Democracy Is Dead: We Must Destroy The Party System To Overthrow Oligarchy
Since the United States became an independent nation, we’ve had political parties and processes for electing out politicians. When electing a president, we hold primaries with delegates and superdelegates, so this is nothing new. But unfortunately, we have come to a crossroads in this country where it’s become painfully obvious that the system is no longer working, and in fact, we no longer even have a democracy with both sides shamelessly rigging the system for their establishment candidates.
What we have now are two parties that pander to the wealthy and have created an oligarchy of the rich, and they simply play musical chairs with the Oval Office. If there’s anything that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump might agree on, it is that the election system is no longer working. The fact that these polar opposites agree on speaks volumes to just how bad things have gotten in the political process.
The Democrats and Republicans have become like gangs of school children in the playground, where winning for “your side” has become more important than the welfare of the United States. And that applies to both sides of the political fence, although the GOP is taking it to new levels by refusing to even meet with President Barack Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court of the United States.
Actually, school children often show more maturity than the politicians currently in office.
We’ve started identifying ourselves geographically as “red” or “blue” states instead of the United States. You hear criticism of “tea party nuts” and “libtards” and other infantile displays of “us vs them.” That’s carried over from politicians to private citizens and created huge divides among the very people that should be sticking together.
The downward spiral of any kind of political civility or code of honor is nothing new, nor is our election process new, but this election has really brought to light how corrupt and how rigged it is on both sides.
The Republican Party wants a brokered convention so they can strip the nomination from Donald Trump. As horrific as it is to imagine Trump in the White House and having access to nuclear codes, the fact is, if he gains the most votes in the primary process, he should be the Republican nominee.
Even DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz admitted the superdelegates were in place to prevent a grassroots campaign from being competitive and possibly winning the nomination. How much more blatant can the rigging of our political system be? Her open admission proves that they think there’s actually nothing wrong with this kind of gaming of the process.
This campaign season, we’ve now had problems in the caucuses with accusations of Clinton’s campaign trying to steal caucuses with tactics such as telling Sanders supporters it was okay to go home when voting wasn’t finished. Another example is Iowa, where they asked for multiple recounts when Sanders won more delegates, trying to manipulate the final numbers by dragging out the process until many had to leave or gave up.
And then there was Arizona. First of all, reducing polling places so that many people had to wait in line for five or more hours simply to vote is ridiculous and voter suppression in itself. What is particularly disturbing is that many voters for this closed primary had their party affiliations changed to either no affiliation or independent, so they were unable to vote when they arrived at the polls. This smacks of straight-up cheating, with someone going in and changing records to suppress the Independent party vote. And we all know who that hurt the most in that primary.
There have also been accusations surfacing in New York that many voters had their party affiliation changed. So we’re probably going to have problems again in this extremely important New York primary, which is now down to a single digit gap in Democratic polls. You know, just like the single digit gap showing Clinton was ahead in Michigan, which she lost.
Why on earth would we even have any closed primaries where you can only vote if you are registered to one of the two major parties? Why would we have any rules that would in any way discourage people from voting?
Our political system has been so corrupted by party politics and gaming the system that it doesn’t even resemble a democracy in any way, shape, or form anymore. Enough is enough.
It’s time to abolish the party system altogether and get rid of delegates and superdelegates so that one person gets one vote and every vote counts equally, without weighing votes by the rich and powerful as representing hundreds to thousands of other voters with their one vote. Or, in the case of this election cycle — where superdelegates have said they refuse to follow the voters of their state and will vote for Hillary Clinton, regardless of whether Sanders won that state and by what margin — not representing the will of the people and the voters in the state.
The reason that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are doing so well on polar ends of the spectrum is because people are sick and tired of the farce of democracy and the bickering infants of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
They are also sick of the party establishment choosing either candidates who want to trample the Constitution by legislating their personal religion into laws, or are so corrupt and beholden to corporate interests they cannot possibly advocate for the working class and the majority of this country. In the minds of political party leaders, and in their game of “us vs them,” you’ll vote for whoever they put on a podium in your chosen color of blue or red, because they think you have no other choice.
The first thing we have to do is abolish the party system altogether. And I mean in an official capacity, although both parties are spiraling toward implosion with how they’re handling the primary elections.
We need to have one primary season for everyone, where one person’s vote counts equally for everyone else’s, and select either two or four final candidates to face off in the general election. I say two or four to make sure there’s an even number of candidates who lean right, as well as candidates who lean left, so that you don’t have say, two conservatives that split the votes and give the liberal an advantage, or vice versa. Make it a fair fight.
We need to do away with the delegates, and especially the superdelegates, as well as voting districts that politicians are always trying to redraw to favor one party or one candidate over the other.
The American people are sick and tired of the both the Democrats and Republicans gaming the system to nominate yet another politician beholden to billionaire interests that hurt the working class. And they think they can get away with throwing horrible choices like Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz your way because they figure once they have a candidate, you’ll either just settle for who they crown as the nominee, or stay at home, which is actually what they prefer.
The two-party system of politics in the United States and the voting process are so broken our democracy is no longer that, but an oligarchy of the rich and powerful who are counting on you to stay silent and fall in line.
Don’t do it. Until we abolish the party system, vote them all out until they represent the interests of the majority and put country over party and personal greed. And after both party conventions, send them a message by switching to Independent.
[Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images]
