Why US Democracy is Broken to Pieces

By Shlomo Maital

(Christian science monitor)

    Fareed Zakharia, CNN, has stated clearly why US democracy is utterly broken, fractured, smashed to pieces, in his GPS program.

    Fact:   171 out of 291 Republicans up for election in the Nov. 8 mid-term support Trump’s false allegation that the 2020 election was fraudulent, ‘stolen’. (According to a careful Washington Post survey). A majority are election deniers, conspiracy theorist supporters.

     Why? 

    Only the US has a ‘primary’ system (actually, Israel also has a version of it), in which parties choose which of their candidates will appear on the ballot.  It is done, when a sliver of the total electorate – the party faithful —  vote for the candidate they favor.  This system has led Republicans to choose candidates with utterly extreme positions, vying for one another to see who can be more extreme, more “Trump” – like Marjorie Taylor Greene,   representative for Georgia’s 14th congressional district since 2021. Greene promotes far-right, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theories, including QAnon. 

    Gerrymandering means that most of the far-right Republican candidates win election. So the real election occurs in the primaries, where a tiny handful of Republican voters make the choice.  And to win primaries, it appears, candidates like Greene take ridiculous positions that party radicals love.  It is undemocratic, because a fair majority does not really get to make the choice.  A mere handful of the crazies vote in the primaries.

     Result:  Though most elected Republicans in Congress in the past did not support the ‘stolen election’ fraud,  this may change on November 8. We may see state Republican officials refuse to authorize presidential election results in 2024, and in other ways work to disenfranchise legitimate Democratic (i.e. persons of color) voters. It is already happening in Arizona.

   You thought Trump’s massive damage to US democracy ended when he left office?  Think again. It brought the Jan. 6 insurrection.  It continues.  And it will not end well.