Should we conveniently ignore the fact that Black voters are regularly disenfranchised by being crossed of voter lists as possible criminals, given an inadequate number of polling places so that the lines take too long to allow voting, harrassement and disinformation campaigns, and outright dumping of ballots from majority Black districts. Without major electoral reform elections themselves are a cruel hoax but and this is particularly true for Black (and Hispanic) citizens. The Dims have not shown much effort in repairing the damage that has resulted in the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004. Simply asserting that voting Democratic is the solution to the erosion of civil rights, civil liberties and all other problems is naive. Don't forget, none of the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court would be there without the support of Democrats.

When I consider the corruption of the so-called two party system I too have to ask, "When is enough enough"?

It would not be possible to eliminate the electoral college by legal means. The disproportionate votes in the senate given to small states nullifies this possibility. SImilarly, since the people in the House of Representatives are in generally safe seats, carved out by party or race, it would be hard for them to vote for proportional representation.

We need a new constitution, and we need to find a basis for the legitimacy of this new constitution. The new constitution would also have to address the problem of small states, i.e., they need to be given enough power to defend themselves but not enough to destroy the legitimacy of the government.

I would think a new constitution would be legitimate if over 60% of the population that would be given representation under the constitution approved it.

I absolutely agree with Mr. Duncan's point that, in the end, we need a new Constitution. This one is fatally flawed in many ways, the Electoral College being only one glaring fault.

I also absolutely agree that with so many politicians in guaranteed seats, it is nearly impossible to remove them, or even to get them to act and vote in the interests of the majority of their constituents.

But if we don't get to educating those constituents and organizing them to begin to act in their own interests by - for example, fighting to abolish the Electoral College - we'll never get to a situation where we can actually have a Constitutional Convention or referendum that would yield substantive, progressive change.

I heard Hillary say that; it was her token "feminist" comment and as such drew a ridiculous standing ovation from the crowd. Dennis won the debate!

Anyway, demanding that impoverished, poor, neglected, uneducated people vote isn't realistic; unfortunately, many of the problems that exist for African Americans have to be fixed first in order to improve the voter turnout.

jaded prole, you got it right. how can you tell black people to vote when both parties enact policies to disenfranchise black people? but let's not forget the source here: the lone black man on the nytimes.

there were a couple of articles in the last few weeks on WaPo and the NYT op-ed pages about the state of black america, focusing on, not prisons, education, not the history of blacks in america, not the vast economic disparities b/n blacks and the rest of the country, not on any structural or historical issue at all, but RAP MUSIC. the sad part was the vast majority of people commenting on the articles (who, btw, are middle and upper middle class whites) agreed w/the articles. Rap music is the poison of today's black youth, and blacks are not able to exercise the personal responsibility necessary to deal w/their innumerable social ills b/c they listen to that jungle crap. unbelievable.

racism is thriving in the US. and blacks ain't gonna vote themselves out of it.

"I don't get it... the sick people just don't seem to be providing themselves medical treatment."

One of the many ways that African-American and Latino voters are disenfranchised is by concentrating minority voters in a limited number of (usually urban) districts.

In the name of protecting minority rights, certain districts are drawn (with the full approval of the US Supreme Court and both political parties and many progressive organizations) so that 60 percent or more of the population is African-American or Latino. This is to "protect" minority representation, but really has the opposite effect.

It limits minority politicians, even such excellent ones as Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Raul Grijalva, Jesse Jackson Jr. etc. to racially gerry-mandered bantustans making it extremely difficult to become leading national politicians, which they should be. They are too often portrayed and viewed as leaders of "their people," rather than some of the leading politicians in the U.S.

If really lucky, a few of the least progressive may get a spot in a cabinet somewhere (ala Colin Powell, Condi Rice,etc) proving a token "diversity."

It is even worse on the state level. I live in Texas, which is a "majority minority" state. The state political establishment does not reflect that reality. Not by a long shot. No way.

Like New York, Texas state politics are controlled by three officials: the governor, the speaker of the house and the lieutenant governor who runs the senate. (In New York, it is the governor, the speaker and the president of the senate).

All of these politicians are corporate-owned, primarily through campaign contributions and outright bribes. In Texas, all three are far-right Republicans. All are white of course.

Though there are a number of minority politicians who would be better than any of them, they cannot mount statewide campaigns because they cannot get beyond their segregated districts and create statewide constituencies, thus rendering the votes of minorities to be less than whites.

There are other ways to gerrymander as well. Nearly all states carve up "safe" Republican and "safe" Democratic districts, depending which party controls the districting apparatus.

In Texas, the infamous pest-control worker, Tom DeLay, successfully stole five congressional seats for the Republicans, without any opposition from the national Democratic Party whatsoever - before a vote was ever cast. Gerrymandering works.

And so when people propose voting out the bums (or even voting in good folk) as a tactic for change, we have to be aware that as long as voting districts in the US are gerrymandered by race and party (as well as economic factors) certain votes will always be diluted and limited.

This is not a call to abandon the electoral system, but to look at it for what it is: limited, corrupt and not what it claims to be.

Look at the situation strategically and put your organizational and change energies where they can be the most effective, knowing that we live in an extremely dark time and we are building for a brighter future that we'll never see, if it ever comes.

One specific thing to do that most people understand is to find means to abolish the Electoral College. This anti-democratic institution, enshrined in the US Constitution, deprives U.S. citizens of our right to vote for our president and vice-president. Our votes are, at best, advisory.

Work to abolish the Electoral College and institute a one-citizen, one-vote, direct-election system - or better yet, a parliamentary system. Or work on the state and local levels to abolish gerrymandering.

As long as gerrymandering is the established form of defining voting districts, electoral democracy and representative government are all but impossible.

Just a quick comment: change has always come from below; pressure from the civil rights movement in the sixties, for example, applied to the political class. Organizing, boycotting, protesting, in mass numbers. Unfortunately, some people were murdered in this endeavor, such as Dr. King, many Black Panthers and a few white folks, too. I agree with Jaded Prole, also: asserting that voting for one presidential candidate or the other is not to understand that this is a false choice. It is a single party system and probably always has been, but more so today.

tj: Good and important explanation; thank you for sharing it. When I read this article it made me wonder how the likes of Condi Rice and good ole' Clarence Thomas can sleep at night. How can these individuals identify with a party whose policies make life infinitely more miserable for the communities they came from? Then the public wonders why out of despair and desperation individuals turn to drugs, or become the local crack dealer to have enough change to take a girl out on a Saturday night. Of course to elites drunk on power and insatiable in their vampire-like need for others' blood and treasure, turning citizen on citizen using immigration or race as wedge issues maintains the masters' status in this morally twisted status quo game.

Siouxrose:

I think that your last sentence pretty much answers your question (as well as many others). The fundamental problem is that you cannot have political democracy without economic democracy.

While times are now worse than they have ever been and human life on this planet is gravely threatened, not to mention the lousy quality of life that currently exists for the vast majority of people in the World, we've never come close to economic democracy - or even very seriously looked at how it would work .

So, economic elites rule pretty much everything through their agents and/or with brute force, brutality and oppression. This much is apparent and not worth arguing about.

But because we largely have never admitted to the fundamental relationship between politics and economics in the US (what people in the world of the living call "political economy"), we are collectively unable to imagine an economic democracy that would make sense in our situation. We don't even have a language to apprehend this most fundamental reality of living on this Earth.

So we thrash about in the dark, blinded by our own ignorance, lashing out or trying to grab onto the robes of the Savior of the Month. Or we succumb to the rule by elites: increasingly dumb, brutal ignorant elites.

Given the situation, I think the best we can do is try to admit that some forms of economic democracy are what is best for human beings and then work within our understanding of the real world to do things that increase economic equity and political democracy.

It seems too late, but it is never too late if you're still in operation as a human being. The building of a community that expresses itself by fairly sharing the fruit of human labor and that allows people a decent life will be free of the profit motive and economic "competition." There will be no elites as we understand the word.

Getting there from here is always the problem. By-and-large, the violent revolutions that have attempted to achieve these goals have failed. So where does that leave us when the current elites are quite willing and able to use absolute violence, torture, mind control of numerous kinds (advertising and marketing, etc)to keep the power and material wealth they have.

Turning the other cheek aint exactly a useful tactic. We have to develop tactics and strategies that are more useful and successful. In doing so, we reaffirm our humanity as individuals and the value of humanity itself. Both have become highly dubious.

Sorry for these long posts. Stuff seems to b connected to other stuff. Ill try to be more concise in the future.

tj

electoral politics are a reflection of the problem, not the problem itself. as you yourself said, tj, the issue is economic democracy. until such is achieved, the fig leaf of political democracy will always be offered.

www.wsws.org

We need a three-pronged approach. We need political actions to make it legal to make rightful gains in economic democracy. Using those new rights or tools, we can support the development of more aware constituencies. Those constituencies can then make political gains, and the results of that can feed back into a virtuous circle.

That feedback can go in the other direction when we say, "It's not worth it to go the political route because the economic factors prevent fundamental change in the political system, but the economic world relies on law and enforcement of that law, and so changing the economic things cannot be done without an active populace that puts in political energy, so there's really nothing we can do."

tj

One solution that would reduce gerrymandering and the dividing up of the electoral districts to create the "racially gerry-mandered bantustans" would be to change the way the districts are created. What I am suggesting here is a bit radical but it does have some interesting advantages.

Basically what I am suggesting is to create two sets of districts across the country. Each set would cover the entire country. Each person would vote in two districts. Each person would have two representatives in the government and would be able to approach either representative and to expect both of them to representthem.

A key part of this system of having two sets of districts is that the boundaries of the second set of districts are different from the first set of districts. This is because the corners of the second set of districts meet in the centers of the first set of districts. By centers I am referring to the centers based on population. By doing this each district in the first set will overlap four districts of the second set. And vica versa, each district of the second set will overlap four districts of the first set.

OK, so what! Why do this? There are several reasons.

One already mentioned is that it gives each person two representatives. The citizen would be able to chose who the best representative is on a given issue.

A more important reason is that it changes the dynamics of how one relates to ones neighbours. Currently we have bantustans. In a bantustan I am pretty much stuck with the results, and if I want to organize and am not part of the majority I am marginalized. However, with the two sets of overlapping districts I am more apt to be able to be active in one of them. And in doing so I need to communicate with people who are active in the four overlapping districts that share the same ground as the district that I am active in. The needs of the neighbouring districts become more important to me because I need to work politically with people who consider four other districts to be important and who each much consider the people of an additional three districts.

The last part of this system of two overlapping districts is a bit more radical. That is, in one set of districts only men can run. In the other set only women can run. Men and women vote equally in each set of districts, thus each person has a representative that is a woman and a representative that is a man. This is not an arbitrary choice. Men and women do think differently. They have differnt concerns. While there are cultural differences, these differences are in flux. With time they change but meanwhile the fundamental difference between men and women remains. Note that each candidate needs the support of both male and female voters and represents both male and female voters.

Of course the devil is in the details. There is the advantages that gerrymandering becomes more difficult as does setting up of bantustans. A further result is that equal numbers of men and women will be active in government, and there will be increased interaction electorially with ones neighbours. Possibly it will reduce the centralized control of the parties somewhat because of the increased need for local coordination and compromise. I will leave the disadvantages for others to point out if they are so inclined.

As a white person who grew up less than affluent, I have great empathy for the rapidly growing ranks of the disadvantaged in this country.

The rampant greed of the ultra-wealthy seems to blind them to one historical fact. The more they take opportunity away from the less advantaged, the more dangerous their own world becomes.

In the past 30 years, the top 5% of income-earners in America have seen their personal financial assets triple, while the bottom 90% has watched their net worth and opportunity for financial advancement dwindle little by little each year.

Colleges, like health insurance, are quickly becoming a luxury only the most affluent can afford... it is becoming more and more difficult to start a successful business...
various taxes are increasing just by bracket creep caused by inflation... and the medical, insurance, banking and energy corporations have a license to sodomize the average citizen.

Top that off with the new corporate trend to ship American jobs overseas or bring in third-world workers willing to work for slave wages... and the people on the bottom financial rungs of society are apparently expected to wander off into the desert and quietly starve to death.

As long as people have a CHANCE to work their way out of poverty, most will work hard to do that. However, if you close off ALL avenues for opportunity, people can become as dangerous as cornered animals.

Personally, I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with our Constitution. The problems come from the way the Congress and the courts have been interpreting the Constitution to suit their own greedy purposes.

I'm afraid things are going to get a lot worse before the captains of industry and the politicians in their pockets see the light.

Our only real hope may come in the form of a "Third Party" of people sworn to work on behalf of the Middle Class... and a return the Sam Walton philosophy of "America FIRST" in corporate America.

Let's see, If every single black voter had voted, we'd be living in Nirvana. Course, you could say the same thing about the results if every single female voter had actually cast a ballot. Didn't this same Court recently gut a Woman's Right to Choose certain issues for herself?

Truth is, if half the people who say they voted had actually gone to the polls, we'd have different outcomes also. This country has appalling rates of voter turnout. Perhaps it has something to do with the affluent being too busy with their toys to bother, and the poor being too busy trying to earn a living.

I'm not sure I would have stood in the rain in Ohio as they shut down precincts and turned voters away - Especially given the certainty that it was a rigged game anyway.

If you want a broader sense of the Black Community, subscribe to Black Commentator.com [no caps, no spaces] It's well written, has some great art and cartoons, and 4-6 serious articles each issue. I try to stay current with what's simmering, these are the writers who will educate the next Black Panthers.

Of course, Hawaii has hardly any Blacks, and Haoles [whites] are the minority. Here, it is easy to see that money is the ruler, ethnicity is secondary. Not to say the whites are not well represented in the power structure, they grabbed their half back in 1893 and have never let go.

Native Hawaiians take the place of Blacks at the bottom of the totem pole. Economically, educationally, and health-wise, they are always suckin' the hind tit. Yet right now there are 2 or 3 lawsuits charging the poor white kid is being discriminated against 'cuz one of 'da Bruddahs got something he wanted.

Yes, voting helps, but as we are learning, it doesn't mean a lot when the establishment decides they don't like the outcome [Check the status of the Iraq War, if you doubt that]

Here there was dancing in the streets last November, and now it's the 4th of July and the same theives are running things...

If every single eligible black voter had cast their votes in the 2001 presidential election in Florida, George would not have been able to steal the presidency.

Yes, there are lots of dirty tricks played to disenfranchise the black vote, mostly because it tends to lean Democratic. . . but if every single eligible black person had voted in Florida, well, there wasn't enough election fraud to override that many votes. The neocon cabal would not have been able to steal the presidential.

Only black people can own black power and it sure looks like they have to fight for their power cause it sure doesn't look like folks IN power are going to give it to them.

Voting is not the only answer . . . but, geez, I really wish every single eligible black voter would show up to vote in every single election. That is Herbert's point: blacks have to own their power.

I think Mr. Herbert was correct in his assertion.

There are about 35 million black people in the U.S.; that's 10 percent of the total population. Considering how close the elections have been lately, black people could easily obtain power beyond their numbers simply by voting as a fully-mobilized, coherent block.

The governmental system works fine, if you actually use it. When we let others run it for us, it tends to not work in our interests. Why do we continue to be surprised and dismayed by this obvious reality?

What continues to perplex me is that the emergence of ubiquitous, internet-based communications system have not immediately resulted in a fundamental shift of power from the few to the many.

It seems like it's more emotionally gratifying to complain than it is to actually solve the problems we face.

If you haven't already, I recommend reading Mark Twain's essay "Concerning the Jews". In it he advises jewish people to address their isolation and alienation by banding together, and becoming a politically coherent voice. There are about 6 million jewish people in the U.S.

If you want political power, you need to learn to make common cause with others that share your values, and then you need to mobilize. It's that simple.

While it's much less dramatic than "tearing up the Constitution and starting over", it's a proven method.

Don Quixote wouldn't like it, but Eugene Debs would heartily approve.

xntrk: Thanks for the "guerilla" journalism report from Hawaii.
Randb: Love your idea! That's thinking out of the box, and you're right about the devil in the details since establishment thinkers would never allow it. They'd use PR to try to turn it into an inverted play on the "gender card."