We’ve discussed this before to the point of obsession. It’s the space between what people want and what they ultimately get. It is the space between popular opinion and what actually happens. I simply don’t have a good name for the gap. Describing why it happens is the easy part. People simply vote against their own interests and beliefs far too often. Sometimes they don’t know what their beliefs are as presented in the political realm. Sometimes they are led by their emotions to become captive to their fears and prejudices. Sometimes they know exactly what they are doing and simply want to punish their own side for their failures to implement the policies they want.

Reports are that nearly two million people that normally would have voted Democratic in 2016 refused to punish Hillary. Add almost two million votes to her ledger and she likely would have won five additional states. Plus, it’s harder to ignore an election where she won the popular vote by five or six million instead of three. The simple fact that we have seen this happen twice in the span of 16 years and that it happened to the Democrats both times kind of tells you something.

If you do nothing but add the judges that George W. Bush appointed along with Donald Trump and then add in the judges blocked by Senate Republicans during Obama’s presidency the results are quite frankly staggering. That literally flipped the Supreme Court from 6-3 one way to 6-3 the other way. What it has done to the entire federal bench is overwhelming.

That’s just the judiciary. Imagine what it has done legislatively. Imagine what it has done in the day to day mechanisms of government. Bureaucracies have been impacted. Day to day regulations have been impacted. Executive actions on weather and natural disasters have been impacted. Just imagine competent assistance during Katrina and Maria. Imagine better assistant during the California wild fires. Imagine what might have happened during the COVID pandemic. What would have happened had we handled the pandemic as most of Europe and Asia did?

It is quite simply a ripple effect. A plurality of people identify as Democrats. Again, national elections are fairly close, but under a parliamentary system Congress would have been under consistent Democratic control. These are just facts. The current exploits of Joe Mancin and Kirsten Synema certainly demonstrate that majorities aren’t a guarantee of anything and yet they highlight the problem. We have a 50-50 Senate. If the Senate reflected even the advantage in the House it would likely be a 52-48 Senate. That’s simply assuming the Senate goes as people have actually voted nationwide. Imagine if we add the million here or there that wanted to punish the Democrats.

This all pays off with the gap. We look up and we get the 21st century version of the apartheid. We get climate change unabated. We get gross incompetence in times of crisis. We get a larger wealth gap. We get fewer consumer and employee protections. We get a cold and uncaring world that most of us can’t recognize. The gap between the world we want and the world we see is real. We should be angry. We just need to remember who to be angry at.