Yes, 2016 taught me about our ‘free and fair’ democratic elections

I just read Edward L. Marcus’s bloviating letter, telling us how the Democratic Party needs us, and Lamont all in lockstep if Ganim wins the primary.

You know, that is exactly what killed us in 2016. The truth is that, I am sick to death of the two-party system, and their exclusive primaries, which deny approximately 40 percent of the electorate to vote, in choosing candidates. The Democrat Party is not what it used to be, which was the party of the middle class, and we are being left in the dust.

We should not have to vote for the least deplorable candidate, just because our two-party system chose them. If Dem leaders paid a bit more attention to unaffiliated voters, they might have foreseen the ’16 outcome. You, along with the GOP, use taxpayer money for primaries, (which most of us can’t vote in) while still begging for money every day by email (I get 35-40 emails a day from Dems all over the country).

That is taxation without representation, and should be against the law ... We all know that money is the all encompassing threshold for each party to nominate their chosen candidate ... We all know now that 33 states pledged their votes to your chosen candidate at the DNC convention in 2015, one full year before the election! It begs the question as to why Dems even had costly primary elections?? For the fanfare?

We also now know that the Clintons’ bailed out the nearly bankrupt DNC ... Bernie kind of muddied the party’s waters though, didn’t he? Then it came out that the primaries were engineered to deliver it to her anyway. It all makes me nauseous, and it is even more disgusting that none of you “leaders” (I use the word loosely) have changed a single thing since then.

Our elected officials beg us daily for dollars, while taking money from lobbyists, looking for votes for and against their interests. Further, I will never forgive our Connecticut elected officials for pledging their votes to Hillary Clinton immediately without knowing how our state would vote. With smug Sen. Murphy making fun of Bernie in the N.Y. news. In turn, I immediately terminated my membership in the Dem party. Funny how he is now touting some of Bernie’s ideas, as if they are original. Yes, 2016 taught me and many others about our “free and fair” democratic elections.

I would hope the Dem party will be wise enough to allow some of these young progressives on their ballot, because they are our future, whether the Dem elites like it or not. They may call themselves Democratic Socialists, but people really need to stop thinking of Socialism as being the same as Communism. I don’t know a single person who hates their Medicare, or Social Security check, or Medicaid, when it is necessary. That’s Socialism, folks. It means that our taxes are going toward making all our lives better, by agreeing that health care for all is a right. State universities are paid for by taxpayers, so why don’t taxpayers’ children go to school free?

Ultra-conservative Hearst Media will never allow this letter to be printed, but I feel better for having written it.