The democratic impulse is an obstacle to austerity. People don't vote to be fleeced, not generally (hence, also, the general trend of declining election participation in supposedly advanced democracies). There is active vote rigging, suppression and violence going on in Russia right now. Russia has been ruled by a former KGB agent for rather too long. According to the NAACP the American political establishment is preparing something similar:
In its report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP explores the voter suppression measures taking place particularly in southern and western states.
Fourteen states have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular.
The new measures are focused – not coincidentally, the association insists – in states with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008.
Barack Obama is part of that establishment. His election in 2008 chipped a small crack in the American political monolith, also known as the Southern Strategy, in short the means by which whatever way the people vote they get a solidly conservative government. However flaky his programme might have been, Obama inspired the Black and Hispanic working class to become politically active, and that is dangerous.