Dear Friends,
The Clinton campaign and its supporters have been spending a lot of time lately telling supporters of Bernie Sanders that they need to vote for Hillary Clinton or they are essentially voting for Donald Trump and that Bernie Sanders need to drop out of the race and work for Hillary Clinton because he has no chance of winning. Besides Hillary Clinton has already announced that she is the nominee. I have read a couple of articles that are worth your time to read.
The first is by Seth Abramson on Huffpost Politics entitled " How to Explain the Sanders Campaign to an Idiot, Paul Krugman or a Clintonite in 8 Sentences" (here). Despite the snarkiness of the title, the post contains a cogent argument for why the Sanders campaign should continue until all the votes are cast at the Democratic convention.
The second is a post by Jake Johnson on Common Dreams entitled "No, I Won't Work for Hillary Clinton: A Response to Robert Reich" (here). It is a very thoughtful and thought provoking piece in response to a Facebook post by Robert Reich (here) who had given advice to the supporters of Hillary Clinton and to the supporters to Bernie Sanders. The advice to the supporters of Bernie Sanders is as it always is - Hillary Clinton is better than Donald Trump and if you do not vote for her you are essentially voting for Donald Trump and how can you stand to do that. Anyway, while I will vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee, the post certainly made me think.
All of this talk of blaming Sanders' supporters if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination and loses to Donald Trump got me thinking about voter turnout. So I did some research.
Counting caucuses, Bernie Sanders has received probably somewhere around 11,000,000 votes so far. For my purposes I would divide that group into a group of Democrats like me who vote every election and certainly every Presidential election and for whom this year will be no different. The other group is a group of people who do not vote every election or even every Presidential election. Who knows the percentages but let's say 50/50. So maybe by the time the voting is done there will be 7,000,000 but certainly less 10,000,000 Sanders' supporters who are at risk of not voting. That sounds like a large number, and it is but it pales compared to the number of Americans who just plain do not vote.
A little over a year ago, the Pew Research Center published a report on the voter turnout for the 34 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (here), basically the world's leading industrialized democracies. Of the 34 countries, the United States ranked 31st in turns of voter turnout with just 53.6% of voting age people voting. Belgium ranked first with 87.2% of voting age population, and Germany was right in the middle at 17th with 66% of voting age population. To put these percentages into perspective. In 2008 Obama got 69.3 million votes and beat McCain by 9.7 million votes. If 66% of the voting age population had voted (same as Germany), there would have been an additional 17.5 million votes cast, more than double the margin of victory. If 87.2% of the voting age population had voted (same as Belgium), there would have been an additional 65.3 million votes, almost 7 times the margin of victory.
The problem with the American electoral system is that we do not have a culture of voting. I believe in large part the lack of voting is the direct result of the lack of exciting candidates and the almost constant problem of voting for the lesser of two evils. I calculated the percentage of the voting age population that the winners in the last nine Presidential elections. In only two elections did the winner get more than 30% of the voting age population - Reagan in 1984 with 31.1% and Obama in 2008 with 30.7%. The average is about 27%, just over a quarter of the voting age population voted for the person who became President. A democracy should not work like that.
This year both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are making the lesser of two evils argument all the time. Donald Trump's best argument for Republicans and Independents is that he is not Hillary Clinton and many Republicans and Independents will vote for him as the lesser of two evils. Hillary Clinton's best argument for Democrats and Independents is that she is not Donald Trump and many Democrats (including me) and Independents will vote for her if she gets the nomination for just that reason - the lesser of two evils.
As a country, we must do more to develop a culture of voting so that the majority can govern. We could start with automatic voter registration and a national holiday for election day.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
Showing posts with label voter turnout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voter turnout. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Why our country needs Bernie Sanders
Dear Friends,
Our political system is broken and corrupt. The old saying that the world is run by those who show up is no longer true with respect to our political system. Now the correct saying is that the United States is run by those who show up and those with money, and we are not sure for the moment which of those two groups will win.
Even I was shocked by the recent article in The New York Times reporting that 158 families have given half of all contributions to the 2016 Presidential elections so far (here). Although I should not have been shocked since I already knew that the Koch brothers were planning on spending as much if not more than either of the two major political parties for 2016 election cycle. Congress does not represent the interests of the people. It represents the interests of the oligarchs who fund the process and pay the lobbyist. Just one example is the power of the gun lobby, fronted by the NRA. Consistently +90% support background checks and a majority support stronger gun control legislation, yet Congress will not even give new laws consideration.
How does Congress get away with not taking action on things that the vast majority of Americans want and support? People do not vote and big business spends billions of dollars to buy the system. In the 2014 midterm elections only 36.4% of eligible voters actually voted. It was the worst turnout percentage since 1942. The United States ranks 31st out of 34 top industrialized democratic countries even using our 2012 Presidential year election (53.6%). Belgium was first with 87.2%. If Americans had voted in the same percentage as the Belgians in 2012, there would have been 200 million votes cast instead of only 129 million. That is 71 million more voters. Just to put that in perspective, President Obama beat Mitt Romney in the popular vote by 5 million; President Obama got 65.4 million votes. Just think what would have happened if those other 71 million people had voted.
There are a lot of what are referred to as safe districts. According to Chris Cillizza's analysis after the 2012 elections in the Washington Post (here), 38% of all Congressional seats are "safe"; that is to say the current incumbent won by at least 67%. Clearly gerrymandering has had a big impact on the creation of these safe districts and while both parties have gerrymandered districts, the Republicans have done a much better job. The Republicans have also been able to enact voter suppression legislation at the state level. But Republicans also do a much better job of getting out their supporters to vote. Higher voter turnout has always helped Democrats. Getting everybody to vote would certainly make those "safe" districts much less safe particularly when you consider that the incumbents have moved so far right to protect themselves against Tea Party primary challengers.
People do not vote because they see no reason to vote. The Democratic Party during my lifetime has been on a steady move to the right, accelerated under the Clinton administration. Remember in 1960, the last year that President Eisenhower was President the highest income tax bracket was 91% and the country was doing very well economically. This move to the right has coincided with increased political contributions by big business and the very wealthy, accelerated by the Citizen's United decision. The Democratic establishment disowned Obamacare rather than educating the people about the good that it would do. The Democratic establishment has and continues to pursue a strategy of being Republican light because they are too uncomfortable with real change and bold ideas.
The October 19th "All in with Chris Hayes" had a segment about the electability of a democratic socialist (Bernie Sanders). The two guests were John Nichols who was not endorsing Bernie Sanders but who has great confidence in the American people's ability to embrace new and bold ideas and ended with the idea that perhaps the person with the boldest ideas will be the winner. The other guest was Matt Bennett a Clinton supporter and advisor who could not imagine changing the narrative that the Republicans have crafted that government is bad and cannot solve the problems. If you accept the Republican narrative, you have lost the battle. Here is link to that segment. It is very thought provoking.
Hillary Clinton is at best an incrementalist. She will not dramatically increase the number of people voting. Bernie Sanders has clearly demonstrated that he can and is getting some of those 71 million people that did not vote to become involved in politics because there is a difference between a political revolution and more of the same establishment politics. Money can only be defeated by huge voter turnout and engagement, and Bernie is the only candidate with a chance to do succeed. He can get this country headed back to being a democracy.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
Our political system is broken and corrupt. The old saying that the world is run by those who show up is no longer true with respect to our political system. Now the correct saying is that the United States is run by those who show up and those with money, and we are not sure for the moment which of those two groups will win.
Even I was shocked by the recent article in The New York Times reporting that 158 families have given half of all contributions to the 2016 Presidential elections so far (here). Although I should not have been shocked since I already knew that the Koch brothers were planning on spending as much if not more than either of the two major political parties for 2016 election cycle. Congress does not represent the interests of the people. It represents the interests of the oligarchs who fund the process and pay the lobbyist. Just one example is the power of the gun lobby, fronted by the NRA. Consistently +90% support background checks and a majority support stronger gun control legislation, yet Congress will not even give new laws consideration.
There are a lot of what are referred to as safe districts. According to Chris Cillizza's analysis after the 2012 elections in the Washington Post (here), 38% of all Congressional seats are "safe"; that is to say the current incumbent won by at least 67%. Clearly gerrymandering has had a big impact on the creation of these safe districts and while both parties have gerrymandered districts, the Republicans have done a much better job. The Republicans have also been able to enact voter suppression legislation at the state level. But Republicans also do a much better job of getting out their supporters to vote. Higher voter turnout has always helped Democrats. Getting everybody to vote would certainly make those "safe" districts much less safe particularly when you consider that the incumbents have moved so far right to protect themselves against Tea Party primary challengers.
People do not vote because they see no reason to vote. The Democratic Party during my lifetime has been on a steady move to the right, accelerated under the Clinton administration. Remember in 1960, the last year that President Eisenhower was President the highest income tax bracket was 91% and the country was doing very well economically. This move to the right has coincided with increased political contributions by big business and the very wealthy, accelerated by the Citizen's United decision. The Democratic establishment disowned Obamacare rather than educating the people about the good that it would do. The Democratic establishment has and continues to pursue a strategy of being Republican light because they are too uncomfortable with real change and bold ideas.
The October 19th "All in with Chris Hayes" had a segment about the electability of a democratic socialist (Bernie Sanders). The two guests were John Nichols who was not endorsing Bernie Sanders but who has great confidence in the American people's ability to embrace new and bold ideas and ended with the idea that perhaps the person with the boldest ideas will be the winner. The other guest was Matt Bennett a Clinton supporter and advisor who could not imagine changing the narrative that the Republicans have crafted that government is bad and cannot solve the problems. If you accept the Republican narrative, you have lost the battle. Here is link to that segment. It is very thought provoking.
Hillary Clinton is at best an incrementalist. She will not dramatically increase the number of people voting. Bernie Sanders has clearly demonstrated that he can and is getting some of those 71 million people that did not vote to become involved in politics because there is a difference between a political revolution and more of the same establishment politics. Money can only be defeated by huge voter turnout and engagement, and Bernie is the only candidate with a chance to do succeed. He can get this country headed back to being a democracy.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
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