No matter who the putative winner is on Tuesday, democracy in America will have turned a corner.
The death knell sounded six years ago when the SCOTUS gave Big Money unlimited access to the election process.
That Supreme Court decision gave free rein to the Empire of Lobbyists. Money has always been integral to American politics, of course, but the Citizens United decision gave big money political donors the stamp of legitimacy.
And those big money political donors have obviously run with it.
Unfortunately, there are no big money political donors lobbying for America's working classes.
Big Labour abandoned the working class at least a generation ago, settling instead for a pat on the back from the establishment for being team players. Instead of fighting for American jobs, they settled for negotiating severance packages when American jobs were shipped willy-nilly to Mexico and China.
It was in fact Big Labour that originally created America's middle class. If you were a member of the Teamsters or the UAW in the sixties, you were middle class. You owned your home and had two cars in the driveway, and perhaps a summer cottage on a lake upstate somewhere. Your kids were going to post-secondary, no question about it.
Today?
The fact that the ersatz billionaire Trump is seen as the champion of the working class speaks volumes. It goes without saying that he'll not be able to bring back the middle class. If he is elected he is doomed to fail.
And Hillary? Maybe Hillary can keep the show alive for four more years; the same-old show where the rich get richer and the poor make do. But that will only last till the next election cycle, when the ground will be even more fertile for an even more virulent anti-establishment candidate.
In the meantime, expect to see the Exceptional Nation export it's toxic and dysfunctional version of democracy to more unhappy recipients around the world than ever before.
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