There can be no definition for democracy that would be universally accepted. Much like the word ‘love’. People can dedicate their lives to and with someone and call that love. One can live in an abusive relationship but still ‘love’ the abuser. Democracy is no different. What it might have meant to the Ancient Greeks is far different than what it means today or how it is practiced, and how it is practiced is tangible.
Countries all over the world think of themselves as democratic. There are places with a much higher percentage of voting among the people than in the United States. Are they more democratic? In some places voting is mandatory. Some countries have one party rule, but the people vote. In this case, many people are voting but not for their preferred candidates. In the United States, for most members of Congress and the President, it is Wall Street that decides who’s in and who’s out.
The United States thinks of itself as the world leader in democracy. So let’s look at it closely. It now costs literally billions of dollars to run for president, and of the two who are given any chance to win, one of them is going to lose. They can lose by 1 percentage point or less, but nearly 50 percent of those who voted will not have any representation at the executive level. We do not build coalitions with other parties; we do not even permit other parties to be in the running. In so many ways, we do not have a two-party system but more like one and one half, as both parties represent the interests of Wall Street, not Main Street.
A Princeton/Northwestern study in 2014 identified the US as an oligarchy, not a democracy. It concludes that what the donors want is what is usually promoted and voted on in Congress, even if that does coincide with public opinion. Big Money rules and gains more and more power with each successive election to Congress or the White House and neither party objects to the point of trying to reverse that, especially with Citizens United. Individual Democratic senators have pushed to repeal it but it steadfastly remains part of our electoral landscape.
The US electoral system is farthest away from the concept of democracy or representative as one can get. Only two parties rule, and both are agents of Wall Street. These two parties control every states’ electoral process, making it extremely difficult, and often impossible, for alternate parties to be constituted and wage campaigns for office. Our national media is fully behind this. Today, former President Trump and his minions are controlling state houses to prevent blacks and poor people from even voting as they would most likely vote for Democrats.
Yet it is ironic that the poorest states in America consistently vote Republican. And these are people who have already earned the right to vote simply as citizens. To think that either party would want an anti-capitalist to vote on their beliefs or run for office is pushing the imagination to hallucinatory levels.
One attempt to make the US more democratic is the notion that we need to have term limits- bring back the days of Thomas Jefferson’s ‘yeoman farmer’, the plain folk, who should lead our nation. Yet the idea of term limits would also destroy the very notion of democracy and fair elections. After all, who but the most wealthy can run for office? What kind of worker who really has the pulse of their community could mount such a campaign against a well-funded competitor, win, and go back to the profession they had before?
The well placed lawyer, CEO, business leaders are the ones who can afford, and will also profit from just a few years in public service. The teacher, the social worker, the bricklayer; all can be perfectly suitable for high office, but their jobs will likely not be there for them when they are term limited. If elections is a barometer for what a democracy is, then we might as well expunge the word from any dictionary. The idea of Lincoln’s ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ is no more real than Santa Claus.