Americans have every reason to want to vote out incumbents, but the sad truth is that most of those running against incumbents are just awful. What to do? Maybe stay home and de-legitimize our corrupt, dysfunctional government. by Joel S. Hirschhorn
(libertarian)
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Consumer confidence is terrible; citizen confidence is worse: Only 11 percent of Americans have confidence in Congress. No surprise there is record-setting anti-incumbency anger rampant among Americans. But the sad truth is damned if you do and damned if you don't vote for incumbents.
The problem is that the reformers, populist outsiders, tea party candidates, surprise primary winners and others expecting to oust incumbents in the coming mid-term elections for members of Congress and state governors and other officials mostly suck. Why? They are nutty, ignorant, dishonest or racist.
Pathetic US Senate candidates like Alvin Greene on the left in South Carolina and Sharron Angle on the right in Nevada, for example, are intellectual nits and an insult to a once envied political system. And in Memphis, Tennessee Willie Herenton, who is African-American, sells black racism to oust two-term incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen in a primary, telling blacks to not vote for his white opponent.
Many ambitious candidates drained the economy to become super-rich. Is this any time to trust people who have taken advantage of our corrupt corporate system to run the government and serve those they have previously taken advantage of for personal gain? Will anger about the corrupt, dysfunctional government system be sufficient for voters to turn the government over to people who have nothing in common with most Americans?
Consider California. Meg Whitman, a Republican candidate for governor wants to beat the familiar, incumbent-like Democrat Jerry Brown, now attorney general, and was previously the chief executive of eBay. She has outspent all other self-financed candidates across the country by using $91 million of her own money to knock out Steve Poizner, who spent $24 million of his own money, in the Republican primary. California is big, but $91 million and likely even more!! She will greatly outspend Brown. And Carly Fiorina, a Republican who is challenging Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer in California, has the audacity to claim on her website that she will "fight for every job" if elected even though, as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in 2003 she cut about 18,000 jobs and did little good for the company. She has already spent $5 million. Are these people worthy of public support?
Consider Florida. Republican Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare an awful large hospital chain that paid $1.7 billion in fines for fraudulently billing government programs like Medicare has become the front-runner for Florida governor. He supposedly is worth about $200 million. He was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation's biggest health care fraud scandal. He loaned his campaign $22.9 million during the period from April 9 through July 16 and spent $22.65 million of it. In contrast, he received only $415,126 in contributions. Bill McCollum, his Republican opponent, raised a little over $1 million during the reporting period and spent about $1.7 million. He has raised $5.7 million since he announced his campaign last year. He has less than $500,000 left. Democrat candidate Alex Sink, with no primary opponent, raised $1.1 million for the reporting period and has raised $7.3 million so far. Is Scott better qualified because of his wealth and ability to advertise more?
Also in Florida is Jeff Greene who wants to be US Senator, a Democrat who had been a Republican with a strange gang of friends like Mike Tyson and Heidi Fleiss. Incredibly, most of his fortune, estimated at $1.4 billion, came from derivatives that let him profit from the collapse of subprime mortgages which helped tank the US economy. He lives in an oceanfront mansion when he is not on one of his yachts or his plane with gold seat-belt buckles. He recently reported taking a paltry $3,036 in outside contributions, while lending himself and spending $5.9 million in the second quarter. Recent polls found Greene roughly even in the primary with Democrat Representative Kendrick B. Meek, who had been the party favorite and took 18 months to raise a similar amount. Incumbent-like candidate Governor Charlie Crist still leads as an independent in a three-way general election. Greene boasts that now is the moment for self-financed candidates. "If 2008 was the year of change, 2010 is the year of frustration," he said. But does frustration justify voting for these characters?
And then there is Linda E. McMahon, a Connecticut Republican who made her fortune in professional wrestling before her Senate run. She has stated a willingness to spend $50 million of her own money to win the election, a lot of money for such a small state, and has already spent $21.5 million. A television ad declares "politicians have had their chance, and blown it" while her jobs plan "is backed by experience." She became president of the WWF as a legal maneuver to save the company in 1993, because her husband was indicted for distributing steroids to his wrestlers. Cleverly, she blew the whistle and told regulators something few in the industry would admit: wrestling matches were scripted shows and not athletic competitions that required the kind of oversight that, say, boxing required. The financial benefit was that her wrestling business operates in 29 states without supervision by state athletic boards or commissions, saving the company licensing fees. She served only a few months on the state Board of Education and then became a candidate. She supports policies that favor the rich and advocates offshore oil drilling. She faces Democrat incumbent-like Richard Blumenthal, now attorney general of Connecticut. Is her wrestling business experience really the basis for being a great senator?
Voters should remember this: None of these characters are legitimate populists, progressives or reformers with a political record to show their true capabilities or positions. Why trust them? Would they perform better than incumbents? I don't think so. More likely, they would serve elites and corporate interests. In the past very few rich candidates have won office (just 11 percent), but considering the anti-incumbency sentiment this year, big money may prevail.
Is the evil you don't know really better than the evil you do know because of failed government experience? Are some incumbents worth support? Or will many Americans admit that voting no longer can fix and reform our battered democracy and stay home? I think I will. There are just too many fools and idiots voting that offset the votes of informed and intelligent citizens. Maybe if voter turnout was totally abysmal, say 20 percent, maybe then we would get the reforms or revolution we need by de-legitimizing our government.
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Posted By: Whimsy1
Date: July 28, 2010 03:15:17 PM
Joel,
I do agree with you. I don't understand how these clearly unqualified, eccentric (I'm being kind) candidates are even getting one vote...
Talk about an uneducated electorate. Seems like too many get their world view from cable news and won't make the time to get any kind of facts. Troubling times we live in.
Posted By: Roy Ellis
Date: July 31, 2010 05:57:53 PM
De-legitimize the government? Aren’t we already there? Eleven percent approval rating, would five or three percent be way worse? Voters may not agree with the political slant Glenn Beck puts on issues, but they do believe, and rightly so, that radicals are in the wheelhouse. And, just coming off an election to rid ourselves of ‘those Republicans’ what is the voters choice? None, other than choosing between the lesser of two evils, again.
IMO, we are now into a ‘save the Republic’ mode as we are left with no legitimate government. That is, a government that represents the voting public. The majority of voters do not want amnesty for illegal immigrants yet every congress since Regan has facilitated, at great expense, population growth by any means available. Perhaps from their desire to close the gap on worker-retiree ratio as it relates to funding social security and trying to replace funds the congress stole from the social security coffers or the people. The majority of voters never asked for reform of healthcare. But, the government insisted and now people are trying to have the new healthcare policy repealed. The majority recognize that you can’t add millions to the healthcare role and provide the same coverage for the same funds. Few voters want Cap & Trade laws but congress is pushing for another major scale program that will cost the taxpayer more. Few voters wanted the government expansion we have witnessed since 9/11. Yet, day after day, right through the great recession we see congress adding agencies and organizations making the government ever larger and more costly. We are exactly upside down from what the Founder’s envisioned, a small Federal government with very limited powers.
Yet, the people keep re-electing their incumbent representatives by something like 90-95% of the time while expecting something different. Does your incumbent speak of reform or do they propose new and bigger entitlement programs to ‘make our lives easier’?
It does no good to leave the voting to a small minority of the population. That only ensures that the duopoly incumbent will continue to win elections. But, one should realize some responsibility in voting in new officials. It seems wise to choose candidates who are relatively inexperienced in politics and government and not high level managers in major corporations, etc. The idea is to weaken the corpocracy by voting in people that are not likely, or not already co-opted by the corpocracy. There is motive to the madness.
Voting incumbents from office is a positive thing but will not, IMO lead to major reform of government. In fairly short order the tentacles of the corpocracy will find their way to these new candidates and the will of the people is likely to be insufficient to maintain an anti-incumbency mindset for the long haul.
Still, weakening the corpocracy is highly valuable. New faces in congress are more likely to support a movement for the implementation of Article V Convention (AVC) as a pathway to reform on some major issues. Currently, there is a movement to hold a mock Internet version, www.convusa.org, of AVC to gain public notice and pressure congress to acquiesce and permit this long denied Constitutional right to be implemented.
Another, an perhaps most expedient, path to reform is through a new third party, as represented by the Republic Sentry Party. That is, just another third party is useless in fighting the corpocracy. A unique third party must be founded through a few rules that will prevent the party from ever being co-opted by the money influence or special interest. Also, the party must be organized to focus the members and their elected officials on the party agenda. The agenda presented should be about reform of government, void of social hot button issues.
For example: the primary mission of the Republic Sentry Party is to work towards abolishment of Corporate Personhood law. We believe that no REAL reform can be achieved through this corpocracy government. A third party with a different political attitude can achieve the repeal of Corporate Personhood with follow-on reform such as REAL campaign finance reform, a flat income tax, and other needed reform of government.
Therefore, we need to vote, but vote wisely for new ‘unadulterated’ candidates.
Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve.
It is apparent, from Mosca (1939), that one answer as to why these people and not others are coming out of the woodwork for election is due to the fact that they are the ones who are striving for a political life, they are the ones who have financial backing, and they are unfortunately the ones we as voters have to choose amongst. It is a fundamental problem of representative democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon offered that we could get higher quality candidates if we leveled the playing field for elections (meaning that you wouldn't need that much money to run) but he was cautious too saying that it's up to the individual of quality to run and most do not because the system sucks that bad. So I guess we need to egg our good people on and just throw eggs at the bad, haha.
