Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Democratic Accountability

 This bit about Ron Johnson is interesting. The idea of democracy is that if you pick an unpopular position, you will be punished by voters for doing so. This - and not Democrats being mean - is why Mitt Romney lost in 2012. He stood by Paul Ryan's cruel austerity program while people were still digging out from 2008.

Johnson was open to codifying Obergfell in the wake of Dobbs. Now, he's retreated. Why? Because he fears his base more than the general electorate. Now, Ron Johnson is a deeply stupid man and may be misreading the room on this one. 

More concerning is how gerrymandering at the House level makes this dynamic worse. Odious morons like Louie Goehmert, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Traitor Green and Gym Jordan are simply not held accountable for taking awful positions, because all they have to do is win their primary and they win their seat. (I have some hope Boebert gets bounced this November.)

This isn't how it's supposed to work.

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