(Photo Credit: The Daily Beast)
We’re currently situated in a political milieu where Democrats and Republicans are more focused on the next election than on meeting the real needs of the American people. Many Democrats and Republicans find it more important to advance their political careers than to improve education, pass legislation that will help to create jobs for the unemployed, extend affordable healthcare to the uninsured, and etc. Of course, there are legitimate times when Democrats and Republicans must stand for their core principles and values and be unwilling to sacrifice those principles and values, but this shouldn’t be the case on nearly every critical issue important to their constituents. The majority of Americans elected politicians to do things that are going to ameliorate their lives; they didn’t elect them to fuss and fight each day.
Too many people are experiencing abject poverty for Democrats and Republicans to become complacent with their bickering. It’s time for them to deliver positive results for the people who elected them. When you’re not sure where your next meal is going to come from, you don’t really care if the Republicans are going to take the Senate in 2014 or will Hillary Clinton run for President in 2016; you simply want your elected leaders to improve your life.
The American people must increase the intensity of their demands for their elected leaders to move beyond simple partisanship and pass legislation that’s going to make America a better place to live and work.
What happened to the national discourse about jobs? Why aren’t we having a national discourse about jobs anymore?
While the scandals going on in Washington, D.C. are essential to investigate and discuss, Democrats and Republicans must make the economy, specifically job creation, their top priority. People who are unemployed deserve to have a Congress and President seriously concerned about getting them a job. Finding some bipartisan solutions to creating jobs does not have to be an overly partisan undertaking.
Most Americans have some level of sympathy for the poor. Poor people, however, need more than sympathy—they need meaningful voices in Washington, D.C. representing their interests. Unfortunately, poor people don’t have the resources to lobby members of Congress. This is where clear thinking and decent Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, can come together to place pressure on their elected officials to make the poor a priority. America has a moral responsibility to ensure the poor are well-served.
We have an opportunity to force our elected officials to embrace bipartisanship: vote those out who aren’t willing to reach across the political aisle to enact legislation that enhances the lives of all Americans—not just the lives of the well-to-do and well-connected. Many Democrats and Republicans are guilty of catering to the well-to-do and well-connected. The American people have the power to throw these types of politicians out of office—just vote them out! When we use our voting power as true political power, we can command the change we long to see.
Bipartisanship does not have to be in crisis. We can use our voting power as our chief political power to demand that it always be valued. Too many politicians in Washington, D.C. aren’t concentrating on governing. Governing requires compromise. The midterm elections are coming in 2014. This presents the first real opportunity to communicate vociferously that we want a Congress that works for us. Let’s elect people who hear us and who genuinely believe we matter. We, the American people, hold the future of bipartisanship in our hands.
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Revolutionary Paideia 
I fear that the ship may have sailed. It will require an unprecedented event (and likely one that is not viewed as positive) or a leader who is selfless unlike any before him or her.
It will still take the demands of the American people for this type of leader to act as they want him or her to act. The American people will also need to elect others to support his or her agenda.
When the radical judicial activists who comprise the extremist majority on the current Supreme Court went well beyond the questions raised in Citizens United, to legislate from the bench an end to campaign finance reforms, the purpose was obvious. These same justices had either ruled on or come to the Court as a result of the equally radical Bush v. Gore decision, and in both cases the real intention was to undermine democracy, to protect a power elite that needs such cynical and sinister machinations in order to maintain its death grip on political power. Do not be surprised if these extremists make further moves before the election, because laws specifically designed by Republicans to prevent legally registered Democrats from voting have been overturned by lower courts, and these perversions of the very concept of “justices” are running out of means by which they and their allies can prevent democracy from breaking out.
Why do you feel that Citizens United and Bush v. Gore are radical and wrongly decided cases?