Shall We Meet for Tea at 4?

American voters show each other over and over again how fickle they are. They say they want change and when a Presidential candidate articulates the type of change he would work toward, describes what he would do in Iraq and Afghanistan, knows the world economy is in the toilet before he is even elected and undertakes to address those issues, suddenly voters say "wait a minute; we weren't that serious about change".

Democrats took a huge political risk in passing bold legislation with no Republican support in the House and very little in the Senate. They set themselves up to be unfairly viewed as steamrollers, entirely ignoring Republicans. That was never true. Republicans made their own wager, assuming their lock-step failure to support any change proposed by Democrats would give them easy cover when the economy did not bounce back from a nearly catastrophic global recession in two years. Few thinking people believed it would but the Republicans were right in assuming the average voter expected it would.

As cynical as that appears, Democrats needed to listen more to their constituencies and, perhaps, slow down the pace of change. Nancy Pelosi might have been too good at her job or she might have been in over her head, depending on how one looks at the job. She certainly - with help - whipped her fellow Democrats into line and was tough on Republicans. She claims she tried to reach across the aisle but, even as a moderate Democrat, I did not see much of that. Governing should not be about humiliating one's opponents but for the last couple of decades, it is exactly how the game has been played. For those of us who believe that the policy choices were right, particularly not permitting the country and the world to slip into a full-blown depression, the question is not whether Democrats are bold enough and smart enough to devise long-term solutions to problems. The question is whether the majority of voters really want long-term solutions or would rather stick with what they know: sloganeering masquerading as policy, name-calling as a stand-in for explaining different approaches and a throw-the-rascals-out mantra that leads us to having a revolving door of rascals going in and out of office.

We could easily call Tea Party Republicans a right-wing group of disaffected, frightened people who were used by powerful interest groups to halt any meaningful policy change. With all of the technology, media outlets and competition for television viewers, most of us prefer catchy names that conjure up an image with no explanation. Most of us are too bombarded with garbage to take the time to consider anything more sophisticated than can fit on a bumper sticker. And, frankly, most Tea Party adherents hate Democrats because so many of us smugly consider ourselves smarter, better educated and better prepared to lead. Take yourself back to high school. The smart kids usually hung around together, studied, did well on their college boards and went on to university. The less smart kids hung around together, smoked in the parking lot, loathed the penny-loafered "rich" kids, lobbing insults at them while some of their friends dropped out of high school or community college before getting a degree which, of course, made it almost a certainty they would be the most economically vulnerable adults. A precious few of them quietly went on to college even though it was a struggle. We call them moderately conservative swing voters. I don't see much difference here.

It all comes down to what I believe is the development of a certain kind of deafness and lack of connection that afflicts powerful elected officials. It certainly afflicts Republicans and Democrats but when the party in power is afflicted, it's a fair bet they'll be taught a lesson, especially during an off-year election. The kids smoking in the parking lot grew up. They're still pissed off. Maybe they have a right to be. The problem is the reason they're still pissed off is - whether they realize it or not - right wing Republicans voted against nearly every piece of legislation that may have helped them find better, more plentiful jobs, opportunities for post-high school education and health care. In other words, by permitting an underclass to exist, cynical politicians and special interest groups can corral them in times of electoral crisis and persuade them to vote against their own interest.