Former Massachusetts representative Barney Frank (D), who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, can always be depended on to spark debate. Frank, as you may recall, co-sponsored the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. It was the only serious legislative effort made to reform Wall Street after the 2008 crash.
In a recent interview with Isaac Chotiner at Slate, Frank—who considers himself a liberal democrat—expressed his frustration with voters who are upset about where the government stands, yet refuse to acknowledge their own culpability:
I am disappointed by the voters who say, “OK I’m just going to show you how angry I am!” And I’m particularly unimpressed with people who sat out the Congressional elections of 2010 and 2014 and then are angry at Democrats because we haven’t been able to produce public policies they like. They contributed to the public policy problems and now they are blaming other people for their own failure to vote, and then it’s like, “Oh look at this terrible system,” but it was their voting behavior that brought it about.
Voter participation typically declines during the midterms, particularly among younger voters. Youth participation in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections was abysmal and declined more than 50% from the 2008 and 2012 presidential races.
Participation rates for voters aged 18 to 29 were even lower: 21% for 2010 and 2014. Waves of republicans were ushered in, including many far-right extremists. They blocked any efforts at meaningful reform and created new ways to thwart not only progress but every day governance. They held the government hostage to extract concessions that hurt their constituents.
Frank said he believes Sanders supporters have a very unrealistic understanding of the political process:
It is harder to get things done in the American political system than a lot of people realize, and what happens is they blame the people in office for the system.
Well, they blame some of the people, anyway. At least one gets a free pass. If you think the government is corrupt and want someone from “outside,” no one on the democratic ticket satisfies that definition. Frank pointed out that, for a quarter of a century, Sanders has been part of the unfair and corrupt system that he regularly demonizes, yet has “little to show for it in terms of his accomplishments.” From a February editorial Frank wrote for Politico:
I don’t personally remember his playing a meaningful role in moving either health care or financial regulation in the direction he favored when we were considering them. This isn’t a criticism of his work at the time, but it’s definitely an example of the scrutiny that should be given to his legislative work on the issues he’s campaigning on now.
Frank suggested Sanders’ role—his lack of activity—is what allows him to get away with casting off responsibility for the government despite his entrenchment in it. He explained why he and many congressional democrats he knows deeply resent how Sanders has portrayed their efforts (so much for that superdelegate strategy):
A senior United States senator who has held national office far longer than any other candidate in the race—25 years in Congress, including influential committee positions—has been the most successful in presenting himself as the quintessential outsider. He presents himself as not only free of responsibility for anything that happened during his tenure, but vigorous in his insistence that nothing that was done while he was there had any value in addressing the problems that he discusses. And his condemnation falls equally on Democrats and Republicans alike. When he leads his audience in the chant that Wall Street regulates Congress, he draws no distinction between Democrats who enacted crucial financial regulations like the Volcker rule, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the regulation of derivatives and the Republicans who fought all three and are now working to undermine them.
According to Frank, the problem with Sanders’ concept of “revolution” ignores the real challenges in mobilizing widespread public support—something Sanders has never striven for until this campaign:
If you think Sanders can bring about the revolution he promises, there is an important question to ask: Why has he met with a complete lack of success in at least starting the revolution until now? True, he wasn’t president, but senators have exercised considerable influence in the past when they had strong, popular sentiment behind them...I’m skeptical—reluctantly so, but skeptical—that the public support needed to get fundamental social and economic change through Congress can be mustered as easily and as quickly as he has led his supporters to believe.
Frank said his problem is not with Sanders’ goals, many of which he supports. His problem is with Sanders’ message, which is convincing people anything achieved short of his lofty goals is worthless:
The problem isn’t his call for revolution to bring single-payer health care, much tougher taxation of the wealthy, universal free higher education or breaking up big banks. What troubles me and many of my former colleagues—among the most liberal members—is the belief that nothing short of this is worth fighting for...In fairness to Sanders, I do not argue that he is himself saying this explicitly, but that’s the message coming through to his supporters loud and clear: Unless he does not win the presidency with his promise of political revolution, they believe, nothing of consequence will be done to make us a better country.
Consider what a remarkable candidate Barack Obama was in 2008. Young people were as passionate about him then as they are about Sanders now. Yet when midterms arrived, most of them did not show up. The republican landslide quashed any hopes of real reform. Imagine how different the primary election conversation might be had democrats swept the 2010 and 2014 midterms.
Today, Sanders’ surrogate Rosario Dawson said many people were disillusioned with President Obama a mere 2 months after he took office (apparently, in part because of his insufficient Twitter usage). Is that the time limit for reform? Two months? It supports Frank’s assertion that some people have an unrealistic understanding of how the system works.
Regardless of who we elect in November 2016, real change will require at least one or two election cycles, including a midterm. If people give up on the president before the first midterm, as they apparently did on President Obama, the dream of progress will only become more distant.
If you did not vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, your silence helped build the government we now have. If you do not vote in November, your silence helps turn the gears to cement in place a government you will hate as much or more than the one you have now.
EDITED TO ADD:
The main point is that when you are discouraged or do not like what is going on, that is when you need to vote the most.
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Just wanted to add this other point made in the Slate interview, which I appreciated:
It’s ironic that we complain about voter suppression and shortened voting times and then we have so many caucuses. The caucuses are the least democratic political operation in America. They cater to the people who have a lot of time on their hands...
Maybe it’s time to start getting outraged about caucuses, too.