My thought

 

 

We’ve been watching the U.S. House of Representatives try to pick a speaker.  It has been three days.  There are holdouts, and no one candidate can get to the majority required.  The television coverage has provided much handwringing about how bad these 20 congresspeople (elect) holdouts are.  Because of them, this process can’t go forward.  The holdouts won’t say what they want.  They don’t have a consolidated list of demands.  They aren’t making counterproposals for a real compromise solution.  They just don’t want what’s offered.

 

My thought goes one step farther.  These 20 difficult congresspeople (elect) were all elected by the populations of their districts.  There are voters behind them.  They probably didn’t trick their voters into voting for them.  The voters knew what to expect from them.  The voters had choices, and these are the people they chose.  We’re not getting what these congresspeople (elect) want, we’re getting what the voters in these districts want.  These elected officials are probably not getting booed back home.  They are likely getting cheered.

 

Much is made about some of our elected officials not being good leaders; not leading their constituents to where they should aspire to go.  That concern might be misplaced.  This could be more about the elected officials going where the people that elected them want them to go, otherwise they wouldn’t have been elected in the first place.  Is the analysis blaming the messengers without considering who sent the message?