‘Clinton allies’ think voters hate current voter-imposed gridlock situation.

I keep getting told this.

Clinton allies also think that a bigger movement that the anti-Wall Street camp favors her candidacy: the anti-gridlock movement.

Voters are tired of a dysfunctional Washington and want leaders who can make the government work.

…and yet, every trend in American politics since November 5th, 2008 has been in support of a dysfunctional Washington.  I know that the Beltway hates hearing this, but the voters keep telling us at the ballot box that they never want to see the horrors of the 111th Congress – the mutant, deranged poster-child for ‘functional’ government – ever again.  That’s why we flipped the House in 2010, and the Senate in 2014.  That’s why we took so many governorships in 2010 and managed to keep them in 2014.  That’s why state legislature after state legislature has fallen to the Republican party.  Do the people love the GOP? No, of course not. They merely find us useful tools for promoting gridlock.

By the way: this doesn’t mean that the voters love a dysfunctional Washington.  All it has to mean is that they prefer dysfunction to the alternative scenario of Democrats running both the White House and Congress. And I should also probably note that if the voters truly hated gridlock above all other things, the recent trend lines suggest that they’re about ready to give the whole shebang to the GOP…

Moe Lane

PS: I understand that it is currently fashionable to claim that the just-past 113rd Congress is effectively identical to the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 111st.  Having lived through both, I have to say: horse-feathers, sir.  Horse-feathers, stuff, and other assorted nonsense.