The 2016 primary elections have been an emotional roller-coaster, with major grassroots politicians gaining a lot of popularity from the establishment.
Unfortunately, events that have unfolded over the past few months have revealed massive failures and corruption in the system, especially within the Democratic party. Bernie Sanders supporters tragically saw millions of their votes uncounted in states such as Arizona and California, total media blackouts from major liberal news stations like CNN and MSNBC, and just plainly ignoring the fact that Sanders was a threat to begin with.
But it doesn’t matter according to the Democratic Party, thanks to the 1968 creation of Super Delegates. After the major surge of millennials becoming adults and utilizing social media platforms in order to become more politically aware, everyone suddenly became very aware of how much super delegates can really impact the primaries.
The law was passed after the 1968 Democratic National Convention when pro-Vietnam war liberal Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president without having run in a single primary election. The rules were implemented to allow Democrats overall control over who represents their party, ensuring that no grassroots politicians can sweep the vote.
It makes the whole public voting process seem like smoke and mirrors. Inevitably, the superdelegates amass for so much of the vote that the average voter cannot sway the vote, as superdelegates do not have to vote with the popular vote of their county.
And as much as they seem to be “one with the government”, realistically, the political parties are just a group of people with a lot of money and publicity and therefore, power, that do not have anything to do with the political process, except that they continuously get elected.
Party affiliation is so important that when it comes to electing congress, there are only a handful of politicians who are neither Republican nor Democrat. Basically, if you want to be elected and have any influence, you need to pick a powerhouse party – which is pretty anti-democratic.
So anti-democratic, in fact, that a major study done in 2014 found that the US acts more like an oligarchy than a democracy. In Perspectives on Politics, a journal published on Cambridge University Press, stated:
“Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise.” They go on to say that “Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
An oligarchy is a system of government where a small group holds all the power over the government and therefore, the people. The oligarchy also includes both aristocracy (rule by nobility) and plutocracy (rule by wealth). If you consider that in a country of 319 million people, we managed to have multiple family members or spouses of former presidents rise to power and contest for presidency, and the statistical impossibility of that being in any way fair – the concept of oligarchy isn’t very far-fetched.
Therefore, it was no surprise this election that senator Bernie Sanders became so popular among democrats and independents alike. Calling out big banks and monopolies, corrupt politicians and corporate influence expressed anger that many American citizens have today.
Sanders stated that it doesn’t matter who became president, because
“that person will not be able to address the enormous problems facing the working families of our countries. They will not be able to succeed because the power of corporate America, the power of Wall Street . . . and campaign donors is just too great.”
Even former president Theodore Roosevelt once expressed that:
“presidents are selected, not elected”.
You know our system has gotten out of hand when even Vladimir Putin, the corrupt Authoritative KGB boss in Russia, can point out our lack of democracy. In an interview about his support of Donald Trump (which he actually denies, calling him nothing but “colorful”), he states:
“America teaches everybody else how to live with their lessons in “democracy” – but do you actually believe the US elections are democratic? Twice in US history was a president elected that had the most votes from superdelegates, backed by the least amount of voters. Is that your democracy? When we try to discuss this with our US colleagues, they say ‘this is how we do it and mind your own business'”.
But the corruption, thanks to the internet and a bunch of dedicated hackers who create websites like Wikileaks, the party corruption is becoming consistently more obvious. Like every historian will tell you about political corruption in the past, or any capitalist will tell you about an inevitable bubble burst, there is only so much corruption a people can take before a rebellion.
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