The Last Two Party Presidential Election in American History

It's on the tip of every tongue in America. Though one gets the feeling that no one likes the taste. We're 44 days away from the next presidential election. But it might as well feel like a year. The mainstream media for whatever reason started "covering" the election over a year ago so it's just about the last thing any one wants to keep thinking about. But the media continues to hammer it in, day after boring day. As they do, the American people continue to be accosted by hate speech and attack ads, shouting matches and pointing fingers of blame and guilt and who said what when to whom. If you step back as if from another country, it appears that America is two steps away from a full on implosion. The golden old days of unity are gone. Patriotism is gone. Nationalism gone. We are two countries now. Two groups of people. No longer necessarily divided strictly by North and South. But divided nonetheless. Divided by two rusted, worthless and irrelevant political parties that have long since worn out their welcome in the American psyche.

We have never seen a presidential campaign this heated, argumentative and venomous. We've also never seen a campaign so vacuous. The Republican candidate, a man they call Mitt Romney, talks about change and improving things. Though no matter how many times he's asked or how many different ways he is asked, he cannot elaborate on what exactly he is going to change or how he's going to do it. One gets the feeling that his primary concern -- at least according to the mandate being forced upon him by the people who are pulling his puppet strings -- is helping further entitle the wealthiest people in the country by taking away entitlements for the least wealthy.

On the other hand, the current president, the man you will probably know in the future as "the first African American President of the United States" -- Barack Obama -- appears much more confident in terms of his actual platform. He has ideas and vision, not necessarily one that all Americans agree with, but they're there. They're obvious. And they too seem a bit too close to what we now call class warfare, pitting rich against poor, the haves versus the have nots. As I type these words a marquis flashes across the television screen in front of me "21% of New Yorkers lived in poverty last year". It is everywhere.

The president speaks of taking care of the least among us. And in theory it sounds and feels like the right thing to do. The last thing any of us really want, in our heart of hearts, is to be stepping over poorer people among us as we make our way to the local diner, or to see giant plots of land filled with whole families living in tents as in times past because they are so poor they cannot afford a place to live. So the basic vision of the president and this team of so called Democrats makes sense.

But for some reason he seems to feel a need to attack anyone who has money or who's making money as his solution to how to help those who are struggling. It's a dangerous platform. America was founded on, among many other things, the principle that YOU can make it here. That if there is anywhere on earth where if afforded the talent and desire for it a person can achieve success it's in the good old United States of America. Why Obama continues to make comments suggesting a socialist agenda of wealth bashing is beyond those of us who have money, and indeed even those of us who still don't have money but want to have some one day. He seems to be only appealing to people struggling economically, leaving those with money to the side of the curve like last night's future morning walk of shame candidate. If you're an able bodied entrepreneurial minded American much of what comes out of this president's mouth seems almost unAmerican. At the very least it seems anti-Capitalist.

But all of the above aspects of this current race towards infamy hint at a bigger picture that is telling about the crumbling American two party system. Another unfortunate aspect of it all is that because of the access that even the least educated and connected among us are afforded by technology we are finally seeing for the first time in our long history what a "Republic" looks like -- in how it's really being practiced. The country's laws and governing principles appear to be being brainstormed and created not by the president or even congress, but by private sector people, celebrities and the super rich, people like Grover Norquist, think tanks like like the Project for a New American Century and political campaign advisors like Bay Buchanan and David Axelrod. These people come on television or opine in the media about what "we are trying to do..." as if they are the ones running the show. The candidates come off like mere puppets, talking heads with the right kind of teeth and body shape to be president. Indeed, we have been taught from an early age, those of us that wanted to know, that America was never meant to be a true Democracy. That "the people" have never had much control over what goes on here; that instead the country was set up as a Republic, meaning that the people are represented by higher ups who speak for them.

That reality was never made more real for America than in year 2000 when we saw one candidate win more votes by the people -- by over half a million -- but lose the presidency. It didn't make much sense to most Americans. How can someone win but still lose? The talking heads explained to the astonished people that their vote in reality didn't really matter. It was symbolic. But not actually a significant factor in determining who would be elected. They call it the Electoral College System. I don't have to tell you how it works. By now, wherever you are, you probably know it better than I do.

This year, in this election, pundits break down the potential outcome of the upcoming presidential race to us with a large map that shows all fifty United States and explain to us that because of the Electoral College system that most of the election has already been decided on long before any of us have even had a chance to vote. That in reality it only comes down to a few states and which way their electoral votes will swing. It won't have much to do with how you or I vote in the election, but more to do with how these electorates in states like Ohio and Virginia, Florida and Iowa will vote. Yes it's disheartening to say the least. It is one of the reasons why less than 50% of eligible voters in the country will actually vote. I get that. I've already been told numerous times by friends and countrymen that there is no need for example for me to vote because I live in New York. New York it's already been decided will automatically go to the Democrats and thus Barack Obama. I'll vote anyway, just to give myself the illusion that my vote matters. But inside I know it really doesn't.

All this leads us back to the original point. Why such a divided country at this time? Why does it feel like the Civil War again? The answer to that question has already been answered. The candidates who decide to run for president are forced to choose between two very large and powerful political parties who are actually at the head of the controls of the nation. These so called parties have tens of thousands of people working for them or with them or associating themselves with them. But these people don't do much. They don't have much control in reality. Behind these two parties is a much smaller group of people who are actually in control. Neither Left nor RIght, they are for all intents and purposes just "the rich". Either individuals or corporations, it is they who call the shots. Whether it is what platform to take on Medicare or which side of the coin to fall on abortion or capital punishment, those decisions have already been made long ago, and have been foisted upon these ancient aging political parties by a small handful of controlling people who understand all too well the power of how to control the many through ideology rather than through leadership.

Mitt Romney, from everything that has been said of him by people who know him, appears to be a good man, with a good heart and a strong moral fiber. But his desire to be president of the United States was much stronger than any of his moral convictions. We've watched him change his views on just about every issue that is relevant in American politics over the last ten years. If he was going to be president, he needed to be represented by one of the two political parties. One assumes he eventually ended up in the Republican camp because he was wealthy. Although he didn't necessarily agree with any of the more social ideals of that party he has had to pretend to. So one by one he's changed his public stance on the issues to appear more aligned with the party he chose and that chose him. Sort of. For the record, there hasn't been an American political party less interested in their own candidate since the Dems were reluctantly forced to back McGovern back in '68 after LBJ backed out and RFK got killed.

So as our summer turns to fall and our days quickly shorten with each day emitting less sunlight as the day before, we are all well aware in America that our presidential race is less of a race than it is a waiting game. Our vote won't count for much as far as any of us can tell, and other than to provide a physical representation or symbol of a competitor, the Republican side of the political spectrum doesn't really serve a purpose in this election. Because the candidate himself doesn't really believe in what he's saying or doing. Because of that, he doesn't stand a chance of actually winning. In my short lifetime, and I don't pretend to have a lot of experience in these types of things, I have never personally seen someone so insincere when he speaks, so thoroughly uninvested in the platform he claims to believe in. You get the idea that he is being forced to pretend that he believes in all these things but doesn't really. That in reality, if given the chance, he would race back towards the middle if he could. But this new breed of the controlling few who have hijacked the Republican party have boxed him into a corner painted so tight that there's no room to breathe let alone move in it.

Personally I'd love to hear what Mitt Romney really believes. What he thinks about health care -- he was the first American governor to accomplish creating a universal health care system for his state, but he's had to reverse his stance on that issue and pretend that he somehow made a mistake just because this party that controls him has told him to. How does he feel about a woman's right to choose? As a governor he was for it. Now he doesn't care if his own daughter's been raped by a crack addict and gotten pregnant, he says he'd force her and every other woman in the United States to have that baby, whether she wants to or not. The same with gun control. Forget the fact that at this point in our history we are experiencing mass public killings on an almost monthly basis by crazed lunatics with assault weapons and giant arsenals. Romney says that there's no need to control what kind of weaponry the average citizen is allowed to purchase.

Of course, not many of us buy these remarks. And that's why he's losing in the polls so badly. He just isn't believable. And for good reason. No one in their right mind WOULD believe most of the things he's saying. He's simply repeating what he's being force fed to say by a controlling few. Why THEY want him to say these things, God only knows. But one thing is certain. This is the last election that will be run by only two political parties in our history. The apathy is more than palpable. More and more people run towards the center, which means they are forced to lean Democrat, as the Republican party continues to spiral into a terrifying mess of insane ideas that only the craziest extremists would embrace. Not happy with either position, most of us feel trapped between two options that if given a real choice we would choose neither. So more and more of us call ourselves Independent. Problem is that the powers that be refuse to even accept Independent as a viable option. But they better start. This upcoming presidential election, and the landslide victory that Barack Obama will experience for better or worse, will show both parties that the days of forcing the American people into only two ideological boxes are over. When a people only have one choice for president, that isn't a democracy. It isn't even a republic. We all know what that is. And it's not something even worth discussing. Unfortunately that's what we have now here. The year is 2012. God help us.