It was 31 long months ago that the polls read conclusively that Hillary would lose and Sanders would win. Yet, thousands of New Yorkers saw their income projections safeguarded in her youthful chagrin. They crowded into the Jacob Javitz Center a few hours after the polls closed and waited for her to claim victory. But as Tuesday rolled into Wednesday their collective delusion melted. A last hope arose that she’d take the stage and claim plausible deniability over what Der Party hath wrought. She never showed. She called Trump from the hotel.
The great, glass convention hall seemed to contract around the fashionable women and fragile male egos who identified with the larger of the two minority ballot lines – the US contained only 19% registered Democrats[1] and about 10% Republicans in 2016 – the longest-ruling bipartite coalition on the planet. Together they comprised over a quarter of the US voting age population (and 100 percent of the Electoral College). However, the Hamilton-Jefferson model of two law firms representing the same client enjoyed a dearth of consent. More numerous than either party were the 2000 delegates who walked out of the 2016 Democratic Convention, which was not televised. These represented between 50 and 70 percent of the electorate.
“Did you hear what President Bush said!” said one young student. I corrected him in passing: “C’mon,” I implored. “He’s not the . . . Pres-i-dent.” Time passed before I overheard it a few years later: “Did you hear what President Obama said?” “C’mon,” I entreated. “He’s not the . . . Pres-i-dent.”
Of course, technically, whichever name most members of the Electoral College scrawl on their ballots and deposit in the Congressional urn, wins the ok to be “president” of these United States. So, in one manner of speaking, our young heroes were guilty only of parroting the media.
First Reagan, then Poppy, then Clinton, then Cheney. (On Donner on Dasher, Obama and Blitzen?) Presidents, elections and the hope that a yet unseen second major US political faction or movement will challenge l’america’s 250 year governing block does not ‘politics’ make. There were good old days when public participation was on the verge of creating upon the American continent a Normal Country. But secret wars, covert actions, and deceptive media saw to it that the master narrative of North America was not World War II or the Cold War, but the population’s failure to see what that narrative is. How often does a day pass when Americans fail to wonder ‘what happened to our kleptocracy?’
So why concern one’s self with who the president is?
No one can guarantee that the ballot line collecting the largest number of votes will throw the election. However, the inclusion of local aspirants in another nationwide electoral contest allows the 18 month public humiliation to be conducted entirely within city limits: Brooklyn’s Bernie Sanders (Bernie the Red long ago became Bernie the Blue) and Bill DeBlasio of the Clinton Faction; Kirsten Gillibrand, (who shared the rostrum with Alfonse D’Amato at her Senate victory speech) of the D’Amato Faction; and Network Television, i.e. the Trump Faction.
Newsday reported that neither DeBlasio nor Gillibrand collected more than the one percent of respondents to any of three qualifying polls for the Mass Debates. Yet they both complied with informal ‘requirements’ for inclusion in the newly minted television serial of the same name. (They both appear to be angling for the vice-presidential nomination under a much older Sanders or Biden).
Before we start ordering in the artificial pizza, reconstituted chicken and near beer in anticipation of two hour debate installments, note that it is one’s immediate surroundings that require our full attention and energetic participation. Unfortunately, in a culture of fundamentalist-grade materialism, there’s a built-in aptitude for citizens to project their responsibilities onto someone else. No matter whether the party regulars choose Biden, Sanders or Trump, what we see, hear, breath and aspire to depends on the time and the attention we invest in what we do, today. Every day.
A Media Literate approach to our transistorized civilization insures that no long-running con risks disturbing one’s central nervous system. Don’t get bent outta shape by what the corporations/foundations report that the White House Broadcast Center announced between midnight and five AM. Like everything else, if you ignore it long enough, it goes away.
The moral of the story? There is little evidence presented to the viewing audience (nation) each quadrennium that voting has very much to do with who is appointed.
Regardless of their individual or collective insignificance, 25 Dems have nominated themselves for the presidency of these United States. And judging from the consequences the past three contested elections (2000, 2004, 2016) the ‘Grand Old Party’ (Republicans) will likely continue to hold executive power over the federal bureaucracy while the Democrats (pretty damned old themselves) stand clear of the fray.
- This 19% may be an overestimate by about half the ballot line’s support, as it was tabulated prior the walkout by about 2000 Sanders’ supporters when he asked them to vote by acclamation for Hillary Clinton’s nomination at the 2016 convention. Notably, Mexico’s turnabout election of the proto-socialist Orbrador Administration is deemed Mexico’s “4th Transition,” and the mass dismissal of France’s two historically leading parties by Macron and LePen, heralded the beginning of France’s “4th Republic.” US media calls the collapse of its neoliberal coalition a fairy tale.↑
