> When the crowd is large enough to show up at the polls and get more votes for the candidate of their choice than anybody else. This is a democracy.
This is a strong indictment of political science education in this country.
First of all, you need to understand that the policy preferences of the voting constituency in any given national election are not strongly correlated to policy results. This is shown convincingly in Benjamin Ginsberg's book, "Do Elections Matter?" I strongly recommend this book - after reading it, you will never again try to explain away an act of government with the same tired logic of, "we get the government we vote for."
It is a difficult-to-deny fact that, in the USA, the government frequently and quietly advances policies which do not appear to be derived from any kind electoral mandate, nor are favored by a substantial portion of the electorate.
But there's a much stronger argument here, and it's about this completely incorrect assertion of yours:
> This is a democracy.
While it's true that, in the modern international parlance, the USA is a democratic state, it is not a democracy in the way that you have used that word here - and our founding documents (and the federalist papers) go out of their way to distinguish our form of government from a democracy as such.
The difference is this: Even if 100% of the voting public votes for a measure that abolishes the freedom to assemble, the government has no authority and no legal standing to trample any individual's rights. This is the essence of a republic: the powers of the government are limited and enumerated and do not change by dint of a given election.
The police presence and tactics at any large assembly in the country since about 1970 has unambiguously been an affront to this right, and the refusal of the courts to recognize this represents one of the most visible abdications of legal reason in modern constitutional law (not the most, but one of the most).
If the government wants to bring sonic cannons and rubber bullets and kettling to protests, it needs to first go through the legal process of amending the constitution to remove the freedom to assemble from the 1st amendment.
Polls and votes and candidates are entirely orthogonal to this matter.
I really agree with this. Specifically, American politics, although technically democratic, is not representational. The US elections are first past the post, where as Australia's is order of preference with instant runoff (you literally cannot throw your vote away) and New Zealand's is MMP (where 50% of Parliament gets equal representation based on party preference and the other 50% get the majority vote).
Also, American preferences don't reflect policy. I did a video on a paper/publication that goes over this:
Maine recently voted for ranked voting, and there are groups like Represent.us that are working to enact anti-corruption legislation at the local and state levels; knowing that anything at the Federal level simply won't pass today. We need new officials elected at the lower echelons under anti-corruption rules and for those rules to then propagate up. It's a very uphill battle considering the amount of power and money to prevent it from happening.
> where as Australia's is order of preference with instant runoff (you literally cannot throw your vote away)
This is a tangent, but IRV is horribly broken: it throws your vote away for you, by ignoring all your preferences other than the top choice until it decides that your top choice no longer matters. If you vote A > B > C, IRC ignores that you prefer B over C until it eliminates A. That can cause C to win. That is not a theoretical concern; it's something that you would expect to happen when third parties become more popular.
It is also a powerful force for forcing cooperation between political parties, which trade preference deals.
This is a powerful force for centrism, an important feature of stable democracies - compare australia’s Relatively centrist governmnents and political parties (despite what the stagnation we see at present) VS the vast and expanding gulf between us parties
Even if she won, she was still the Secretary of State that gave us more predator drones, more bombing and served under a president that spent every day at work (the first president in history).
I feel like people don't realize the corruption is pretty equal between both candidates/parties, they just toss a few pandering policies here and there to get people angry, or spin things differently.
I think it doesn't matter which side you see it from, democracy in the US is completely broken. In most states your vote doesn't matter. Both parties ended up with candidates that were disliked by more people than liked. Trump keeps bringing up Hillary because she probably is the only candidate who makes him even remotely look good to anyone meanwhile even most Democrats didn't want her. Both parties had to fight off what in essence were third party candidates because it's more viable to hijack one of the big two than running as a third party. And that's completely ignoring that once in office completely unpopular measures get pushed through my either site. It's completely broken!
Some dudes I work with went nuts over Obama being a tax burden when he stopped in Hawaii and it was reported he was stoked to have a plate lunch. To be fair though, they kept talking about Hawaii like they didn't realize it's a state.
> I feel like people don't realize the corruption is pretty equal between both candidates/parties
So what? Even if one accepts the unimaginative premise that all politicians are equally corrupt, there are very clear differences in the policies they enact, so it is a rational decision to make discerning choices between them; the implied suggestion that it's all a wash is very obviously incorrect.
If you look at the primary abuses of the plutocracy in the States (ie War Complex, Wall Street & Central Bankkng, psrticulsr kinds of constitutional abuses) there is little difference. For example, Goldman Sachs wins with unelected powerful positions after every election(1). Obama was anti war and said he would protect whistle blowers, but prosecuted more whistle blowers than any president in history, and dropped over 25,000 bombs, primarily targeting Muslims. He also didn't stand up to the healthcare lobbies, or use any seriois political capital to end unconstitutional Guantanamo. So you can't tell me any rhetoric coming from our last presidents has much of anything to do with what really matters in the world. All the huffing and puffing is just targeted at people's emotions to keep them occupied with political battles other than going after the plutocracy.
> You can't tell me any rhetoric coming from our last presidents has much of anything to do with what really matters in the world
Without delving into the subjective can of worms that underpins "what really matters in the world", none of what you said refutes the fact that it is still rational to make choices since those choices have consequences that matter to citizens. There are other things going on in the world besides whatever it is you believe "really matters", but you're free to abstain from the political process until the time comes when nations stop fighting wars.
Just to make it abundantly clear, by "what matters" I'm referring to the topics I addressed in my post such as (1) who gets killed? (2) who does the killing? (3) who ends up with the money? (4) who has constitutional rights?
I have been thinking about how to work around the gerrymandering/gigantic 'war chests' that the incumbents have and the following idea comes to mind: run against these incumbents locally in the party primaries to help drain their truckloads of 'campaign contributions' and help give the election candidate a fighting chance to upset this stinking pile of evil.
And if people were asked about immigration policy instead of told, we both wouldn’t have had a candidate as vulgar as Trump getting the GOP nomination, and we wouldn’t have had the demographic shift that probably resulted in more Democratic votes than Hillary won the popular vote by.
Oligarchic forces aren’t just tipping the scales in one direction.
There is more than one definition of democracy. We have never practiced that form of it and never will. Representative democracy is still a form of democracy, no matter how much people want to pine after the popular vote totals.
Before the election she was a Senator, a Secretary of State, a First Lady and about 20 times the Most Admired Woman in America. Her unpopularity was manufactured. It says more about the electorate than the woman.
Now why would that be? Must have been something. Not sure what it was. Maybe you can remind me. It was repeated over and over and over, endlessly. You'd think I'd be able to remember it. I'll think of it eventually.
I honestly don't know. Was it the emails? Was it Benghazi? It's also totally irrelevant. During the primaries we had a single candidate with positive approval ratings. After the primaries we had to disliked candidates whose primary strength was that they weren't their opponent. Then the candidate with the higher popular vote lost. It's completely fucked!
