You Call This A Democracy? The American Government Does Not Represent The American People

by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

Screen-Shot-2016-05-26-at-1.21.42-PMHillary Clinton won the popular vote for president by 2.8 million votes and counting, yet serial liar Donald Trump will be our next president.

In the three states that gave him his electoral college majority — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — Trump won by 100,000 votes, which are fewer than the number of voters suppressed by various Republican measures. In Wisconsin, a federal court found that 300,000 fewer voters cast ballots because of new ID restrictions; Trump won there by only 27,000 votes. Similar suppression efforts in other states also worked well.

Nationwide, Democratic voters outnumber GOP voters, yet Republicans control the House and the Senate.

So the government of America does not represent a majority of us Americans.

If this is democracy, Superman poops kryptonite.

The policy positions most favored by most Americans — get money out of politics, reverse climate change, have free tuition in community colleges, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, reverse mass incarceration, rebuild our infrastructure, get equal pay for women, take on Wall Street, protect the most vulnerable Americans, improve Obamacare (why not Medicare for all?) — were those of a candidate who was not even on the general election ballot. Bernie Sanders, known as a radical progressive, but whose positions are totally centrist, lost to the neoliberal Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

So: you call America a democracy?

No way.

Our president does not represent the majority.

The House does not represent the majority: the Republicans control it because of gerrymandering, i.e. cheating.

The Senate does not represent the majority: the Republicans control it because of gerrymandering, i.e. cheating.

The Supreme Court does not represent the majority: it would have, if the GOP had not refused to consider President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, in a radical move unprecedented in American politics. (This same do-nothing Congress, the least productive Congress in history, has obstructed everything President Obama wanted to do to provide us with more jobs, a fairer economy, and a better America.)

We have a minority-chosen President, Congress and Supreme Court.

We do not have a democracy.

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