I was just
gobsmacked when I heard you use the phrase “The People's House”
in your scolding of the Democrats after their gun control sit-in.
Although, I took it as a minor miracle you didn't immediately choke
on your words or that lightning didn't strike any where near you.
Granted, I didn't check the D.C weather reports for that day, so it's
possible the latter happened.
How, I wondered,
were you able to utter the phrase, “The People's House,”
especially after criticizing Democrats for doing a sit-in because
they wanted to debate what were, after all, fairly mild gun safety
regulations with which the majority of Americans agree.
According to a CBS
News poll taken after Orlando, 57% of Americans now support a ban on
assault weapons, a much more substantive proposal than anything the
House Democrats were putting forth. One bill the Democrats wanted to
debate was universal background checks, which a super majority of 89%
of Americans support, including substantial majorities of Democrats
and Republicans.
How can you call it
“The People's House” when no debate is allowed over what the vast
majority of the people want? To call the present Republican House “The
People's House” makes a mockery of the term. As Sean Illing pointed
out in Salon in 2015, “the GOP’s control of
Congress is . . . a scandal.” Obama beat Republican candidates
twice “with more than 50 percent of the popular vote.” Also,
“Democratic congressional candidates received 1.4 million more
votes than their Republican opponents in 2012. And yet Republicans
lost only eight seats that year. In a remotely representative system,
such results would not be possible.”
So
what has happened in the world's last best hope? Your party, fueled
by dark money, was extraordinarily successful at rigging the system
in its favor by gerrymandering at the state level.
As
Illing explained, “Something
like 55 percent of America’s congressional districts have been
redrawn to favor the GOP, while a paltry 10 percent have been redrawn
to favor Democrats. It’s difficult to overstate how anti-Democratic
that is. Republicans have essentially short-circuited the Democratic
process.”
And
how did your party do that? “They’ve used advanced technology and
algorithms based on the most recent census data to redraw borders and
create the safest districts possible.” So because of your party's
rigging of the system, its influence in Congress is much greater than
its support among the actual people of America.
Another
more interesting way to say it is that all of us have collectively
been ratf**ked as Salon editor-in-chief David Daley puts it in his
provocatively titled new book, RatF**ked: The True Story Behind
The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy. Daley
points out that because of your party's successful effort to subvert
our democracy, blue states like Ohio and Pennsylvania that voted for
Obama end up sending super majorities of Republicans to Congress, all
because of gerrymandering. In Ohio's case, Republicans have a 12-4
advantage and Pennsylvania's delegation is 13-5 Republican.
Of
course, your party was only able to pull off this little coup because
of dark money. In fact, if it weren't for a handful of right-wing
billionaires, the Kochs, the Scaifes, the DeVoses, and a few others,
your party's hard right turn over the past few years would never have
been possible. They bought off media and universities. They
established think tanks and a 24-7 365-days-a-year campaign mode that
has transformed our nation for the worse.
As
described by Jane Mayer in her well-researched Dark
Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the
Radical Right, the present-Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell once explained to a college class that there
are only three ingredients to building a political party: money,
money, and money. So according to your counterpart in the Senate,
such quaint notions as the people's will or the common good are not
ingredients in building a political party. Good to know.
After
years and years of your party filling its coffers with dark money,
while doing nothing, being the Party of No, you have the gall to
lecture those who want to do the people's business. And to add insult
to injury, you call your bought-and-paid-for House, “The People's
House.”
Given
all the above, I don't know whether to call your utterance of the
phrase “The People's House” chutzpah, delusional thinking, the
meaningless mouthing of political platitudes, or just politics as
usual as practiced in the second decade of the 21st century? Yet no
matter what I call it, the people, whose well-being should be the
primary objective of “The People's House,” will continue to be
the losers.
