This Is What Democracy Looks Like. Will a Twisted Primary Season Twist Your Vote?

If you believe the opinion polls and the horse-race-driven media, we already know who the next president will be (Hillary Clinton) so why bother seeing this whole "democracy thing" through to the end?
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

As the Democratic race for president draws to the end of the primary season and nearer the July nominating convention, the efforts to influence voters and delegates are becoming more urgent. The messaging from the campaigns and their surrogates is becoming more desperate.

For instance, did you know that, if Bernie Sanders continues to represent over 40 percent of the primary and caucus votes all the way to the convention, his "scorched earth campaign" will ensure Donald Trump wins in November? Or that the right and the left agree that Hillary Clinton-who significantly leads in the delegate count, states won and the popular vote-should withdraw from the race for a variety of reasons? Or maybe you were aware that Donald Trump, in an effort to draw attention away from his own gross sexist pig-like behaviors toward women, placed Bill Clinton in the same sentence as "rapist?" I hate to concede that last statement is any part of our democracy, but sadly enough it is.

For, if you believe the opinion polls and the horse-race-driven media, we already know who the next president will be (Hillary Clinton) so why bother seeing this whole "democracy thing" through to the end? If you believe them, then Sanders should drop out - with six primaries remaining - because he cannot possibly win and new national polls indicate Clinton will beat Trump (by a slim margin if she can hold it through November). So, according to those who claim to know, voting in the final primaries, voting at the nominating convention and voting in November are certainly complete wastes of time. After all, we already know the outcomes, right? Wrong.

We need to remain engaged through all phases of this election cycle, because this is what democracy looks like. In fact, this is what democracy demands of us.

Where in the Constitution or in our founders' writings does it say or even suggest that Americans should phone it in once the pollsters tell us their predictions for the future? (I know that there were no phones or pollsters around when the country was founded. Hang with me here....) Nowhere. It's not even implied. In fact it's quite the opposite. Our founders, and many soldiers and citizens of every race religion and both sexes since, have fought for the right to vote and to be represented in our democratic processes, even if they express that right by sitting it out sometimes. Sitting out is a democratic choice; having your choice taken away is not.

In the nomination process thus far, almost 23 million people have voted in the Democratic primaries and caucuses: almost 13 million for Clinton (57 percent) and almost 10 million for Sanders (43 percent). The point here is not whether nearly 3 million more people have voted for Hillary. It is that the voices of nearly 10 million engaged voters would go unheard at the convention if Bernie Sanders did what the media and the pollsters insist he must: Drop out. In contrast, only 7.3 million Californians voted in the 2014 General Election. So the pundits and pollsters are suggesting Bernie Sanders leave the presidential race while he currently represents nearly half-again more voters in this election than voted in the entire state of California in 2014. In a breath of sympathy, Republican voters have had only one choice for the party's nominee since May 4th and many of them wish they had a second chance to do it over again.

Some say, now that Donald Trump is virtually certain to be the Republican nominee, "we need to be looking to November" and Bernie Sanders's continued insistence on campaigning up to the final moment the party has nominated someone is a distraction from that. Yet, that is exactly what those 10 million Americans have tasked Sanders with doing. They are trusting him to carry their votes as far as they will take him in this election. Why can't we trust that is exactly how this democracy is supposed to work?

Winston Churchill once said, "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Democracy is not easy, and this election cycle proves it ain't pretty either. How about we just do the one thing that is uniquely ours: Vote. Then trust that the system will produce a nominee and we can decide then what to do after that.

But for now, your vote is your voice. Don't let those who speak loudest-the pundits and pollsters-silence it.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot