Sanders is breaking this mold by giving voice to the majority.
Many of Sanders' proposals, like on inequality, financial regulation,
tax and campaign reform, are supported by large bipartisan
majorities. Clinton by contrast has created a dubious montage of
Sanders' positions modified, one might say distorted, so as to be
unthreatening
to plutocrats.
Independent voters who decide general
elections are bell curve centrists, not plutocratic centrists, and
are therefore inclined to prefer a Sanders, when allowed the choice,
provided that Sanders can continue to by-pass the mass media and the Democratic Party to get
his issue-driven message out to them.
Second, Sanders' central campaign message about political inequality, and the economic inequality that it generates, defines a second fault line that lies between Independents and the two parties. As Independents grow in number, this fault line is emerging to be as important politically as the differences separating the two plutocratic parties that have cooperated to cause the inequality. There are thus two significant political axes operating today, which is highly unusual for the two-party system inherent to the United States' first-past-the-post single-member-district non-Parliamentary electoral system. The closest previous example of this duality reaching the point of instability is the election of 1860, though comparable instability arose again at the height of the Progressive Era, in the election of 1912. The first destroyed one and nearly both of the two parties; the other led eventually to the suppression of the Progressive movement, and the end of their Era.
One axis is the conventional one that separates the parties
roughly between issues of community and issues of security so innate
to a normal distribution of human psychology that parties tend to
divide evenly around them. The other axis defined by Independents,
and represented by Sanders could be identified with the fight for
survival of the democratic polity itself against two systemically
corrupted political parties who have colluded in overthrowing it.
The
principal thrust and hallmark of Sanders' campaign is his promise to
fight the same special interests, some of whom happen to be Clinton's campaign
contributors, the only way possible, with an
electoral revolution in the Progressive tradition. Large majorities
regularly report their desire to change the corrupt system in which
the Clinton family has prospered, and is ruled by what Sanders calls "the
billionaire class." The 84% of all Americans who complained
recently to pollsters that "money has too much influence"
in campaigns included the same portion of Independents holding that
view. The difference is that partisans think the other party is
corrupt, mutually disagreeing about whether Democrats are
extortionists or whether Republicans take legalized bribes;
Independents understand both parties to be corrupt and therefore
refuse to associate with either.
Independents are at least as critical of political corruption as are partisans, with 59% possessing the basic functional understanding of US plutocracy that, most of the time, politicians "promote policies that directly help the people and groups who donated money to their campaigns." It's not rocket science. Even though Independents include roughly an equal number who lean Republican, traditionally the more openly plutocratic party, slightly fewer partisan Democrats, only 53%, share this view of a government for sale in which both of the two parties serve as brokers on most issues.
One reason increasing numbers of voters identify as Independent is their disgust with the systemic political corruption managed by the two-party condominium. That does not necessarily mean they are all or even mostly either moderate on issues or confused where they stand on issues on what we can call the "policy axis" along which the parties divide themselves. It does reflect that a majority of Americans "are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties," finding that both parties occupy an equally unsavory position in the pockets of plutocrats at the same end of what we can call the "polity axis." Systemic corruption and democracy cannot both exist in the same government across the fault line dividing them.
Other polls show why voters do not necessarily prioritize solving the issue of corruption, so much as coping with it. Few people are persuaded there exists any effective solution to the problem of restoring the country's democratic heritage, even at the modest level achieved prior to 1976. It is this doubt, or cynicism, that primarily prevents the political world from total reorientation around the polity axis that Sanders represents to achieve a majoritarian solution by restoring rule of law and applying ordinary robust criminal law enforcement to the field of systemic political corruption.
Sanders is the only candidate offering the plurality of voters on his side of this new political fault line across what is called here the "polity axis" a credible alternative to a party candidate, irrespective of where those voters may stand on the policy issues that divide the two parties. Until Independents clean up the systemic corruption of the two parties, the parties' supporters will not be allowed by the ruling plutocrats much of importance in the way of what they want from government anyway.
3. Independents' Day
For these two reasons that involve a complex ongoing reconfiguration of American politics along the two described political axes, it is no surprise, then, that the Quinnipiac poll shows that more Independents think Sanders shares their values compared to Clinton by 47-33%; more Independents think Sanders authentically "cares about the needs and problems of people like" them, compared to Clinton, by 59-40%; and vastly (38%) more Independents, 64% to 26% - and even a further corroborating margin of Republicans, 39% to 7% - think Sanders "is honest and trustworthy," compared to Clinton. It should be no surprise because on the end of the polity axis where Sanders operates, democracy, honesty and authenticity are as closely connected as are plutocracy, propaganda and cynical manipulation on the other end of the polity axis where Clinton finds her support.
The only important issue in the 2016 campaign for the majority is which candidate can honestly be trusted to act effectively to start rescuing our former democracy from the deadening grip of corruption on all levels of government that, in myriad ways, is driving economic inequality to record levels. No important policy opposed by plutocrats, like any measure that might slow the current upward redistribution of wealth to them, can be accomplished until their political investments are outlawed again. Nor can any of the increasingly dysfunctional policies that plutocrats support be stopped, such as the job- and democracy-killing so-called trade agreements.
Government will not serve the majority until private money is eliminated from politics by systemic reforms, such as broad ethics recusal requirements and Supreme Court jurisdiction stripping, that go well beyond the pretextual piecemeal proposals now on offer by operators along the incremental policy axis allied with Democrats.
This leaves for effective partisan contest along the policy axis just a few issues of identity politics and religion for which plutocrats have not yet discovered a profit angle worth the price of influence. Since they both serve a system that disserves majorities, the two parties are incapable of fulfilling their only legitimate function of channeling the consent of the governed while at the same time they join together in protecting the corrupt plutocratic system from reform. The two corrupt parties are now the principal obstacle to consent of the governed, as Madison and the framers expected they would be. Sanders seems to believe that with struggle at least one these parties can be repurposed to serve the majority.
The comparative ratings of Sanders and Clinton discussed above reflect the diminishing legitimacy of the two corrupt parties. They help explain why only 38% of Independents have an overall favorable opinion of Clinton while 56% have an unfavorable opinion of her. (Only 5% have no opinion, leaving virtually no room for improvement in her negative numbers without an unlikely change of by now fairly hardened perceptions of her.) Independents by a large margin apparently believe Sanders, but not Clinton, has the integrity to keep his campaign promise to fight the bipartisan plutocracy, and also to level with voters about how the fight is proceeding. As one critic writes, "virtually every voter group other than self-identified Democrats ... appears to be screaming: Please do not do this. Nominate someone other than Hillary Clinton."
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