For those who believe that the political system in the United States is a democracy, with the definition of “democracy” that one can find in dictionaries, it will perhaps be shocking to learn about the electoral statistics. Analyzing various elections in the United States, one can infer that the most important election by far, is a presidential election, when majority of the population participate. According to Statistica, percentage of those eligible to vote in presidential election was the highest in 2020 with 67%, and percentage of votes in comparison to total population was 48% in the same year. It means that more than one third of the eligible people did not bother participating in presidential election. And those who participated, were even less than half of the total US population.
The reason that a person does not participate in an election is a lack of trust in the system, thinking that his or her vote would not change anything. People who are elected into various governmental positions, they usually are in favor of the system, as they are voted in within the system, and obviously do not complain about the political system they are a part of. They usually concentrate on opposing those who compete against them for the same position. One person who is critical of the system from its roots, and does not belong to either of the two parties, is Bernie Sanders. He has been critical of many aspects of the system, while being a part of the government or an insider. Several years after he was first elected in 1997, he put his ideas in a book titled “Outsider in the House”. His book was republished in 2016, when he was running for the highest office in the United States. He thought the best chance for him to receive many votes was to run in one of the two parties, instead of an independent. He ran against Hillary Clinton, and to many it was not a surprise that Clinton became the candidate for the Democratic Party.
Sanders, like almost all other elected officials, calls this country a democracy. One reading his book realizes that his description of the politics in the United States, in any level of the government, does not match the definition of this word in any of the dictionaries, as it was noted earlier. Even one would notice through his descriptions of the system that the political decisions in this country are made by officials who are basically elected by the owners of a few large corporations, and not a large majority of people living in this country. Some of the highlights of Sander’s book is copied here, to understand whether United States is a democracy or a corporatocracy. On page 20 of his book, actually he eludes into the fact that the political system in this country cannot be a democracy because of the unequal distribution of wealth among its citizens:
“Time after time, I pointed out that such disparity in the distribution of wealth and decision-making power was not just unfair economically, but that without economic democracy it was impossible to achieve genuine political democracy. The message could be reduced to a simple formula: wealth=power, lack of money=subservence. How could we change that? How could we create a truly democratic society?”
However, in several passages of the book he considers United States political system a democracy, with an emphasis on some aspects of the system which could put the democratic political structure of the country in jeopardy. Just looking at the original constitution of the United States and limitations on voting, it becomes clear that founding fathers of this country did not mean to include every citizen of this country among the voting population. The only group of people who could vote at that time were white people of European ancestry. Therefore, the original citizen of this country and black slaves were forbidden to vote. Even among the Whites, only those who owned land could vote, meaning those with more economic power, or a certain class of people. The two mentioned characteristics which would eliminate some from candidacy have been corrected since, but the electoral system still keeps these two groups out to a great degree. When you exclude certain people from voting, especially by analyzing the voting process that in presidential elections votes are casted not directly for a candidate but for an elector, it further removes the election process from a democratic system.
Established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States. Each state has as many "electors" in the Electoral College as it has Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress, and the District of Columbia has three electors. When voters go to the polls in a Presidential election, they actually vote for the slate of electors who have vowed to cast their ballots for that ticket in the Electoral College. Therefore, not everyone can vote, and even those who are allowed to vote, do not vote directly for the candidate of their choices!
Again, lets just remember that this book was written 25 years ago, and his vision for the future could be pretty much compared with historical events. Also, the content of this book reveals that the author had been working on this book for a few years, as the next statement reflects. On page 30 of the book he talks about the presidency of Bill Clinton:
“The Motor Voter bill would be repealed… Union-busting legislation would become law, the minimum wage would be abolished, and child labor would increase… I’m voting for Bill Clinton. Do I have confidence that Clinton will stand up for the working people of this country-for children, for the elderly, for the folks who are hurting? No. I do not. But a Clinton victory could give us some time to build a movement, to develop a political infrastructure to protect what needs protecting, and to change the direction of the country.”
Considering the events of the years after this book was written, especially after the turn of the century when the second George Bush started all the wars in the Middle East, the movement that Sanders is talking about in the last quotation, did not occur, and even financial condition for the average citizen got worse.
Every so often, minimum wage is raised in this country. In spite of the fact that in the past 75 years, especially in the past forty years, minimum wages have been increased, the inflation and rise in prices have reduced purchasing power for the United States citizens. It is mentioned briefly in the next quotation:
“But there are 12 million American workers earning less than $5.15 an hour, or $10,712 a year. And no, these are not all middle-class teenagers earning a little mad money. Three-quarters of them are adults, mostly women, trying to keep themselves and their families alive… The national minimum wage today, in terms of purchasing power, is 26 percent less than it was twenty years ago… Since the 1930s, when minimum wage legislation was first enacted, much of the business community and their representatives in congress have fiercely opposed raising the minimum wage.” (Page 120)
In the following paragraph, Bernie Sanders keeps track of the downturn of wages in the last quarter of the past century. This decline in wages had occurred along with a decline in purchasing power of wages mentioned above.
“While unemployment remains too high…real wages for American workers have declined by 16 percent over the last twenty years. In 1973, the average American worker was earning $445 a week. Twenty years later, that worker was making $373 a week in real dollars… Real wages for male high school graduates in entry-level jobs plummeted a full 30 percent in the past fifteen years, while wages have fallen 18 percent for young women. During the 1980s, about three-quarters of the new jobs created in America were poverty-level jobs, many temporary and part-time.” (Page 126)
Empires stay in power by enforcing their military might on other countries, when such countries refuses submission. Also, wars are effective ways of controlling the economy in stifling any opposition. The largest industry by far in this country is what is called Defense Industry, which in fact acts offensive almost all the times. Human life is of course the true expenditure in any war. Sanders criticizes one of such wars in the following paragraph.
“Six years after the war, I wonder how many Americans have seen even one story about the enormous loss of life suffered by the women and children of Iraq. An estimated 200,000 noncombatants died in that war, killed by our ‘smart bombs.’ This figure does not include the terrible loss of life incurred after the war as a result of hunger, contaminated water, lack of health care, and the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure… Some 70,000 American soldiers returned with a variety of ailments commonly referred to as Persian Gulf syndrome. In fact, ever since the war, the Pentagon has lied and attempted to conceal almost all information about the devastating effects of the war on American soldiers… there is no reason to expect that the government and the media will behave any differently when the next war comes… After all, Kuwait was, and is, a country controlled by billionaire emirs. Kuwait is not so free that it allows women to vote, or even to drive automobiles. It is not so free that the Christian and Jewish soldiers we sent to defend Kuwait were allowed to celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah when they were there.” (Pages 143, 144, 145)
Next paragraph is interesting, when Bernie demonstrates the very thin difference between the two parties, controlling the government in turns.
“If, five years before, someone had suggested that a Democratic president and the vast majority of Democrats in Congress would have supported legislation that cut food stamps by over $20 billion, viciously attached legal immigration, and terminated a child’s right to minimal economic support, they would have been laughed at. But that’s exactly what happened.” (Page 171)
Bernie states a poll conducted 26 years ago. He was amazed how ignorant Americans were of their political system and their political representatives. He may be amazed that these percentages are higher today, than they were 26 years ago.
“In January 1996, a poll conducted by the Washington Post revealed that only 40 percent of Americans were able to name the vice president of the United States, 66 Percent did not know the name of their member of Congress, and 75 percent could not name their two U.S. senators. Further, 40 percent of the respondents believed that either welfare or foreign aid constituted the largest single expenditure of the federal government. This, at a time when the budget for AFDC was $14 billion- one percent of the federal budget- and foreign aid was slightly less… Republican leadership is increasing military spending by about $60 billion over a six-year period, an increase larger than the savings produced by cuts in welfare.” (Page 173)
The following observation taken from two separate sections of the book, are sad facts that show how divided this country is economically. Again, we must emphasize that these facts and statistics belong to a quarter of century ago. The disparity between the rich and the poor in this country is much worse.
“Let me begin by presenting two rather startling facts, and then posing a few questions. Fact 1: in 1993, Michael Eisner, the president of Walt Disney Corporation, earned $200 million. Fact 2: 20 percent of America’s children live in poverty. Now, why is neither of these facts- the outrageous vulgarity of Eisener’s salary or the unjust condemnation of almost a quarter of our children to a life of poverty- at the forefront of public dialogue? Why do we hear more about O.j. Simpson or the Superbowl or a plane crash than we do about the fact that in a period of declining wages for working people the average CEO of a major American corporation makes more than $3 million a year? Could there be any relation between what we see on the ABC Evening News and the fact that Michael Eisner runs Disney and that Disney in turn owns ABC?... Big money interests own the media. The media plays an enormous role in shaping our view of reality. Our view of reality too often turns out to be that the nation’s problems are insoluble. And because these problems are insoluble, democracy is no longer relevant.” (Pages 272 and 273)
The point he is making is interesting! When media is monopolized by big business, the news become the news that such corporation is chosing to broadcast. Any news against the benefit of the corporation or its affiliates would not be broadcasted. This is just a simple fact, which makes sense in reality. Sanders continues this analysis for a different conclusion, below:
“The richest one percent of Americans now own 42 percent of the nation’s wealth, compared with 19 percent in 1976. That top one percent own more than the bottom 90 percent. Between 1983 and 1989, 62 percent of the increased wealth of this country went to the top one percent, and 99 percent of the increased wealth went to the top 20 percent. The CEOs of major American corporations now earn 170 times what their workers make, the largest gap between CEO and worker of any major nation. In 1982 there were twelve billionaires in the United states. Today there are 135… In fact, adjusted for inflation, the average pay of four-fifth of American workers plummeted 16 percent in twenty years. The inflation-adjusted median income for young families with children-headed by persons younger than thirty- plunged 32 percent between 1973 and 1990… In 1973, the average American worker earned $445 a week; twenty years later, that same worker was making $373 a week. And they are working harder for less money. U.S. workers put in about 200 more hours per year than West European workers, who typically obtain four-to five- week vacation, often legally mandated.” (Page 275)
To get a better understanding of the disparity between the rich and the poor in the United States, watch the following youtube clip:
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