A Democracy in Name Only

The American political system is completely broken. Democracy has long since been usurped by plutocracy. If you're one of those who still thinks your vote matters or that the system can still function for the average American, then you are either; 1) hopelessly uninformed. 2) completely brainwashed. 3) brain dead.

While the signs of the death of American democracy have been evident for some time, they have come into glaring focus in the last few months as the health care reform debate has taken center stage. The problems are clear to anyone with eyes to see. The United States spends much more on health care than any nation with which it likes to compare itself. Let's call these our peer nations for lack of a better term. Amongst these industrialized peers the US is virtually near the bottom in most indicators of the efficiency and efficacy of its health care system. Upwards of 50 million citizens have no access to health care. Take note, lest you think this is some irrelevant group of fellow citizens, it would be as if an entire nation somewhere between the size of France or Spain, had no access to health care. If you still remain unmoved, and, like Rush Limbaugh, would rather blame the ill or needy for their own plight, then consider the recent report on Bill Moyer's Journal about what it means to have no access to health care. In a word, it is appalling, and a national disgrace.

Spiraling health care costs are also threatening America's economic future. Indeed, health care costs have been growing at well above the inflation rate for some time, and now threaten the competitiveness of American employers, large and small. Every other of our peer nations has long since decided that all their citizens have a right to good medical care, and that this is consistent with health care being a right that accrues to all people, by virtue of their humanity, and nothing else. A comfortable majority of Americans also believe this, and wish to see a change in the way health care is delivered in this country. And yet, facing this problem for which there is near universal agreement that a change in the status quo is essential, the elected government appears powerless in the face of the minority corporate interests who are the only ones who benefit from perpetuation of the status quo. If the government cannot even adequately address an issue of such importance to all it's citizens, then what problems could it possibly solve?

The primary crisis facing American democracy is that the two major parties (Democrat and Republican) have long since stopped representing the interests of average citizens, rather, they almost exclusively govern at the whim of monied, corporate interests. There are numerous reasons for this, but several of the most relevant include; 1) These same interests fill the campaign coffers of both Parties, enabling the funding of the expensive public relations exercises that pass for political campaigns in this country. 2) A large fraction of candidates are drawn from groups of people that largely share the same interests as these corporate and wealthy constituencies. While this is especially true of Republican candidates, it is also largely true of Democrats as well. Not convinced, simply consider the US Senate, about half of whose members are millionaires, and which has an average net worth of between 8 and 9 million dollars. 3) The vast majority of media outlets that "inform" and shape American opinion are owned and controlled by corporate interests that share the same goals and ideology. This is the same corporate-owned media that "manufactures consent," and makes sure that corporate aims are always positively represented in their content. Indeed, you've probably never heard the term "manufacturing consent," one of the concepts ellucidated in the many writings of Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most widely cited intellectual in the world, but whose voice fellow Americans are systematically deprived of because he speaks truths which are in direct opposition to the corporate status quo. In fact, the exclusion of Chomsky from American media outlets is perhaps no better proof of his very critique of American corporate media.

Once in office the major party candidates overwhelming support a corporate agenda, but--at least this part hasn't changed yet--they still have to get elected. So how do they do it? Well, put simply, they try to talk a good game, and no one has been better at it in recent memory than our current President Barack Obama. Obama's soaring rhetoric was geared to capitalize on the deep, and justified, dissatisfaction with the Bush years. Among his principle campaign points were his promises around ending involvement in the Iraq war, as well as pushing a health care reform agenda. However, once in office it appears increasingly clear that the actions of the Obama administration do not match, or even come close, to the campaign rhetoric. And nowhere is this more clear than in his, and the Democratic Party's, efforts around health care reform.

Almost from the beginning the administration's actions have been one of attempting at all costs to placate their corporate clients in the health care and insurance industries. Obama has met with CEO's of all these entities, and on numerous occasions, and then sought to keep the records of whom was visiting the White House from public view. So much for transparency, which was supposedly going to be another hallmark of his presidency. Then came word of the "deal" reached between the White House and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, ostensibly giving them the "windfall" that the Government would not use it's bulk purchasing power to negotiate the best (read lowest) price for it's consumers, that is, we the taxpayers! Funny, I thought price negotiation was a core principle of a Capitalist free market system. From the outset, the "Obama plan," as much as we know about it, was seemingly geared to take care of corporate concerns before the health care concerns of most Americans. As in, let's reform health care so as to further increase the profit margins of insurance and drug companies!

No doubt there is a wing of the Democratic Party that does not act reflexively at the beck and call of corporate interests, but this minority group has routinely been played for suckers, promised that their concerns would be acted on, but then eventually rolled by the Party "pragmatists," epitomized by Obama's choice for White House chief of staff, fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel. The same story is now playing out in the health care reform debacle, but with more devastating consequences. See the spot-on discussion by Glenn Greenwald. Indeed, it appears that the Party is more interested in appeasing Republican whack-jobs like unrepentant "deather" Chuck Grassley, who famously warned his constituents that they had every right to fear Sarah Palin's imagined "death panels," than the very people responsible for electing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, not to mention returning the White House to a Democrat.

While the Democrats hold the White House and both houses of Congress with comfortable majorities, they appear remarkably "weak" in attempting to pass reform on an issue with such broad public support and importance. How can this be in a supposed democracy? Again, the "weakness" is that the interests of corporations and money carry much more weight on Capitol Hill and in the White House than the interests of average Americans. Democrats can equivocate, offering no end of laughable excuses for why they can't seem to do the people's business, but in the end the only reason that doesn't illicit chuckles is the fact that they are just as beholden to corporate interests as Republicans. Indeed, the present leadership in the Democratic Party appears set on maintaining political control by becoming more like the Republican Party than by expanding its appeal amongst working class and progressive constituencies. Another corrosive dynamic is that each Party seeks above all else to simply maintain its political hold on power. While such political calculating is to be expected at some level, it has completely trumped any service to the nation as a whole. Is it any wonder then that people feel completely cut off from their own government?

There is a minority that benefit from the status quo, these are the insurance and health care corporations and their clients who have made a killing out of denying care to Americans and turning treatment of the sick and infirm into a for-profit business. While they represent a minority of voters, their influence is greatly amplified by the power their money purchases on Capitol Hill, and the influence of media campaigns and exposure that they are able to fund and which corporate media allies gladly promulgate. Much of these media campaigns rely on myths and distortions regarding health care that are repeated endlessly. No doubt the support for reform and universal coverage would be greater still if not for the success of these propaganda campaigns.

So, is there any way to breach the corporate gridlock which is presently suffocating American democracy? There is no hope in the Republican Party. For many years they have been completely at the service of wealth and power. The only way they have been able to achieve occasional electoral successes is by mobilizing sufficient social conservative (think God, Guns and Gays) constituencies (themselves a minority), while politically suppressing their opponents at all turns. Even so, time, and the changing demographics of America seem set to continue to force Republicans (thankfully) into the minority. This leaves the Democratic Party or some alternative. Unless the present Party leadership can be retired or replaced with more progressive representatives, it does not appear that this dead-lock will be relieved any time soon. The elimination of corporate and special interest money from elections would be a useful step, but the well-heeled have always found a way to make their resources tell, and there is no reason to think this would not continue. The only real solution will be pressure from popular movements and demands. As Frederick Douglas famously stated, "power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did, and it never will." We must never stop demanding.