Different types of “democracy” according to historical development. Athenian slave democracy and English rule democracy. Pictures from the British Museum.
The 2024 United States presidential election will take place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. J. Biden is running for re-election. His predecessor, D. Trump, is running for a second, non-consecutive term, something only Grover Cleveland achieved in the late 19th century. Other candidates have also announced their candidacies for the nomination of the two major parties. The winner will take office on January 20, 2025. In addition, 35% of the Senate and 100% of the House of Representatives of Congress will be renewed. State legislative and gubernatorial elections are being held in several states.
Recently, the counter-revolutionary groups in Miami spread their latest hoax that “Cuba intervened in the US electoral process.” Something so crazy that it would be ridiculous if it didn't have negative consequences for our country. This shameless lie was quickly refuted by Cuba, and all Cubans know that it is another of thousands of unfounded slanders in the 65 years of the Revolution. I was motivated to write these notes detailing the American electoral process.
The Greek word “democracy” (“the power of the people”) was invented by the Athenians to define a system of city government in which decisions were made by the assembly of citizens (a term that did not include women, slaves, or foreigners). ) and not by a king or emperor as in other states of antiquity.
Later, for example, the English Magna Carta was a document that embodied “feudal democracy,” in which the king shared his prerogatives with the “barons” or feudal lords, the high clergy, knights, and to varying degrees other prominent figures.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was an important philosopher and writer of the 18th century. His political philosophy had a great influence on the French Revolution as well as on the American Revolutionary War, the Latin American Wars of Independence and, more generally, on the general development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. In 1762, his publication The Social Contract became one of the most influential works of political thought in the Western world (1).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the fathers of socio-political thought at the time of the bourgeois revolutions. Portrait of Charles Escot.
The American and French Revolutions resulted in “treaties” or constitutions that outlined the rights and freedoms of the governed. The ultimate reason for these constitutions was to create the legal framework of the capitalist legal society, in which the most important elements were neither “individual freedom” nor “human rights”, but rather, in complete primacy, the defense of private property in general and, so on, the means of production in particular .
The US Constitution, which has existed since 1787, consists of 7 articles and 27 amendments. It is the oldest constitution of a nation state still in force in the world. To give just a few examples, the Constitution recognized slavery until the 1860s (in practice it was the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that first allowed slaves to be emancipated and then given the right to vote around 1870). and did not accept women's suffrage until 1920.
Women's suffrage was not granted in the United States until 1920. Photo congress.
The “capitalist constitutional state” embodies the principles and prerogatives of the ruling bourgeoisie. But for fascism, even the limited rights offered to the exploited are illegitimate. Fascists do not accept a “social contract” (be it in the US or any other country), nor do they accept a legal system only if it protects them and they work in that spirit, as is the case today with the US Supreme Court Appointments are for life and When selecting judges, the opinion of the people is not sought.
In Donald Trump's United States (and on January 6, 2021), fascism manifested itself, among other things, through the attempt to ignore and violate the regulations of the capitalist constitutional state (as was previously the case in the Weimar Republic or in Primo de Rivera's Spain Had happened). ), i.e. the “social contract” of this company.
On January 6th, 2021, American fascism rebels against the constitution. Photo NBC.
The 2022 midterm elections
On November 8, 2022, the latest “democratic” spectacle in the United States took place: the midterm elections. The Republican Party took control of the House of Representatives but failed to win the Senate.
In this year's races for the Senate, House of Representatives and other offices, many of the Republican candidates have disputed or questioned President J. Biden's 2020 victory. Therefore, we have seen many politicians succeed in an electoral system that they themselves denounced as fraudulent.
Since we were children, we Cubans have learned that you can't just accept the rules of the game when you win. The conditions for a potentially massive electoral collapse in the 2024 presidential election campaign had already been created.
The US electoral system with an all-powerful Electoral College in which a few hundred party delegates are able to overturn the popular vote of hundreds of millions; With two senators per state, although very different, the fact that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life and without popular participation, among other things, requires a significant change in the system of American “democracy”, which has become completely anachronistic , but for the class of power, it is in their absolute interest to continue to prevent the people from bringing about a fundamental change in their favor in government. But even this diminished “democracy” does not satisfy the plutocratic leadership that requires absolute authority and power to attempt to maintain an impossible “unipolar” world within and beyond its borders.
Examples of “anti-democratic” legality. Ouroboros bites its own tail
For example, in 2000, the majority of American voters voted for Democratic Party candidate Al Gore. A long political soap opera ensued involving hanging papers and Electoral College votes in the state of Florida, and the US Supreme Court handed the presidency to GW Bush, who was 543,895 votes short but 5 votes ahead in the Electoral College.
The perpetrators, from left. right: G. Bush (son), G. Bush (father), both US presidents, and J. Bush, governor of Florida in 2000; and the victim, Al Gore, in the photo below. Photos from The Atlantic and The Hill.
A surprise, with a certain degree of influence from characters as diverse as Jeb Bush (governor of the state who decided the presidency for his brother) and Elián González, whose failed counter-revolutionary kidnapping attempt triggered the highest pro-Republican vote for the “Cuban”. Americans” in the south of this state. In the two crucial counties of Miami-Dade and Broward, traditionally Democratic strongholds, the Republican vote increased by 79,834 and 35,069, respectively, compared to the previous election. Of them, 34,000 to 37,000 were voters of Cuban descent, as punishment because Attorney General Janet Reno enforced the law and returned the minor to his father, as justice and common sense demanded.
Hillary Clinton received almost three million more votes than D. Trump, but lost the presidency by 77 votes! in the Electoral College, an expression of the tyranny of a few against the overwhelming majority of the people. Photos The Hill.
Also in 2016, “Democratic” presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the election to Trump. This was again thanks to the machinations of the Electoral College, a relic from the era of slavery whose mysterious and convoluted nature was aimed at giving more power to the slave states and ensuring that “democracy” would never be truly “democratic.”
In addition, “gerrymandering” or redistribution of electoral districts occurs in favor of one party or the system as a whole.
Campaign finance and the large amount of money allocated to the entire electoral process. In 2010, the Supreme Court struck down campaign finance restrictions to give corporations and wealthy donors more ability to buy political influence. In the last midterm elections, federal and state election spending was expected to exceed $16.7 billion, making it the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history.
At least 97 members of Congress had purchased or sold stocks, bonds, or other financial assets related to their work in Congress, or had reported similar financial activities by their spouses or children. The United States Senate gives the 580,000 residents of Wyoming the same voting rights as the 39 million residents of California. Two senators per state, period.
The Covid-19 pandemic played a major role in the last midterm elections.
This and other factors are firmly anchored in the minds of many Americans as evidence of the disaster of the Trump administration, “muting” the intensity of the Republican victory and preventing the emergence of the much-heralded “red wave.” In other words, the vote did not penalize J. Biden's administration more, even though its results were much lower than expected, but because many people still remember that Trump's was even worse.
Regarding Cuba and the “Cuban-American” mafia
Since the 1998 election, when then-President George W.'s brother, Jeb Bush, won the governorship of Florida, the Republican Party has controlled that state's government, now with the very right-wing governor and major presidential candidate R. DeSantis. Senator Marco Rubio was re-elected, boasting in his campaign that he was the originator of Trump's policies towards Cuba, which J. Biden said he maintained “out of fear of Cuban exile.”
The three Republican representatives in the House of Representatives who are the standard-bearers of the anti-Cuban hard line were also re-elected in Miami: María Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos Giménez.
But be careful, the fact that supporters of Trump's anti-Cuba policies are winning does not mean that Mr. Trump is guaranteed support for a Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The current Republican governor Ron De Santis is already emerging as one of the two main candidates (along with N. Haley) for the Republican nomination for the White House against the tycoon and former president, for which he has relied on the pressure, blackmail and political propaganda apparatus that is in the hands of the Cuban-American extreme right in Miami.
It should be clear that J. Biden clearly lost Florida in the midterm elections, despite the support he gave to the Cuban-American Mafia. He maintained the Trumpist policy of maximum pressure against Cuba, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic, when his government did not even deny the island medical oxygen. Despite all this, the far right in Miami accuses the “Democrats” of being socialists and communists.
J. Biden's administration continues to receive millions of dollars in media funding of all kinds for the psychological war against Cuba, which, according to a University of Florida survey, has regressed to forms from the 1960s and features an even more extreme anti-communist discourse. , organize and finance terrorist actions on the island.
In other words, the only thing that has changed with Florida is that the leadership of the “Democratic” Party understands that there is no “agreement” with Florida, no matter what it does to align itself with the Cuban-American To “fall in love” with the Mafia. . In 2024, Republicans will win this state again.
Reflections on the undemocratic electoral system in the USA
Before the midterm elections, the president said that “democracy is on the ballot for all of us.” Not to mention that he himself is complicit in a fundamentally undemocratic landscape in which “one person, one vote” was never an option and in who simply trying to understand the Electoral College can lead to a brain aneurysm.
Significantly, a majority of Americans support replacing the Electoral College system with a direct popular vote. But listening to this majority would be a dangerously democratic approach for the plutocracy that is firmly in power.
In the last midterm elections, it once again became painfully clear that electoral democracy in the USA has shortcomings. But given that American “democracy” was actually intended to be anti-democratic and pro-hegemonic, doesn’t it fulfill the very reasons for which it was conceived, namely that true democracy never comes?
Fascism is an inherent part of capitalism and of course it has been around in the US for a century, but it has become more evident since the Trump era. For the fascists. The very limited and outdated constitution and generally the country's laws are an unacceptable obstacle.
It is under these conditions that the general elections will take place in November 2024, a confrontation between a weakened capitalist “democracy” and the manifest fascism that wants to eliminate it completely (2).