What's wrong with US Democracy and How to Save it

What's Wrong With US Democracy?

Donald Trump's Presidential candidacy has been hilarious, but it's become quite terrifying. The Presumptive Nominee of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States of America, Donald Trump has attacked American Veterans, Mexican Americans, Mexicans and Mexico in general, Chinese businesses and lately Muslim Americans.

Sadly all this is quite predictable. During difficult economic times democracies usually turn to the radical far right for solutions. Of course this has a very low success rate.

Many of you I'm sure will be thinking that actually things are actually not that bad in the USA right now, and you have the figures to prove it. Lets go through them:

The unemployment rate is now at 5%. That's quite low and down from a high of 10% in October 2009. So why are we seeing this kind of political instability in the land of the free?

One factor is income inequality. I believe income inequality is the number one driver of political instability in the USA. Income inequality is a good and necessary part of the capitalist system. However when wages in real terms have not risen since 1975, but productivity has risen exponentially we are talking about the slow undermining of the American middle class. The non partisan Pew Research Center have studied this issue for a long time.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

The implications are bleak. In a world where your salary remains stagnant in buying power, but productivity increases exponentially, I think we need to ask where all the money is going. How is it that 40 year old mothers and fathers are forced to work in the fast food industry, where wages are eye-wateringly low and impossible to live on. How is it that full time Walmart employees cost the Government $6.2 Billion in food stamps, Medicaid and Public Housing?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/

The answer is of course that all the money has risen to the top. That the masters of the universe have never had it so good, while the ordinary people struggle to put food on the table. Indeed one study has rated America's inequality as higher than Ancient Rome.

http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/

My next question to ask, what was the outcome of the high inequality in the Roman times. The answer might sound depressingly familiar. The Senate became highly polarized between a political party of capital, the Optimates and a party of the common man, the Populares. (Not that they were parties in the modern sense of the word.)

The workings of the Government slowly ground to a halt as the constipated Senate failed to do it's job and instead focused merely on members careers and power. The Optimates rigged elections, and had reformers ultimately put to death to maintain the unequal status quo.

Such legislative deadlock was ultimately unsustainable and ancient Rome fell into a period of turmoil known as the social war. This was a bloody civil war that set the stage for Julius Caesar to rise to power in his own civil war. The Roman Republic did not survive Julius Caesar.

Am I saying that the USA is going the way of the Roman Republic. Well no. Not yet. And it doesnt have to. However I would say that the American electoral system needs a great deal of reform to avoid the historical pitfalls of a great power with a massive and restless underclass.

It's very clear that the US Congress like the Roman Senate before it works for no-one but it's members and the mega rich. Here is what I propose:

A Non-Partisan Electoral Commission.

Most advanced democracies have one of these. They are impartial and draw the districts for the lower house. The reason that most of the US House of Representatives members are so batshit crazy is that they do not fear the voters. Both Republican and Democratic Party interests are served to have as few as possible seats in actual doubt. That way they don't have to spend money on the race and can keep it for the Presidential and Senate Elections. This is why although Barack Obama won the 2012 election by a large majority by popular vote, in the House of Representatives the Republicans were able to maintain power. In effect most candidates are more afraid of the Primary elections in their own party than that of the general election by the population at large. Of course the people voting in the primarys are mostly the most devoted and extreme. which is why we see government of the people, by the extremists, for the extremists.

This obviously won't remove the money from US politics, but maybe it won't have to. We've seen that massive amounts of money spent by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Addleston have spectacularly failed to move the electorate one iota. In fact the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has more successful at moving the electorate to the left than towards mainstream conservative ideas.

A political body that doesn't fear it's electorate won't respond to the needs of the people. The US district boundaries are broken due to a corrupt and craven system controlled by the two parties for their own needs, not the needs of the people.

A legislative body elected to serve the needs of the people, not the mega-rich would actually respond to the people on the street. The ones actually hurting. Not the uber-rich, but the millions left behind in a globalizing world.

Donald Trump is the inevitable manifestation of the fear and anger of the people. A people who have been ignored for too long by a political system who doesn't understand them, and doesn't have the time or will listen to them.

I think Trump will actually lose this election. But don't for a moment think that the issues he's tapping in to will magically solve themselves. Things are going well in the economy but people are still angry. They will remain angry until their issues are addressed.

I'm not actually that afraid of Trump. He's an idiot. A second rate narcissist-megalomaniac who has the gift of the gab. What terrifies me is the next Trump. I believe a highly intelligent man (or woman) is watching the freak show that is the 2016 Presidential election with great interest. He is learning from Trump how to manipulate the fear of the average American. He's the one I fear. The megolamaniacal despot who is absorbing the lessons of 2016 and will apply them in 2020 or 2024.

The way to prevent it is to reform Politics. Now. Don't wait, because we don't have the time.

Democratic Primary Season - The Big Test

Democratic Primary Season – The Big Test

So far the Democratic Race of the nomination has provided little of the rancor, tempestuousness or stupidity of the Republican race. This is to be expected. Democratic base voters tend to be better educated, far more mellow and closer to reality than the Republican base.

To explain what I mean by that, just listen to an hour of NPR then an hour of right wing talk radio. The difference is stark. Liberals tend to be attracted to candidates who are conciliatory in their approach and speak in quiet tones. That being said, the malaise that causes the right wing to be attracted to be attracted to candidates like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is visible if you know where to look.

In 2008 Hillary Clinton held a large lead both in votes and money raised heading into the Iowa caucus', but was knocked off by the insurgent candidate, a fresh faced Senator from Illinois Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama was African American, born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father, he spent time as a child in Indonesia. He spoke in lofty ideals, articulated a far less arrogant foreign policy and seemed to offer an antidote to the backward, expansionist, intellectually stifled GW Bush years.

Voters flocked to the candidate in droves, testing the Clinton campaign in unexpected ways. The Obama campaign had learnt how to use the internet to drive the campaign. This dovetailed with his fresh face and masterful rhetoric. He rode a wave of hope all the way to the White House.

It seemed a new era had dawned in America. Fast forward to 2016 and Obama's hope seems to have been mugged by reality.

Obama provides a template for liberal candidates in America. Liberal voters want hope. They want to believe in something bigger than themselves. Obama provided them with this hope. That's how he won. That's what Bernie Sanders has to do to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Sanders is an interesting character to raise his head in US politics. A lifelong self proclaimed socialist, Sanders taps into the same malaise on the left, that pushes right wingers to follow Trump, Cruz et al.

Sanders' charm as the irritable Jewish grandfather is undeniable. His cut through style seems to say "I don't have time for all that political crap".

Millennials now outnumber baby boomers of voting age. They never experienced the cold war and the "red scare". They don't seem to fear the word "socialist" in quite the same way that baby boomers and gen xers do. Their life experience has been of a dysfunctional capitalist system pushing an expansionist foreign policy that has reaped a crop of massive social inequality, crumbling infrastructure, two wars, and precious little to show for it.

The truth of it is that Sanders is a Democratic Socialist, basically on the same page as Tony Blair was in the UK. In any other nation he would be considered a centrist or centre left at the very most, but for America this is a radical departure from the centre right of Hillary Clinton or Obama and the far right of the warmongering Bush/Cheney years.

Americans appear ready to embrace a new political reality, but Sanders still has an uphill climb. His job as the insurgent candidate is to associate his cut-through style with hope. Eight years of Obama beating his head against the "scorched earth" style of Congress championed by Senator Cruz should have made America much more cynical about "Hope and Change".

Ultimately that's good for Hilary Clinton. Clinton will be viewed as a safe pair of hands to place the Presidency into because the Republicans can't win the presidency while spouting anti Hispanic, anti-immigrant sentiment. The demographics are clear on this point. They were made clear in 2012 by Obama's victory over Mitt Romney. Actually if you remove George Bush's 2000 victory (which you should, the popular vote was won by Al Gore and more people voted for Gore in Florida than Bush), the Republicans have only won one Presidential Election since 1988, that of 2004. That election was special because it happened during a time of war.

After Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are finished with inciting the right, the Republicans will be so toxic in 2016 that no Republican will have a chance.

I don't know who will win the Republican primary in 2016, but it won't matter. That nominee will fail because he/she will be so radioactive in dealing with Trump/Cruz et.al. If it is Trump or Cruz they still won't win.

That leaves Clinton or Sanders. Clinton has to be the favorite, by far, but Sanders can win. The thought of a Sanders win and what the right would make of a self proclaimed socialist in the White House is amusing, given that they went "Ape Shit" over a black man in the oval office.