Less than 24 hours ago the 45th President of the United States of America took the oath of office.: I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. With these 35 words on person becomes the ‘Ex-President’ and another becomes the ‘President.’
A few days ago I was attempting to savor my breakfast food – I was emerging from being immersed in a nasty cold and ‘food’ was still not very savory. There were two people in the booth behind me and they were ranting and raving out the person who was going to take the Oath of Office on the 20th of January. They were not pleased with the outcome of our recent Presidential election.
Then, in the midst of a bit of silence one of them asked the other: ‘Did you vote?’ The response was: ‘No…it was a waste of my time and my vote. Did you vote?’ The other person responded: ‘No…my vote doesn’t count for much.’
There you have it, gentle reader. Folks are blaming the new President when the actual blame lies with WE THE PEOPLE. What blame am I referring to? Here are some numbers that might help us understand (I am, if you have been following my blogs for these past 4+ years not a big numbers person – but these numbers are significant).
We have in the United States 218,824,246 registered voters (by the by, there are many more ‘eligible’ voters than ‘registered’ voters).
65,844,610 (30% of ALL registered voters) voted for Clinton.
62,979,636 (28.8% of ALL registered voters) voted for Trump.
90,000,000 (41.5% of ALL registered voters) DID NOT VOTE.
Our Founding Fathers believed that Democracy would only survive and thrive if the citizens embraced their civic responsibilities. What do these numbers tell us about the health of our Democracy?
Even if Clinton had been elected by the popular vote alone (no electoral college) she still would have been elected by 30% of all those who were registered to vote (as I noted above, there are many more who are eligible to vote but who are not registered).
Our Founding Fathers were a hybrid of Realism and Idealism; they were Practical and Prudent; they were Supportive and Suspicious of the Voter; they were Political and Philosophical. They knew that the United States was landmass-huge and they strove to imagine the number of people that would eventually inhabit our country (they had no realistic idea of the number of course – for any number of reasons); the numbers today would, I think, whelm them over (just as the numbers whelm us over today).
In one sense I believe our new President is correct: America must come first. The ‘America-First’ we need, however, has more to do with ensuring that Democracy as our Founding Fathers envisioned it will become healthier than it is today (a major sign of the health of a Democracy is that, indeed, the number of eligible folks who can vote actually vote – given this sign Democracy is dis-eased today). If WE are going to become a healthy Democracy then it is up to us. It is up to…
WE THE PEOPLE!
Searcher-Seeker 
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