Republicans, can you explain this to me?

[Brian37]

I didn' t dodge the question.

I don' t affiliate with ANY party - because all a party is, is a label a politician sticks after their name to trick the public into voting for them.

It' s TOTALLY about politicians - as the public's perception that there is a difference between parties serves the politician not the public.

Sadly, I concur that the differences between the two parties are more superficial than folks like to admit. But I don't blame the politicians. I blame the people responsible for electing the politicians: the general population.

Now, I'm not saying the general population shouldn't be in charge of putting government officials in power. There is no better group than they.

I just wish they were more qualified (ie better educated) for the job. (It is a rather important job, after all.)

See the thread about overeducation to see why the free market will not allow a more qualified general population. That's a catch 22 if I ever saw one. Have fun complaining about "those shitty politicians" because I can only see one way to fix that problem. And it ain't gonna be fixed by the looks of things.

Once again, I am tired of seeing this argument that the two parties are the same. They are not.

Politicians regardless of party, only have the power voters give them. 

There is a HUGE difference between voters regarding party.

Long term GOP voters have thought long term, and vote more in local and state and off year elections. Democratic voters have not. 

Dem voter apathy took hold when Reagan started deregulation and successfully busted the air traffic control unions. Since then dems AS VOTERS became more apathetic to local and state elections, which in turn allowed the GOP to gerrymander more and more in that 40 years. That in turn forced our politicians to compete with their narrative. 

DEMS as voters are on the right side of history. AS VOTERS. We want livable wages for workers, we want affordable health care and affordable education. We want investment like FDR gave us in the New Deal. We want minorities to be treated as equally as the majority. 

The reason we don't have that isn't because our politicians don't want to give that to us, they do. The reason they cant, is because we don't show up enough to vote every year, and we dont think long term. 

The GOP has taken advantage of our 40 year dem voter apathy and stacked the deck with the voting districts and the Supreme Court.

IF dems as voters would stop their bullshit infighting, and show up in all local and state elections every year, and we stop vilifying middle America which also has liberals, and we start thinking every day, and every year long term, we can win. 

We won't win if all we do is look at politicians as super heros with capes.