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2016 California Primaries, American democracy, California, California Democratic Party, California Democratic Primary, California Economics, California elections, California Population, California Republican Party, California Republican Primary, Democracy, Democratic Party, Economics, Elections, Electoral Cynicism, Liberals, Media, Politics, Republican Party, Voting

It Ain’t Over ‘Till California Says it is

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The fight for the Democratic Nomination is over! Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has defeated Senator Bernie Sanders, and can now shift all of her attention to her general election opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump! At least that is what the national media has been saying, loudly, for months now. If the media is correct, then I suppose it means that Bernie is engaged in a lavish performance art piece for the glorification of his own ego, and his supporters are being played for fools or are in on the joke. Even as I write this, thousands of Bernie supporters are pounding pavement, knocking on doors, and calling people all across the state of California in a supposedly doomed, comic attempt to win the state’s Primary this Tuesday, June 7th. But there is at least one person who is certainly not laughing about Bernie’s chances this Tuesday: Secretary Clinton herself! Hillary has been crisscrossing the state for the last several days in a last effort to win a state that is slipping from her once firm grasp. Hillary Clinton is here fighting for votes because she knows that no election is ever over until California has had its say.

California is by far the most populous state in the United States of America, and is estimated to be home to over 39 million human beings (Texas is second with just shy of 27.5 million, while the nation itself is home to an estimated 323 million people, making it the third most populous on earth). To try to put California’s size in perspective, if it were its own nation, it would rank as the 35th largest on the planet, and home to more people than Canada. If California were an independent nation, it would have the 6th or 7th largest economy in the world according to Gross Domestic Product, having a larger economy than India and is either just behind, or actually ahead of (according to different sources) France, a nation inhabited by over 20 million more people than California. And yet, in spite of our wealth, power, and population, national politics and national politicians often ignore us (the Republican approach), or take us for granted (The Democratic approach). Californians are tired of being marginalized in national affairs. Bernie’s popularity and his chance to win the Golden State are in part because he’s taken the all-too-rare step of actually listening to what we have to say.

Bernie has not promised to fix everything overnight or by himself. Instead he has reminded us of the power that we have as a people to make our state, our nation, and our world a better place. Failing to use our power has allowed money in politics to clog and calcify the arteries of democracy. Bernie, like a surgeon, is asking for our help in performing a bypass surgery by way of political revolution. If we continue to tolerate the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of only a small group of wealthy oligarchs, then eventually the patient, “the American democracy,” will die.

There is no way that our nation can remain a democracy when the people of California are solely addressed by national leaders when our Primary comes up, only to return to being politically irrelevant again the day afterwards. Treating 39+ million people as an afterthought is a dangerous way to run things. And as if ignoring us politically for all but a few weeks every four years was not insulting enough, the national media is now telling us that our votes are meaningless because the race is already over. Really? Must they rob us of what limited voice we already have?

Bernie is here, and so is Hillary, but only one of them is saying that things cannot stand as they currently are, where the nation and much of the world looks to us for technology, entertainment, diversity, science, music, and food (among other things), but turns away from us when we try to have a say in larger issues. But Bernie hears us, and the national media is going to have to sell its ‘California doesn’t matter’ story elsewhere, because on Tuesday we’re going to speak up together, and the whole world will have no choice but to listen.

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VOTE! Seriously, VOTE!

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Cynicism and apathy in American elections is like a disease. Americans look at congress and are disgusted (if the 8% approval rating is any guide), but too often it seems the response – especially among younger would-be voters – is not to work hard to ‘throw the bums out’ but instead to throw up one’s hands and walk away from elections entirely. Voting is one of the issues that I am most passionate about as, with my knowledge of history, I see it as a long battle to expand the franchise to as many people as possible, with a rearguard action always fighting to restrict access to the polls in order to hold onto power without actually serving the interests of the people. For those who want to restrict voting access, apathy and cynicism are their most deadly weapons and, no matter how many people I encourage to vote, and no matter how intelligent those people are, I often hear, “Why should I even vote, it doesn’t matter anyway!” Well, here are some reasons your vote does matter!

90,682,968 Americans voted in the last midterm elections in 2010. That’s out of an estimated 235 + million eligible American voters, or just under 38% of the eligible population. To contrast that, 53% of American voters cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential elections. The 2010 election cycle may not be a good guide as to what will happen tomorrow, but it is a good baseline because no midterm elections ever come close to matching the slice of the populace that votes in presidential elections. 2010 is also valuable as it was the first election after the Citizens United decision, and it is estimated that over $3.6 billion was spent on campaigns in that cycle, and it’s hard to believe that less has been spent in 2014 than in 2010 (numbers won’t come out until after the elections), and just in using the 2010 numbers, it means that even if YOU don’t value your vote, enough money was spent on the 2010 elections to equal over $40 for each vote cast. You may think your vote is meaningless, but obviously there are people and corporations with a LOT of money who believe otherwise and if they are so willing to part with at least $40 per voter, then they certainly think it has value.

Besides the congressional elections, there are also referendums, governorships, and state legislatures that will be decided tomorrow. Washington D.C, Oregon, and Alaska will all vote on whether to legalize and tax marijuana; Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all have a raise in the state minimum wage on the ballot. Colorado and North Dakota have extremely strict anti-abortion “personhood” laws on the ballot, while here in California medical reform and prisoner reform will be voted on. And if you don’t think your governor matters, consider that in Texas, Rick Perry (for purely political reasons) chose not to expand Medicaid as part of Obamacare and therefore around 1 million Texans who would qualify for Medicaid have been left without any health care. It is very unlikely that Democrat Wendy Davis is going to win tomorrow, meaning that those 1 million Texans living in poverty will continue to struggle without the health care that is available to them, but in your state you might be able to make the difference because you never know how close the election will be. This brings me to another number you should consider when deciding whether to vote or not: 537. That’s the amount of votes that separated George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. Avoiding all conspiracy theories and comments about the election result being stolen for the moment, the fact remains that in an election that saw 105 million Americans cast a ballot, it was less than 550 votes that meant we had President Bush and not President Gore

You really need to go and vote tomorrow, and make sure everyone you know who is eligible votes too! Voting is too precious a right to waste when so many states around the country are making it harder for people to vote, and when so many nations around the world go even further than that. Voting doesn’t solve every problem and your vote tomorrow won’t change everything, but in a nation where Blacks once risked (and often lost) their lives to vote and where it took women over 130-years of struggle to get the franchise, it is not just cynical not to vote, it is cowardly. So get out there and vote, honor our proud democratic tradition, and make the choice to be an active participant in our society and not a spectator