In just five short months, voters across the country will head to their local polling place to vote for local, state, and federal offices, and to pretend we have a functioning democracy.
But the truth is, our democracy is broken.
We make it difficult for whole groups of people to participate, like minorities, seniors, college students, and low-income Americans.
We cast our ballots on privately owned machines, but we have no way of telling whether they're counted correctly.
Our elections are primarily funded by corporate elite and billionaires who funnel their donations through dark money organizations.
And as former President Jimmy Carter pointed out on my
radio program last year, the flood of money into our politics has effectively undermined American democracy, and left us with American oligarchy.
But the corrupting influence of money in politics hasn't just compromised our democracy: it's costing American lives.
Just one week after the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, four gun control bills were brought forward in the Senate.
The substance of the gun control bills had a tremendous amount of
popular support: 92% of Americans support a universal background check to prevent felons from buying guns and 85% of Americans support a "no-fly, no-buy" bill. That's people of both parties!
So, how many of those laws that pretty much all of us wanted actually passed the Republican-controlled Senate?
Zero, zilch, none.
Even though two of the bills had a simple majority of support, also known as a "constitutional vote", those two bills still failed because the Republicans filibustered the bills and required that each bill needed at least 60 votes to pass.
According to
Vox, 56 Senators have received at least an A-minus grade from the gun lobby, meaning that the NRA considers those 49 Republicans and 7 Democrats basically as "gun-industry-profits-friendly" as they come.
And unsurprisingly, 56 Senators voted against the bill introduced by Chris Murphy that would require universal background checks, the bill that 92% of Americans support.
