I'm annoyed, so now what?

I've literally been a political junkie for 37 years.  In 1972, I followed the presidential election.  That election became immortalized in the very famous book, All the President's Men.  2 years before that, I had memorized all the presidents. I was either a child prodigy or an insufferable nerd.  But there's something that really works againts reformers. 
When you reform you change things, and when you change things, there are winners and losers.  The losers are bound to be very angry at what they lost due to reform (& you know they won't call it reform but rather the nation going to hell on them).  The winners will be happy.  But happiness doesn't inspire action the way anger does.  How many times have you ever heard someone fighting out of happiness?

Let's suppose you were mayor of a town of 1,000 registered voters.  You were up for re election and you liked your job well enough that you wanted another term as mayor.  Suppose you had 520 people who liked the job you did and were supportive of your policies where you righteously got rid of corruption.  Then there were 130 people who didn't care if you were the mayor or Daffy Duck were the mayor (yes, there's people like that!).  Then there was 350 people who hated you, were hurt by your great work in cleaning up the town.

You would think you were in good shape and would win something like 500 to 300.  WRONG!!!
First, if you were lucky you would only get about 60% of the 550 who like you.  That's 312 votes.  But since your opponents are so angry they have 90% turn out.  Do the math!  You just lost the election 315-312 to someone who is actually greedier than Daffy Duck!

Here's another example.  The US government subsidized the production of mohair from 1954 to 1995.  By all accounts, it meant very little if US produced a little or a lot of mohair.  & yet, we spent millions and millions of dollars in the 41 years the US government gave money to mohair producers.  Why?  Because if your legislator or president saved you money by cutting out the mohair subsidy, you would be happy but you would hardly be much of a reason to re-elect him.  But the person who was hurt by no more subsidy would be so pissed off he wouldn't be content until you were soundly thumped in the election. 

Another example.  Western farmers are allowed to let their animals graze on land belonging to the federal government.  Normally, if a farmer had his animal graze on your lawn, you would get money for it (provided you were desperate enough to need the money).  But Western farmers pay a pittance to allow their animals to graze on millions of acres of land at the expense of tax payers who must pay income and other types of taxes, and at the expense of people overall who pay on a deficit b/c the government doesn't get as much revenue as it spends and we pay interest on that deficit. 
If we raised, the grazing rates, people who aren't Westerners wouldn't give it a second thought.  But the Western farmers affected would howl for the blood of those politicians raising the fee.  Very ironic that Western farmers get so much help but pride themselves on "individualism".  How proudly rugged and independent should you act if you demand a major contribution from Uncle Sam?

You can have all sorts of people agreeing with you, but that doesn't necessarily win elections.  You need your supporters to break away from the bonds of their routine and help you out.  If you reform and don't inspire that, you're screwed.
& that's why it's so hard to reform America from greedy bastards like the health insurance industry.  An industry where the facts show that their industry is not as effcient or cost effective or contain inflation as well as Medicare.