After long experience at watching the political scene and having worked with a House campaign, a Senate campaign, and in the campaign of several local elections, I have to say, very few people care as much about tearing down the corrupt system as the people who are getting a slice of the pork care about keeping it in place. The majority just take their toys and stay home rather than putting out the sustained effort fixing the system would take.
McCain brings home the bacon for the right money interests in Arizona so there will always be plenty of money to buy votes and to convince those who don't like him to stay home and not bother voting.
That's what you get with democracy, the high bidder wins or the vote is ignored.
Look at how much democracy is respected when states have a referendum that outlaws queers marrying one another, the result doesn't suit the people who pump money into politics so democracy doesn't apply. When they can buy an election, though, democracy trumps everything else including all the rights of the who voted against the winner.
And that's why the US was founded as a Republic, not a democracy, so that the We The People would actually have a say by voting for State Representatives who in turn chose the Senators.
Now? Tough turkey, you can't work at the State election level and influence anything Federal other than by having more money than the opposition. Even then, the winner in any given State is still limited by the flood of money that flows into Washington to beat down anyone who doesn't go along to get along. There aren't fifty States where you might get caught passing money under the table to buy yourself a Federal Senator, there's only the Federal Department of Justice which is controlled by the incumbent President with predictable results.
We're enjoying the "great benefits" that flow from progressives convincing the public to go for the Seventeenth Amendment. The Senate approves judges and other appointments and Senators were supposed to be at the beck and call of each states' House of Representatives and therefore very sensitive to the current views of the people of the State.When that power over Senators vanished and Senators couldn't be touched for six years at a time the idea of States Rights became null and void, replaced by the auctioning off of Senate seats with bidders nationwide free to add to the bid.
"Don't pay, you have no say", throughout history that's what democracy has always ends up being and that's what we now have.
JMHo
I think you make good points there. I understand where you are coming from on all of it, and I agree that you’re addressing real issues there with decent comments.
I expect this sort of thing. What I don’t expect is for our own people to fall for the trashing of J. D. Hayworth the way they did in 2010. With McCain’s history, even if J. D. was as bad, it would have been better to send him in, because he wouldn’t have had the seniority to be respected enough to lead everything off track like McCain always does. And Hayworth was a decent man.
Did he have some flaws? Yes, but compared to McCain’s, his were scrapes instead of a head bashed in or a saber through the heart.
So let the big money do what it does. You can overcome that. You can’t overcome stupid.
You could put a weeks supply of food and water in the bottom of a pit and tossed in even some of our own in 2010, and they would have starved in three days.
You can’t fix that. Folks have got to use their heads.