It’s January 2015 (news flash!) and we’re on the brink of true divided national government – Congress in the hands of one party, the Presidency controlled by the other, and a 5-4 split on the Supreme Court. If electoral politics may be considered by anyone to be a true measure of the nation’s policy aspirations, it’s hard to see how we have reached this outcome. We hear from our corporate media that the American people are tired of gridlock and dysfunction in Congress, and yet the electorate has rewarded the faction most responsible for these maladies with control of the Senate and an expanded majority in the House. Is there any expectation on the part of those who voted in the last election that Congress will function more smoothly and more effectively as a result?
Perhaps it’s simply that our Congressional elections are really 435 tiny local races rather than one big, national one; that each district decides on the basis of who’s running and who’s most likely to show up at the polls. My home district, New York’s 22nd (the fighting 22nd!) is a pretty good example. Our representative, Republican Richard Hanna, ran unopposed last year. The Democratic Party won the seat for the first time in a generation in 2006, lost it in 2010 and again in 2012, and apparently decided it wasn’t worth spending any more money on. Hanna is far from the most reactionary member of his caucus, but he is a conservative Republican in the traditional sense, holding a 95% rating with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an “A” rating from the NRA, so it would have been nice to have someone else to vote for. So much for that.
Hanna presents himself as a moderate, at least between elections, as do some other upstate Republicans (like the recently elected John Katko, who unseated Democrat Dan Maffei this past November). But the effect of their presence has not been to moderate their caucus; they generally support their leadership. (Katko claims he will be independent, but I’ll believe it when I see it.) When you cast your vote as a member of the House of Representatives to elect leaders that will willingly drive the country over a cliff economically (through austerity budgets), environmentally (through inaction on climate change and support for domestic oil production and the Keystone pipeline), and in the realm of foreign policy (with support for interventionist policies around the globe), it makes little difference what you call yourself. You are part of the problem.
So … happy new year, friends. Let’s work to make 2015 better than the lousy year we just left behind.
luv u,
jp
