The Democratic Party: No Longer “for the People”
Last night the Associated Press announced that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party’s nominee. Most major news stations have been reporting this as if it is a fact as one of the nation’s most important primaries takes place. These misleading headlines are aiming to do one thing, something the main stream media (MSM) has been doing throughout this entire election cycle — disenfranchise voters.
By making it sound as if the race is already won, they’re hoping Bernie Sanders supporters are less likely to show up at the polls today. Not only is this undemocratic and highly indicative of where the MSM’s interests lie, but it could also have the opposite impact, making Clinton’s supporters less likely to vote, thinking there’s no need if she’s, according to the newspapers and stations they read and watch, already won the nomination. Whatever way this impacts the polls, it’s wrong and unfair to all voters.
This one specific incident is just a symptom of a election cycle full of corruption. While the press and Democratic Party officials have been calling on Sanders to drop out of the race because they claim he can’t win enough pledged delegates today and is only dividing the party further, nobody talks about the superdelegates who should go to Sanders, based on the districts he’s won, but who still state they’re endorsing Clinton.
Superdelegates, who do not vote until the convention in July, can announce an endorsement at any time, but they aren’t bound to it until the official vote. While they can technically make their own decision on who to endorse, they should vote for the candidate who won the most votes in their district.
By calling on Sanders to drop out before the convention, they are taking away the people’s voice. They are trampling on the very democracy set in place to prevent corruption like this. If the superdelegates were listening to the voters, the race would be much tighter and would actually reflect the desire of the people instead of the party establishment. Paul Tonko, one of these superdelegates who is ignoring the will of his constituents, is from my own county.
NY’s Albany County undeniably went to Sander back on April 19th, as did the majority of the counties in NY, yet Tonko is still pledging his support as a superdelegate to Clinton. This highlights a huge contradiction within the Democratic Party at the moment — they claim that making Sanders the nominee would be ignoring the will of the people, yet they look the other way when superdelegates do exactly that in support of Clinton.
My issue with this hypocrisy goes beyond my support of Bernie Sanders. If it was Clinton who was being wronged I would be equally as angry because this kind of corruption is a huge threat to democracy. The people deserve a voice. The people deserve to be heard throughout the entire nomination process and not just while it’s convenient for the establishment.
We need to remember that when some are silenced, all are in danger of being silenced. We need to take a stand and let the Democratic Party know that we will not allow for voters to be ignored. We need to call upon superdelegates to support the candidate their constituents chose. We need to make this race what it hasn’t been since the start — fair and representative. It isn’t just the fate of this specific election cycle that hangs in the balance, but the future of our democracy.
