The 2016 presidential primary race is almost over, and it has come down to three hopefuls: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I’ve had a lot of people ask me what I think about the candidates and who I think is going to win. So, by request, this is my theory on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Voters need to understand who these people are and what their platforms are, but that information alone can be misleading if you don’t understand how elections work and how these candidates fit into the greater political system.
Presidential elections are supposed to be a contest between the best and brightest Americans to determine who will act as the will of the citizens in government, but that’s not how elections in America work anymore, if it ever did.
The American people don’t vote for the president. They vote for representatives in the electoral college who have no obligation to vote according to the will of the people. The only reason this system exists is to act as a fail-safe in case the people don’t choose the candidate that the political system wanted to win.
For that reason alone, a vote is just a wish. That’s dystopian already, but the value of a vote is worth less than that, because all the candidates come from a small pool of applicants, not the best and brightest minds from the general population. There are only two ways to become a presidential candidate. You either have to be a billionaire, or you have to climb the ladder of the Democratic or Republican party. So voters get to pick between the puppet on the right hand, the puppet on the left hand or the guy holding the puppets.
It doesn’t matter if a candidate is a member of the Democratic or Republican party. They’re all professional campaigners who work for the same donors and aren’t allowed into the club, let alone get allowed to run for president, unless they play ball. Even if a politician goes rogue and does things that aren’t in the interest of big business, they still have to work against thousands of powerful people who are playing ball, and those puppets will shut down the government before they let anyone challenge the status quo.
If any of this is true, consider how Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders relationship to the existing power structure:
Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a member of the 1%, the people who are hoarding all the money that the poor can’t use to buy food, health care, a home or an education. Economic inequality is the biggest problem in America today, and Donald Trump is the poster child for inequality. He made his billions the same way every billionaire did, by exploiting their workers, customers, and investors. He’s not the solution to America’s problems. He’s the embodiment of America’s problems. The best thing that could happen to him is for economic inequality to keep getting worse.
There’s no reason to believe Donald Trump cares about anyone but himself. That’s why you shouldn’t vote for him, and also why the electoral college will never vote him into office. He’s a liability to other billionaires.
Donald Trump knows he’s not supposed to win. He’s just there to make Democrats feel more comfortable with having Hillary Clinton as president. So Donald Trump is free to act as dramatic as possible on the campaign trail. The whole ordeal still serves his interests, because the more media coverage he gets, the bigger his celebrity status becomes. That satisfies his narcissism and increases the value of whatever products he sells in the future.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is the most experienced and willing candidate to represent the will of business owners in government, and that’s the first reason why you shouldn’t vote for her, but that’s also why I’d bet money she’ll be the next president.
Hillary has received millions of dollars in donations from the banks that caused the 2008 economic crash, and she’s had time to court every major donor in the business world. Unsurprisingly, her voting record while in office is on par with every other professional campaigner who sold their soul to the party.
If/when elected, Hillary Clinton will be Obama 2.0 or George Bush 4.0. The only difference is she doesn’t have charisma. She has such a reputation for being a lying, heartless robot that her focus groups advised her to do damage control by portraying herself a loving, grandmotherly character. Nobody believed it, because it doesn’t take a cold reader to tell she doesn’t stand for anything except her career.
The only people who should vote for Hillary Clinton are wealthy business owners and people who believe in trickle-down economics. Even radical feminists who are hell-bent on electing the first woman president should wait this one out. Hillary Clinton isn’t a strong woman struggling to make it in a man’s world. She’s a narcissistic sociopath who will do whatever it takes to secure her own fortune and glory.
Bernie Sanders
The first and most important reason voters should take a good look at Bernie is because he’s not accepting big money from big businesses. This makes him the least compromised candidate. He’s also the only candidate who isn’t talking in meaningless focus group-generated sound bites, and he’s the only one zeroing in on the source of America’s largest problems: economic inequality.
It doesn’t take a cold reader to tell that when Bernie Sanders talks about the American people, he actually cares, and he means what he’s saying. But a lot of Americans don’t want to hear what he’s saying because he calls himself a democratic socialist, and Americans are raised on pro-capitalist propaganda that demonizes any social or economic movement that threatens the profits of American businesses. Some Americans are so afraid of socialism that they don’t even know what it is and don’t want to know.
Democratic socialism is “a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership of the means of production.”
Bernie Sanders isn’t advocating overthrowing all the business owners, taking away ownership in their companies and redistributing it evenly among the workers. He just wants to reign in the rampant inequality that causes the poor to suffer and stay trapped in a lifetime of wage slavery, and he’ll probably do that by taxing the rich like sort of like President Roosevelt did to fund The New Deal, except not that drastic. If you’re poor, you need this to happen. If it doesn’t, and the economy keeps operating the way it has been, you’re going to keep getting poorer.
The thing that worries me about Bernie Sanders is that he’s made it this far in politics to begin with. I want to assume the best about him, but the skeptic in me has to wonder if he’s really just in the race to get conservatives to feel better about Hillary becoming president or perhaps he’s trying to raise awareness of his ideology the same way Ron Paul ran two doomed presidential campaigns just to raise awareness of Libertarianism.
Americans should still vote for Bernie Sanders. He’s the most genuine, articulate and empathetic candidate. If Hillary Clinton has really already been chosen to be the next president, your vote will at least be a big middle finger to the people who put her in office.
I could be wrong about Hillary Clinton already being chosen, but even if Bernie Sanders beats her in a free election, you can still expect his wave of momentum to crash against the cold, hard reality of Washington the same way Obama-mania did. The rich won’t let Bernie Sanders take away their profits. That’s not how the government works.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but one way or another, Bernie Sanders’ political mission to save the poor from the rich will fail, if not on the campaign trail, then on the floor of Congress.
The only way the 2016 presidential election will raise the quality of life of the average American is if Bernie Sanders’ supporters organize into a stand-alone movement that can enact meaningful change outside of funding politicians’ campaigns.
If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:
Barack Obama
- Americans, you’re not represented in the 2012 presidential election
- 10 things Obama won’t change in his second term
- Why Obamacare made me facepalm
- This Was Your Life: Barack Obama (Comic)
- Occupy LOL Street: The Wizard of LULZ (Comic)
The 2016 Presidential Election
- Why it’s delusional to vote in America’s 2016 presidential election
- Everything wrong with America’s 2016 presidential primaries
- This Was Your Life: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Part 1 (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Part 2 (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: Bernie Sanders (Comic)
- This Was Your Life: The Trump Supporter (Comic)
Donald Trump
- How to survive the Trumpocalypse
- Why did Americans vote for Trump?
- What will Trump do now that he’s president
- Why I’m glad Trump won
- How Trump changed my understanding of American politics
- 4 reasons Americans shouldn’t accept Trump as president
- Why won’t people just give Trump a chance?
- What should non-Americans do about Trump?
- What should Republicans and Democrats do about Trump?
- What should racists do about Trump?
- What should xenophobes do about Trump?
- What should rich people do about Trump?
- What should minorities do about Trump?
Voting
- Voting never has, and never will, save America
- If you want everyone to vote, then make voting work for everyone
- How presidential elections work (Comic)
- How congressional elections work (Comic)
- How political representation works (Comic)
Corruption and Election Reform
- How to end corruption in three steps
- 6 ways to improve the political nomination system
- 10 solutions to most of America’s problems
- 3 solutions that won’t change America, and 5 that will
- Occupy LOL Street: The Constitutional Convention (Comic)
- Occupy LOL Street: Adventures In Lobbying (Comic)
- Occupy LOL Street: The People’s Party (Comic)
American Laws
- The 28th amendment
- My theory on gun control
- My theory on illegal immigration
- My theory on age-based accountability laws
- 5 reasons why prostitution should be legal
- 5 reasons to legalize gambling
- 8 reasons to legalize marijuana you’ve already heard
- Why stop with just making drugs illegal?
- 4 illogical arguments against polygamy
- The American burqa
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- How freedom works (Comic)
- How equality works (Comic)
- How gender equality works (Comic)
- How the war on drugs works (Comic)
- The Ents: A Story About Marijuana Prohibition (Comic)
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My Tweets About Politics
- #17: The 2016 U.S. presidential election
- #18: Donald Trump’s presidency
- #19: Political corruption, incompetence, and voting
- #20: Political and economic freedom
- #21: Immigration, racism, and guns
- #22: Public education
- #23: Political reform
- #24: Police, prisons, and unjust laws
- #25: War, military, and troops
- #26: Social justice warriors
Feel free to leave a comment.