Must Be An Election Year
I’ve said it for decades…the number one goal of a politician is to get elected. The number two goal is to get re-elected. Anything else is secondary.
All 435 members of the U.S. House are on the ballot this November. That’s 435 very different situations, and while we try to lump them together as if it’s a national election with blue waves or red waves, they are each local elections…and those running probably have a better idea of what their voters want to hear than someone with a broader agenda beyond “I want to be re-elected”.
That tells you all you need to know about why 7 House Democrats broke ranks with their party yesterday to vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security…part of the set of budget bills that have to be passed by both chambers no later than a week from today, or else part of the federal government will shut down again.
And that desire to be re-elected is all you need to know about why a group of Republicans broke ranks and voted to extend Obamacare subsidies earlier this month.
Now, it’s possible that at least on some of these things, the votes were because it was the right thing to do, because it helped citizens. But let’s face it…the voters were because the representatives thought it would be politically popular back home.
To be clear, we call them “representatives” because they are supposed to represent us…vote in a way we back home think is best. But something happens once they land in D.C.—Potomac Fever is the most charitable way to phrase it.
All this is to remind us that keeping a caucus intact for a vote is never easy, quite like herding cats. Between now and November, though, predicting a vote based solely on party identification will be increasingly harder to do.
