Counterpunch | the former constitutional law professor Obama knows damn well that
the President of the United States is NOT “elected by all the people.”
Thanks to the openly undemocratic Electoral College system, the winner
of the national presidential popular vote has failed to win five U.S.
presidential elections so far, including the last one.
And to what “democracy” is Obama referring? The United States is a corporate and financial oligarchy. This is an open secret understood very
well (in private) by the onetime record corporate fundraiser Obama.
Even some conservative elites like the veteran federal jurist and
economist Richard Posner concede this basic reality. As the
distinguished liberal political scientists Benjamin Page (Northwestern)
and Marin Gilens (Princeton) showed in their expertly researched book Democracy in America? (written and researched during the highly instructive years of Obama’s Citigroup presidency):
“the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans actually have had little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups – especially business corporations – have had much more political clout. When they are taken into account, it becomes apparent that the general public has been virtually powerless…The will of majorities is often thwarted by the affluent and the well-organized, who block popular policy proposals and enact special favors for themselves…Majorities of Americans favor…programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut ‘corporate welfare.’ Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies [and programs] (emphasis added).”
By Gilens and Pages’ findings, based on exhaustive inquiry into
hundreds of bills and policies enacted and blocked since the 1980s, the
basic same rule – concentrated wealth wins, the populace loses – holds
regardless of which major party or party configuration holds or
distributes nominal power in in Washington.
The “hope” and “change” Obama administration, loaded with agents of
high finance, was a case in point. It gave Americans a blunt object
lesson on who really owns and runs the country, helping thereby to spark
the Occupy Wall Street rebellion, which Obama’s Department of Homeland
Security helped crush (along with hundreds of Democratic city
governments from coast to coast).
Seven in the ten Americans currently support Medicare for All – a
desperately needed policy that the current pretend-progressive
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden suggests he would veto if it
came to his desk as president!
