An Imperfect Democracy

The most recent national presidential election cycle (2024) established the fact that democracy in the United States is, at best, a shadow. A debate on that observation implies two questions. First, is the shadow from something real? Second, is the shadow imaginary and nothing is there? Is democracy something we have lost or was it always a dream?

This is the opening post of a series that I had previously written but removed to recast the story into an accessible narrative. This opening post describes briefly our current political environment, and a summary of recent defining moments. Last, it will introduce an overview of the compromised system drawn up during the Constitutional convention held during the summer of 1787.

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s bigger than an expected victory over incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020, two new terms entered our vocabulary when referencing that election. The first being “the big lie” and the second, “our democracy”. The first term notably is referencing Donald Trump’s insistence that the Democrats rigged the election. Pundits and the talking heads appearing on (faux) liberal video media mostly used the “our democracy” phrase repeatedly without a definition.

No matter how much the Trump apparatus tried to prove in court that voluminous election fraud occurred, they met with failure 100% of the time. The former president’s insistence that he won is called a “big” lie. Only the true big lie was calling our election processes in 2020 and mostly through America’s history a Democracy, let alone one shared equitably among all voters by using a collective designation called “our democracy” is in truth a big lie that stretches back centuries.

Many of Trump’s supporters publicly accept his assertion of a victory in 2020, it in practice only an unofficial oath of fealty or loyalty to Donald Trump himself. But what is noteworthy it symbolically reflects the depth of dissatisfaction Trump’s followers have in any American system. In short, they are saying that when “our democracy” is mentioned by (faux) liberals, it is not the democracy they envision. And any system that is not a cohesive whole is, in fact, broken.

There are two reasons that Donald Trump did not win in 2020, first was Covid. A genuine test of a leader is when the totally unexpected hits, the capacity to pivot on the metaphorical dime is the test and President Trump failed. Second, was that Joe Biden was perceived as everyone’s goofy uncle. Comfortable to be around, likes everyone and everyone likes him. As the pandemic’s day-to-day impact waned, the comfort of a goofy uncle seemed nice.

Not talked about by the (faux) liberal media was that Biden was inserted into the race by his party’s protectors of the status quo. When it became apparent that nobody, except for Bernie Sanders, who was the only candidate that associated his agenda with disrupting the status quo, could put together a coalition of voters. As one by one different Democratic candidates slid off the stage after a momentary burst of enthusiasm, it was determined by the party that Joe, who did not even have a significant amount of delegates, would be the nominee. He was well known and well liked; and would not rock the boat. Few people reflected when January 6th occurred that “our democracy” is a manipulated fraud.

Was 2020, 2024, 2016 or any other presidential election the model the founders visualized their democracy would look like? For one reason only, the answer is a certain no. Their vision was a limited democracy. Limited in the choosing of the President, the judiciary, and the Senate. Democracy was only widespread and distributed in the House of Representatives, however, not all citizens had the right to vote for their representative in Congress.

Presidential Candidates were, in most states, voted on by the eligible citizens. The election served as a non-binding opinion only, as Electors cast each state’s votes via a process decided by each state’s legislature. State governors or legislators, who are elected by voters in their state, usually choose both senators. Judges are chosen by presidents and approved by the Senate. Democracy in the original US Constitution described a federal government that in only one-half of the legislative branch was democratically selected. The other half were chosen by people who had already won an election by citizens. The Judicial branch was another layer away from citizen direct input since they are chosen by the President and approved by Congress.

Selecting the federation’s officers and judges by voting-eligible citizens was at worst 4 degrees of separation.

That describes the beginning of America’s experiment in a democratic federation. That experiment started over 230 years ago. Changes have been made in every branch, some for good, some for worse, and many changes have served as a band-aid rather than a cure. This series intends to walk through most of the ways our political systems have changed, mostly by-laws or amendments, but also by many process changes as well.

We already know the ending. We have a broken democracy, flawed from the start. The problem is that our democracy has been patched many times and only a handful of the patches made democracy more perfect, and even those patches have withered away.