Reply #13: "Washington today is a place where good ideas go to die"

[frazzled]

That's the damned truth. I can't believe how much time we spend here nitpicking over the minor (and premature) differences in the candidates' various policy plans. There are plenty of good policy plans, which are mostly similar, sometimes with a difference. They are all better than any Republican plan. But we've had great plans for decades and decades, both from candidates and in our platforms. Fabulous policy ideas. But they rarely materialize in legislation.

Democrats tend to make this mistake every single election cycle. We let our candidates tear each other apart based on policy outlines that are going to shift anyway (prediction: if Hillary Clinton becomes the next president, she will not submit a health-insurance plan that includes mandates to Congress; I'd bet my lunch money on that). Democratic voters think they are smart cookies because they scrutinize policy issues up and down, thinking they can adjudicate the "best."

It doesn't matter what the policies are if they're going to go to Washington to die. So the question becomes this. Do they die because no one is working hard enough to get them to pass? Or do they die because the leadership can't build the public consensus to overcome insider and Republican opposition?

That is the question to ask yourself in determining your vote. I'm not saying I have the answer, but I've leaned toward the argument that hard work alone will not get the job done. That this time, we need something more: something that can shift the fundamental public dynamic on these issues. I don't expect everyone to make the same assessment. But it really does boil down to this ... not to a bunch of "specifics" given by a candidate on a website or in a town-hall discussion.

On edit: On the lighter side, I know where Obama got this phrase about Washington being the place "where good ideas go to die." As a former faculty member at the intellectually rigorous University of Chicago, he knows that the unofficial (and jokingly self-deprecating) motto of the school is: "University of Chicago: the place where fun goes to die." Honest, they even sell t-shirts that say that.