Opinion | Here’s what the public really thought about the shutdown

Unfortunately, hard line democrats who 'vote the party ticket' supported what they did.

Unfortunately, hard line republicans who 'vote the party ticket' support what they did.

BOTH polarized bases, like sheep, fully blame the other side and will re-elect these clowns to continue obstruction politics where the blame rhetoric gets eaten up.

Despite Schumer and McConnel each 'serving' for 20 years, they failed to do their job, continue to fail, and continue to get re-elected because the polarized sheep from the left and right see all blame for the other guy... they obstruct progress and compromise in order to point "the other guy's" obvious failures.

Meanwhile, progress from both sides gets obstructed and the obstructionist architects from both sides get applauded and re-elected.

MSG (Join to see) - It is easy to decry the system but this is the way the system was designed to work. Getting legislation through, unless it is widely supported or your party has control of both houses and the white house is hard to do. That difficulty actually protects us, to some degree, from the whims that come and go.

The people vote for their representatives and senators. They do not get their by royal decree or fiat. America is polarized, that is the reality. Schumer, McConnell and others are a reflection of that polarization.

I agree those are the issues, but the House was designed to bring hard liners to represent every district and fight for their own needs and interests.

The Senate was designed to bring all of those interests to the table, find middle ground, and compromise in a way that everyone gets a little and America as a whole gets governed.

That has been lost through the years, and instead representatives only govern for their base - not all constituents or Americans... and the consolidation of power by these two parties continues to provide the means of incumbent protection to re-elect these leadership failures despite not achieving what the system intended.

In essense, they both corrupted a great system to win elections, despite failing at governance... and the rhetoric of speeches is what gets their blindly loyal base energized, despite few actions which back that speech up (over sustained periods of time).

The real issues is the federal government is too large, has too much control and there are too many things they are involved in they should not be. Our state houses should be doing a lot of this work.