Wasserman Schultz: Another One Bites The Dust

For once in her political life Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done the decent thing and resigned her position as chairwoman of the U.S. Democratic Party’s Democratic National Committee (DNC). The exposure by Wikileaks of emails clearly proving her staff worked to prevent Bernie Sanders from achieving the Democratic nomination, has only served to highlight what was already known by anyone familiar with U.S. politics.

Rigging the result is standard practice in American politics. Indeed, it’s almost accepted as inevitable – until suddenly someone slips up and facts are made known, as in this case. Then there’s a public outcry, at least by those supporters whose candidate has been wronged.

Indeed, as the BBC’s North America reporter, Anthony Zurcher, points out:

The revelation that those in the heart of the Democratic establishment sought to undermine the anti-establishment Sanders is roughly on a par with police Capt Renault’s professed shock that gambling was taking place in the Casablanca club he was raiding, as a waiter hands him his winnings.”^[1]

Though at risk of revealing his age Zurcher has, in a few lines, neatly portrayed the absurdity of politics in today’s world. Accepting corruption as rife in third world banana republics has long been the norm, though scorned by more ‘civilised’ societies, but the people of America and much of the Western world are now realising they too are being conned by their politicians. Sadly, like the citizens of those banana republics, they’re also learning they can do very little about it.

Democracy is about choosing to vote for a representative who can best serve you. When the realization dawns that no-one on the voting list will do that, democracy is dead.

Wasserman Schultz is not being sacrificed for her devious malpractices, but because she’s allowed those malpractices to become public knowledge.

^{[1] US election: Email row claims Debbie Wasserman Schultz” BBC, July 25th 2016}