Washington Post Editorial In Favor Of Incremental Change In Politics

The Washington Post agrees with Hillary Clinton's strategy against Bernie Sanders.  Clinton claims that she shares his sentiments but that he has not shown how they could be implemented.  Clinton is correct.  They would be difficult to implement.  The Post editorial argues that our system of checks and balances is responsible for the difficulty.  The system was set up to promote incremental change and to resist radical change.  I have two problems with the Post's editorial.  In the first place, Obama was elected in 2008 by an electorate who wanted the changes that he advocated.  The Democratic Party was given a majority in the House and in the Senate to support those changes.  The system of checks and balances, that the Post editorial supports, limited the ability of our elected government to deal with the Great Recession, and the reform a healthcare system that limited access to proper care, and is more expensive than any other healthcare system in the world.  Furthermore, the Republican Party has done everything possible to undermine the healthcare bill that was passed by our Congress.  The gridlock that we have endured for eight years suggests that there a flaws in the system of checks and balances.  In the second place, the problems that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton acknowledge are serious problems that need to be addressed.  Does the Post believe that we should do nothing about them because they are too difficult to implement?  They are serious problems that undermine our democratic system.  Most of them are problems acknowledged by the Post.  Should we nothing about global warming, rising income and wealth inequality, the dependence of electoral system on financial support from anonymous contributors, and a higher education system that has become too expensive for the majority of our citizens as states have systematically reduced their funding?  Our current system of checks and balances does not serve us well.  If the Republican Party has its way these problems will only worsen over time.  The Post should not be praising a system of checks and balances that has produced gridlock.  It should be promoting a means to reduce gridlock.