When it comes right down to it, labels like "republican" and "democrat" take a back seat to what's really important: heeding the demands of the $$$ behind all of them that the current regime of unaccountable looting be upheld at all costs. Thus, you see establishment "left" and, in a slightly less open manner, establishment "right" falling in line to elect $ellery, because the $$$ knows their game will be safe in her hands. Revealing that our "democracy" amounts to going through the motions of a pre-scripted and predetermined media event is a price they're willing to pay, since they assume there aren't enough people paying sufficient attention for it to cause any real backlash. Corporate media is fully engaged in the effort. $hillary is being imposed on us whether we want it or not. (Of course we're told we do)

It seems in the EU the game's the same as here: no matter who or what you vote for, you get pretty much the same thing. That's no surprise since Wall St runs or inspires everything there like it does here. It's all the same neoliberal regime whatever you call it. Here, there's the appearance of "democracy", as we're allowed to vote on a meaningless slate of policies tailored to appease some constituency stitched together in the hope they'll provide the required 50.1% to gain a "mandate", promises which are then largely discarded after the "election". (We voted the gop out in droves and gave BHO and the dems a clear mandate to address our concerns; instead, the president bent over backwards to find a "consensus" with that same gop, and nothing really changed; $hill promises more of the same) There, people vote on who or whatever in their countries, then the EU imposes what $$$ demands. (Their national gov'ts are necessarily complicit, of course)

(I look at "globalization" as an attempt to impose neoliberal capitalism, consistently, on a large enough scale, interconnected, international and borderless in scope, so that no individual nation will be able to challenge it. Any attempts, such as brexit, to address it, will just result in more pain for those who resist, and possibly for their "leaders" who failed to keep them in line. Such concepts are baked into so called free trade agreements)

The thing that's struck me when reading about brexit from the English pov is that many of the same discussions we're having on this site are going on there, almost as if it's only specific to them, and in some ways it is. Similar stirrings are going on elsewhere in Europe. But missing from their discussion seems to be any kind of connection to what's going on here, or the idea of any kind of interconnectedness between all of these individual struggles. Despite differences in some of the details, it's really all the same battle. Unfortunately, due to the nature of modern media, and the standard use of fear to advance various self-serving agendas, upheavals tend to inspire reactionary responses, and the proposals getting the most play tend to lean towards trumpism and right wing solutions.

What this all says to me is that the time is right and conditions are ripe for a "Workers of the world unite" type of movement, and an international political coalition that supports Labor as its only constituency - "labor" referring to people who work for a living, or would like to, as well as all others left out of the feeding frenzy of greed that's been imposed - and makes no distinction between white or blue collar workers, poor or middle class, since we're all on the same chopping block - essentially the 99% whose interests have been sold out or ignored for the last 40 years.

BTW... I pretty much concluded the fix was in when the cheney regime was installed, voters be damned, because they demanded it was only fair that it be so.