Voters, Stupidity, & Election Results

Jonathan Gruber, a chief architect of the Obamacare fiasco, thinks that voters are stupid. I would contend that it is the politicians and their entourages that, while maybe not individually stupid, are collectively unwise and certainly do stupid things. 

I read an article about that warned against reading too much into big election swings and over-reading shifts in public sentiment about a particular party or ideology based on a given year’s election results. I disagree that big elections do not reflect big shifts in voter trends. The problem comes when one party makes a big gain in congress, the white house or both, the winning party almost always starts doing stupid things. 

In 1994 the republicans rode a wave of sentiment shift against Bill Clinton and the democrats to make historic gains and take control of both the House and Senate. What did they do with their voter mandate? They impeached a sitting president and shutdown the government over budget squabbles. The electorate predictably took away the levers of power. Similarly in 2006 and again in 2008 the democrats emphatically took over the reins of governement. And what did the newly empowered democrats do? They rammed a healthcare bill no one wanted down the throats of the American people. They enacted stifling regulations on the economy that muted the economic recovery. So what did the “stupid” voters do? They spanked the democrats in 2010 and again in 2014. Had the voters known in 2012 what they know now about the Affordable Care Act and IRS corruption, it is likely they would have punished the democrats then as well and we would have inaugurated President Romney. 

Many voters aren’t as informed as they should be. However, voters know stupid when they see it. They also know arrogance, corruption, and deception when they see it, and they have seen a lot of it over the past six years.