How Government and the Democratic Political Institution Works

Too often now I am hearing that unless you are a member of the extreme party that will not speak to the other side or work with them that you should not be elected to office of any kind. No compromise! It is either my way or the highway even if the wording of a bill or resolution could inadvertently do harm to voters. They point out in war that collateral damage is the price we pay for getting what they want. They don’t care about what is good for the voters but only what they value as good for their own group.

Our younger voters and yes even some older ones don’t want to listen. They in fact refuse to listen. They don’t want to work with people they consider the enemy. They don’t want to learn political history. They don’t care about the past because they simply don’t care if they repeat past mistakes. They will use the current rules to their own advantage but howl to high heaven if they don’t get their way even if those same rules apply to them. I don’t think they have even bothered to read the current rules. Rules that have been argued over, refined time and time again. Where the different between shall and may was debated for months if not years.

The Democratic Party as a whole has a long drawn out process for creating a party platform which states common core values for the party. It addresses the voter’s views on current issues and hopes for the future.  The process starts at the Ward level where people put forward their ideas in a legal format called a resolution. Then it is reviewed by a committee so as to fix any flaws in wording and to combine it with the past platform and other Wards resolutions that address the same subject. It is then voted on at the county level. Then it moves to the state level where again it is combined with resolutions from all over the state and the state level platform. At this point it is moved to the national level where resolutions are combined with the national platform and resolutions from other states to develop a living document that puts forth the values and desires from people all over our country. An idea at the local level can see many changes before it reaches the national level. This angers the new Democrats. But it is how government and organizations that are representative of a large number of individuals works.

In government people are elected at local, state, and federal levels. Our government is divided into three independent branches that balance each other out. This does not give complete control to any one individual. Each of those three branches are answerable to the voting public. Two of the branches are directly elected by the voters and the third is appointed and approved by elected individuals. In short “we the people” control our government as a majority. No one person or group may take control without a majority of the people handing it to them.

Our government is designed to force people of different viewpoints to work together in order to enact change in the current incarnation of our government.  The reason that not much change has occurred as of late is because the different branches of government are refusing to work together for the betterment of the people they represent. My way or the highway does not work in our form of government. We must allow our elected officials to work with each other if anything good is to come from it. Now that does not mean giving one side everything they want but it does require that they listen and explain in a reasonable clear fashion their views and why they hold those views. It does require not alternate facts but real provable facts that can be studied, deliberated on and debated so as to enact actions and laws that will result in the best overall outcome for this country.  At no time in this country’s history has every voter agreed with any one law or action taken by the government nor should that be the case today.