Why Majorities Fail
Working Families sends emails:
Rachael spoke to North Branford resident Bruce Deegan who was surprised that Senator Ed Meyer didn’t support the paid sick days bill.
Deegan said he spoke to Meyer at a meeting in Killingworth in May and believed Meyer would vote in favor of paid sick leave. “Based on things he said at the meeting and then the fact that it did end up having a later starting date, like he said he favored, I expected that we would have his support and I was extremely disappointed,” Deegan said.
You can read the full article here.
As we’ve been reminding our supporters, it’s this kind of behavior from our elected officials that makes it easy to be come cynical and jaded about our political process. And not without reason. But big changes like this one won’t happen overnight. At least, as a silver lining, Senator Meyer indicates he will support the sick days legislation in the future. Let’s hold him to that.
Paid Sick Days died on the Senate floor with eight Democrats opposed, three of whom had voted for it in the past. The question, of course, is why? I enjoyed this explanation (for the U.S. Senate, not our local version) from Matthew Yglesias:
I don’t think you need to appeal to the idea that people prefer to pander to the caucus’ worst instincts so much as simply the fact that legislators prefer to do nothing at all. The supermajority—and, more broadly, the extreme difficulty of moving legislation—makes it easier for elected officials to make contradictory commitments to various people. Consider that as long as Democrats clearly didn’t have the votes to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, they could promise labor law reform to unions while also reassuring business that no such law was going pass. After the election suddenly there were sixty members who’d promised to vote for EFCA, which created an awkward situation for those members who, in fact, preferred to do what business wanted and killed it. They had to flip-flop in a not-very-pretty way and anger a lot of people. If it took 67 votes to move a bill, they would have been in much better shape, loyal friends to Wal-Mart and the AFL-CIO alike. (Emphasis added.)
It’s not hard to figure out — when Meyer et al could promise an expansion of the safety net to workers, safe in the knowledge that Jim Amann would stop the bill from passing, they made that promise and voted aye. But given a choice, they’d rather help the CBIA.
A future promise following a past betrayal isn’t a “silver lining” — the silver lining is having an improved understanding of his priorities, and the ability to adjust one’s support accordingly.