Some of the most recent elections indicate that the country is looking for rebound politicians. Good examples of that occurs when an election that is usually controlled by one party is actually won by candidates from the other party. Doug Jones's victory over Roy Moore for a Senate seat from Alabama and Conor Lamb's win over Rich Saccone for Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional seat are two examples of where voters were choosing rebound candidates. For it seems that many voters have been greatly disappointed by President Trump's performance And in trying to recover from that Presidential choice, rebounding voters had only one option.
George W. Bush was a rebound President for those who were the first to suffer from Clinton fatigue. And then Obama was the rebound Presidential choice for those who had had enough with Republican Presidential policies. After that, Trump was the choice not just for those who feared that liberals had too much say in our country, but also for those who had had it with the Republican establishment. And so Trump ran as the only rebound candidate for the Republican nomination.
And needless to say, Hillary Clinton was the long awaited choice for those who were legitimately looking to rebound from the long line male Presidents. And like our two-party system, people had only one option to choose from for that rebound vote.
As things stand, it seems that the American voter is the ball in a game of pong between the Democratic and Republican Parties. The American voter rebounds with one party only to find out that they need to rebound again. And so back and forth voters go to rebound from one party's politician to another party's politician.
We could point to the two-party system for the American voter's endless need to rebound from the candidates of one party to another. And though the two-party system is very deficient, it doesn't provide the sole, or even the major, reason why we constantly go back and forth between the two parties. The major reason why we are constantly rebounding between the two political parties is because we don't want to constantly participate in our nation's political processes. As a result, we vote for the leaders whom we think we can ignore until the next election. The problem is that our choices rarely work out that way.
Our choices don't work out because the more we ignore our elected officials, the less accountable they become. The less accountable our politicians become, the more likely they will act in their own interests. And the more they act in their own interests, not only will we become disillusioned with them, the more they will be imitating us, the voters, who voted for politicians in order that we could act in our own interests.
Now the above theory doesn't answer why we have so many incumbents in Congress who are constantly reelected time and time again. There are other explanations for that. But it certainly might help explain why we keep switching between Republican and Democratic Presidents. And it also explains why the political activities of many Americans are restricted to election related activities.
Occasionally, we run into causes that move us to take time out of our busy schedules to speak out to our politicians. The March For Our Lives movement is such a movement for it has awakened many people to an important cause. And certainly reducing gun violence by passing good, effective gun control laws is a worthy cause to take a stand on. And in case some have not noticed, the level of participation in the March For Our Lives movement is modifying some of the rhetoric and stands some of our politicians are taking. And that should tell us something. What if the American showed the same level of participation in advancing other causes as they have in the March For Our Lives movement? What would happen is that our politicians would become more accountable to us and we would gain some power over them.
There is much corruption in our political system today. Certainly, our politicians deserve some of our anger for the corruption. But the corruption is not all their fault. Some of the corruption is due to the fact that, just like art imitates life, so politicians sometimes reflect the moral values of us, their constituents. And some of the corruption is due to the fact that we think we have more important matters to attend to than to constantly hold our politicians accountable. Indeed, we do have other important matters to tend to such as caring for our families and managing our jobs and careers. But still, to not make time so that we can hold our politicians accountable for their voting records and actions is to almost ask them to get away with as much as they can. And until we are more willing to participate as citizens in the available political processes such as activism, we should expect nothing else from our elected leaders than to cheat on us.
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