Pulling dinosaur teeth
The sun is not quite up. I’m in my one and only bathroom, sitting on the toilet which is mere inches away from an exterior wall with a window. Three men with power tools are on the other side of that wall creating a cacophony suggestive of a dinosaur dental clinic suitable for a Tyrannosaurus rex. There are apparently multiple patients in the office at the moment.
It’s disconcerting. For more than the obvious reasons.
These workers have been here every day this week—arriving before the sun is completely up. They drive an hour to get here, start work in the dawn’s dim light, and work hard all day.
I read about these men in this morning’s Washington Post. Well, not these workers precisely, but people like them. It was an article about an ironworker who decided to run for office. After winning his primary, he was asked by his party to quit his job and campaign full time. “I was working eight hours a day or longer and then campaigning in the evenings. I didn’t have the hours in the day to call and raise money… even people in my own party don’t understand what the average worker is going through. And they certainly don’t understand a worker trying to take on a task this monumental.”
This working-class politician tried to raise the money necessary for a political campaign: “My very first call was to a fellow ironworker. And I called him and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m running for Congress. Can I count on you for $50?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, man. I heard about that, and I support you, but I’m laid off right now, and I don’t have the money.’ When I hung up the phone, I was like, oh man, this is what I’m up against.”
And therein lies the rub. The cost of running for office is astronomical. A regular Joe (like the workers in my backyard) can’t easily get there from here. It takes big money—millionaires, billionaires, corporations—which, in turn, can make candidates obligated to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. Thus, people with big money—people who are so insulated from the general population they wouldn’t even be aware of dinosaur dentists in their backyard—control the election process.
The candidate continued: “Every policy is driving up costs on the everyday average worker. The benefit never trickles down, but the cost does. And it’s because you don’t have people with the working-class perspective in there arguing on behalf of the workers.”
If this fellow is right—and I suspect he is—maybe we need to limit the number of millionaires+ allowed in congress. The Almighty Google tells me roughly 50% of congresspeople have an estimated net worth of a million dollars or more. But only 18% of households in the US are so well off.
And The New York Times tells me, “Mr. [Elon] Musk, the world’s richest person and a Texas resident who has major business interests in the state, sent $158 million in September to a super PAC that immediately flipped that much money to a group backing Mr. [Ken] Paxton’s Senate bid.”
Should a person be allowed to, effectively, buy a candidate merely because he can afford to? Where does that leave those guys in my backyard working hard to make dollars that just don’t stretch the way they used to?
Until we get big money out of elections, regular folk will never be truly represented. It might be like pulling teeth—dinosaur teeth—but average Americans need to get millionaire+ money out of politics.
For the record—the aforementioned ironworker did quit his job to campaign full time. I hope he retains vivid memories of working-class life.