As a US voter, a Bernie supporter in the primaries, and a skeptic of Joseph Robinette Biden’s willingness to make even the slightest modifications to the status quo, up until a couple of weeks ago, I had planned to vote third party.
It is true that the Democratic party in 2020 has swung left on a sampling of token social issues that are of little consequence to the preservation of the Union, but that they believe are acceptable sacrifices that can placate the average voter without damaging their dependence on the corporate class of donors.
They have swung instead to the center right on economic issues, betraying the same groups who have made up their base since the 1960s, the industrial working class in the Midwest and South, smallhold farmers, and the suburban lower-middle class on the West Coast, in order to keep those corporate dollars flowing.
The Democratic party is a moderate careening monolith, out of step with the majority of mainstream American political ideology and policies, sometimes compromising on token issues like marijuana decriminalization (not legalization), but not on Medicare for All, which the vast majority, 69% (PNHP, 2020) of Americans support. Further, their leadership is unaccountable, and cares little for the average citizen. This year, the DNC head Tom Perez forced through punitive measures on states who tried to delay elections by just a few days to adapt their primary elections to protect voters against coronavirus. For that alone, Tom Perez should step down immediately and potentially face manslaughter charges as would a reckless employer who forced laborers to endure dangerous conditions.
Further, the party conspired, in 2020, as in 2016*, to preordain and fix the primary winner, by maintaining relationships with key figures in the media, primarily those within CNN, repeating their old crimes, to delegitimize leftists and suggest that two men who fared poorly in one-on-one matchups against Trump were “more electable” than those who were actually more competitive, but who aimed to shift the status quo.
The Democratic party is a modern day political machine, whose seemingly only qualification at this point is that it “believes in science,” and isn’t Donald Trump. Hardly an inspiring message.
*In 2016 Donna Brazile of CNN was caught illicitly conspiring to aid Hilary Clinton during the primary campaign to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. She was caught red handed feeding debate questions to Clinton prior to the CNN hosted debates, and her shamelessness, lack of remorse, and total void of accountability was expressed in the following admission, “if I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity.”
After what seemed like the second primary manipulated by elites in the Democratic party to defraud primary voters, and Tom Perez’ crimes against humanity, it seemed like the logical move for anyone who believes in the sanctity of the democratic process should have been to boycott the party, at least their presidential ticket, in the 2020 election. This could conceivably send them a message, and at the very least would an opportunity to conscientiously abstain from a corrupt, tainted process in which voting Democratic would be essentially tantamount to rewarding the Democratic party apparatus for its crimes.
Efforts to create a fairer process, more amenable to third party access to ballots, was unsurprisingly decimated by California Governor Gavin Newsom and others’ campaigns to preemptively delegitimize and reject ranked choice voting, evaluated as a necessary tool to break the stranglehold that duopoly politics has on America without the need to actually amend the constitution.
If all this is true, if the candidates are preordained, and if both sides are corrupt, is voting truly pointless?
That is not a question worth pondering.
Democrats lost in 2016 and the party learned absolutely no lessons, showed no humility, and changed virtually none of their strategies or their policies. Rejecting one or the other party in all likelihood will have virtually no effect on their trajectories. America’s bile infested parties have formed a two-party electoral mechanism, and a corresponding two-party electorate, and both parties can only truly win when staying true to their side, while making a compelling argument to delegitimize the other to attract the relatively uneducated and apolitical “middle.” The only way to break this stalemate, and to truly gain control of our parties so that they represent the core of America and not corporate interests, centrist elites, or radical ideologues who think they know better than Americans what is good for Americans (present in large numbers in both parties), is to eliminate this two party stranglehold.
To do this, not voting will likely make no difference. Instead, take every ounce of angst and energy and avail it towards pushing in each and every state in the union for a referendum on ranked choice voting. In states where ballot initiatives and referenda are unavailable, pound your legislatures to give you that right, or vote every single one of them out of office as punishment for treason in their conspiracy to defile the American democratic system for the preservation of their own worthless tenures.
Staff writer: Ari B