The two candidates go head-to-head in their first one-on-one debate

In the 5th Democratic debate last night, Hillary Clinton once again positioned herself as the only candidate who will be able to “get things done” and isn’t “mak[ing] promises [she] can’t keep.”

This is simply dishonest, and here’s why—

No one, Clinton included, will ever be able to “get things done” and enact the change the American people so desperately need unless and until the elite’s grip on Congress is pried off.

Right now, neither Republican nor Democratic politicians are actually working for the people of this country, or even care what we think — they’re wholly concerned with and working for rich, corporate America.

As Princeton University finds —

"...Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Why?

Because politicians are profiting from these corporate relationships: in investments, campaign donations, lobbying, legislative help (like policy writing), and sometimes even employment.

In return, Congress passes legislation to help and protect these corporations, and spends more than $1 billion on them every year in tax breaks, subsidies, grants, loans and the allowance of offshore tax havens — sometimes using your tax dollars to do it.

Contrary to what Clinton tried to assert last night, as Harvard University’s Center for Ethics finds —

“Contributions do influence policy.”

And that policy is for the wealthy, against the poor.

As Johns Hopkins associate professor of political science Steven Teles tells us —

"[The complexity and incoherency of our government] makes it difficult for us to understand just what the [US] government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized."

The two exist in a symbiosis of money and power, helping each other to retain their mutual vice-like grip on wealth and status.

In other words, Congress is "rewarding [corporations] for ripping us off," because Congress is profiting, too.

This is why we have a country with more people in prison than any other nation on earth.

This is why Americans pay far more for our drugs than almost any other country in the world.

This is why we can’t get tuition free college, or health care for all, or increase the minimum wage, or rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, or get a tax system that makes the wealthy pay into the society they profit from —

People are making millions off our oppression.

And nothing will get done, by Hillary Clinton or anyone else, until this — as even Jimmy Carter sees it to be — oligarchic state comes to an end.

This admission, this leveling with the American people about a corrupt Congress, comes from Bernie Sanders’ mouth, and no one else’s.

It is the single biggest, and most important, difference between him and Clinton.

Honesty about this corrupt political system, and openness that no president will be able to change this without the strong support of the American people.

As Sanders said last night—

“The only way we make change in terms of health care, in terms of dealing with a broken criminal justice system which, today, allows us to have more people in jail than any other country -- largely African-American and Latino -- the only way we create millions of jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure or have a tax system that says to the wealthy that they are going to pay their fair share, is when millions of people become involved in the political process. No, you just can't negotiate with Mitch McConnell. Mitch is gonna have to look out the window and see a whole lot of people saying, ‘Mitch, stop representing the billionaire class. Start listening to working families.’ And as president, that's what I will work hard on.”

Americans have GOT to start voting, petitioning, calling, and participating in their government, because right now, half the American people vote for President.

This is insane, and far worse than countries worldwide: Turkey, Australia, South Korea, Iceland, Israel, Greece, Austria, Mexico, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Portugal, Luxembourg, Estonia, Poland, Canada, and Slovenia all have higher voter turn-out rates than America.

As Sanders said last night, this leaves a political vacuum which the wealthy and powerful have filled.

No President can change that.

The American people must change that.

It’s what Sanders’ call for a political revolution is all about.

​No other person running will say this, will admit that they can’t change the country: and because she does not level with the American people about this, ​Clinton absolutely is making promises she can’t keep.

Sanders, on the other hand, is telling the American people the truth, and calling upon them to change their own system, demanding we take responsibility and ownership of our democracy, and begin to participate in it.

For Clinton to say that she’ll be able to somehow squeeze through her semi-ambitious progressive agenda when Obama struggled for 8 years to get even a rocky, shaky health care law that, while making great progress, still leaves millions uninsured and under-insured, is absurd.

People’s lives are being ruined here. Clinton says we “can’t wait,” and she’s right. That’s why we need an overthrowing of the economic and political elite, and the institution of a government of the people, by the people, for the people, NOW.

This is the single most important difference between Sanders and Clinton: honesty.

Without a political revolution, only more of the same grid-locked, oligarchic state will prevail.

Bernie 2016.