We all know that ALMOST ALWAYS the political party that holds the presidency LOSES seats in Congress’s midterm elections.
Here is why.
The Executive Branch – regardless of which party controls it – FAILS TO DELIVER what the voters really want. It allows big businesses and other powerful “special interests” to control federal agencies so they cater to those powerful interests and FAIL TO SOLVE our nation’s problems.
Voters punish the negligent, corrupt party by VOTING AGAINST that party’s congressional candidates in the midterm elections.
Public opinion polls keep showing that increasing majorities are saying our nation is “on the wrong track.”
Often people say the system is “broken.” It is not “broken.” It is “fixed” in a different sense of the word “fixed.” The system has been corruptly designed to serve people who have economic and political power – at the expense of ordinary people and the environment.
In 2013, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to a nationwide meeting of labor union members. She told them, “The American people know that the system is rigged against them.”
So when the public gets to vote in the mid-term elections, people tend to vote AGAINST the political party that holds the White House and runs the Executive Branch that not only FAILS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS but also MAKES CORRUPTION WORSE.
Most people want peace, but BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES KEEP MAKING WARS. The Executive Branch starts and conduct wars. The Congress keeps funding wars — and refusing to hold presidents and the Pentagon accountable. This is true REGARDLESS OF WHICH PARTY runs the Executive Branch or the Congress!
This article is titled: “Why Congress keeps giving the Pentagon more money than it needs.” Read it here:
The article points out: “If deterrence is synonymous with dominance, no amount of military spending will ever be enough.”
For nearly a century, the U.S.’s foreign policy has been STRONGLY BI-PARTISAN: More militarism. More wars. More nuclear weapons. Nobody should be so naïve as to think that replacing Republicans with Democrats would lead to peace.
Presidents: I’ve read a number of articles explaining that Biden’s foreign policy is “virtually indistinguishable from Trump’s.” Biden is continuing Trump’s “maximum pressure” against Iran, which backfired when Iran escalated its nuclear program and elected anti-U.S. hardliners so they can protect their national security from U.S. attacks.
Congress: Both political parties’ candidates are lavishly funded by weapons manufacturers. Both political parties seem to believe that the U.S. is entitled to dominate the world – and that nuclear weapons protect us (when actually they are suicidal). Only a few Democrats are sensible, but they cannot hold back the tide of relentless military escalation.
The article points out that “deterrence” has come to mean endlessly escalating “overkill.” Meanwhile, Pentagon waste and fraud are out of control, and it still can’t pass an audit. Federal law REQUIRES an audit, but for MANY YEARS the Dept. of Defense has FAILED TO PASS an audit. Congress doesn’t care. BOTH PARTIES just keep throwing more and more money at the Pentagon.
In the past, DEMOCRATS supported unions, but for several decades (especially since Bill Clinton), Democrats have merely USED unions for donations and volunteers, but most Democrats REFUSE to take strong actions to support labor rights.
As a result, many voters in the working class can be fooled by Republicans who use racism, xenophobia, etc., to pretend they are protecting jobs from Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. Hillary Clinton was so terribly subservient to Wall Street banks and global capitalism that Trump won many votes.
In the past, REPUBLICANS supported small government, but increasingly Republicans want Big Government to take away our rights and oppress us in various ways.
They want politicians to make women’s most intimate health decisions. They want to impose right-wing Christianity upon our nation. They government to take away the rights of LGBTQ persons. They pass laws making it harder to vote — especially if you are of the “wrong” race.
BOTH of the big political parties are hypocrites, so voters retaliate against whichever one they think is worse on the day they vote.
This article was posted in February 2022. It reports on the Republicans’ hypocrisy in supporting Trump stealing classified documents from the White House vs. the Republicans’ anxiety about Hillary Clinton’s emails: https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/trump-clinton/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9854&recip_id=22838&list_id=2
Trump keeps promoting the “Big Lie” that he actually won the 2020 election, but — while many people know he is lying — a major reason for the “Big Lie” that Trump and Republicans keep promoting is that Republicans want to weaken public trust in elections and democracy, because they want an authoritarian government instead.
In a January 2021 poll, 59% said they have confidence that elections in this country reflect the will of the people, while 40% said they lacked that confidence. But by September 2021, MOST Americans — 52% — say they do NOThave confidence that elections reflect the will of the people, while 48% say they do.
This does not necessarily support belief in “the Big Lie.” It could also show that people believer Big Money dominates elections in ways that violate “the will of the people,” and that BOTH of the two big political parties are so corrupt that they no longer represent “the will of the people.”
Apart from propaganda by Trump and Republicans, we seem to be experiencing SYSTEMIC problems in our electoral system that had ALREADY laid the foundation upon which the Big Lie was able to take root.
We really need VIABLE THIRD PARTIES, but Congress and state legislatures have rigged the laws to prevent that. Just like big businesses that collaborate to share a monopoly and screw the consumers, the two big corrupt political parties “conspire in restraint of trade,” to use the legal term from the business sector.
We need to build a strong, strategically savvy grassroots movement to “bust the monopoly” and open the laws up to allow third parties. Most other democracies have systems that allow MANY PARTIES to be viable — and to use “proportional representation” to earn their fair share of seats in legislative bodies. The U.S. needs to do that too.
