The real losers on Election Day 2016

At some point this coming Tuesday night, November 8, 2016; either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election by the mass media.  One of them will undoubtedly give a concession speech while the other will cry "Victory" before their assembled supporters.

But neither of them will be the true loser.  If you want to see the true loser of this election, look around you.  Look in the mirror.  The American people are the real losers here.  Because we will have put either an unqualified, self-aggrandizing sexual predator, or a woman who may well be qualified to be president but one who had to resort to super-delegates and a corrupt Democratic National Committee to defeat her main primary opponent to secure the nomination.  In the eyes of the world, we are being forced to select between two bad choices.

There is a possibility that things could get even worse.  There is already one Electoral College elector who has said he will not cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, even though that would be his sworn duty.  The Electoral College system may not present a clear victor in the election, which would result in our elected House of Representatives choosing the next president.  That 435 individuals can and would determine the next president of a nation with a population of well over 300 million people is a very clear indicator of how broken our system is.

One of the problems with our system of electing presidents is that it has become all about the money.  Spending on presidential campaigns involves such insane amounts of money that no one who lacks access to major benefactors, or an unlimited personal supply of money can ever hope to seek our nation's highest office.

This graph, from an article by Mother Jones, shows that the cost of the 2004 election blew away the previous record for most expensive election; the 1968 contest between Nixon/Humphrey/Wallace.  The 2008 election campaign between John McCain and Barrack Obama involved more than double the spending of that 1968 contest (all values in the chart are expressed in 2011 dollars).

I don't know if the 2008 record for spending will be broken but according to the Washington Post, the two major party candidates have raised a combined total of more than $2.1 billion as of October 19th.  Which brings up two things that Donald Trump promised during this campaign.

1.  He said he would not be beholden to special interest money because he would self-fund his campaign.
2.  He said he would put at least $100 million of his own money into his campaign.

Two more broken promises.  More than 7 out of every 8 dollars in the Trump campaign coffers comes from other people.  But that's just an aside.

If we are to ever have a real choice for President, things have to change.  The system is broken.  We must either find a way to fix it, or else we're stuck with it.