Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
They don't care about representing those people, they care about locking in their votes. It's why they constantly talk up emotional social issues that rarely affect them, while stabbing those same people in the back on basically every other issue of substance. It's an odd kind of abusive relationship where the abused doesn't even realize they are being abused. Or they do realize they're being abused, but don't care because it's "owning the libs" or whatever.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
The Republicans who are supporting Trump just for political reasons aren't doing it to represent their electorate; they're doing it to avoid losing in a Republican primary where the rabid base has an outsized influence. It's the same reason why Conservative candidates in Canada court social conservatives even though they make up a pretty small slice of the overall electorate.
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I agree that they are cynically motivated and likely don't actually care about the people voting for them, but making decisions because doing so will get them votes is basically the definition of democratic representation. It could be materially better for the electorate to have people in office who would govern on something other than what drives votes, but that would be less democratic and would presume that someone in office knows better what their electorate should want than the voters do.
I'm just saying, democracy is only as good as the people who vote. The people in office are there because of the people who show up to vote. Garbage in, garbage out. Such is the will of the people.