The Great Hope and the Great Dread are ready to meet in the guise of the 'midterm elections', which is something I could have cared less about in lesser times. I have been following the various candidates some, not a lot, because I can't vote in their contested districts.
The potential for change is great. However, I've also seen this happen before, all this buildup, all this hope, and have been disappointed when the results have come in because I couldn't believe that people would vote the other way and apparently, though I can't be sure, enough of them did.
A little background, for those who don't know. United States senators serve six year terms, and can be reelected indefinitely. There are no term limits. House Of Represenatives members come up for reelection every two years and like the senators, can be elected over and over. The potential for the concentration of power is highly evident in these configurations because senators, especially, wield great power and once elected can serve far longer than any president.
Stacking the courts with federal judges that serve for life (Supreme Court justices are lifetime appointed) is another way to concentrate power. Is all this going on, has it been going on? Ohhh yes.
Republicans hold majorities right now in both houses of congress and it's not likely a major change is going to happen in the senate because not a lot of senators are up for reelection. But in the house, it's different. Enough swing can happen to overturn the Republican majority and transfer that to the Democrats.
If congress is ineffectual now, slow moving and without much direction due to infighting within the Republican party, just think what will happen should the Democrats become the majority in the house. The present administration will be greatly hobbled. Contentious laws will be much less likely to get passed, and the final two years of the great orange one's tenure will be acrimonious and bitter indeed.
Best thing on TV and in the news is this. It's like Apollo Creed and Rambo are starting to duke it out and they might just go all the way up to the big day, November 6th. What will the people choose to do? Continue with more of the same, or usher in change? For those interested, this is edge-of-your-seat stuff.
Where laws get made.
Caleb Fisher- Unsplash.com
Maybe, though, we should simply look at this from a sustainability angle and take the politics out of it completely. We can do this by positing a question. "If enough incompetent workers fiddle with an intricate machine, will it continue to function?". Machinery can take a bit of abuse, that's built in by the designers, but after a while the maintenance guys having coffee and reading the sports page down in the far reaches of the building have to be roused from the comfortable chairs they lifted from some defunct office somewhere to respond to a level three emergency call. Grumbling all the way, they will only grumble more when they come upon the scene and see what a mess the people who were supposed to be overseeing things created. Upon that point being reached, fixit work has to be done. Production will just have to cease for awhile.
This will be the inevitable result of the midterm elections, I predict. One way or another, maintenance work will have to be performed. Does it start on November 6th, or will it be delayed until some other time?
Just wondering! I can't vote in your district.