Voters aren't voting for policies at all. They're voting for candidates who come as a package deal, and often have to make tradeoffs among their own policy pos

Voters aren't voting for policies at all. They're voting for candidates who come as a package deal, and often have to make tradeoffs among their own policy positions as no single candidate aligns with them on all issues. On top of that voters are casting their votes in an electoral process rife with gerrymandering, wedge issues, exaggerated or fabricated crisis rhetoric, party-line voters, and other distortions. The idea that the behavior of the government is ever a consistent reflection of the aggregated intentions of the electorate is something of a fantasy. No one is intentionally voting for bad policy -- they're getting bad policy in one area as a consequence of voting for good policy in another.