[phyzix5761]

Here are a few examples of times congress passed laws/acts which went against the will of the people:

The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) The Prohibition Act (1919) The Vietnam War Draft (1960s) The Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008)

[clucas]

OK, the only modern example on your list is TARP. I think the strength of your examples does not justify the strength of your statement.

Actually, I just read your update, you've changed from making a bold (and, in my view, wrong) statement about how government is not responsive to the will of the people, to a fairly boring technical point about how a representative democracy works. I have no idea if you're just doing a motte and bailey or if you were never trying to make a bold claim in the first place...

I'll just leave my piece here, in any case: I believe that the US system of government actually works really well, and in general we tend to get laws and regulations that are based on the broad consensus of a very diverse electorate. This is a good thing. In my opinion, when most people complain about how the government doesn't work for the people, what they actually don't like is that a lot of the country disagrees with them, and that disagreement is reflected in our government.

But, maybe I'm wrong and there's some other system we can come up with that will keep a vast and diverse nation hanging together prosperously for another 250 years. Shrug.

[phyzix5761]

Some more modern examples:

Gun Control Legislation (e.g., Background Checks, 2013)

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, polls showed overwhelming public support (over 80%) for universal background checks. Congress failed to pass significant gun control measures despite this broad consensus.

Net Neutrality Repeal (2017)

Public opinion polls showed strong bipartisan support for net neutrality regulations. Despite this, Congress and the FCC rolled back these protections, prioritizing telecom industry interests.

Affordable Care Act (ACA) Repeal Attempts (2017)

Repeated attempts by Congress to repeal the ACA (Obamacare) were made despite consistent public support for key provisions like protections for pre-existing conditions.

Stock Trading by Members of Congress

Polls show overwhelming public support (around 70-75%) for banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks due to conflict-of-interest concerns. Yet, no significant legislation has passed to address this issue.

[clucas]

Gun control - fair point, this is one where I think an ambitious legislator could really make a name for themselves by pushing for it. I suspect that there would be more pushback from the electorate than is indicated in the polling, but who knows. This is your best point, I'll be really interested to see how public opinion actually breaks if concrete legislation is introduced.

Net Neutrality - maybe? My read on it is that it's just too wonky of any issue for most people to actually care that much about, and polling can't really tell us much about how the electorate would lean if they actually studied it - phrasing of the survey question can probably skew things strongly one way or the other. But, maybe that's just a cop-out.

ACA - doesn't this strengthen my argument? It's popular enough that even when the Republicans had a trifecta they still couldn't repeal it, despite running on "repeal and replace"... Maybe if they had actually had a replacement ready to go, they actually would have succeeded... but they couldn't reach consensus on a replacement, so it didn't happen.

Stock trading by members of Congress - the jury is still out on this one... when did this push start, during Biden's term? If (1) public opinion stays strongly in favor of it during Trump's current term but (2) we still don't see any legislation during the next presidential term... then I would call this a mark in your favor, but not until then.

Overall, I'm still not buying your argument that our government is unresponsive to the will of the people. It's certainly not a perfect reflection of the electorate, but generally when we build consensus, we get things done... it's just that consensus is really hard to come by these days.

Have a good one my friend, thank you for engaging, I think this stuff is really important. :)

[hindsightbias]

Difficult to say what the will of the people was on TARP as it changed week to week depending on what the stock market had done that day.

But three days later they were for it before they were against it:

https://www.astrid-online.it/static/upload/protected/GALL/GA...

On the draft, that wasn't a new law. Selective Service was probably a 1940s law. A majority didn't think the war was a bad idea until 1968 and a majority supported Nixon pretty much to the end regardless of the reimagining that hippies were ever a majority.

https://time.com/archive/6875220/a-time-louis-harris-poll-th...