrupt so fast that I see little hope for the future of this country. We are headed toward a situation where fiscal reality is going to hit us upside the head very soon, and we are going to have to contend with the fact that we have run out of money.

I consider it my birthright to live in a free country. I feel that I was promised a government that had constitutional limits to its power, as dictated by Section 1, Article 8 of the Constitution. However, constitutional limits disappeared before I was born, mostly bolstered by liberal Supreme Courts that ruled that the Interstate Commerce Clause gave the federal government nearly unlimited power. As a result, I have no right to freedom beyond what mob rule will allow.