Next week my 2301s start digging into the constitutional principle of republicanism and how James Madison justifies it in Federalist #10. Pure democracies are turbulent and short lived, he argues, and an elected class is necessary in order to ensure that passion is filtered out of the governing process. The following comment might explain why:
Are voters confused? For a while now, there has been a seeming disconnect in the polls. In the most recent CBS News poll we see it again, more voters say they have an unfavorable view of Republicans (58 percent) than of Democrats (56 percent), and more disapprove of GOP policies (68 percent) than of Democratic ones (58 percent). On key questions about the economy, they also like Democratic policies better than Republican policies. For example, when CBS asked which party was better at helping small business, respondents preferred the Democrats 49 percent to 41 percent. Asked about creating new jobs the response was 44 percent to 38 percent in favor of Democrats.
Yet when you ask people if they will be voting for the Republican over the Democrat, they say yes. The margin is only two points (40 percent to 38 percent), but given those other numbers, wouldn't you expect people to favor Democrats?
The answer is probably that given current hardships, a large segment of the voting population wants to punish someone, and the people in charge happen to be Democrats. It seems pointless to punish the party not in charge regardless what their policy positions are. The content of policy proposals matters less than who controls the governing institutions. Does this make for a rational public?
Update:
Jonathan Cohn and Joe Klein make much the same point. One point made by angry voters. They don't government spending or deficits, but they want quick government spending on jobs, apparently even it if leads to larger deficits.
