Editorials

America’s Failing Democracy

By Final Call News | Last updated: Mar 30, 2016 - 10:44:02 AM

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The United States has tried to export and bludgeon nations into accepting her version of democracy. But the death of a system corrupted by big money, special interests and obstacles to the basic right to vote is on display in 2016 runs for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

The GOP debacle is the biggest example of the end of so-called American democracy—which was never fully extended to the children of America’s ex-slaves. The Democrats are not very far behind though they are better at stage-managing the nomination process.

With wins in three caucuses on Saturday, March 26, elderly upstart Bernie Sanders continues to be the gadfly upsetting the politically predestined coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic nominee in the fall. Instead of embracing lively debate and active participation of the party faithful, the party powers that be would rather Mr. Sanders sit down somewhere. “On Saturday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won landslide victories in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, chipping away at front-runner Hillary Clinton’s lead in the race to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for the White House. Sanders won at least 71 percent of the vote in each state, including 82 percent in Alaska. ‘The reason we are doing well is because we are talking about the real issues facing America and we’re telling the truth,’ said Sanders in a victory speech in Wisconsin. While Saturday may have been the biggest day of the Sanders campaign, the corporate media largely downplayed his victories,” according to alternative news program, Democracy Now.

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The self-declared Democratic Socialist is raising concerns about income inequality and special interest money that Democratic power brokers would rather not hear. There is also an effort to push the Vermont senator into attacking former Secretary of State Clinton instead of focusing on serious issues.

If the Republican Party quest for the presidential nomination were a reality show, it could be rightly called “One Hot Mess!” The darling of the Republican masses, businessman Donald J. Trump, and opponent Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas that almost no one likes, are battling it out in the gutter of presidential politics.

Insults have been hurled at candidates’ wives, a National Enquirer story about an alleged affair and nude photos have followed talk of hands and the size of sexual organs. This is what America wishes to share with the world?

“Donald Trump barely won Louisiana’s primary. In fact, he lost the actual primary day turnout. A big win in early voting helped him keep the lead, but it was close. So close, in fact, that for all intents and purposes, it was a draw,” observed a March 27 article posted on RedState.com.

“What is very clear is that if Donald Trump is not awarded the nomination on the first ballot, his bloc of delegates will melt away and his wins are not being capitalized upon because his campaign is essentially incompetent.”

RedState.com describes itself as “the most widely read right of center site on Capitol Hill.”

“On March 5, Mr. Trump took 41.4 percent of the Louisiana vote compared with Ted Cruz’s 37.8 percent and Marco Rubio’s 11.2 percent. Mr. Trump was awarded 18 delegates, so was Mr. Cruz, and Mr. Rubio got 5 delegates,” observed the Washington Times on Sunday, March 27.

“So what happened between March 5 and Sunday? Mr. Rubio dropped out, and under Louisiana delegate rules, those pledged to Mr. Rubio became unbound—meaning they were free to choose whatever remaining candidates were left in the race. Looks like they chose Mr. Cruz.” That choice fits with the Republican establishment desire to unseat Mr. Trump before he takes the GOP’s prize. They fear a huge loss in the fall if Mr. Trump is the party nominee.

GOP voters, however, are dissatisfied with the “respectable” Republican merry-go-round—which has regularly employed race baiting in its politics. They desire the brash, coarse, unfiltered and often profane pronunciations uttered by Mr. Trump, who once declared he could shoot someone and still win the nomination. He has warned his supporters will riot if he is cheated out of the nomination.

“I think it’s dangerous for the future of politics and for the future of America when we become uncivil in our discourse. … In this dialogue between Mr. Trump as the potential standard bearer of the Republican Party and Mrs. Clinton who has brought her husband beside her in her battle to become the nominee of the Democratic Party, if they start down this road of bringing up negative things about Bill Clinton and they bring up whatever they can discover about Mr. Trump, this political campaign will degenerate into something like two children in a crib. … Two children in a crib and one child reaches into his diaper and picks up some fecal matter and rubs it in the face of the other one, but the other one’s diaper is hanging lower and he reaches in and gets something and puts it in the face of the other,” observed the Honorable Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam in January.

“As children you might look at it and laugh and say, oh, that’s funny; but when two adults who are leading parties in the most powerful nation on earth degenerate the dialogue into that kind of personal thing where we knock out each other with the bad of who we are,” said Min. Farrakhan. He warned then and has warned since then that the downward spiral of political discourse would bring down America’s stature in the world—and that was before the Trump-Cruz diaper dumping clashes.

The political season continues to move along—stay tuned. You are watching The Fall of America.