On Wednesday, April 15, 2015, Rasmussen Reports released a poll showing that 57% of Americans believe Hillary Clinton is likely to win the 2016 Presidential race despite the fact that they have much uncertainty about her. I am sorry, but what does this mean? On the one hand, the poll basically says that a part of the American people are at most undecided on Hillary for President and on the other still believe that she will
be so in the end. How does one reconcile that? What this poll tells me is that
it is another example of the American electorate becoming more and more asleep
at the wheel when it comes to the nation’s elections and what goes on in the
nation and how it and they are affected.
This, if true, is very bad for the republic in the shot and long run. Representative forms of government only work when the people are involved in the process. To be involved in the process means that not only that those who can vote do vote, but also that they do so as informed voters and to vote on their convictions and beliefs on who they believe will
best represent them.
However, when you have a large amount of potential voters saying that at the same time they have mixed feelings on a candidate for office, that they believe the candidate will win the election in question regardless; that implies that the people are not involved in the
process as they should be and is required to have the republic run smoothly. It
implies that people just do not care one way or the other.
When the citizens of a republic start to be apathetic to what goes on with their government as well as their leaders and potential leaders, that republic is in serious danger and will not be long for this world. There is a famous story of after the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention convened, as Benjamin Franklin was walking out, a woman came up and asked him “What have you given us sir?” He replied. “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
A republic or representative democracy will only last as long as the people in it are
involved in its governing and electioneering processes. To be involved means
that the people care about what is going on around them and the Country and
care about whom their leaders are and the curator of said leaders.
The Rasmussen poll on Hillary Clinton is just another alarming sign that we Americans are losing our great Republic of the United States of America and not from without but from within. Our republic is dying from within due to, in part because of the lack of caring about its people!
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