I’ve noticed a frustrating trend when it comes to discussing politics, particularly regarding whether or not we should pass a certain piece of legislation, especially when that legislation has a possibility of not actually solving the problem it is allegedly designed to solve.
When conservatives were trying to pass the anti-illegal-immigration bill in Arizona, they focused on how bad illegal immigration was in that state. Liberal opponents focused on how bad the bill was. When liberals were trying to pass Obamacare, they focused on how bad healthcare was in this country. Conservative opponents focused on how bad the bill was.
This dynamic not only affects party lines in both directions, but also issues that transcend them. In the current debate over Internet sales tax, which pits online businesses against brick & mortar businesses and has a lot of Republicans on both sides, supporters focus on how unfair the current tax structure is. Opponents focus on how this particular bill is not that good of a solution.
In summary, when a potentially bad legislation is being offered to a legitimate problem, supporters talk about how badly we need a solution to the status quo while opponents talk about how the bill in question won’t actually solve the problem. As a result, they often end up talking past each other, whether on the floor of the Senate or in the comments section of every website, saying the same things over and over again and getting nowhere.
Supporters often accuse their opponents of not caring about the problem. You don’t support the Help the Children Bill? Don’t you think children need help? Why do you hate the children? Then they just repeat all the statistics about the terribleness of the status quo. There are 765,405 children in this country without any access to an ice cream truck! 53% of them have never even heard an ice cream truck jingle!! If we can just give ice cream to one life… Opponents tend to ignore all that and reiterate their opposition. This bill will add burdensome regulations to small businesses. Some businesses can’t afford to maintain an ice cream truck in their parking lot 24 hours a day. This is just an attempt to give the Ice Cream Advisory Board more power to regulate our lives! And then the supporters say, Why do you care about businesses more than the chillllllllllllldrennnnn?????
So how do we solve these repetitive exercises in futility? Well, if you support a bad bill because you don’t like the status quo, you need to stop. Some bills that have the intention of solving a problem may not actually create the incentives to solve that problem (in fact, from my bias, it’s probably a majority of bills), and if you really care about solving the problem you don’t want a bill that doesn’t solve the problem.
More importantly, if you oppose a bad bill, don’t forget to reiterate how much you care about the problem (assuming you actually do care, of course). A little bit of signaling can go a long way. If the supporter is just repeating talking points about the status quo without connecting how this bill will solve the problem (see the last five months of gun control debate), just take a little time to quote all the statistics back to them to show how much you all agree about the problem, and then explain how the particular bill won’t actually help.
Then you will easily convince them that the bill is bad, and then it won’t pass, and then everyone will be happy. The End.