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No Matter Who Wins, Americans Lose
Why am I so sick of all the media attention to the Republican presidential primaries and all the blabbering about President Obama’s advantages and disadvantages for the coming election? I just cannot get excited. My answer may also be yours: No matter who wins, our nation loses.
(Photo: AP)
Come election night I would be overjoyed to see Obama lose and equally overjoyed to see the Republican candidate, whoever it is, also lose. I cannot see how either Romney or Gingrich or even Ron Paul could possibly offer what is truly needed to fix the root causes of all the dysfunction, corruption and despair with the US political and government system. And Obama? Nothing but slickness instead of results.
Here is a central, common deficiency: No major presidential candidate has come out with strong support for any of the constitutional amendments critically needed to truly reform our system. More than ever, after so much failed government, a whole lot of Americans are ready to support amendments that would, for example, mandate term limits for members of Congress, remove all private money from federal elections, require a balanced federal budget, and revitalize the constitutional requirement for Congress explicitly declaring war.
With one or two billion dollars spent on campaigning for this presidential election cycle the real winners will be all the media companies and army of campaign advisors and consultants getting all that money. With the media and pundits focusing on the election the public has been robbed of real in depth news coverage of countless issues and situations worldwide that we should be far better informed about, especially to better understand exactly what public policies we should want from the president and Congress. The mainstream media that treats the presidential campaigns like sporting events has become as superficial as the presidential candidates.
There is only one scenario that could make me enormously interested in the presidential election outcome. With relatively little media attention to it, few Americans know about the Americans Elect national effort that will place a presidential candidate on every state ballot. The candidates for president and vice president will result from a lengthy process conducted on the Internet involving millions of Americans that have signed up to be part of that process. True, those two candidates that cannot have backgrounds from the same political party, but they may turn out to be somewhat familiar to us because of their past political efforts, though neither will be the same as those on the Democratic and Republican tickets. For a fair analysis of this innovative process read what John Heilemann has said in New York Magazine.
Considering the widespread and deserved disgust among Americans with both major parties, there is a decent chance that people like me will be strongly motivated to vote for the Americans Elect alternative ticket. It definitely will be a vote against both major parties. If millions of Americans make this choice, then I will be overjoyed and so should you. Why? Because it may be the most important historic event that could motivate actions to get us genuine reforms of our political and government system. The Americans Elect ticket does not have to win, just show the Democrats and Republicans how much they are both being rejected.
For this scenario to occur, however, people must stop thinking about the “spoiler” fear that both major parties promote. Democrats want people to fear that a vote for the Americans Elect ticket will cause the Republican ticket to win, and vice versa. In truth, by voting for the Americans Elect ticket we the people have the most important electoral choice to fix our broken system. Think of it as an electoral revolution. The imperative is to stick with your fundamental belief that in the end it really does not matter whether the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate wins, principally because elite rich and corporate interests will still prevail. This means that the vast majority of Americans will continue to get screwed: The top one percent will still own and control our nation under either a Republican or Democratic president. Keep remembering that both major party candidates have lied repeatedly, will keep lying, and will never implement whatever they have promised they will do to reform the system.
My best advice to you now: Stop wasting your time on following all the nonsense about the Republican primaries and later about the main campaign from both major party candidates. Don’t let yourself be manipulated. Instead, sign up at Americans Elect and join the 2.4 million Americans who have already joined the process to give Americans a true alternative to both major parties. Note that 80 percent of people have said they are ready to support an alternative presidential ticket this year. Will they put their votes where their words are?
At some point it will become necessary to mount a national demand that the Americans Elect candidates be allowed to participate in the pre-election national televised debates and also to demand that the mainstream media give equal time and attention to them. If we are to convert our current delusional democracy into a genuine one, then the most patriotic and courageous thing to do is to support the Americans Elect effort.
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92 Comments so far
Show AllEven an American Selects candidate is still a candidate. And each side will think it's just a plant or gimmick created by the opposition. What we REALLY need is a truly generic "None of the Above" option. THAT would send a message to both parties, and no one could claim it's a trick. I would even go so far as to say, if None of The Above wins, both parties must then ante up all they spent during the campaign and put it into a general slush fund for registered voters to withdraw from (or get back during tax time).
This article is seriously flawed in that the author bases his entire fallacious thinking that there are only 2 parties to choose from when in fact there are more to choose from. Americans lose because they're forced to believe that "third parties can't win" and whatever other bs and I don't blame half the voters for abstaining from voting out of frustration.
Interesting that he posts "Americans Elect" as a goto source but when I went to the site and dug deeper to look at all the candidates, all I found were Republicans and Democrats including those who dropped out or chose not to run at all. With no mention of Rocky Anderson or Jill Stein while giving a high listing to Paul Ryan, AE doesn't appear to be as populist as it's hyped up to be.
Rocky Anderson appears on the ballot: apparently your assertion of "dig[ging] deeper" was in point of fact, not deep enough! I support Rocky. Here is the link:
http://www.americanselect.org/candidates/all?page=1
Rocky's barely listed and that's after changing the option to "View All" while Jill Stein isn't at all. Sorry but AE has a long ways to go.
This is not directed to max payne, but to any objective observer. All those listed are LISTED under their last name or chronologically under last name. Apparently, some here are more concerned about their obfuscations than they are with changing the system. Like I said previously, the trolls here are all bought and paid for according to their various handlers.
And look who's paying for "Americans Elect"--the right-wing hedge-fund sharpies!
And you're accusing others of being bought and paid for?
What's the old expression about people who live in glass houses? See the following:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/30-7
Are you asserting that Nader, Kucinich, Sanders, and Anderson are all stooges of hedge fund managers?I am just curious how that would serve the elites, if enough people advocated for them? Besides, what is your solution?
No--I am asserting, per the facts, that America Elects is financed by hedge funders,
The leading candidates for this group's nomination-the ones featured most prominently on the Web page--are right-wingers like Ron Paul, Buddy Roemer, and John Huntsman.
You are clearly suffering from some seriously and deeply ingrained illusions about the sponsors of this group--which are hedge funds, the people who have made a wreck of the economy with their byzantine, corrupt financial schemes--whatever your wish to deny or dodge this clear fact.
Ted,
Thanks for the link. That is all I was asking for was a source which substantiated the charges. I posted before reading the article. My response follows the attacks on progressives too many to list; but here is a small sampling: Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Bill McKibben, Glen Greenwald to name a few, but by no means all. I’ve been reading these attacks void of any sources to back the charges for years. So I jumped in. It is not delussional to ask someone making charges to substantiate them. After reading the article you shared, I agree with the contradictory posting by CD of two articles in conflict with each other.
Moreover, none of this renders illegitimate my observation that a large block of people who post here do so with a partisan agenda. I’ve been posting here for over five years and there is a large body of Democrats who disguise their attacks in clever ways intended to derail, or discredit any point of view that seeks to advocate for Third Party runs, mostly one can see this norm whenever Hedges goes after the liberal lite crowd. Then you have the block of neo-conservative troll pretending to be progressive and cheering on someone like Hedges who is trashing the duopoly, but obviously their partisan participation is to help sway fence sitters who may be thinking of voting for a Third Party candidate.
The entire forum has become polluted with this type of deception and it is difficult to discern the players. I do appreciate you providing a source to back up your claims. I was obviously mistaken about the group.
Additionally, you never anwered my question and I would be interested in learing what you think. What do you advocate for taking back the system?
I think we need to build an independent progressive party--not one financed by hedge funds.
That party needs to be more than an electoral machine, like the Greens. It needs to hit on all cylinders--electoral, activist, educational, etc., like the French NPA.
Such a party does not now exist--but it could emerge out of the Occupy movement as long as it doesn't get coopted by the Democrats.
Thanks tbg. Some people never learn and then they go personal for nothing. They wouldn't know squat about being objective let alone. I'm not about to completely dismess AE but there's no denying the fact that it must repair itself first. The author gets some things right and congrats to him for making it clear that the duopoly must not be taken seriously but it's not trollish to let it be known where the errors are and what can be done to correct them.
So your excluded from going personal? Go back and re-read your comments.
I stand by what I said. Think what you personally like.
I see from other well written comments what AE really is and where it comes from. Sorry to see you down in the dumps for losing out on your arguments.
What is the relationship between Nader, Kucinich, Sanders, and Anderson, and the organization running this thing?
There is none. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
Just because others may not have a "solution," that does not make your "solution" a good one. It is illogical to suggest that.
We have good reason to be suspicious of this if only because illogical and deceitful arguments are being used to promote it.
Jesse Ventura said that Americans should vote for anyone who is NOT a Republican or a Democrat. Anyone. That would change things immediately for the better.
Jesse's an idiot too - let's elect Ron Paul and his cadre of Birchers and Survivalists! For the better? NO FREAKIN WAY - those people have allegience to NOONE except their hypocritical heartless hero, Ayn Rand.
Just to cut through all the obfuscation being dumped on the heap of lies by those advancing their partisan issues: Rocky Anderson, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders all appear on the ballot. The list is extensive read it before mudding the waters.
A referendum process at the federal level is I think what people mean when they say "direct democracy", right? Then the Obamas of the world cannot avoid simple questions like that about the useless expenditures we make: the War on (Some) Drugs. Anyone and I mean anyone, who refuses to confront this issue honestly is a sellout to the status quo of our insulting and unnecessary international presence as warriors for (our own brand of) morality.
Guess what- "Americans" have all ready lost. The MurKKKans won.
Slick diversion of our electoral process to the 1%. Follow the money. The same fat cats funding Romney, Gingrich and Obama are funding organizations with "corporate" unnamed sponsors using arguments similar or the same as that given above. They are nervous they may lose some control of the US so they are going direct. Our electoral system has worked for hundreds of years except when the fat cats take over like 2000 with Bush or 2004 with machines in Ohio or whatever they are planning for 2012.
I am truly appalled and puzzled that commondreams would publish an article by this group. Just last week commondreams published an expose by Peter Hart of FAIR that shows that Americans Elect is a trojan horse of right-wing hedge-fund sharpies (the tipoff in this article is the lack of any mention of most of the key planks of the progressive agenda--single payer healthcare, carbon tax, financial transaction tax, slashing the bloated Petagon budget to fund social needs, etc., while pushing the idea of a mandatory balanced-budget Constitutional amendment, a long-time daydream of the far right) See the following for further deatils:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/30-7
Here's the reality: the ruling elite knows full well that Americans are growing increasingly disillusioned with the two major parties and all the major instruments of social control. So, in order to remain several steps ahead of the game, they are floating gambits such as this one, so that their political shills can appear to be part of a nominally "independent" process and so demagogically and cynically tap into some of the legitimate disillusionment that has spawned the Occupy movement while betraying its populist essence.
As the Hart piece shows, the puppetmasters remain the same, notwithstanding the superficially anti-establisment rhetoric.
Why, in this case, commondreams has consented to be one of the puppets is curious indeed.
"Electionselect" are simply hedging their bets.
You're absolutely right, teddie. I thought the same thing: what is CD thinking of in promoting these clowns? I hadn't heard of the piece by Peter Hart but I mention other such pieces corroborating his--and your--points in my comment below.
Hear, hear.
The people in power ignore the Constitution as it is. How would changing the Constitution make any difference in that?
A "unity" or "centrist" candidate is an absurdity. Halfway between the two parties is still far to the right and of no value to the interests of the working class people.
There already are alternative candidates. The only logical reason that anyone would discount that - disappear that in the case of the author - and not put their money (millions $$$ are being spent in this "Americans Elect" farce) and effort into one of those candidates - Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson or Stewart Alexander, for example - is because the people behind this are right wingers.
"I cannot see how either Romney or Gingrich or even Ron Paul could possibly offer what is truly needed to fix ..."
Loaded "even"
"Americans Elect: The Truth Behind the Corporate Scheme to Swipe the 2012 Election"
http://ouroregon.org/sockeye/blog/americans-elect-truth-behind-corporate-scheme-swipe-2012-election
Ah yes, Joel, democracy. We must first define democracy n'est-ce pas?
"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"
Re-reading, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 'The Leopard."
Americans Elect? You gotta be kidding me! The only thing dumber than voting for Barack or Mitt would be voting for whoever this corrupt cabal of capitalist clowns vomits up as their candidate. Their shtick is that all our problems are due to excessive "partisanship," of which Democrats and Republicans, left and right, are equally at fault. They hanker for a "grand bargain" that would raise taxes on the rich somewhat in return for deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. They may have pictures of Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders up on their website to attract a few slack-jawed clueless yokels, but there isn't a chance in a million that these brokers will actually nominate one of those two guys. The guy they really want to nominate is--hold onto your lunch now--Michael Bloomberg! Yes, indeed, the nation's favorite 0.001% politician and architect of the destruction of Occupy Wall Street is their idea of a "centrist" who can save the nation. The group's original big funder was one Peter Ackerman, a crony of the "junk bond king" Michael Milken. The are presently being bankrolled by a smoke-filled room of 1 per-centers, but they refuse to say who these fat cats are because they are afraid of being criticized. One of their biggest cheerleaders is the immortally stupid Tom Friedman. These clowns suck, in a very big way.
Google the phrase, "who is behind Americans Elect?" and you will find a bunch of articles supporting these claims, including from the LA Times, Salon, PuffHost, and other places.
Well said! Americans Elect is a fraud. Fat cats hedging their bets. That's all!
"At some point it will become necessary to mount a national demand that the Americans Elect candidates be allowed to participate in the pre-election national televised debates and also to demand that the mainstream media give equal time and attention to them."
This will never happen. It is the single most important objective of PRIVATIZATION that control remain in the hands of the few. It is sole reason that the elite movement of total privatization exists. It is the reason we find ourselves here today reading this article and having this problem.
We must not vote for either Obama or any of the Repubs unless we are for PRIVATIZATION and elite rule by the OnePercent. This is the "What comes first, the chicken or the egg" problem.
We have to continue to build our own infrastructure of Alternative Media and we have to support it and watch it. We MUST NOT DEMAND that changing the system we have is what we are waiting on. That will insure elite rule until the end of time. What we need to do is take our toys and go else where. We have our own media now and that is why, now, for the first time we can have this decades overdue conversation. Now , lets move away from the Dems and Repubs and their political theater for idiots.
Ignore the Two parties of the OnePercent candidates and the shows that run them. Ignore all of this and the money for it will dry up. We must start now by NOT VOTING FOR THIS TWO HEADED PARTY OF THE ONEPERCENT from now on and until forever. We must ignore them and put our attention on what *******WE******* ARE DOING. What the people we like are doing. Write about their every move. Make videos about them, etc etc. We must look at this like a business, which it is. That is not to buy bad products that don't work and harm us. That means not voting for the lesser of two evils no matter what. Do you use laundry soap that gives you less of a rash than another laundry soap. No. You go without or find an alternative no matter how much trouble it is.
This is our only solution. If people simply quit paying any attention to the garbage we are being served they will be like the crappy restaurant that no one ever goes to. Our power is leading and not following.
Watch all the OWS videos and comment. Link up good journalist talking about good candidates. The more we do it, the more the two parties will fade away. We can't beat them on their turf with their tools. That's never going to work. We can, however, build a movement behind a candidate. We did it for Obama and we can do it for someone else.
Vote third party, it is the **********ONLY********** ANSWER.
The lie in the logic behind the need for more political parties being necessary to bring democracy to the U S of A. assumes that the French have a democracy because they have many more political parties than there are in the U S of A.
It is very probable that one can exercise democracy with one political party
Joel S. Hirschhorn seems to be a genuine fellow with good intentions, he is however, as an engineer, engineering the political process from above.
"My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest...no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism...true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village." Mahatma Gandhi
Remy Germain:
I noticed your post only in re-reading this thread. I have two responses.
First, I do not advocate MANY more political parties; I say we only need
ONE more political party, and it needs to be a major party, approximately
equal to the D's and the R's.
Second, in your knowledge and quotation of Gandhi, you've communicated
the essence of our problems today: That is, the U.S. and other big nations
" ... function today [as] diluted fascism ...", and " ... true democracy cannot
be worked by twenty men sitting at the center." Amen! Americans Elect
notwithstanding, we don't need yet another centrist party. What we NEED
is a radical party. There is much more that could be said about non-centrist
politics. Here is not the place or time for such comments. I do thank you
for the Gandhi quote.
We need democracy in the workplace, not another ballot choice in the national dog and pony show. Besides, we already have alternative ballot choices in that charade.
Why would you want three parties that are approximately equal in strength, to include the two existing parties?
Why three parties? Whose interests would each of the three parties represent?
Two Americas:
I won't say whose interests the Red party and the Blue party
represent. They are certainly not the interests of the un-rich
and the under-represented: The poor class, the middle class,
and the former middle class (now become a new poor class).
I said in my post that a new major third party should be a
RADICAL political party. I meant it should be the party of the
Americans who have been radicalized just by their NOT being
respresented in any honest way by the other two parties. Just
that criterion should delineate a major constituency. It should
be the party that represents the interests of We The People!
What you term "alternative ballot choices" don't amount to any
choice, other than a choice to waste one's vote. Better not to
vote than to vote for an alternative, merely because it happens
to be an alternative.
(I've already posted that I think I ought to be able to vote against
one candidate without having to for another candidate, but I fear
that such a logical answer to bad candidates will never be granted
as a permissible option.)
A third party is an excellent idea. It has been done in other country's and like the NRA in America during the eighty's it started at the local elections and built a base for support. Now the NRA controls both party's.
The question is, does it really matter who we put in office if we don't support them after they get there. Where are the protest and voters for climate, healthcare, financial reform, military spending, SSI or Medicare? Other then OWS and a pipeline that has been the extent of the protest and action.
I think Americans forget how little power a president has and how much power congress has. Ultimately it is the voters who have to bring the change any of us want.
The Truman quote comes to mind when talking to the early civil rights folks "you have to make me want to do this". Without the support any person we put in office is helpless and the current president told us exactly that before he took office.
"Considering the widespread and deserved disgust among Americans with both major parties, there is a decent chance that people like me will be strongly motivated to vote for the Americans Elect alternative ticket. It definitely will be a vote against both major parties." As a result, your credibility is lost. Americans Elect is a totally Corporate/1% effort to take us even further to the right -- of all that is left.
Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research 2005
Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.
September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.
Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.
The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.
~~~
Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research 2005
"When people across the US and around the World find out that Al Qaeda is not an outside enemy but a creation of US foreign policy and the CIA, the legitimacy of the bipartisan war agenda will tumble like a deck of cards."
"Across the land, the image of an "outside enemy" is instilled in the consciousness of Americans. Al Qaeda is threatening America and the world. The repeal of democracy under the Patriot legislation is portrayed as a means to providing "domestic security" and upholding civil liberties.
"The 9/11 Commission Report destroys the historical record of US covert support to international terrorism, while creating the illusion that America and "Western Civilization" are threatened. In turn, the various terrorist warnings and code orange alerts have created, across America, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation."
Election rigging happened long before the 9/11 CR added insult to the injury.
gringos get what they deserve
trouble is , whoever wins, the world suffers as well
"Think big money and Wall Street have too much influence over national politics? Not to worry: A hedge fund–backed third-party presidential candidate will fix all of that." "What it really is, though, is a call for Democrats to move to the right, and—on issues like spending cuts—for the poor to sacrifice more. Americans Elect may or may not be a factor in the 2012 presidential election. But it’s a sure bet that corporate media will be pulling for them."
The 1 Percent President: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4475