Tuesday, February 02, 2016

167,000 Iowan VIP's Render Key Verdicts in U.S. Presidential Race

A select elite of Iowans, only 167,000 out of all the 3,124,000 people who live in Iowa (in other words, about 5% of the residents, one in 20), have steered the direction of the presidential race- or so the U.S. media would have it. This select group, 0.052 percent of the U.S. population of 321,419,000 (about 1/20th of 1 percent), after months of media anticipation, have finally spoken. And the media brays- the winner is Ted Cruz! With 27.7% of the caucus "vote." (In other words, 72.3% didn't vote for Cruz.) Donald "I Love Me!" Trump came in second, with 24.3% of the GOP caucus vote. [1]

But the "surprise" was Marco Rubio, third with 23.1%, declared the virtual winner by some, such as Don Gonyea of NPR (the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network), who explained to us this morning that Rubio was a "winner" because he "exceeded expectations" [of the media, he neglected to say] and this "gives him momentum going into New Hampshire."

Ah yes, the Big Mo. I remember decades ago Hunter S. Thompson describing this "momentum" trope of election "coverage" with sly contempt. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Bernard (I refuse to call him "Bernie," he's not my uncle) Sanders were virtually tied- but the U.S. media insisted on declaring Clinton the "winner." Martin O'Malley was nipping at the duo's heels with 0.6%. Okay, he was left eating dust. (He then "suspended" his campaign for president.) At 6 of the Democrats' caucuses, coins were tossed to pick a winner. This is what "the" media wants us to take seriously! Clinton won 6 of 6 tosses, enabling her to slightly edge Sanders 49.9% to 49.6%. Thus is the Fate of the Republic determined. (The news of the coin tosses came from alternative radio/website democracynow.org. Not on NPR, which has been "covering" the Iowa show to the exclusion of almost all else.)

Now the horses are racing towards the next post, New Hampshire, another virtually all-white state, with the "journalists" providing more breathless commentary. So much artificial excitement! As if anything fundamental is at stake. Even if Bernard Sanders were to run, nothing of the deep power structure would change in the U.S. Any deep changes Sanders attempted would simply be blocked. Even a moderate change like universal health care is seemingly impossible to achieve. Or limiting the amount of money billionaires can deploy to fix elections! A mere five reactionaries, who happen to wear the robes of Supreme Court Justices, overturned the will of Congress and something like 80% of the American people on that score.

Notice how it takes more than a year of hype to get people worked up over their election! I wonder what that is symptomatic of.

1] Population figures latest from U.S. Census, as of midyear 2015, rounded off to nearest thousand. Vote percentages from New York Times. Of course, not everyone is eligible to vote, such as people under 18, and the one out of eight black men branded "felons." So the electorate is somewhat smaller than the population. But the point doesn't change. 167,000 is a tiny number of people to be handed such outsize influence in choosing the president of the U.S.

You might want to read the report, "State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010," by The Sentencing Project. Here's the first sentence: "The United States is one of the world’s strictest nations when it comes to denying the right to vote to citizens convicted of crimes. A remarkable 5.85 million Americans are forbidden to vote because of 'felon disenfranchisement,' or laws restricting voting rights for those convicted of felony level crimes."


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