Once again, liberals are being taken for granted by the Democratic Party. This time, they’re presenting the possibility of a lame, poorly-funded and thus merely symbolic primary challenge to Hillary Clinton from the left, via Bernie Sanders or possibly Elizabeth Warren, as ersatz democracy and a way to make progressives, whose concerns are ignored by the party bosses, feel less badly about holding their noses and voting for Hillary in the fall of 2016.
Lemmings, Moths to Flames and Liberal Democrats
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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It’s not possible to win an American election looking as Hillary does now on TV, AND there’s no election this fall for anything Hillary would be interested in.
I thought it was bad when they started putting out Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving, then before Halloween, then before Labor Day. But campaigning for the 2016 election before the mid-terms is like putting stuff out stuff that’s specifically for Christmas 2016 in Summer ’14.
(There will be plenty of time to moan about the rotten choices we’ll be given to choose between in ’16 if we wait until ’15, there’s no need to start THIS early.)
The problem is not continuous election campaigns, but the lack of annual elections providing enemies of the people long periods of unaccountability under the name of a supposedly democratic rule of law.
The Founding Monarchists hated Benjamin Franklin for his democratic Constitution of Pennsylvania, and preferred a constitution where the monarch ruled under the title of president, the aristocracy ruled under the title of senator, and the commons, home of the popularly elected, were thwarted by veto of the propertied Upper House.
I would not know cose being a registered Blank, I can’t vote in the primaries and I can’t unregister..
Glenn has some very good points but I would veer in a different direction. The problem goes beyond the fact that the very way in which the US Constitution was designed was NEVER intended to be democratic outside of a tightly held oligarchy of assumed privilege (which I don’t have a HUGE problem with, actually), the problem is impunity and lack of accountability. But elections are not the answer. In a world of refined propaganda machines, honed with precision and perfected in the 20th century, elections become a sham to validate the power elite – they are accountable to elections, but not to laws, which they twist to serve their purposes. The idea that Obama faces the real possibility of impeachment after this November, and that Clinton was impeached but George W Bush is still war criminal at large speaks to this.
The fact that a judge in Alabama can be impeached and removed from office and then REELECTED speaks to this. We have a lawless system. We have, in essence, a feudal system. Finely tuned, narrowcasted propaganda machines can deliver precisely the election results needed to validate this and pass it off as legitimate. This is why I advocate (and I’m in the process of developing a book about this) for a constitutional monarchy. We need to stop obsessing over WHO is in office, and start focusing on lawful execution of job descriptions. We need to move away from elections and toward a methodical hiring practice which carries with it a maximum life term in prison for violations of public trust and duty. Officials would simply go through a periodic performance audit (like everyone else with a job), and have a publicly broadcast hearing on any questionable actions. Political parties would be abolished, as would campaigns (and with them campaign finance problems).
Our system is far too corrupt to salvage, and a general democracy, even one that upholds all of the ideals of liberalism, is simply incapable of dealing with the existential threats humanity faces. Sorry “liberals”….it looks good on paper, like everything else, but it just can’t withstand the incompetent implementation inevitable to a population greater than about 200 persons.
> the US Constitution was designed was NEVER intended to be democratic outside of a tightly held oligarchy of assumed privilege
Interesting statement, can you document it? (acceptable sources include the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but not editorials written by individuals expressing their own personal beliefs.)
The fact is that they were revolting against that very type of government, it’s hard to believe that they would turn around and re-create the same thing. While it’s true that some delegates believed in slavery, and some delegates believed that only landowners should vote, it’s patently false that they collectively designed the constitution towards those ends.
It is true that they designed a constitutional republic rather than a democracy (I assume you’re familiar, just avoiding a different argument) but IMnsHO, that’s a better way to guarantee freedom than a pure democracy. Just look how some states keep trying to vote away people’s civil rights every chance they get.
Everything else you’ve said is spot on, though. People raised in a free society take their rights for granted, which makes it all too easy for other people to take those rights away.
Parliament’s restraint on the English king’s war making powers came into being because the aristocracy lost wealth in the loss of serf’s productive labor to making war.
Today’s military industrial aristocracy’s wealth comes as a result of the monarch making war so it places no restraint on that which benefits its own interests. The serfs still lose.
Let me assure you, Aggie_Dude, as a subject in a so-called «constitutional monarchy», that whatever other advantages or disadvantages such a political construction may possess, it is definitely not an answer to the «democracy» problem you pose. In such a polity, the obsession of which you speak above does not concern a president, but rather a prime minister – or are you thinking of abolishing such offices as well ? – but that hardly represents a step forward….
Henri
I always say, everybody’s right.