While I have found that the general perception of America’s two major parties is that the Democrats are the party of the people while the GOP is associated with America’s elite, this election cycle has proved the opposite. The fact that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and likely next president of the U.S. is not primarily the result of popular effort but of the party leadership’s decision that she would be their nominee. Democratic voters never really had the chance to choose someone else.
Popular figures such as Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden declined to run because Clinton was the heir apparent, the one who had put her time into the system and would now receive the appropriate compensation. Her only potential obstacle was Bernie Sanders, who gained unexpected popularity running as a democratic socialist. But he was almost universally shunned by party leaders in favor of Clinton (he won only 48 superdelegates to Clinton’s 602) and was conspired against by a supposedly neutral DNC, which actually heavily favored Clinton.
While admittedly Bernie Sanders was a radical proposing to substantially change elements of our political system, the fact that he did so well in the face of such stacked odds is a testament to the feeling of voters that they were being left without options and their votes merely a formality to Clinton’s predetermined ascendancy.
Whatever else you can say about Donald Trump, perhaps the most polarizing, hated and ignorant presidential candidate ever, he did reach his position by the will of the people. The Republican leadership sacrificed pragmatism for their principles by not attempting to intervene in the primaries and thus allowing an inept candidate to assume the nomination.
Hillary Clinton, who in some ways would do a thoroughly ordinary job as president, ascended to her current position and continues to be aided by the machinations of her allies among the political and economic elite. Despite the sensational warnings about the results of a Clinton presidency being aired by some conservatives, I don’t think Clinton would do much worse a job than Obama. But what all Americans regardless of political persuasion must ask themselves is: "Do the ends justify the means? Does who our next leader is matter more than how they got there?" No! That’s the kind of reasoning used by every government that strips power from the people and bucks accountability, in essence saying: “We know what is good for you better than you know it yourself.”
The people will make mistakes in their choices. I think Donald Trump is one of the biggest ones yet. But at the end of a failed Trump presidency, we could at least say to ourselves, "We the people chose him, from start to finish. And we could learn from that mistake." But if we allow the kind of nepotistic elitism that has empowered Clinton to flourish, then democracy in America will become merely a hypocritical facade.