What Makes Voters Care?

 

Here in Florida a man whose company paid $1.7 billion in fines for defrauding Medicare has been elected and reelected our governor. With term limits kicking in, he can’t run for governor again so he’s thinking of contesting Bill Nelson’s US Senate seat.

Nelson is a third term senator with a solid record, yet he would have a battle royal on his hands if this guy runs against him.

What on earth is going on?

Don’t the voters know about Rick Scott’s past? Don’t they care?

Or do they expect their elected representatives to be crooks?

And is that why Trump still has a loyal following?

Every day we hear some new and horrifying revelation about the president. According to press reports, he and his associates are being investigated for an array of suspected offenses – conspiring with Putin’s hackers to fix the US presidential election, laundering money for the Russian mob, obstructing justice by intervening in the FBI’s investigation of his activities…

Yet Karen Handel credits Trump’s popularity for her victory in yesterday’s special election in Georgia.

So, if personal probity is not a factor in America’s choice of its politicians, what is?

Apparently party policies don’t matter much. The Republicans keep socking it to the majority of voters, taking away their health care and saddling their kids with massive student debt, for example. Yet we the people keep voting for them.

It doesn’t seem to matter that they have abandoned any pretense of protecting the environment, turning the energy barons loose to plunder and despoil the country at will.

Nothing seems to change those voters’ minds.

America is at war, has been at war for nearly 20 years and will continue to be at war as long as the military-industrial complex prospers – and the voters do nothing to end it.

There’s no longer any talk about correcting the injustices – and tragedies – of the criminal justice system.

Our global alliances are coming undone.

Yet Republican candidates keep winning elections. Why?

Of course there are some voters who are so obsessed with stuff like abortion and gay marriage, they care about nothing else.

They don’t even care about their own lives and livelihood.

But don’t they care about their children? Or their grandchildren?

Don’t they care about their country?

Don’t they care about the world?

Scott’s Medicare fine

Handel’s victory speech

Investigating Trump