Below is his recent posting on the Camera. See if you can spot why Mr. Coleman was not elected to council. While I am not calling him a sore looser, he certainly leaves that perception. But what I'm concerned about is that Mr. Coleman thinks he lost because of voter apathy. He lost because his ideas, whatever they were, were rejected. People do not vote for city council because you are offering to be "a competent member of city council." Shawn promised to do a good job and work for solutions. So what, everybody promised that. The candidates that won offered actual positions on issues; they offered a track record. A higher turnout would have produced exactly the same results.
"While I know a lot of folks who post on these blogs are unhappy with the direction that Boulder, and the Country are going, but now that the election is over we know that the Overwhelming majority of Boulder residents are decisively happy with the direction of Boulder evidenced by the Majority of the 34% that cared enough to vote for the status-quo and the 66% that didn't think the election was worth their time. The Tacit endorsement however is the strongest tool government can have, and therefore the biggest foe of public will. This is as true in Boulder as it is in the entire country. While you constantly hear criticism of the war, congress, and the president, it seems that this apparent "vocal majority" doesn't quite care enough to cast a ballot. Whether you like the outcome or not, it must be understood that if the input is the same, the outcome will be the same, ALWAYS. While I suspect voter apathy in Boulder is more a function of legitimate satisfaction, than disenfranchisement like in national politics (though their is disenfranchisement in Boulder and I have serious concerns about how satisfied the electorate will be if some policy changes are not made, and quickly, the revenue shortfall problem I talked about during the campaign is Boulder's number one quality of life issue, it's hard for folks to see that when the chickens haven't quite come home to roost yet, but I assure you they are on their way), voter apathy is exactly to blame for our democratic problems. And it took us a long time to get here, and it will probably take for things to get worse before they get better, and the upswing will take a long time too. The analogy I always make for the "self righteous non-voter" who is happy to complain about government is, "If you own a business, and your employees are doing a bad job, and you go out of business, who's fault is that" of course they answer the employees fault which gives you insight to the problem. The answer is of course that it's your fault because you are in charge, but getting that wrong is more evidence of the lack of personal responsibility that is so lacking in all things. And with an apathetic electorate void of personal responsibility, why should we be surprised that those who do get elected by and large are either incompetent, agenda driven, or truly think that "they know what's best" as opposed to folks who listen, care about public will, and are more interested in doing the job they we're elected to do, than do want it is that they want. Input=Outcome
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5 comments:
Nothing says "loser" like those who spell it "looser." That drives me up the wall. More coffee, fellah.
Also, having insulted you, I now request that in the future if I'm quoted here (unlikely, perhaps) you provide a link to either:
www.boulderlout.com
OR
www.darkendeavors.com
...along with an 8x10 glossy from my youth, and paragraphs of praise, preferably written on the note attached to a large certified check made out to 'cash'.
Normally, this would be considered rude and clueless, but I've learned from reading fellow bloggers: it's always to be about me.
All you need to do to determine the impact that voter turnout has on elections is look at 2005 vs. 2007, more voters = more balanced council, also more voter = more accurate view of the public will, period. You clearly missed the point of my post, I'm glad the Clint Talbot got it. I have to say if one could sift through your commentary that is full of mistruths and ugly personal attacks you actually make some solid point, a bit of advice, stop the mistruths and personal attacks and you'll have yourself an informative blog. And though i'm clearly not your favorite Boulder politician, you have complemented me in the past (don't know if it was on purpose or not) so thanks.
"Balanced" according to what or who? What says it's unbalanced and doesn't reflect the vast majority of Boulder?
To have balance, it must reflect weight, mass, numbers. It is not balanced if you find the midpoint between the two extremes, neither of whom have mass behind them and wouldn't represent any statistical category.
fair enough, balance is subjective, that said there is no question that, the more voters you have the better picture you get of public opinion, and in 2005 with nearly double the number of voters, the council election outcome was a much more moderate council. It can not be said with any amount of intellectual honesty that this election with 16,000 voters is a better representation of the political climate in Boulder that in 2005 when there were nearly 30,000.
In my opinion those that didn't vote were in effect voting to continue the policies of the last 4 years. In other words, things are going along fine so there's no need to vote.
However, I think the message many on council will take from the election is that the electorate is fine with a significant shift leftward and did not vote knowing that a small turnout would elect the Sierra Club slate.
If so, we go through the cycle yet again where the council moves leftward, they screw things up a lot, and this causes a much larger turnout to bring it back to the not as far left.
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