Jonathan Chait had a brief post today at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer blog, commenting on President Obama’s speech calling on Congress to vote on gun control measures. After citing the institutional roadblocks that are thwarting efforts to enact legislation that polls well, Chait says,
Basically, everything is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change.
Chait’s laying it on a little thick, deliberately so I think, but his point remains. We don’t enact laws by public opinion polls. We don’t vote based on party platforms. People saying they support something doesn’t mean a whole lot.
What would matter would be millions of votes demanding change. Would a red-state Democrat who hasn’t endorsed background checks lose a primary challenge to someone who does? Will a suburban Republican Congressperson lose a general election in 2014 for voting against whatever package passes the Senate? Will someone who hasn’t bothered to vote before get up and cast a vote in 2014 for someone who supports stricter gun control? If the answer to that is no, then the millions of voices aren’t really calling for change. At best, they’re offering a tepid interest in the possibility of change, but they’re not willing to act on that wish.
It goes back to Charles Peirce – you can tell the content of someone’s beliefs not through the words they use to express it, but through the actions that they take because of it.