My First 2010 Prediction

So I have been checking back in at NY Times political map, as well as InTrade and Rasmussen (which does seem somewhat conservative, but also seems pretty accurate). My prediction in the Senate is 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans; Democrats look like they'll win California, Connecticut and Illinois and Republicans will win the other toss-up states and Pennsylvania. The House looks like it will stay Democrat as well - maybe around 235 Democrats. Of course a whole lot can change between now and next November as issues change and candidates rise and fall (see Scott Brown), so take this with a gigantic grain of salt.

In fact, the thing I will be the most interested to track between now and November is the approval of the health care change - as well as the passion for one side or the other. My sense from past experiences is that people tend to forget about issues pretty quickly. With health care, I think much of the dissatisfaction is over how long it took to get passed, how contentious it was, the political procedures used to get it all passed, and a lack of understanding / believing some of the mischaracterization of it. None of these concerns seem to me to be things that voters would hold on to.

While we are talking about voting, I do want to reference one other related thing. Megan McArdle, writing for the Atlantic after health care was passed, wrote this pretty angry, and completely absurd post. She says we are in a different world because elected officials voted for something that many polls show has a minority of voter support. She seems genuinely shocked that politicians could ignore the will of their voters. Unfortunately, Ms. McArdle does not seem to understand the political system that was formed by our Constitution.

Our system is one of representative democracy - not direct democracy. Elected representatives have two, often conflicting, purposes tugging at them. On purpose is to follow the will of the voters; when politicians vote on something, they need to consider how their voters feel, and how strongly they feel it, if they want to get re-elected. But the other, and just as important, purpose is of an elected official in our system is to do the research and learn the issues and make the best decisions on the policies before them.

This means that sometimes an elected official will vote their conscience, or will have a better understanding of the issue than the voters (ahem, death panels), and will therefore vote differently than the majority of their constituents. At other times though, they will realize their voters feel strongly and will choose to vote against their conscience and best evidence (of course sometimes, maybe even most times, their conscience and the voters' preferences are in line). Either way, it is a regular tension and calculation among elected officials. And in fact it was designed that way. So to pretend that this is something new shows either that Megan McArdle does not actually understand the basic nature of our political system or was so mad about health care that she allowed herself to write an unreasonable, and poorly reasoned, post.

The beauty of our system though is that when politicians do vote against their constituents, their constituents have the ability to vote in someone who will vote differently - which in fact is what conservatives are pushing for. If health care is repealed in that way, I will likely be as mad then as she was when health care passed. But I will hopefully be wise enough to understand that it is part of the system, as opposed to a scary new world.