There's this graph that I saw recently. It's
the most unsettling graph I've seen in American
politics in a very, very, very long time.
And yet it's really boring to look at. It's
just a nearly straight horizontal line.
The line doesn't do anything interesting at
all.
But what the graph shows is something that's
somewhat terrifying. What that line shows
is the relationship between what the average
voter wants, and what they actually get.
In a huge study, looking at over 2000 surveys
of people's policy opinions, whether people
were on the left side of the line which meant
they opposed something happening, or on the
right side, which meant they all wanted it
to happen, it didn't matter.
Once you controlled for the opinions of affluent
Americans and interest groups and other lobbying
organizations -- average people, their voice
was not heard at all. Or at the very least
their voice didn't appear to matter at all.
Average folks only get what they want if economic
elites or interest groups also want it. And
all this data comes from a time when these
groups were arguably less powerful in American politics.
America never sold itself as a democracy.
It sold itself as a representative democracy.
There's accountability from voters onto politicians,
but politicians, they get time in office.
To step away from the passions of the electorate
for at least a little while. And do things
that are right for the country, and then voters
will judge them on whether they did a good
job.
So maybe its the case that affluent Americans
and interest groups and politicians just -- they're
always right. And average voters. You can
just safely ignore them. But it doesn't look
like America's been run so well. We had a
massive financial crisis because we didn't
do enough to regulate Wall Street, we got
into a disastrous war in Iraq. We have median
wages that haven't substantially grown in
many, many years.
It doesn't seem that we are so incredibly
good at running this country.
Maybe we need a little more democracy in
our representation.
