Samhain Waning Harvest Moon
Election day. Or, as I prefer to think of it, extinguish those politicoporn commercials day.
The constant negative drone, the contention that the other person has committed some perfidy totally unexpected of a human being, let alone a politician, gets on my nerves, so, for the most part, I shut it out. But that’s not what I mean.
What I mean is the amount of hard cash required for designing, shooting and airing political commercials. Along with other technological expenses in the modern campaign the dollar amounts required make it inevitable that each politician, each one, Republican and Democrat, spend their incubency focusing not on policy or the politics of the day, but on fund raising. Fund raising in amounts so large that often times they go back to the same well not just twice, but thrice. This places every politician in Congress squarely in the sites of those who have wealth or who have become adept at bundling wealth from others for political purposes. This is not only bad form; it is also a bad way to create a government.
Add the constant fund raising to the incessant drum beat of lobbyists and it’s no wonder our democracy–for which we want to make the whole world safe–has twitches and contortions that make professional gymnasts look clumsy and out of practice. We are a people proud of our democracy, often hubristically so, and yet it has become a clogged artery, a broken limb, a part of our body politic that needs strong medicine and tough therapy to heal.
Our system of checks and balances has devolved into a system of halts and stops where partisan wrangling and/or ideological purity turns each place where a check might happen into a full body check against the boards and puts a thumb on the scales wherever balance must come into play.
While I’m at it, let me point out, too, a problem in our Senate. No, not the rules, though those do need attention. No, not Jesse Helms. He left office. I’m talking about representation. Here’s what the point in a brief paragraph from Wikipedia:
“The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state’s consent. The District of Columbia and all other territories (including territories, protectorates, etc.) are not entitled to representation in either House of the Congress.[12] The United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959.
The disparity between the most and least populous states has grown since the Great Compromise, which granted each state equal representation in the Senate and a minimum of three presidential Electors, regardless of population. In 1787, Virginia had roughly 10 times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming, based on the 1790 and 2000 censuses. This means some citizens are effectively an order of magnitude better represented in the senate than than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are approximately proportionate to the population of each state, reducing the disparity of representation.”
And this from a book blurb on Amazon for: Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation–
“We take it for granted that every state has two representatives in the United States Senate. Apply the “one person, one vote” standard, however, and the Senate is the most malapportioned legislature in the democratic world.
But does it matter that California’s 32 million people have the same number of Senate votes as Wyoming’s 480,000? Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer systematically show that the Senate’s unique apportionment scheme profoundly shapes legislation and representation. The size of a state’s population affects the senator-constituent relationship, fund-raising and elections, strategic behavior within the Senate, and, ultimately, policy decisions. They also show that less populous states consistently receive more federal funding than states with more people. In sum, Lee and Oppenheimer reveal that Senate apportionment leaves no aspect of the institution untouched.
This groundbreaking book raises new questions about one of the key institutions of American government and will interest anyone concerned with issues of representation.”
I mention this intriguing and disturbing analysis to underscore the problems with the amount of money it takes to win a Senate race which is, by definition, a whole state affair. This means that money sunk into races in smaller population states can have the affect of negating changes in the House of Representatives while increasing the amounts for which the elected Senator is beholden. This is not a recipe or a chance for corruption; it is a guarantee, a built in consequence of modern elections and an increasingly unequal Senate.
What to do? We’ll look at that tomorrow, apres deluge.