Wait, wait, don’t clobber me for asking this low in vitamins, high in refined sugar question. I’m not qoing to answer it. I question the question… the repeater-rifle question stuck on automatic: “Should Hillary quit?”
Hear me out…
There are several poignant “election times” topics for national discussion that have been mostly ignored. They oughtn’t be. For instance:
How much of the MSM, by their pronouncements about what any candidate ought or ought not do, (such as quit running) seems to be attempting to influence and create behavior in a candidate, rather than reporting on a candidate’s behavior?
This one too: Whether or how powerful media TV and radio show hosts, who daily perseverate on ‘Should Hillary Clinton quit?’ (sometimes with bald exhortations rather than as inquiry) come close –perhaps unwittingly– to subverting the spirit of the election process…
An election process in the USA seems to guarantee that citizens are allowed to place their votes in a nomination contest without having themselves, or the candidates, be unduly pressured to quit by any outside power or force.
In a democracy we are told that our votes count, that voting is the rich marrow of the bones our country is founded on. It seems sensible that each person in America who so chooses, wants to be able to have their one say-so in this nomination contest.
I think, from the people I listen to, just average people who work for a company or who own their own businesses, the voters don’t want their chance to vote in the primary pre-empted by a media surge that contains overt and covert calls for a candidate to quit.
What I hear in my corners of the world is that ‘the people’ don’t want the contest to be shut down by media influence, nor by endless fair-weather polls quoting, nor by pollsters’ choices of what to/ whom to test and what not to test, what to keep in, what to leave out.
I think a majority of people just want what they have been promised, what they have prepared for, given their time to already for many months now. They want their right to cast a vote in the election primary not to be interfered with.
Instead, what continues to seem odd, is the MSM in much of television and radio in particular, but also in many old mainline newspapers, seeming telling/ shouting out what a candidate running for high office ought do to quit…
Some in media remind me of a part of the old ballpark where habitually squatted a group we used to call ‘the loser bruisers.’ These were guys who’d never played the game, drank plenty of spirits, but enjoyed dispiriting the players on the field by shouting out insults… the theme of each being predictable: Go home, You’re no good.
But, the ‘loser bruisers’ forgot that for the game to be fair–and to make a winner really ‘a strong winner’ by having met the challenge, not just ‘a weak winner’ by default– the game had to be played out in a certain form… despite those who thought otherwise.
Exhorting a candidate to drop out, too, appears to be tromping on the form. I think the idea is that we are in a democracy, where as impatient as some of those in the MSM are pressured to rush onto the next big OJ thing… the people, ‘we the people,’ want their say. Everything in its own time. Without shortcuts.
Imagine for a moment, another nation, one that has lived under a dictatorship, but which suddenly was enabled to have their first democratic election. Imagine such a nation where the people are straining toward a new day after years of having been battered about. Imagine there are two or more candidates giving speeches, rallies, visiting parts of the country that no person from high office has EVER been bothered to visit before.
Then imagine a big portion of the big and moneyed media of that nation—rather than the people who have not yet voted—imagine the well-established media of that country, much of it old guard, begins pushing that one candidate or another ought disappear before the contest is done, before all the people can vote on which one they most want….
Most Americans would be
outraged at anyone trying to interfere with a fledgling democratic process in another nation. Americans, some of the deepest hearts in the world in terms of holding out for Mother Justice, would be incensed.
And what if that imaginary nation were really our nation, The USA, in actuality?
What if we are, in fact, looking for a new day after years of so many people feeling they’ve been made invisible, gone unheard and deeply ignored. What if we want –and demand– for the first time in a long time, NOT to be told what to do, or how it’s going to be with no balanced considerations for us, nor input from us?
What if we want our say-so to be heard at last, our voices not to be scorned, our voices louder than any handful of people or corpus braying repetitively, day in and day out, about who ought and who ought not run for election, or for how long?
What if the people want a clean version of our time-honored process of democracy, and are refuting any calls for it to be short-cut, sidestepped, side-swiped, in order ‘to save the party,’ ‘save money,’ or because ‘so and so cant win,’ or other earnest or specious or impromptu arguments?
What if ‘voice of the people,’ rather than only the loudest or most moneyed voices– is what the soul of this nation really dreams?
The ‘voice of the people’ allowed to vote their preferences above the din, seems like true democracy.
That’s what a lot of us would like, the true democracy. If not, then perhaps we’ll live to see the day when other democratic countries who have an special interest in the USA remaining whole, will insist upon sending to America, “official observers’ to watch over our election processes, to insure that our once and future fledgling democracy truly thrives.