United States: Poor Version of Democracy

"While the United States wages war to expand democracy around the world, how is our own democracy doing? Not very well, says a group of distinguished scholars.
"[T]he voices of American citizens are raised and heard unequally," declares a task force of the American Political Science Association. "The privileged participate more than others and are increasingly well organized to press their demands on government. Public officials, in turn, are much more responsive to the privileged than to average citizens and the least affluent."
Disparities in political participation, the report says, "ensure that ordinary Americans speak in a whisper while the most advantaged roar.". . .
While the United States wages war to expand democracy around the world, how is our own democracy doing? Not very well, says a group of distinguished scholars. . . .
Since the early 1970s, the report says, we have seen "a massive mobilization into politics of advantaged groups that had not previously been active in Washington." With the decline in union membership, "the already privileged are better organized through occupational associations than the less privileged."
If the golden rule means that those who have the gold make the rules, that principle is alive and well in our campaigns. The task force, chaired by Lawrence Jacobs of the University of Minnesota, notes that while "[o]nly 12 percent of American households had incomes over $100,000 in 2000," 95 percent of the donors who made "substantial contributions" to political activity were in those wealthy households."