Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission

Kamala Harris Withdrawal From Presidential Race Changes The Equation

Ronald 1 Comment

It was surprising that California Senator Kamala Harris withdrew from the Democratic Presidential competition yesterday, something no one could have predicted would happen so early.

Senator Harris said that money took her out of the race, as she is not a billionaire, and that brings up the issue of the absolute necessity to do something to prevent the future political scene only being based on personal wealth, as with Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, who should not have the ability to compete simply based on their personal wealth.

The need for a turnover of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2010, and the passage of another equivalent McCain-Feingold Act is urgent.

For right now, Harris’s withdrawal changes the equation, giving potential new life to New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former San Antonio Mayor and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, as otherwise, there will be no diversity to the Democratic debates coming on December 19 in Los Angeles, plus the future debates in the early months of 2020.

And the question also arises as to where Harris staff will gravitate, with the possibility of them going to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg or Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, as the most likely campaigns that may gain such support.

How The Republican Majority Supreme Court Has Promoted Corporate Control And Voter Suppression, And Undermined American Democracy

Ronald 5 Comments

Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission (2010) and Shelby County V. Holder (2013) are the two decisions of the majority Supreme Court in the last decade which have destroyed the concept of fair and free elections in America.

Those cases, and Bush V Gore (2000) have done everything possible to undermine the majority of the people in Presidential elections, as well as other elections in states, which should have favored the Democratic Party.

And now, with a new right wing Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, possibly more extremist than Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito on the Court since April, the future is very gloomy for progressive values and beliefs.

Realize that the Democrats have won the popular vote in Presidential elections six of the last seven times, from 1992 to 2016, only losing to George W. Bush in 2004.

But the Supreme Court Republican majority has allowed corporations to be seen as people, and this has led to extreme abuse by many wealthy corporate special interests, and individual millionaires and billionaires, to put excessive amounts of funding into negative campaigns against liberals and Democrats, and to fund right wing extremist campaigns for legislation they want, and for conservative candidates they desire.

And loosening the enforcement of voting rights by states has allowed many states to place new voter restrictions on poor people, minorities, young people, and the elderly, making voting an onerous process, and in effect, working for voter suppression, which apparently had an effect in the 2016 Presidential election in some states, and for sure, in Wisconsin, one of the crucial states that gave Donald Trump the victory by a very small margin of votes.

The undermining of American democracy is in full swing, and the fear is that we have just seen the tip of the iceberg in regards to Republican and conservative repression of much of the law and legislation, and the election process itself, in the future, with the ability of Donald Trump and the Republican Party to “fix” the future, one of moving backwards by a century or more in so many respects.