[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Nate Duehr]

Sean LeBlanc wrote:

> Sigh. I guess 2008 will again be an election about "family values", or
> prayer in schools, or flag-burning, or gay marriage, or other largely
> unimportant wedge issues. Extra points if it can involve unverifiable
> metaphysical belief systems. Ever notice that things that *really* affect
> Americans on an everyday, large scale fashion are never what an election is
> "about", at least as the corporate media tells us it's "about"? As long as
> we're off in the weeds arguing over stupid issues like when a fetus is a
> child or if we should see two men kissing, we will have stuff like
> NAFTA/CAFTA rammed through without any public discussion at all. 

Lee Iacocca's recent book talked directly to this point.  Politicians 
aren't willing to work on the real/hard problems, for various reasons. 
It's easier to focus on the secondary "stuff".  We all do it to some 
extent, but it's not what we "hire" our political representatives to do. 
   Problem is, the masses get tied up in the secondary battles and only 
vote based on those, and never punish politicians who are ineffective at 
working on the important items.

Here he is in his what, 80's?  Applying basic business principals to 
government, and is pretty distressed at what he's seeing for results. 
Can't blame him.  And coming from the guy that rescued Chrysler from the 
abyss in the 80's, he at least has SOME credibility...

He points out that if you poll even the "masses" they'll all agree on a 
very similar list of top-priorities for the country.  Then if you 
compare that list to what the politicians actually work on, they never 
match up.

But the average person never keeps throwing out the politicians that 
DON'T affect changes in those agreed-most-important items, NO MATTER 
THEIR PARTY AFFILIATION.  (Add in religious affiliation to that if you 
like... none of the major things people agree are important to "fix" in 
goverment are related to religion or party affiliation, but neither 
"side" ever does anything about any of them.)

Nate