America has just installed a democratically illegitimate democracy

As the Senate and House of Representatives begin a new session, it’s worth noting the fact that America was never a democracy at its founding, and is not a democracy now.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has been talking about a peaceful transfer of power. The problem is that while the transfer has been peaceful, how we got here has nothing to do with peace and democracy. What we have is a Republican Party that worked very hard to win, and a weak Democratic Party whose leadership betrayed many of their constituents through its silence and inaction.

Republicans used the court system to aid voter suppression and deny Americans health care coverage through the Medicaid expansion to Obamacare. They used economic angst to promote racial, xenophobic, ethnic, and gender polarization in order to divide and conquer. They effectively stole a Supreme Court seat.

Meanwhile, Democrats saved the economy and provided health care (and many other good programs). However, they did it timidly. They refused—and continue to refuse—to play hardball. Why didn't Obama appoint a Supreme Court justice during a recess, when he could? It was his appointment to give.

When Democrats had the opportunity to show what full progressivism could deliver, they punted. The titans of finance threw the country into a financial crisis, and the country was ready for bold action. But Democrats, specifically Blue Dog Democrats, half-stepped. They did not deliver enough to cauterize the change in the psyche of a more sizable portion of the population.

Americans needed a single-payer health care system, or at minimum a public option to Obamacare. Americans needed a much bigger stimulus that reached all corners of the country. And yes, we could have afforded it—just like we paid for wars, and bailouts for the military industrial complex and the titans of finance, respectively. Somehow we can always find the money to help the plutocracy, but not the poor and the middle-class.