The largest voting block in the last presidential election was eligible voters who did not vote. In fact, the US has the lowest voter participation in the developed world. There is a reason for that stark fact. The election process is controlled by plutocrats to such an extent that many voters believe their votes do not count in the final analysis. Forget about the Republicans. They are the party of capitalist rentiers, par excellence. The Democrats are not an authentic alternative for the middle and working classes, however. In election after election, the party's central congressional organization, DCCC, has backed establishment candidates who solicit big donor money at the expense of populist progressives as Bernie Sanders sadly found out. The DCCC unabashedly tells incoming lawmakers that they are expected to spend four hours every day they are in Washington making phone calls to solicit donations. Such activity is commonly known as "dialing for dollars". Potential candidates who cannot demonstrate at least $250,000 in donations for their run for office are usually shunted aside by the Party in favor of those who can.
Given that finance capitalism controls politics in the world's richest country, it is little wonder poverty is allowed to exist as a matter of political economy. Trump's bellicosity about making it great again contains the unspoken caveat: for the 1% only. This chart shows another deplorable fact about 'Merica:
The rich world's Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, says that youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% for the rest. The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality calls the United States a “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league”. Perhaps this fact also explains why the United States has more of its citizens incarcerated per capita than other bastions of democracy like Turkmenistan, El Salvador and Russia. This condition is not inevitable, it is an actual policy choice of the economic elites who control the government. Given the current constitutional scheme of representation and the population exodus from the country's interior, a party of the rich could control the Senate with just 17.6% of a general election popular vote. How ludicrously undemocratic is that?¹
This policy depends upon an illusory emphasis on employment. It totally ignores the real fact that there are not enough jobs to go around (perpetual labor surplus), and many individuals who would work are unemployable because of substandard educations, criminal records, drug abuse, health or mental disabilities, or no training in relevant job skills. A further fallacy of this cruel charade is that prevailing wages are sufficient to make poor families independent of a rudimentary welfare system (eviscerated under Democrat Bill Clinton's administration as "workfare" reform). It has been estimated that as much as $6 billion dollars go from the food stamp program to support low-paid workers, thus providing a huge virtual subsidy to the relevant corporations. It is noteworthy that the location with residents most reliant on food stamps is Owsley County, Kentucky, which is 99.22% white, according to the US Census, and 95% Republican, and where at least at least 52% of its residents received food stamps in 2011. These are the same people who voted for the con-artist in chief as their liberator. Go wail at the wall.
No bro, its not the Russians, crooked Hillary, nor even the dangerous buffoon occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. We have met the enemy, and it is US, who allowed a rigged system to deprive you of democratic hope².
¹Under representation of the class of poor urbanized workers, already established in the great cites of Europe but just beginning in the Colonies, was intended by the Framers. Those fine gentlemen, landowners and prominent businessmen all, did not walk to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia but were driven there in carriages by their servants. The American Revolution was thus essentially a revolt of the elite of colonial society. Alexander Hamilton, currently celebrated in a popular Broadway musical, was the bastard son of a Scottish laird's descendant. Although denied membership in the Church of England because of his biological status, he nevertheless received a university education, a hallmark of the gentlemen of the time. He was an early advocate of independence from the crown, and wrote 51 of the Federalist Papers, but he was hardly an egalitarian democrat. The first Secretary of the Treasury was responsible for establishing the first central bank. He supported commercial economic predominance, a large military establishment, and centralized government. Policies that have prevailed in the modern state.
In contrast Thomas Paine, who authored the most influential pamphlet of the revolutionary period, Common Sense, was the most radical of the Founders. French co-revolutionists appointed him to their National Assembly. He introduced the concept of guaranteed minimum wage, and old-age pension. His defense of the French Revolution in the Rights of Man got him targeted by the British for seditious libel. Paine was eventually imprisoned in France by Robespierre. After James Monroe secured his release, Paine returned to the country he helped create after a long absence. Only six people attended his funeral including two freed slaves, ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity in his Age of Reason. Paine's encounter with Native Americans, notably the Iroquois Federation, deeply influenced his thinking. His body was exhumed from burial on his farm with the intention of transporting his remains back to England. The reburial never occurred, so his bones are lost to posterity.
²The rate of fatal drug overdoses rose by 137 percent from 2000 to 2014. In 2015 alone, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, exceeding the number of US fatal casualties in the Vietnam War. The suicide rate rose by a staggering 24 percent between 1999 and 2014.