Is America Democratic & How Important Is Your Vote?

The simple answer is ‘not really’ & ‘very’.

America provides one of the very best illusions of democracy as so much money, people power, advertising, campaigning and media go into tub thumbing the fact that it is incredibly democratic. Even the constitution, that paragon of freedom will tell Americans they live in a democracy but really what type of democracy do Americans honestly have.

It is a sobering thought that by the time this election is over, all contestants, combining the primaries, state, presidential etc etc  will come this Tuesday have spent in excess of two billion dollars on this exercise in democracy. Understanding you can hardly run an effective campaign in the modern age from the back of a horse and dray, this still quite frankly is obscene. It is even more obscene juxtaposed against a sharp economic downturn and both sides bleating on about sound fiscal management. Quite frankly is it bullshit from all candidates as the amount of money required to get into high office in many countries is expensive and then there is America which beggars belief. It is high lighted by the fact that Obama received $200 million in September alone to keep his campaign pumping away.

Let me place my allegiances squarely on the table – I loath the Republican Party and especially the enormous right wing fundmentalist Christian base that talks more of raptures and Armageddon, security, laws, gun rights, longer prison terms, stripping the constitution and supporting the Patriot Act, foreign invasions and generally put a dickhead like Bush into high office to destroy more lives and more freedoms that has been humanly possible in a supposed time of peace.

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4322655

I would, if I was American, as many people know, support and vote for Obama and every column I write is towards that end. However, critical as I am of massive contributions, had the McCain camp been on the receiving end of such largesse, particularly had the money emanated from Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Prince Group etc there would have been uproar. But as the money was going to Obama from the likes of Oprah and a mass of Hollywood and Music industry luminaries (and of course $5 here and $10 there from common folk) it is accepted and McCain does have a valid point when he states there was a ceiling on donations and this ceiling has been blown clear off the roof by Obama. It began in the primaries when Obama effectively beat Hilary, not simply because he was a more popular candidate but because his coffers were constantly being replenished by such powerful benefactors to point where she simply could not compete financially. As for the likes of Oprah and Letterman as well as Saturday Night Live, Daily Show etc etc the value of this advertising is incalculable. So while as a critic I have harshly criticized the Fox network for being a mouth piece for the Bush campaign and administration for the past eight disgusting years, Obama's campaign funding probably needs a closer look. However, while on the subject of FOX who actively supported Bush and prolonged these bastards in such spurious wars and policies rather than reporting Fox has constantly editorialized and has simply become a propaganda machine for the Republicans and Christian right. FOX news has been a right wing disgrace that is a blight on journalism. It is an extension of how Murdoch dispenses news – and I have seen him do this pretty much all my life with the papers he has taken over all in Australia and the rest of the world. It is a recipe of sensationalism, heavily editorial tub thumping, biased shit. America, here is a tip about Murdoch. He is a politically expedient animal and he is a business man first and foremost – and a very ruthless one at that. He likes to back winners. He backed Thatcher and the Tories right up to the point where he crucified Major and backed Blair & Labour into power. He will no doubt move his bias away from the Republicans if he truly believes Obama will win. You will notice the shift – subtle at first but if he is really backing Obama he will be so blatant come November if his track record is anything to go by. Murdoch loves elections. Each one makes him a fortune. Murdoch pumped FOX news during the majority of Bush’s two terms, the Republican Party and this ludicrous war against terrorism to the point of propaganda. FOX news! What an absolute insult to one’s intelligence. And what is more in the recent Australian election that saw the Liberals (ironically it is actually the “conservative” party) being defeated after 10 years but saw Howard, not just thrown from office but one of the very few serving Prime Ministers ever to be thrown out of his very once safe electorate. This was due to many factors, one of which was Howard’s very unpopular alliance with Bush and having Australia involved in this war and the other was the editorial barrage he received from Murdoch Press, papers and television that had shifted it alliance to Rudd, who happened to run an effective campaign. But the point is that Murdoch changes quickly but in the last 1o years he has been a great friend of the republicans and made a great deal of money from supporting this war. However the boot is now well and truly on the other foot and the media is hankering to get Obama elected. As an Obama supporter I love it, as a social critic it is unbalanced and it is own way just as dangerous as if those fuckwits on Fox were spewing their bullshit out on a gullible public.

The America electoral system needs to be overhauled. It is fundamentally unfair and biased towards whites and those more easily able to cast a vote which in many places is a test of patience in itself. How can the supposedly most democratic, free country in the world be claiming such a thing when they are saddled with a college voting system and conditions on voting day that are fucking disgraceful in most places of the union. To have people lined up hour after hour for nearly half the day, lose pay in the process just to then strike problems with dubious voting machines and even more dubious electoral roles that mysteriously you seem not to be on. It is a disgrace and it is a national disgrace that is biased against the poor and those who really do have to sacrifice just to cast a vote. At least the poll tax has been abolished; I suppose that must be seen as a blessing. But instead of a poll tax there comes a bullshit replacement that keep people almost paralyzed in voting queues. Single parents keeping children under control for hour after hour often in the blazing sun or in some cases bitterly cold west winds and pouring rain. People, because voting is not compulsory, are literally pressed into the polling booths by zealous party workers. I am not sure which is the more undemocratic, kidnapped and taken to a polling booth or forced by law, as in Australia and many other Westminster systems, to vote or be fined. Then to find that voter registration is such a mess the only people who really have a field day are the lawyers waiting in the wings like vultures. This time around there has been some improvement. There are meant to be more booths, a person has been able to cast absentee votes more easily to avoid a Tuesday crush, some booths are located in shopping malls to make a shopping trip a real day out and in some states you don’t have to wait until Tuesday to cast a vote. All good: or more to the point, good by American standards. From one democracy to another, it still comes across as uneven and at worst a little third world. The fairest way to cast a vote is to put that vote on a piece of paper and have scrutinizers from both sides checking it. It is laborious but it works and above all it is fair. Computers can be manipulated and hole punches can be faulty. Both should be outlawed.

One only need talk with a grass roots worker of either party and realize getting people motivated to vote, then get them registered and then of course the real trick, get them to physically cast that all important vote for your guy, appears to be easier herding cats. In what often turns out to be the world biggest car pool, people too lazy or too unable to get to a polling booth and physically ferried there by party workers who have been campaigning for well over a year are utterly knackered and the last thing they really want to do is a car pool. Or more likely the last thing their reluctant partners want to do is bussing people back and forth from polling booths. You don’t think there could be an easier way? In the richest country, the smartest country and indeed the most self reliant country there is not an easier way to be democratic? Quite frankly there has to be. But then once the vote is cast you bang up against the College voting system which is fundamentally flawed and basically undemocratic.

How is it possibly democratic for a candidate to lose by a whisker only to then lose the entire state college vote? What crack head came up with this and figured it would stand the test of time as democratic. It is a system that begs to be abused and distorted. The perfect example of this is the 2000 election in Florida. It is worth remembering not simply because of the fuck up with punch machines, arguing over the validity of indentations in the Supreme Court but how the numbers and College system subverted a higher popular vote and gave the election wrongly to Bush. Or in that case, stole it from Gore.  Many Republicans believe the College System works just fine.

My reply is no it does not! You cannot have someone winning by a hand full of votes and picking up the entire state vote. That is absurd and more to the point it is highly undemocratic especially as the larger states swamp smaller states and negate democracy in those other states.

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

Florida 2000

George W. Bush 2,912,790 popular votes 48.85% 25 college votes
Albert Gore Jr 2,912,253 popular votes 48.84% 0 college votes

And that is democratic?

In other words, 537 votes gave George Bush 25 electoral votes thus negating the votes of seven other states and over 1.5 million other voters. So just to drive the point home and using this 2000 election as a perfect example of just how undemocratic it is – please explain to me why it is democratically fair that 537 voters in Florida should negate the votes of seven states and over one and a half million people (1,562,541 to be exact in Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine. Vermont, Hawaii, New Mexico and Rhode Island) who collectively voted for Gore and collectively raised 25 electoral votes in their combined states the same as Florida. Second main point is that preferential voting would have meant the other candidates votes would have been preferred to the main candidates. As most of those votes came from the Greens I doubt if the “I don’t give a flying fuck about the environment” Bush and the ex head of Halliburton would have got many of those preferences away from the future Nobel Prize winner for his work regarding green house gases. The other thing too is that in Florida under preferential voting Gore would have received 12 electoral votes and Bush 13, thus not destroying the votes of those seven other states. Or even more alarming the 51,003,926 voters to elected Gore and came up with 48% of the popular vote as opposed to Bush's 47%.

I really do defy you to explain how this college dog can look you in the eye to claim it is fair.

Put simply - it is not!

Combine this with the fact that to so many Americans it is either knowingly made impossible to get a vote cast or in some cases just deliberately excluded: not surprising this seems to happen most often in the south and against blacks. Because the prison rates are so high in the south and prison populations are disproportionately black to the general population it does not surprise to discover that once in prison many of the southern states completely remove a persons right to vote even though that person has been released and often released decades before – but still denied a vote. Every election brings up charges, again many levelled against the southern states who make it as difficult as they can to have people cast a vote.

Why does America persist in having their election on a Tuesday yet it is still a working day? Only those who can afford to do it use it as a long weekend. For most struggling financially, the thought of standing in a voting queue is simply uneconomically viable. Here is an idea, how about doing it on a day that people are not working. What Obama has done for voting registration and the black vote is probably similar to what Tiger Woods has done for golf. When you really want to get that vote out you will do it. But still we do not get passed the fact that many who vote this Tuesday will be doing so under unnecessarily difficult conditions that should not exist in any democracy much less in America. 

But then you have a system that is greed personified. To raise and distribute that much money sees a system laden with self-interest and weighed down heavily by its own self-importance.

It is no coincidence in America that officials elected to the highest office in the land more often than not are either very famous or very wealthy or both. Or seasoned political animals like Nixon or Clinton. It is a system that requires any potential candidate to be very well connected and thus very well indebted to those who have backed them into power. Rarely does a politician rise through such a system unsullied by lobby group, committees, business associations or by something self serving. If you don’t bend you break and it’s a matter of how far you are willing to bend your principles that will dictate who you are as a person and who you are as a leader. It is a system that guarantees you are electing an individual who cares less for the common electorate as for those who put their hand in their pocket to promote and back that person’s career. By the time someone is sitting in the Oval office they just about owe a favour to everybody. This goes from the top down and the amount of money it requires to fuel this system is staggering in its excess and obscene in its pigs at the trough waste. If you thought Elvis Presley and Mike Tyson had a few too many hangers on, presidential candidates are laden with them. What the system creates is an animal so driven by money that a very thin veneer of democracy is disguising a hugely biased plutocracy that really runs the show. No matter which party is elected.

All individuals involved skew the political process of legislation against the common good due to the ponderous process needed to draft and actually legislate through the congress and senate. For starters, most of the people involved are lawyers. To be great lawyers you need to discover what is legally wrong with something and either defend it or attack it through legal means. Therefore it is often better to attack your opponent’s credibility as a means to destroy the legislation. Therefore much time is spent attacking each other in the democratic cauldron of congress and certainly in a presidential race for no other reason than to weaken credibility. And in such a crucible you toss in self interest, lobby groups and favours there is sometimes not much room left for the ‘common good.’ In acrimonious political point scoring the concern shifts to disgracing one’s opponent rather than creating a fair and equitable society that benefits the majority of its citizens.

God is almost every candidate’s running mate in America. In western democracies this is unique to America. Even Tony Blair, who was politically to the centre left and was aligned with Bush primarily through their similar devout beliefs in the ‘Man upstairs’ would not be thanking God so overtly. Blair never went around praising God, loving God or hinting God is on his side and the side of the righteous during his election campaign because Tony Blair knew most of his British voters couldn’t give a shit what he believed in except the real issues at hand. Same thing goes with John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister who lost his last election. Howard who was more aligned politically with the right winged Bush would no doubt be bemused privately by such overt and continual reference to God in an election campaign. Yet in America, candidates know that if they openly stated that they thought the notion of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit was rubbish it would be the equivalent of politically ‘falling on your sword.’ If your candidate was the greatest humanitarian since Gandhi and Dr. Albert Schweitzer but didn’t believe in God, don’t expect to see them sitting in the US senate or Congress without first sitting regularly in a church pew. Yet on the other hand a gun toting, God thumping patriot who bombs innocent civilians, destroys civil liberties, ignores the Geneva Conventions, passes environmentally dangerous legislation, believes in the death penalty, is anti abortion and anti gay is actually a more acceptable person to middle America to have in the white house. Quite frankly, most people outside America finds this bizarre and dangerous and makes this presidential election a major concern to more people than just the American constituents. Just recently Barbara Dole, Senator (and hopefully after Tuesday, ex-senator) from North Carolina ran a TV ad against her Democratic opponent stating in effect she was a stooge for the “Godless” and that this opponent should not be seeking office because she was at best an atheist and the underpinned message was she was in league with the devil. Needless to say her opponent very quickly came out with an ad expressing her devout faith in Jesus and how upset she was that Barbara Dole should slander her faith in such a disgusting way. Such a thing would never happen in Australia. Australians really couldn’t give a shit so long as you came across as somebody who can do the job properly. In America however every politician appears to believe in God and so many still come across as sleazy. 

American politics is really shades of grey and the centre ground is almost indistinguishable from one another.  The republican centre and democrat right are virtually identical. The pluses for this American system is that this homogenous representation of blandness creates a very stable and predictable political environment which people enjoy. People react to change and electorates hate surprises. You don’t buy a Garth Brooks record thinking you are going to hear him cover Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” Like wise a predictable representative is a good thing.  This is made easier by the constant fear of being sued for defamation as well as the crushing weight of being politically correct. Quite frankly I am sure most Americans would love Bush if he suddenly said, “Fuck I hate these Muslims – Godless pack of pricks” – his ratings would soar instead of trying not to offend the sensibilities of your constituents and international community while at the same time bombing a country to dust with God on your side. But truly active democracies do not create stable governments with Italy and Israel as outstanding examples. Their parliaments spend most of their time shouting at each other from a potpourri of factional minor parties which makes every term in office as stable as a one legged man in an arse kicking competition.

A solid two party system on the other hand may be stable but choice becomes so limited that representation for minority beliefs and interest becomes nigh impossible to be aired on a national political forum. This is one of the major reasons why minority communities have traditionally such low voter turn out and very difficult to get that voter turnout to rise. This is why Obama is such a miracle. He has engendered a hope in the electorate that the underprivileged, unrepresented and completely disinterested are not voting for the same old white bread. For many voters of these disenfranchised, politically underrepresented minority groups, each election is like being a hard core fan of punk music and you can only find the juke box is offering a choice of hearing Neil Diamond or Neil Sedaka. So for minorities to have any sort of representation in a hugely bureaucratic two party system they either have to be lone voices shouting from the fringes or bend their beliefs to a point where they are so compromised as to not truly represent their original beliefs. Either way as a minority voice you are not heard properly for its not on the agenda or you have the dreadful alternative of hearing Neil Sedaka’s version of “Anarchy in the UK.”

The simple fact is those middle class White Anglo Saxon Protestants constitute the bulk of each parties voting base. Democrats may lay claim to the gay, black and theatrical vote and the republicans from big business but really white middle class America still decides who will be sitting in that Oval office. We elect who we are and as most voters are white and conservative is the reason why a godless, black lesbian will never be elected even if she has cured cancer, world poverty and is up for sainthood. But Obama is not a godless black lesbian is he? Plato the father of democracy actually considered an election to be nothing more than a popularity contest. You control the outcome by controlling the voting base. In other words the more Asians who vote the more times you will have Asian representation. More blacks who vote the more black representation, etc. This was exactly the same thrust of Emmaline Pankhurst’s speeches during her famous suffragette battle to give women the vote. Without true representation you cannot really hope to have any legislation that will truly represent you. For those who vote you are blessed with a representative government and for those who don't and don't believe in what is being legislated is in their best interest, for those they feel a political tyranny. The amount of legislation passed before women received the vote that truly reflected the issues and concerns for women and protected the rights of most women was virtually nil. Without a vote, at best, there were watered down versions of legislation that still left women with no true legal standing. It is exactly the same for minorities in the American political system. You may only be voting for Neil Sedaka singing Sex Pistols but without voting you are never going to hear the real thing.

Obama will win.

The 2004 election saw the Democratic Party spending millions upon millions of dollars to try and introduce Kerry to the wider US public and then actually convince people that John Kerry was a real human being. This time around no such introductions were required. Hilary was known to everyone and in a moment of something coming back to bite you on the arse, the Clintons sanctioned Obama’s stellar appearance at the Democratic Convention that has seen his star rise ever since. Anybody who witnessed that mesmerising speech knew he was something special. However the Clintons must have felt like Paul McCartney who suggested to Michael Jackson that song ownership was a good idea. The other thing too about Obama is that he has a very electable wife.

The real ace in the Republican cannon over the past years has been fear. Fear that America could be attacked any moment, fear that unless rights are stripped, phones are tapped, terrorists hunted down, billions spend on war against terrorists, every thing was about to go to hell. However after years of this bullshit, McCain really has nowhere to go with security, terrorists, stripping rights, giving the finger to world opinion because most Americans are worn out by it. In the 2004 election, Bush won because Kerry was a crap candidate and Bush very effectively employed Lincoln’s election adage of 140 years ago, “You don’t change horses midstream.” McCain can be hammering the fact that it is still a time of crisis and a change of leadership would be disastrous to the future security of Americans. This line simply will not wash except those hard core republicans who know they are fucked this time around. That is not to say between now and Tuesday Bush has not put the American public on high security alert or the head of Bin Laden doesn’t suddenly show up on a CIA plate. History will tell you that voters see it this way. Winston Churchill may have saved Britain’s arse but certainly didn’t save his own from getting chucked out of government first thing after world war two. This was because the voters couldn’t count on the old warmonger not getting bored and starting world war three. Most Americans are sick of war, sick of the cost of the war and sick of George Bush. Unfortunately no matter who wins, Americans will be in both Afghanistan and Iraq for some time to come.

Bush has exacerbated an America that is paranoid, isolated and seen its valuable constitutional rights eroded. There is a joke that after seeing Bush in action is not so funny.

Bush goes to speak in a school class room and Billy asks a question of the President,

"Why did the USA bomb Iraq without UN support? Why are you president when Al Gore received more of the popular vote? Where is Osama Bin Laden? And why do you have to turn the USA in to a prison with the Patriot Act?" and just then the bell rang for recess, and Bush tells the class,

"Those are good questions and I will answer them after recess.

After recess Bush asks if there are any questions,

"Hi, my name is Steve and I have a few. Why did the USA bomb Iraq without UN support? Why are you president when Al Gore received more of the popular vote? Where is Osama Bin Laden? Why do you have to turn the USA in to a prison with the Patriot Act? Why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early and where the fuck is Billy?"

I hope Obama is elected and is allowed to be a great President by those bigots who fear and despise him. I hope the electoral system is reviewed and that the voting system in itself brings in proportional and preferential voting to allow for a more representative election, a greater variety of candidates who truly speak for those currently without a voice and I hope America once again is looked upon internationally as a beacon of light and not some ruthless self serving cartel.

What I really hope is that middle America has an opportunity to correct its mistakes of the previous elections. And whoever is elected will be in for a hell of a trip over the next four years. It will not be easy. 

IS AMERICA DEMOCRATIC & HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR VOTE?

The simple answer is ‘not really’ & ‘very’.

VOTE OBAMA

There is one more thing and I suppose it comes under the heading that an untruth eventually collapses under its own weight. White America’s history with Black relations has been anything but glorious; especially in the South. But there is something deliciously ironic and indeed poetic about the thought of an incoming black president and his wife being shown around the White House by the incumbent white president and his wife. That the incumbent president be from Texas and who so often comes across as a good ol’ boy – it will create an image to those whites and blacks in the south as if the plantation owner has been forced at last to show the slave his mansion and then the white boss being given his marching orders of eviction. Somehow, history may smile at that and note at this point the Civil War and the principles on which it were fought was truly won.