It's election time - and I don't care!

For a person like me who is usually almost OCD about following the polls and election news, this is a completely new and liberating experience:  I have almost no interest in the daily reports about our upcoming elections.  I arrived at this happy place when I realized that it simply doesn't matter.  All the hype in the media about the day to day incremental polling trends, and what this politician says about that one, is irrelevant.

It's frankly a little embarrassing to see so many intelligent people making so much noise about whether the "Zionist Camp" or Likud will get more seats, as if that makes any difference.  Like, don't they remember what happened in 2009?  Kadima under Livni got one seat more than Likud under Netanyahu.  Does that mean they won?  No; Kadima got the most seats by cannibalizing votes from their natural coalition partners, Labor and Meretz.  So when it came time to form a coalition, Livni was stranded, and Netanyahu became Prime Minister again.  So too today: even if Yitzhak Herzog gets a couple seats more than Netanyahu, it won't make a shred of difference: the only thing that counts is how many total Knesset seats he will be able to command for a coalition.  And in those stakes, Netanyahu is king.  Between his natural coalition partners (Bayit Yehudi, Yisrael Beiteinu, Koolanu, Ha'Am Itanu) and the Haredi parties, their total poll numbers have consistently been hanging around the 70 mark, give or take a couple.  (Link to a great poll-of-polls analysis over time here, thanks to DG and ED.)  So barring some really major "black swan" event, I think we can pretty safely say that the large print of the day-after reports will probably read "Netanyahu re-elected Prime Minister".

The small print may be of slightly more interest, but not much.  The biggest swing factor will be whether Ha'Am Itanu makes it over the bar, but otherwise the trends are pretty much in a holding pattern.  A handful of seats may be swinging between various parties, but the overall picture is consistent: the government will once again be formed of a hodgepodge of medium and small parties.  They will thrash out a coalition agreement that nobody will be particularly happy with, and within a year or two, the government will once again fall due to internal bickering, and we'll be back at the polls.

Even if I'm wrong, and Herzog does manage to cobble together a majority of the Knesset to support a coalition under him, I don't really care.  His coalition would somehow have to include even more fractious partners, like Lapid with the Haredim, or Liberman with Meretz.  They wouldn't be able to do anything significant or dangerous, and the government wouldn't last long enough to give Livni even a day at the helm.

Netanyahu's proposed legislation to change the electoral system may or may not pass, but once again, it won't matter.  I know I'm pitting my intelligence against a guy who reportedly has a 180 IQ, but I simply cannot fathom how he thinks it will help to crown the leader of the largest party as Prime Minister automatically, even if he can't form a majority coalition.  Does it mean that the government will be able to pass laws even without a majority?  That's unthinkable; it means the Knesset might as well pack up its bags and go home, and you're effectively stuck with a dictatorship for 4 years.  But if you do need a majority to pass laws, then how will it help if the nominal Prime Minister cannot command that majority?  If anyone can educate me as to what subtle point I am missing, I'll be most grateful, but right now this idea looks pretty asinine.

So the cycle will repeat itself, returning to elections every couple of years that produce the identical outcome as the time before, with minor power shifts and flavor-of-the-month "centrist" parties rising and falling, until maybe someone significant decides to pursue the idea of switching to district representation, an event for which I have faint hope, for reasons I have explained before.

Perhaps my most compelling reason for getting excited about elections in the past was because each time was an opportunity for Moshe Feiglin to get elected.  He did, and performed superbly - and then he got ousted by the Likud and is not running in these elections.  So I really do have no horse in this race.  I haven't decided who I'll vote for, and when I do, I probably won't feel any need to advertise or proselytize, because it won't make any difference overall.  I do hope Feiglin will return to the scene with credible force next time around, because I think he's the one person who really has potential to shake up the system.

But until then, I'm watching the elections as a movie-goer watches an entertaining historical film.  Without any emotional involvement, without any need to trash-talk anyone, relaxed, and happy!