Day After Mid-Term Elections Musings

The more things change the more they stay the same.
 
The mid-term elections are over. The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but not a super majority, and they retained control of the House. On the surface you might think this will mean that things will now get done.
 
Nope. Without that super majority the factions will have to work together. The House knows this finally and bipartisan legislation has actually passed over there. But on the other side of Capital Hill ... well that's where bills went to die. The Democrats had a majority but not a super majority and the Republicans didn't feel like cooperating. The table has flipped around now. Does anyone really think that the Democrats are going to be inclined to play nice with the Republicans?
 
Get ready for more filibustering, more nominations being blocked and more of the same old stuff. The only difference is going to be who is doing the finger pointing. Well, that and the President's first extensive use of his veto pen in his six years in office. Buckle up American, it is about to get pretty bumpy on the road to 2016.
 
It will be interesting to watch the posturing of various would-be presidential contenders as they work on legislation in the next two years. One GOP Senator has remarked:
 
 
I think they have less than that before the voters get fed up and want results. I find it amusing or maybe bemusing is a better word that although the President's approval ratings were admittedly low all through the months leading up to the mid-terms and don't show any signs of pulling out of that nosedive, the GOP's approval ratings are pretty bad too. The President's was at 40% a few weeks before the election but the GOP's was only at 33%  and yet so many got elected (the Democrat's rating was at 39% in case you were wondering). So everyone was unhappy with, well, everyone but they were the most unhappy with the people they actually ended up electing.
 
Now that's confusing.
 
I'm not happy with your performance, I don't like what you're doing even less than I don't like what the other guys are doing but oh, okay I'll vote for you.
 
Is it just me? Or is that really disfunctional?
 
I suppose we could always blame it on the usual "low voter turnout for mid-term elections". And maybe that's true. Maybe people were so fed up they just couldn't motivate themselves to get out and vote. Maybe they thought their vote wouldn't matter. MAYBE they were overconfident and didn't think they needed to vote (doubtful that one). Whatever the excuse ... if you didn't vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome. If you DID vote and you got the outcome you wanted you have no right to complain should things not magically, suddenly get better for you. Because they won't. No matter which party has control of what... things do not get magically, suddenly better for anyone other than lobbyists.
 
The rest of us have to wait and wait and hope and wait and then just maybe we might get a tiny, itty bitty tidbit of something close to progress about ten seconds before everyone declares they are running in 2016 and starts paying attention to getting re-elected (or elected to something bigger) and forgets all about why their constituents sent them to Washington for in the first place. I figure we have about a month or two before that craziness starts.
 
 

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