If 50 million or so people began demonstrating in the streets, McGrath, and practicing civil disobedience, then the ruling system might blink, but I can't see that happening. An election is seen by the ruling people as a fait accompli once it's done. They elicit all the public's hopes, fears, and dreams to get them actively involved in the process and to raise money and get them to the voting booth...but the day after the vote the whole thing just starts rolling along exactly the way it did before the election. The engine of the $ySStem is still in command.

It would take a genuine popular revolution that mobilized millions of determined people to shake that system and make it truly change.

Winning an election is not decisive at all, because you cannot vote out the ruling system itself, you can just change the face on the mask it wears.

The Afghans are about to find that out too, I think. They may already realize it.