The Speaker Election Process was Wonderful
It showed us as a vibrant, open, robust democracy
Almost everyone is saying the week long speaker election was a big negative. Across the political spectrum, the reasons why people say it was bad vary, but the bi-partisan conclusion is it was a mess, a problem, that it showed us as dysfunctional.
Are you kidding me? You prefer the Kabuki Theater where the decision is already made and the vote is pro-forma? Where all of the negotiation occurs beforehand in back rooms and we are just presented with the results?
This was a gigantic political fight, we all got to observe the fight and the parties involved. And most important, it was resolved the way it should be - with a vote. To repeat, this whole process occurred withing the framework of our democratic system. This is wonderful.
Then you have the people worried about who won. Well, the Republicans not only won the most House seats, but they won the popular vote for the House1, by about the same percentage as their majority in the House.
As to the percentage of crazies in the House2, if anything their percentage in the House under-represents their numbers among the Republican primary voters. Maybe, just maybe, their clout in the conference is larger than the primary voters. But probably not.
And then we get into their demands. They are all reasonable demands to make within a party. Some of them I disagree with strongly, but they are (mostly) acceptable requests. The demands for regular order have come from many Democrats too.
So let’s celebrate that the process worked as laid out in the Constitution. No one suggested any extra-legal steps or actions. We all got to see it play out in all the messy details. And…
From the point of view of us Democrats, it made McCarthy an even weaker Speaker than he was set up to be. The House will by definition be almost entirely dysfunctional. And if the Republicans are going to be in charge - what more could you hope for?
In the TV show Ghosts (U.S. version - highly recommended) Isaac spends a lot of time in one episode trying to get elected as their representative. During all that he talks wondrously about Democracy. Then when the basement ghosts win the election, he replies “yes, Democracy is broken.”
Democracy not only means accepting the consequences when you lose, but celebrating when the process follows the constitution, the law, and our expectations of doing right by the system.
The count of individual number of votes for Democrats & Republicans across all House races.
Which is more than 20. Plenty of crazies like MTG & Jim Jordan supported McCarthy.