Diana,
Good post. The big concern, the big reason for the angst, is not what happened, but whether it will result in notoriously flaky, self-absorbed Democratic voters not showing up at the polls because they don't each have their own personal optimized best-ever candidate for them.

Did you listen to the Terry Gross interview 2 days ago, about how the Supreme Court has been relentlessly stacked for the last 50 years by conservatives -- who interestingly, despite 50 years of dominance and ruling consistently for the rich and powerful (and even handing the Presidency to George Bush), haven't managed to overturn Roe (because how else would they keep dangling it in front of conservative voters?)
Web Link

My point is that on the right, they don't care about anything else except power, and on the left, they live in idealistic bubbles in which they don't think about the power dynamic or don't appreciate that EACH PERSON has to vote and play their part or things just keep getting worse.

One thing you could do to help this situation, Diana, is to start talkinga bout the real economy. The media know 45 is a liar but they take whatever he says about the economy on face value. The new tax policies were a disaster for tens of millions of middle-income Americans in high-cost states. Unmitigated economic disaster not offset by anything else. The manufacturing sector went into recession in 2018. The stock market actually performed better under Obama. Debt and deficit have gotten much worse under 45, and that's the thing people on the right seized on the most under Obama because they had nothing else. 45 is taking credit for some of the same things that were just as good or better under Obama, only Obama was handed an economy in freefall, 45 was handed things in great shape, many that are worse. The import TAXES (tariffs) have hit ordinary Americans. Lower-income people are doing better mostly thanks to minimum wage increases that Democrats fought to get (against Republicans who tried to prevent them).

While Democrats attack each other, they are missing the things Americans really care about. And they are missing the opportunity, every time they meet, of finding ways to get Democrats to understand the need for sustained turnout, not just to elect a President, but for sustained support to reform the ways Republicans have been able to strain our democracy and hollow us out from the inside so that outside enemies like the Ru&&ians can take over. (They aren't just doing it here -- remember, they don't care about global warming. Look at climate-denier regimes around the world, where, not coincidentally, R hacking and manipulation has been a problem in elections.)

I am a fan of all those people on the podium. But unless they get real about helping Democratic voters understand how important it is for each one to get to the polls every time, for every race, and sustain that, while demanding reforms (like an end to the electoral college), then it's not going to matter who prevails.

In a perfect world, I like Elizabeth Warren because of her experience understanding how ordinary people are bilked of their wealth. And she's just smart. I am liking Mike Bloomberg because we need someone who is a good manager and problem-solver who can restore the efficient and effective functioning of our national government (and our safety). And at least he'll pass muster with voters of all stripes, but not be a rightwing apologist the way Clinton was and not give the extreme right more ammunition. But that, too, will only be the case if Democratic voters start showing up and start caring about the big picture of power balance, regardless of whether they get their exactly perfect designer candidate for everyone.

Dianna. Good post and great observations.

The one person who has come out well in these debates is Tulsi Gabbard. She has said before that the debates are not where policy can be discussed, as who can discuss a complex issue in 90 seconds.

I suggest you pay more attention to her. She is not one angry candidate, but eloquent and sensible. The fact that she has served the country well first hand is an extra bonus.

Typo. The first sentence in my post should read that the one person who has come out well in these debates is Tulsi Gabbard, because she hasn't been in them. She has not had to succumb to the angry mob mentality that the debates have portrayed.

The impeachment fiasco is still fresh on everyone's minds.
Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi have given the Democratic party a bad look: vindictive, petty, hateful, self-righteous and fruitless. The "Russia saga" prior to that was also a colossal waste of time and a meaningless distraction.
I blame the media and their ratings addiction more than anything.

"vindictive, petty, hateful, self-righteous and fruitless"

Sounds like someone is describing Trump.
Too bad Moscow Mitch and his acolytes did not allow witnesses and evidence.
A tru travesty for our country

OK guy.

I rest my case?

@Petty dictator,

Agreed. But whose fault is this ultimately? The Democratic members of Congress were actually extremely courageous and principled. If Democratic voters had gone to the polls in higher numbers and fielded more Senatorial candidates, 45 wouldn't still be getting away with it. Notice that at the 2018 election, there was a 51/49 balance, but at the impeachment hearing, there were more Republicans .
That's because Republicans have been systematically trying to go about overturning elections at every level of government all over the country, especially in Western states. (Speaking of "coups"...) Democrats are not looking at the long game, and getting their butts into the voting booth, and voting for the balance of power, and to overcome all the Republican tricks. Knowing that the Republicans try to suppress votes to win, Democrats have to overcome that with so many more votes they storm the walls. It's harder to enact schemes to steal an election (as Republicans are more prone to doing) if there is a huge unexpected swell of opposition.

As you can see from above, 45's supporters didn't really listen in, they just listen to the rightwing echo chamber sound bites. (Oh, and notice if you say things like that, their new MO is to repeat the description of THEIR bad behavior right back after a few exchanges and accuse Democrats of the same thing with no basis. 45 is worse, when he's guilty of something, he goes really aggressive on exactly what he is guilty of against his opponent, and Democrats just keep falling for it, they never go, hey wait, we know 45 attackd hardest when he himself is guilty, here's the examples -- what did he do this time?)

The right already knows the majority in this country are Democrats, but Democrats can fix all the shenanigans by each person taking the responsibility to always, always, always get to the polls and take all the downballot races just as seriously. No designer candidates. If anyone is reasonably good (as opposed to Republicans who look for corrupt, self-dealing, unethical, hypocritical liars) then get behind that candidate and get involved to fix what needs to be fixed.

there was a 51/49 balance, but at the impeachment hearing, there were more Republicans, i.e., like 53 to 47? If it has still been 51 to 49, Mitt Romney's come to Jesus moment would have thrown the whole thing to Justice Roberts, who at least would have had to own the fact that he's not all impartial like he tries to make out to be.

Fantastic debates. They tell us everything we need to know about this group of candidates.

> Democrats will need to select from several squabbling candidates, and try to choose the best one

How quickly we forget about 2016 where a dozen GOP candidates argued about "hand" size and insulted each other.


***

They did speak words of truth between the childish insults:

- Lindsey Graham called Trump a "race-baiting xenophobic bigot."

- Marco Rubio described Trump as a "con artist."

Ted Cruz certainly had his number:

- “Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia... - The fact that Donald seems terrified to release his taxes suggests that there's a bombshell there... It's natural to wonder, ‘Well, what is it that he's hiding in his taxes?'"

- Cruz called Trump a “sniveling coward"

- “big, loud New York bully"

- “a small and petty man who is intimidated by women"

- “Now, let's be clear, this is nuts. This is not a reasonable position. This is just kooky."

- He also called him a “pathological liar" who “lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth"

- “Whatever lie he's telling, at that minute he believes it, but the man is utterly amoral"

- Cruz accused him of narcissism and being a “serial philanderer"

- all the above are easily searchable using Graham, Rubio or Cruz's names.

***


Everyone looks pretty civil compared to the GOP.

I find it incredibly disappointing that you aren't concerned about NDA's, given the Harvey Weinstein case and so many others. Maybe you're not aware, but it's a major major issues for countless women across the country.

And amazing how you got through a long column about bloomberg and only said he has many accomplishments. Nothing about the bad things he's done?

I think all you've done with this column is reveal a ton about yourself. And now we can decide what that means

duplicate

"I write this now because we Californians will be voting March 3 in our presidential primary."

Get out of that outdated mindset of voting on election day. Santa Clara County ballots for vote-by-mail were sent out over a week ago. Many of us have already voted (I voted on Saturday the 22nd).

Younger generations (Millennials, Generation Z) will increasingly disrupt the "I went to the physical voting location" paradigm. I'm an early Gen Xer and the last time I walked into a polling place was 2004.

The rich areas around Palo Alto and the NE quadrant are supporting anybody but Sanders and Warren. Unfortunately, the majority of Dems in the Bay Area have put their money behind Sanders and to a lesser extent, Warren. These Dems seem clueless about the fact that either one of them has 0% chance of beating Trump and even if they did, they would be able to accomplish none of their so-called plans, given the composition of Congress.

There may not be a lot to like about the elites of Palo Alto and Atherton, but at least they are more realistic about what it takes to beat Trump.

If the elites are truly elite, they will manage to pull the rug out from under Sanders at the convention, and install a moderate as the Democratic candidate.

Chris - any proof for the donation patterns you claim?

> about the fact that either one of them has 0% chance of beating Trump

"fact"? Prove it, if it's such a "fact". Cuz you and I define "fact" differently.


RCP lists of polls selections off the first page, all within the last week:

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Sanders Morning Call Sanders 49, Trump 46 Sanders +3
Virginia: Trump vs. Sanders Roanoke College Sanders 49, Trump 40 Sanders +9
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders CBS News Sanders 47, Trump 44 Sanders +3
Michigan: Trump vs. Sanders Univ. of Wis Sanders 48, Trump 41 Sanders +7
Wisconsin: Trump vs. Sanders Univ. of Wis Sanders 46, Trump 44 Sanders +2

Which polls showed Trump winning in February 2016?

The SF Chronicle published the presidential donations by zip code. They present it in table and graphical format.

I think this is all about how there is no longer an American conversation or any way
to layout the basis for such a thing. That, since the debt of FOX News and the
takeover of AM radio, and an assault on all media by big corporate money our
very means of sustaining society and democracy have been yanked from underneath
us and no one really noticed.

It is all about money. Massive money interests, money with no face, money with
no responsibility, people behind all this money from, we don't know who, we don't
know where, and we do not know for why.

The people in America that make money off consolidating the economy into smaller
and smaller tranches as in the media, and the banks, virtually every "means of
production" hide what they do behind the veil of private enterprise, meanwhile they
hire and corrupt the government to remove all interference by pesky democrats.

To do all this massive amounts of lies, noise and misinformation must be kept
swirling around everyone, as well as keeping everyone busy and paranoid about
others. If it was only greedy Americans trying to take over everything that would
be one thing, but we have no idea who is really doing what or behind these efforts.

Money flows all over the world through unregulated offshore banks, and crypto-
currencies, and no one seems to understand what is going on, or if they do they
are unable to transmit that information to the body politic in order that citizens gain
some idea of what is going on and what to do about it.

What we hear are broad generalities, use of emotions buttons and scare tactics
while our government, mostly from the Republican side is slightly more invested
in the status quo than the Democrats ... but not much. We have a virtual uni-party
system in policy while the POV from each side looks like good-cop, bad-cop
soap-opera drama that unfolds in the media to distract citizens and drain energy.

In our current iteration of politics we have 3 groups. One is the extreme right-wing
Trump group that believes in the raw expression of money and power and uses
borderline Trotskyite tactics to reshape American democracy into the joke that it
was when the nation was formed and call that Making America Great Again.

Another group is the Democratic establishment that believes our system is
working and has been working, but has a few unknown unknowns and asks us to
have faith that if we just return Democrats to power things will go back to
some kind of normal. That is, a normal that was unacceptable for 40 years while
all this social deconstruction and corporate reconstruction too place to begin
with which allowed the openings and deregulations of our system that broke
it and made it worse.

Then we have what seems like extreme-Leftists of the Democratic party who
know well the issues, but do not understand the nuts and bolts and want out of
band change to break the status quo and assist citizens in order to bring back
democracy. This is an unknown scary prospect to most, and the other two
sides are playing that up to the maximum possible in order to support two
different views of a toxic status quo and the continuing lose of public space,
faith in government, the engineering of our society from on high - making
decisions about people's live that they have no business making.

Change is always scary and holds the prospect for mistake and trip-ups, but
the main threat to the country can only be seen as the internal one that is a
virtual war on regular normal people, to control them, to overcharge them,
to underpay them, and the fail to represent them through trickery. The only
way to directly counter these dangerous trends in our country is offered
by what we are told is the extreme-Left and so scary, but that in the 1930's
under the New Deal and FDR's New Bill Of Rights was the peaceful, civilized
and just way for our country to proceed.

So, with all the corruption we know we have, is it any wonder there is noise,
misinformation, lies, and provocation happening in the one area where civic
minded Americans go to meet and try to do their duty to democracy? Hardly,
it seems to me. What is acceptable to those in power should not be acceptable
any more, but neither side will attempt or allow any change.

Do we listen to what Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have a record of
doing and saying themselves, or do we get distracted and listen to the plastic
paid off voices of the media talking heads telling us instead what they want
us to think and what they want us to fear?

Guess we are left to make up our own minds, but there is still enough information
out there to see which way the wind is blowing, and surprisingly there are still
enough good Americans who know the difference between right and wrong, and
that are not chained by money into something they don't feel that great about.

"Which polls showed Trump winning in February 2016?"

Didn't you claim you had *facts* on his winning this year?

Chris,

"If the elites are truly elite, they will manage to pull the rug out from under Sanders at the convention, and install a moderate as the Democratic candidate"

That sounds like real democracy to me. I am a Palo Alto resident since 1984 and i totally support Bernie.We'll soon find out if we live in a real democracy as opposed to a pseudo-democracy.

Many people in the Bay Area totally support Donald Trump, and are thankful for our
U.S. Constitutional Republic form of government. Vive le difference.

Sanders is Trump's dream opponent. Sanders has virtually no chance to beat Trump in the states that matter. Sanders' CA supporters are oblivious to reality. But more important, even if Sanders did win, he would be impotent to get any of his “radical" ideas implemented. Which members of the House and Senate would support his ideas when that would guarantee that most of them would lose there next election.

> Many people in the Bay Area totally support Donald Trump

And MANY MANY MORE do not support Trump in the Bay Area. Thanks for sharing.


> Which polls showed Trump winning in February 2016?

Sorry - you're unable to use a search engine? Bummer. You should try harder.

Quinnipiac Feb 2016
Would you say that - Donald Trump would have a good chance of defeating the Democratic nominee in the general election for President or not?
REPUBLICANS/REPUBLICAN LEANERS.....................................

PARTYID... AGE IN YRS.......
Rep Ind 18-44 45-64 65+

Yes 78% 73% 74% 79% 77%
No 17 20 21 17 16
DK/NA 5 7 5 4 7


>> about the fact that either one of them has 0% chance of beating Trump

Still looking for your "facts" on it being zero percent chance.

C'mon... you can do it.

Maybe.

Ever since I was a child, in my family of European origin, people were given nicknames to distinguish them from others of the same name. The "Maria's", the "Anna's", they all had nicknames.

It was not mean-spirited. But it was not to the person's face either. It was meant to describe them to others, in normal conversation. It's unheard of, today.

Examples of this are:
"'Maria Five and Dime' is going to the beach this weekend." Maria worked at a Five and Dime store. "'Anna the Bowlegged'" is having her parents over for dinner tonight." Anna had bowed legs.


People that used the nicknames, like my grandmother and everyone in her age group, have been dead for over 30 years. They'd not be shocked today, to see people given nicknames that fit. In those days, people were not as thin-skinned as we are today. They did not hold grudges for years.

Trump's nicknames don't bother me. I have had a few nicknames given to me over the years, and they fit me, though not all were flattering.

What I find most admirable is when people ultimately make peace with each other, like Ted Cruz and Trump have, putting the country first, over all petty politics and even personal animus. People have to be very strong, to do that.

Interesting take on Republicans telling you about Trump.

"Trump's nicknames don't bother me."

Does it bother you that Trump told you he likes to assault women, by grabbing them by the *****?

Republicans the the truth about trump in 2016 and she calls them nicknames????

Nicknames?

Excellent article, Diana.

In the Democratic Party, we need unity, a strong message, and ethics.

Remember the proverb: When two dogs fight over a bone, a third one carries it away!

> In the Democratic Party, we need unity, a strong message, and ethics

Agreed. Opposed to the other party, where they have strong unity (of a smaller base,) a strong message of lies, and few ethics (Merrick Garland, anyone?)

All the polls show that Sanders is the most likely candidate to beat Trump. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and all the other corporate media channels are very obviously extremely biased in favor of policies/candidates that are in favor of their innate profit maximization corporate business motive. Sensationalism media channels are for the intellectually lazy. NPR/PBS aren't as reliable as they once were either.

I suggest: "Democracy Now!" as a far superior alternative to PBS/NPR and obviously all the more popular entertainment "news" media channels.

#VoteBlueNoMatterWho is something all Democrats and Never Trumpers must embrace for this year's election. Let the candidates sharpen their teeth for the Trump GE debates, that is if Trump even agrees to participate. Who knows with this guy. After Tuesday, the race will narrow some and the rest of the primary will play out. Even if moderates are faced with a Sanders candidacy, they can have the calming thought that his ambitious agenda will be filtered and diluted through Congress, GOP filibusters, and the courts.

The last commenter misunderstands what is happening and what will happen.

The establishment will do everything it can to prevent Sanders from getting the nomination.

If Sanders somehow overcame the opposition, he would not get strong support from the establishment and Democratic congressional and Senate candidates in the presidential election. They have their own seats and elections to be concerned about. Sanders would doom many of them to defeat. if Sanders somehow overcame the lack of support, he would accomplish very little in his term as president.

For the future of the Democratic Party, they would prefer to battle Trump for 4 more years than try to defend Sanders. In 4 years, Sanders and Warren will no longer be viable candidates and the Democrats would be able to rally around more electable candidates.

the bots are out!

"....many of them to defeat. if Sanders somehow overcame the lack of support, he would accomplish very little in his term as president. For the future of the Democratic Party, they would prefer to battle Trump for 4 more years than try to defend Sanders."

If you are still considering voting for Sanders, read David Brooks column posted yesterday. That should disabuse any thinking person of his or her infatuation with the "democratic socialist".

Trump will have an easy campaign. All he will have to do is repeat the word socialist over and over and the whole Democrat political structure will collapse.

[Post removed due to inaccurate citation of campaign donations.]

I'm glad to know that the Palo Alto Weekly is upset that the Chronicle scooped it on reporting the publicly reported campaign contributions for zip code 94301, which show an embarrassingly low amount for Sanders.

The Weekly should not state the Chronicle's numbers are inaccurate without providing evidence.

Moderator Note: The numbers reported by the Chronicle are not accurate. Researching presidential campaign donations is very complex because there are a variety of different ways candidates can raise money, through multiple committees each with different restrictions. For example, more than $360,000 has been donated from residents of the 94301 zip code to the Trump Victory committee, not the $0 the Chronicle reported. If you wish to dig further into this and conduct your own search, you can go to the FEC website at Web Link

What about Crazy Bernie? Aaaahhh, Crazy Bernie the Socialist. Socialism, folks! Are you kidding me? Crazy Bernie. A Socialist! Didn't get it the first time. He's another politican. Another politician. They run, and they lose, and they sometimes win, and they lose, and they run, and then they run again. I only had to run once, and I won! I won! Black unemployment, black unemployment is at an all-time low! Hispanic. Hispanic unemployment, all-time low.
Crazy Bernie Sanders will destroy our country, folks. Socialism! Crazy Bernie will take your jobs, he will take your guns, but guess what. Ain't gonna happen. America will never be a Socialist country. America, will NEVER be a Socialist country! We will win, and we will win easily. We will defeat the corrupt Socialist Democrats, and we will Keep America Great! Thank you, and good night.

Donald,

And that's why it suits your purposes to have Republicans in SC to vote for Sanders in today's Dem primary.

California Dems seem oblivious to the obvious, with a significant plurality sticking with The Bern. 3 more days for Californians to left their heads out of the sand.

The Progressive Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not socialists.

Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist for some reason, and in doing so shoots himself in the foot. Fortunately for Bernie he can still run faster than most of his opponents evenl with a shot foot.

Bernie would do better to join the Democratic Party and to brand himself as an FDR Democrat. A policy that even reasonable Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower had no problem with when America was the leader of the world. To make America great again means bringing up FDR's New Bill Of Rights and continuing with that very American political agenda that we are now last in the world among developed countries.

If we had Medicare For All or some national health care service we would have some infrastructure in place for all Americans to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak.

The scare tactics have been rolled out and every ridiculous thing is being blamed on Bernie, and yet it is not Bernie who lies with his every breath, it is Donald Trump.

It is Trump who thinks he knows everything. It is Trump who does not respect the experts in government. it is Trump who fires experts or muzzles them so they cannot tell the public what science says or what the real facts are. And it is not just Trump, it is the whole Republican party.

Some recent quotes from Noam Chomsky explain it well:

Noam Chomsky: Yeah, he's [Trump is] off the spectrum. But the fact is that that's true of the Republican Party generally. Two well-known commentators from the American Enterprise Institute, Thomas Mann and Norman Orenstein years ago, described the Republican Party since Newt Gingrich as a radical insurgency that has abandoned parliamentary politics, and is now often a different dimension. What's actually happened is that during the neoliberal period both of the political parties have shifted to the right. So the mainstream Democrats, the ones who are now meeting with their billionaire friends to try to figure out how to get rid of Sanders and Warren, they're basically what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Democrats abandoned the working class by the late '70s. The last bit of a show of interest was the Humphrey Hawkins 1978 Full Employment Bill which Carter watered down so that it had no teeth. And after that, they kind of gave up. They handed the working class over to their class enemy, the Republicans who try to mobilize them on what are called cultural issues. They're shafting them at every turn, including Trump, but you can try to mobilize them on the basis of abortion, immigrants, guns, anything but the real issues.

...

Noam Chomsky: Well, I don't think the word socialism should even be used in this context. Bernie Sanders is a decent person. I like what he's doing. To be quite frank, his major policies would not have surprised President Eisenhower very much. He's a progressive, New Deal Democrat. Politics has shifted so far to the right during the neoliberal period that things that were sort of conventional and mainstream 50-60 years ago now sound radical.

...

Noam Chomsky: Well, you know, what does socialism mean these days? Socialism means the New Deal. In the United States, you don't call it socialism because socialism is a curse word. We're a very business-run society.

...

Noam Chomsky: Well, you have to take each case on its own. Take the Electoral College, that's bad enough, take the Senate. The Senate is one of the most undemocratic institutions in the western world. Take a look at the number of voters that each senator represents. If a country tried to enter the European Union with the U.S. political system, they'd be turned down by the European Court of Justice. I mean, there's a whole history here that has to be thought of. The Constitution in the 18th century, though it was a pretty conservative doctrine nevertheless, by the standards of the eighteenth century was pretty novel and even progressive in some respects.

But to adhere to the 18th century constitution in the 21st century is a pretty strange phenomenon. I mean, take the people who are called originalists, you know the right-wing originalist Gorsuch and so on who say we have to interpret the Constitution the way the founders and the framers in the 18th century understood it. I mean, does that even approach rationality? To discuss the modern world the way somebody in 1780 perceived it?

...

Noam Chomsky: The current moment, not just political, is the most grim moment in human history. We are now in a situation where this generation, in fact, in the next few years, is going to have to make a decision of cosmic significance which has never arisen before: Will organized human society survive? And there are two enormous threats. The threat of environmental catastrophe, which at least is getting some attention, not enough. The other is the threat of nuclear war, which is increasing sharply by the Trump administration, in fact. These have to be dealt with quickly. Otherwise, there's nothing to talk about.

And notice that the wrecking ball in the White House just doesn't give a damn. He's having fun. He's serving his rich constituency. So what the hell, let's destroy the world. And it's not that they don't know it. Some months ago, maybe a year ago by now, one of the Trump bureaucracies the National Transportation Administration came out with what I think is the most astonishing document in the entire history of the human species. It got almost no attention. It was a long 500-page environmental assessment in which they tried to determine what the environment would be like at the end of the century. And they concluded, by the end of the century, temperatures will have risen seven degrees Fahrenheit, that's about twice the level that scientists regard as feasible for organized human life. The World Bank describes it as cataclysmic. So what's their conclusion? Conclusion is we should have no more constraints on automotive emissions. The reasoning is very solid. We're going off the cliff anyway. So why not have fun? Has anything like that ever appeared in human history? There's nothing like it.
...

From The Intercept: Deconstructed - DECONSTRUCTED SPECIAL: THE NOAM CHOMSKY INTERVIEW
Web Link

My vote in primaries seems to be the kiss of death for any candidacy, going back to the Reagan years. Y'all should pay me to vote for someone you don't want....

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

Not just defense

PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

Republicans like to say that we're not a democracy, we're a republic, as if those terms are mutually exclusive (they're NOT), rather than that we were established as a democratic republic and a representative DEMOCRACY, which is what we are. But, their belief is consistent with the way Republicans have been trying to destroy Democracy since Nixon (especially since Reagan).

If we are not a democracy, just looking to the preamble to the Constitution:

PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

(Capitalism is not mentioned in the Constitution either. I'm an Elizabeth Warren capitalist, but, hey, Republicans don't believe in competition at all, they've gone completely over to avoiding it through lying and cheaating.)