Voting. What is it good for?

In the election of 1992 James Carville, advisor to Bill Clinton, nailed the primary issue as, "It's the economy, stupid!" And, that's the way it was, and is, and will probably continue to be until we socialize the American economy like all the other progressive nations in the world.

I'm writing this week's column on Sunday afternoon as usual and have no idea how the election will end. "Que sera, sera."

How do Americans generally decide for whom to vote? Do we vote for party candidates or for candidates who are popular? Do we vote by issues or by popularity? Do we vote for change, or do we vote to keep doing what we're doing?

George Washington, our first president and one of our founding Fathers, warned about the dangers of political parties in his farewell address. "Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged."

We've lived the truth and comedy of Washington's warning.

In one of his posts in the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote the following. "A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths."

Just like George Washington, James Madison warned that governments operate under the whims of human nature raising the question of how to keep governments true and just.

Then there was Thomas Jefferson, more of a party of one. He famously said, "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." I believe Jefferson also said something about separation of church and state, though that likely would not apply to political parties, or precluded opinions about going to heaven.

National elections since 2016 have mocked the old counterculture soul song "War" written in 1969. "Voting, huh. Yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'." Regardless, the 2026 midterm election has set the tone for the next two years.