Scathing but true OpEd: Democracy Forgotten

[Horse with no Name]

>>>>snip
The point here is not that there is no difference between the two main parties but that the difference is insufficient to make a significant impact on the lives of large numbers of Americans. The problem is not that people don't want or need change - the poorer you are, the less likely you are to vote - but that they have long since given up on the idea that voting is the way to get it.

The future of the country was supposed to hinge on the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. But somehow the issues of poverty, racism and infrastructural decay that were evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina nine months later just never came up. By the time the midterms arrived, little over a year later, Katrina had somehow become irrelevant again.

It's not difficult to see why. Elections are big business. Last year the parties spent $2bn on ads alone. Throw in the fees for thousands of lobbyists, consultants and fundraisers and the electoral-industrial complex starts to develop a momentum of its own. Hillary Clinton, who faced only token opposition in a Senate race she won by 30 points, still lavished $27,000 on valet parking and $13,000 on flowers. The people who provide this money have healthcare, housing and decent schools for their kids. They pay the pipers and name the tune.

The mainstream media dances dutifully. Reporters somehow never encounter non-voters, instead constructing a country hotly debating the issues and weighing up the candidates. Obsessed by polls and personalities, they have a surreal fixation about who is up and who is down, with little indication of why we should care. They have barely digested the results of one election before they move on to devour the next. The morning after the midterms, with the fate of the Senate in the balance, CNN already had a banner along the bottom of its screen that read "America votes 2008". New York magazine hit the stands with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover and the words: "And now the real race begins".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2005943,00.html

[illinoisprogressive]

1. It occured to me while reading this that the money Hillary spent on a non race

could have been so much better spent in NOLA. She only needed to spend a fraction of what she did and the donors could have put that towards the rebuilding...

[blues90]

2. That really sums it all up

Elections are big money . One huge game in my opinion .

One would at least that just for on second that people would think about how much money is spent on campaigns and adds .

You would think people would realize through all the resent years of political campaigns nothing has really changed at all except of course when bush came along , now we have change , a drastic change and all for the worst possible one could imagine unless you happen to own stock in some corporation dealing with oil , death or rebuilding or contractors related .