The Pandemic of Voter Apathy

It's presence in American politics seems to be inevitable, like that hideous hairy mole that appears on your face with age when you're too old to be bothered to do anything about it...or the nagging mother-in-law who won't shut the f##k up.

The recent election of Scott Brown involved apathy on several levels. First, the Democratic candidate was a complete idiot...she made the #1 mistake in politics: never assume the election is a lock. She only has herself to blame; she completely blew it. Period.

Not only did she just blow an election, but she gave up Ted Kennedy's seat -- a seat held by the Democrats for half a century.

Still, despite any anger or frustration with the system, Mass. voters shouold have known better and understood what's at stake. Why didn't they? Here's my take.

1. Selfishness. When you have a state-run health care system that takes care of you, why worry about the rest of the country? Who cares about the other guy? Apparently very few...apparently it's too easy to get caught up in the hysteria of your own little world and "make a point at the polling booth"...assuming you hopefully know what you're doing, which leads me to my next point.
2. Short-sightedness. Apparenty the voters of Mass. have a case of severe short-term memory loss, or passed out from too much Sam Adams winter ale. Uh, recall what Americans did to try getting things moving again in the last election? Yes, that would be called progress.
3. Plain old apathy. Recall how we voted in more Progressives because we were tired of the same old politics from Conservatives? Sometimes creating fundamental change canvasses more than one election cycle...so all this being said, what sort of change, my Commonwealth Bostonian voter, do you expect to see if you tip the scales back into the hands of Conservatives? Christ, you're a friggin Dem...what's that all about? Apparently pulling your head out of your ass isn't one of your strong suits.

Apparently with Ted Kennedy's passing also passed health care reform legislation in its current form as we know it...but why is that necessary?

My answer: We need to go nuclear. Dems need to grow a goddam backbone for once and pony up to eliminate the filibuster, which was originally intended as a seldom-used tactic but has become commonplace in Washington nowadays to the effect that we're deadlocked and can't get anything done. This is supposed to be a democracy where the majority rules, NOT A SUPERMAJORITY.

If the filibuster isn't eliminated, and eliminated soon, we're screwed on all the issues: health care, clean energy, immigration...everything.