Monday, November 12, 2012

The Will of the Majority


"Our job now is to get a majority in Congress to reflect the will of the American people". -  Pres Barack Obama, 11/09/2012

Congress, unlike the Presidency, isn't a "Winner Take All" proposition.

You'd think a "Constitutional Scholar" would get how this whole Republic thing is supposed to work.   The American People elected a Republican Supermajority in Congress, who largely campaigned on restraining runaway spending and fighting Obamacare.

Obama won the election in large part because the Democrats have a massive army of Union and other activist volunteers who are well organized who concentrate on high population areas to get high voter turnout from a lot of people who are disengaged from any sort of intellectual assessment of what makes America special, why it was designed the way it was, and why it is a bad idea to build large government programs that run directly against the principles upon which the country was founded.

Especially in our split political environment, you turn out a bunch of urbanites who spend their lives partaking of government programs that probably shouldn't exist, or should be far more limited when they do -- in high population areas, and you rack up your popular vote count.

But this doesn't work outside of these areas.  You can't game the electoral college outstate where the only people who live in the district can vote for their representative.  You can't get votes from Urban Cleveland to add to 5th district totals.

Congress is how we get everybody represented in a split country.

The Senate should go back to the pre 17th amendment Senate to restore the proper balance between the interests of the individual States and the less stable passions of the general population.

Sadly, this is not the case now, so what we have is two houses of representatives, one of them highly disproportionate in representation -- that being the Senate.  So SOME gaming can occur.  That gaming (and both sides do this) happens when people from other states and districts pour money and volunteers into campaigns in states and districts in which they do not live.  I'd like to see this problem dealt with as well.

But ... imperfect as it is, Obama's just going to have to deal with the fact that America sent GOP Congressmen to say "No". 

So when they call the GOP "The Party of No" for the next 4 years, the GOP should stand up and say "Damned Straight!"

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