Saturday, August 8, 2009

Is the Senate Listening to the Voting Public?

The Republican Party is training people to disrupt town hall meetings on healthcare reform so our senate representatives are now holding small group meetings but in doing so are they failing to hear the voting publics concerns about healthcare reform. The voting public is beginning to show that they are angry at the democratic representatives for not more strongly standing up for the public option. Empty words are not true support for this issue. The voting public feels that they have been doing all of the giving and the healthcare field is doing all of the taking in creating a bill. At this point no one will support anything coming from the gang of six in the senate and voters are being to say “just say not!” because they do not feel that their voices are being heard by their own representatives.

The Democrats of the Democratic Party worked hard to elected officials that would listen to them when it comes to important main street issues like healthcare reform but a number of them are now feeling as if Washington and the Senate are going back to business as usual and this could result in a very poor turn out for some of our democratic senatorial representatives at best and a grassroots swell support of more progressive candidates on the far end in the future. Either senior senators start reaching out to the voters or the voters are going to start handing out a few not so great lessons on the subject of communication. Senior senators are going to have to begin to understand that they are not above the public who elected them to office and pat answers written by staffer is not the answer to questions that matter to the voting public. Giving openly republican controlled newspapers their views is a major failure and will anger voters in ways that cannot begin to be shared with these senior senators. The appearance is one of being totally out of touch with the voters or that of them being closet republicans and the voting public is asking which is it.

Support is a two way street and if they are unwilling or unable to go down that street then the voting public will find candidates such as Congressman Ben Lujan and Congressman Martin Heinrich who understand the value of direct communication with the people who support and voted them into office in the first place. No one wants to feel like their voices are not being heard by their own representatives so I hope that Senator Bingaman starts to reach out to the voters before it is to late. He should begin to learn for our young progressive congressmen before he losses the change to support change for the better. The time to fight for the main street voting public has come. I can think of no more stronger individual to do so then our senior senator if only he will do so on this very major issue.