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Verify: What would our forefathers think of politics today?

<p>Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, PA.</p>

PHILADELPHIA - What would the founding fathers think of our modern, messy democracy? For his segment, Verify, reporter David Schechter escorted a viewer to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia to find out for herself.

Mesha Coleman is a professional and mom from McKinney, TX. She’s not getting paid to be a guest reporter, but it is her job to see things first hand and reach her own conclusions.

Coleman met with Robin Kolodny, Chair of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia to discuss politics of today.

“Do you think where we are now in politics is where our forefathers envisioned us to be?” she asked Kolodny.

“Absolutely not. And what what people don’t know about the forefathers, Jefferson in particular, is they never expected this constitution to last 240 years,” Kolodny said. “It’s not the election system they expected. They expected that ordinary Americans wouldn’t have as much interest in participation as they do now.”

Coleman told Kolodny how earlier in the week she had talked with Bernie supporters and saw how unhappy they are that he isn’t the Democratic nominee. “

Do you think when they established the Constitution they thought we would have two candidates representing two parties?” she asked Kolodny.

“Oh, no. They thought they were designing a Constitution that was against parties,” Kolodny responded. “But you have to realize their system actually does work. It’s very hard to change anything. Talk is easy but getting whatever each of the candidates are proposing through both a House and Senate, which may or may not be controlled by your party, is a very different thing altogether.”

After getting her questions answered through the week at the DNC, Coleman reflected on all she’d learned.

“This country is still moving in the direction of what the forefathers thought when they were creating the Declaration of Independence. Being able to be who you want to be and live the way you want to live in a free country for all,” she said. “They’d be excited to see that people are still fighting for what they believe in. That’s what they did.”

TEGNA, our parent company, paid for Coleman's travel and hotel and submitted her information to be credentialed to attend the Democratic National Convention so she could be a guest reporter.

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