It has occurred to me that nothing gets done in Washington because of political party nonsense. Let's take health care, for instance. Love the health care bill or hate it, it will pass or not due less to its own merits than whether or not the Democratic party can expect its members to march in lockstep, and whether the Republicans can intimidate their members into voting against it.
That's the way things work on the Hill. If you're a free-thinking Republican who might want to vote your conscience, or on the actual merits of the bill itself, woe be to you if you're even thinking about running for reelection. Because if you don't toe the Republican line (which these days just means voting against anything the Obama administration wants), you can expect a cold shoulder from the party at reelection time. And, to be fair, the same thing happens in the Democratic party when the President is a Republican.
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for an "average Joe" to get elected? That most of the folks in Congress tend to be wealthy? It's almost impossible for anybody to get any support from their political party unless they've got contacts in all the right places. And that's a shame -- because I happen to think that if the manager of the local hardware store has the best ideas for how to shape things up in Washington, then he or she should have the opportunity to launch a serious campaign.
Maybe it's time we dump these labels, have campaigns be publicly funded (which would make them a whole lot cheaper than they are now), and stop the gridlock.
