Primary Elections USA: What’s Missing

A couple of things can happen in the race for the party nominations in the United States. First, Donald Trump will get enough delegates in Indiana to tie up the Republican nomination. Second, neither of the two Democratic candidates will get to the number needed to avoid an open convention, with more than one ballot. That is, it will be decided by a different process, not by primaries and caucuses, the way it has been up until now. This situation sets up a different struggle among Democrats, one the leadership didn’t count on. Nor do these two arguments mean that Bernie Sanders has been eliminated; he controls the political scene to a great extent. However, he faces some difficult obstacles if he wants to continue and to prevail. As to the remaining Republicans, Cruz and Kasich, their chances of going into an open convention, that they have been working so hard for, are nil. Thus, given the expected outcome, everything points to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump heading their respective parties’ tickets, facing off for the U.S. presidency.

The Republican leadership, facing the inevitability of Trump’s victory, is already putting energy into moderating the profile of the presumptive candidate. They’re trying to refine, if not change, several of his crude, sharp, controversial and less attractive statements. How much they can do will be seen in the weeks ahead. This circle of establishment bosses can’t shake the doubts that keep eating away at many of them. They think that the tycoon doesn’t have the characteristics to make himself into a winning candidate. But by the same token, they felt, and even predicted, that Trump would be eliminated immediately. Contrary to all predictions, he has overcome whatever obstacles he has encountered. This doesn’t mean that he has improved his ability to win the presidential election. (According to half of the opinion polls, he would be beaten by Hillary, and also by Sanders; however; a recent poll has him leading Hillary.)

For her part, Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have it easy either, and for her, it looks even less promising. The lopsided support she has gotten from the elites since the start of the race — both endorsements and campaign donations — comes with a major downside: being seen as a product of the dominant system. In the current climate, it is dangerous to be seen this way, given the overwhelming discontent that a majority of people in the country feel about their political leaders – disillusionment verging on outright opposition, and rebellion against the status quo. This majority — disenchanted, anxious and quarrelsome — won’t support the persona that she projects: the classic Washington insider. She is definitely a political woman, in the usual sense of that term, an important person, nurtured within the core of U.S. decision-makers. For now, growing groups of voters are passionately rejecting her. The recent attack triggered by Trump goes to the core of her ambitions, image and behavior. It includes attacking her honesty, and her dependence on the powerful, dominant interests: Wall Street, energy, insurance and so forth. Trump signals his future attacks with uncommon crudeness. Among other things, he claims that Hillary won’t hold up, because she will lack the toughness to stand fast when facing the enormous pressures of being the commander-in-chief.

Clinton needs a wider audience than the one that has made it possible for her to get a larger number of voters (many of them African-Americans) and pledged delegates. Her eventual primary victory will require her to look for a way to turn the popular movement centered on Sanders toward her side. To start with, she has made the Vermont senator’s basic proposals her own. It won’t be easy for Clinton to attract the huge army of young people backing the sui generis Vermont senator. The reason is simple: The majority of those young people are not registered Democrats, but rather independents (40 percent of the electorate) who don’t have any party affiliation. What they’re looking for, with noteworthy enthusiasm, is change that will open up real new horizons of coexistence for them, not just modifications to existing governmental programs.

Sen. Sanders doesn’t see his attempt for the nomination as lost. He contends that he has two major points in his favor. First, the push, the so-called momentum, that has him continuing to close the gap with Clinton, a gap that is now 10 percent in the number of delegates. And second, the request that the super-delegates vote as their respective states have voted. According to Washington Post estimates, obtaining 58 percent of the delegates in play will be sufficient to complete his pledge. If these suppositions turn out in his favor in the remaining primaries – a long shot – Sanders assures us that he’ll be able to win over a larger number of the super-delegates who will be voting in the coming open convention in Philadelphia.

While the election scene is being clarified somewhat, what is certain is that the spirit breathed into U.S. youth by the Sanders campaign prefigures a future shift in paradigms and rituals far beyond those of the dominant system today. Sheer inequality remains at the core of the discontent, and the damaging effects it causes in the democracy and the exercise of power are notorious.