Why are US politicians so out of touch?

The way voting districts are often mapped out, makes it almost impossible to vote them out.

Just think about their “out of TOUCH” constituencies. The representatives are sometimes more moderate than the voters.

Truth told, there are a tiny handful of far left members of congress. The problem we face with out-of-touchness is mostly a problem of the far right trying to constantly veer even more far right. Why?

You live in a country where over 40% of the population believes the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. And gerrymandering has carved out districts where that’s all there is—flat earthers.

The corporate selection process only leaves those who are out of touch with normal people and have a predisposition towards their corporate masters. Plus the rampant bribery.

@ragingloli; No, no, no, no! It’s called lobbying and campaign financing and it’s perfectly legal! ~
@ragingloli & @ETpro hit it right on the head as usual.

They are completely in touch, with their paychecks.
I’m not talking about the salary for being a congress critter, it’s the corporate kickbacks and ‘consulting positions’ they have before and after being in office that get their attention.
Unfortunately, especially with the Roberts Supreme Court, this is perfectly legal as @Espiritus_Corvus points out.

But more critically the corporate selection process that @ragingloli mentions sticks us with lousy candidates in the first place. With all the corporate money affecting the primary races, a lot of us never get the chance to vote for someone we really want.

Not much more I can add here. Politicians are in-touch and represent monied interests. Some of them are simply liars and say what they’re paid to, and others genuinely buy into what they say and are in the job because they believe what they believe. There’s the odd semi-decent one that slips the net, but I still wouldn’t trust any of them.

And there is no “far left” in the US government. If there really was a wide range of political views in the US government, they may well function better than they do currently and actually be more representative of the public. What you have are two ends of a narrow range of the same ideology.

It’s a bit of a joke to me that what’s known as Progressives in the US are regarded as part of the far-left. They’re really at most centre-left social liberals—agreeable and well-meaning, but ineffectual, and I think rather naive.

You get the government you deserve. As long as we focus on how bad the other guy is, we’ll never see how bad our own guy is. No one of any worth would run for office in this environment. So we get the radical or corrupt. Most of the country has no clue what needs to be done so they vote on the issue of the day or the race of the candidate or the sex of the candidate or some other crap criteria that doesn’t solve any problem. Real issues are ignored and slander is championed. Democracy in action. You don’t need to be good if you can make the other guy look bad. We all jump on this bandwagon and then complain that the other idiots did it. I want my vote to count so in the next election I’m voting for the candidate with the biggest breasts.

@Jaxk Saturn must be in Uranus, or else Jupiter is in my moon again. We agree.

The politicians do what their constituents demand of them. And that is their job. So blame the voters.

That’s a leading question.

One could also ask: Why are US voters so out of touch?

Because we can be

@woodcutter The PACs and special interests with their vast sums of money have already set who “We the people” get to vote for way back in the primary process. Their multibillion dollar war chest, much fatter now, thanks to Citizens United and the Roberts Supreme Corporatocracy, seldom fails to get their stooge elected.

Every single facet of our society has a PAC of some kind. They all try to do the same thing. Nobody grumbles when one they are in favor of succeeds. And everyone else grumbles about that success calling them corrupt. You don’t lament when billionaires give millions to causes you like do you?

@woodcutter “Every single facet of our society has a PAC of some kind.”
Show me the PAC for the sub-minimum wage-earners.
Show me the PAC for the senior citizens on fixed income.
Show me the PAC for the homeless and disabled.
Show me the PAC for Walmart workers.
Show me the PAC for the fast-food workers.
Show me the PAC for people who clean offices and restrooms. (<=ok some of these folks are lucky enough to belong to SEIU and may benefit from their political actions)

Among the PACs that do exist show me the money.
Because PACs do determine the candidates we get to vote for these days, and because the PAC dollar resources are extremely skewed toward the benefit of a tiny percentage of the population, they are completely undemocratic.
The amounts that billionaires give to progressive/populist causes and PACs is tiny next to the boatloads that other biliionaires give to PACs that exist to get them their next billion.

@dabbler So what you want is everything to be sort of fair?

@woodcutter You certainly implied equality with this statement “Every single facet of our society has a PAC of some kind.” And that is clearly ridiculous.

And “fair” is plenty ambiguous, but sure, why wouldn’t I want things to be fair?
Do you not want things to be fair? What do you want, unfair?

@woodcutter One of the most serious problems facing our body politic today is that so many citizens are falling for the false equivalence that our corporate masters have their media feed us.

Ideals are dysfunctional, not extremes. If the ideal is perfect, then the extreme is perfect. If the ideal is dysfunctional then the extreme is dysfunctional. An extreme of a good ideal is perfect because It shows consistency and is cleansed of hypocrisy. Therefore, it seems you have a problem with the ideals, not extremes.

In that case, don’t vote, or vote third party (centrist) or whichever party resembles your ideals the most. People are voting based on whichever candidate is available and represents their ideals the closest. It’s not a perfect science, but it would seem right and left parties are the closest, based on the amount of voters. For some it is a perfect ideal, for others its close and for some its not even close, but its the “lesser of evils” or better than voting third party or not at all. Voters are out of touch with politics too.

@dabbler Why is it do you think those people have no PACS? Min wake workers don’t need a PAC. They get to work at getting out of min wage jobs. Each one who succeeds is usually pretty happy with themselves. In more ways than one.

Ever heard of AARP?

@woodcutter You’re the one who wrote ”“Every single facet of our society has a PAC of some kind.” Did you mean “Every single facet of society that I personally give a shit about…” ?

What makes you think minimum wage earners don’t need a PAC? When they’re up against policies enabled by corporate PACs that let their employers wring every possible cent out of what ends up in the workers’ pockets?
By whatever logic you could claim that “Min wake workers don’t need a PAC” nobody needs a PAC. Corporations certainly have other ways to amplify their influence on government, minimum wage workers don’t.

A couple decades ago you could say AARP was an advocate for the elderly. It has since morphed into an insurance broker.

@dabbler AARP is an advocate of retired persons. And they offer insurance. And…..? Why is it the low wage earners don’t have PAC’s? I think they do. It’s called the democrats. Can’t get much bigger than that. Are you admitting to us all that the dems sort of suck at helping their constituents? It sort of looks like you just did.

@woodcutter “AARP is an advocate of retired persons.” No they aren’t, not any more. They would like you to think they are, they used to be. They have been on the wrong side of several major issues in recent years, i.e. against the benefit of senior citizens and for either insurance or big pharma.

Do you not know what a PAC is? “The democrats” doesn’t in the slightest qualify.

As far as ‘admitting’ dems suck at helping their constituents, so what? What’s your point? Have you mistaken me for a Democratic party apologist?

And if you imagine reps don’t suck at least as much at helping their constituents then you don’t know what a constituent is. With few exceptions (extremely wealthy people) the folks who vote for republicans are very poorly served by the people they elected. These days people who vote for Democrats are not much better served if at all.

why is it do you think no poor people have PAc’s then? Fair isn’t even part of the ways of human life. Because for one thing its never going to happen. And it shouldn’t. Oh sure there have been half- assed tries making it so, but they have failed. Fair is unnatural. I hazard the guess that’s why it hasn’t taken hold, where competition brings innovation, not hand outs. There is just as much corruption in freebees as there are in free markets. The best way to get a livable increase in min wage is to advance away from it so someone else has it. Not by artificially propping up of the value of a job. That is the same as stealing value.

@woodcutter
“why is it do you think no poor people have PAc’s then?” Possibly because they don’t have billions in disposable income lying around, ya think ?

“Fair isn’t even part of the ways of human life.” You must be one of those America-haters, fairness is in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, considered by our founding fathers to be self-evident (which means totally obvious to anyone paying attention).
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,...”

Stealing value ? Nobody steals more value than corporations. It’s part of their nature, they call it “externalizing costs”.
The end-game of unregulated capitalism is monopoly (some naive writers will say lack of regulation leads to competition. to the extent that is true it is temporary until the biggest entity wins and takes over all.)
Anyone who is actually concerned about stealing value should be clamoring for populist policies.
Anyone who thinks working people steal value – compared to their natural adversaries, corporations – has been reading too many children’s books like those egoist adventure novels by Ayn Rand.

I think you are straying here. Nobody owes any of us shit. If you are weak you will suffer. End of story. Complacent people who are content spending their lives “waiting for something” will do just that. Stop waiting already! Do things that improve yourself and earn advances in life the way 99% of everyone else does.Things will happen for you. Holding firm to a dead end job because one thinks they are entitled to more is a losers game.

And you know I’m right.

Then I am sure you would have no problem if the working class banded together, rounded up all the upper class parasites and executed them all without trial, french revolution style.
After all, “life is not supposed to be fair.”

Sorry @woodcutter I do not know you’re right. I know you’re wrong, and I wonder who kicked you around so much that you are complacent with a weak soul suffering in a life bereft of connection with others.

We all owe each other because poverty affects us all, we are all connected – not just in airy fairy metaphysical ways but in real ways like epidemiology and social order (good description @ragingloli). You benefit from helping the weakest and poorest among us whether you like it or not.

Straying? How did you arrive at your whole set of points get to revolving around people ‘waiting for something’ and ‘holding firm to a dead end job’? Who does that? You might be able to find a few but there are so many more people who are stuck where they are because there are no opportunities to get out. And everywhere they turn someone or some entity is taking from them. Your fantasy that all someone in a desperate situation has to do is try, or try harder, to get out of it is just hard-hearted delusion.

It’s not inherent to the weak that they suffer. A Society can collectively decide to change that.
Notice that our U.S. middle class is an invention, the result of intentional policies to create a large population of people who have more than enough to survive. ...An invention that worked well.
The weak make contributions to our society and culture and as a group we have the opportunity to make it so they can without suffering. There is no reason not to, it’s cost effective.
Stephen Hawking, for example, does world-class physics because people help him overcome his physical disabilities. From the sound of it you’d have kicked him down the stairs a long time ago.

@ragingloli Then I am sure you would have no problem if the working class banded together, rounded up all the upper class parasites and executed them all without trial, french revolution style.
After all, “life is not supposed to be fair

Not sure what you are getting at there. For whom would the working class work if they, upper class parasites ,all were murdered? You assume that only the super rich have min wage workers?

But hey, if a murderous revolution is what you think would be fair and productive then by all means bring it. I ,personally, would like to see this happen here in the states. That is a fight I would like to have because really….it has been long over due.

And I think you know this too.