Don’t Fear the Tax Man, Unless He Only Comes For Thee

Taxation

In my last blog, I examined how Democrats work their payouts to their supporters, so that they can retain, and hopefully expand, their winning collation.  As I explained in that post, Social Safety Net programs like Social Security and Medicare, are specifically designed to help large swaths of the population in the hope that people who need those programs will support the party that created them, in other words, prompt them to vote for the Democrats.

And the Republicans, to combat this, must engage in a strategy to make people believe these programs are not sustainable, and then they must offer an alternative carrot to the voters.  The one that they have fixated on is “Lower Taxes.”  Their point behind this is that if taxes were lower, people could put money aside for their own old age.  It stresses personal responsibility over shared burdens.  And honestly, like all public policies, it has both a good side and a bad side, some truths, some lies.  But at the end, it is simply an alternate vision, designed to woo voters to their side.

Or, I should say, it was, until the administration of George W. Bush.

Now it is a harbringer of a sea change in American politics, one that can be read to show that democracy is no longer really needed or desired.  Until “W,” tax cuts were either targeted to the poor, as in the Earned Income Credit (a Gerald Ford policy) or an across the board tax rate reduction, as in the Regan Tax Cuts.  These tax policies benefited a wide swath of voters, and could be viewed as a way for the Republicans to combat the social programs of the Left and draw in voters.  This actually worked for Reagan, who won re-election by an astounding margin.

But, with the Bush II tax cuts, something seemed to change.  Although taxes were still cut across the board, the bulk of the tax cuts were targeted to the super wealthy.  In fact, the richer the person, the better they did with the Bush Tax Cut.  Since 2008, the Republicans across the country have doubled down on this policy, and the bulk of the tax cuts have benefited multi-millionaires, basically the 1% Club.  Although crumbs are still thrown at the Middle Classes, many, and sometimes most, people actually see their taxes go up under current Republican policies.  The only uniform beneficiaries are at the top end of the tax rates.

At the moment, people are still accepting this, because the story has been sold, and bought, that the rich pay far more than their fair share.  Even though this is true on a certain level, progressive tax policy recognizes that Bill Gates can afford a 5 million dollar annual tax bill far better than a minimum wage earner can afford a 500 dollar one.  I should note here, progressive in this usage does not refer to the political left, it simply refers to the idea that taxes increase the more money you make, and go down the less you earn.  Regressive taxes are the opposite, and hit poor people harder than the rich.  Sales Tax, which is uniform, regardless of your income, is an example of a regressive tax.

However, the tax changes currently under consideration by Trump bring regressive taxation to the fore.  Two policies especially are extremely regressive; removal of the child deduction and elimination of the mortgage deduction.  These two policies are among the most progressive tax exemptions, as poor and middle class people spend a lot more of their income, percentage wise, on children and interest.

It’s almost like Trump could care less about using tax policy to win voters.

In fact, this becomes very similar to the payouts that you see in dictatorships and monarchies.  This is because this payout affects only a tiny percentage of the voters, and screws over the rest.  In fact, from a political standpoint, this would be very, very stupid, as the last thing you want to do in a democracy is piss off a sizable percentage of the population.

Unless you no longer care about democracy.

And this is where these policies begin to terrify me.  If Trump was concerned about winning elections in the standard method, i.e. winning the popular vote, he would want to make sure his agenda benefited the widest swath of people.  But what if he didn’t care about that?  What if he, and the Republicans in general, were no longer interested in paying off a large segment of the population?  What if they were only worried about gaining the support of a small, but very powerful, segment of the population?

In that case, their policies would look a lot like these; screw the bulk of the voters and further enrich the already rich and powerful.  That is not the pattern of behavior in a democracy, where you have to please wide swaths of the population, that is the behavior of a party unconcerned about democracy.

In a democracy, you have to get 51 percent of the people, or at least the voters, to vote for you.  This doesn’t matter in a non-democratic country, where the leaders are selected through some other method.  And here, I would like to point out, despite a earning 3 million vote margin, Hillary Clinton is not the president.  So the finger of inequity is already on the scales.

So, tax cuts that are specifically targeted to the richest segment of society are casting light on a real problem, one that may grow, unless we do something about it.  Up until recently, these massive tax cuts for the rich have gained widespread approval because of the aspirational nature of American Society.  We all expect to be rich someday.  In fact, most people consider themselves to just be “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” to quote John Steinbeck.

However, income inequality is beginning to raise its head, as many, maybe even most, people begin to recognize their children will do no better in life than they did.  Worse, many people have to face the fact that their children will not do as well.  The aspirations are more and more becoming obvious pipe dreams. This very well grounded concern is what actually pushed Trump into the White House, at least if post election surveys are to be believed.

However, the actual policies being enacted don’t follow from addressing the concerns of the constituents.  The actual policies are very much those of an oligarchy, where the “peasants” have no voice.  Why would this be?

Perhaps it is because they know that they can ride this wave for a couple of elections, get their policies enshrined in such a way that they will be hard to undo.  Possibly they think that they can say that the opposition to helping the poor was “too great,” and use that to fuel outrage to gain even larger margins.  Perhaps this is simply a bait and switch operation, where they feel that they can con the voters into voting against their self interest for years to come.

Or it could be a much darker reality.

Perhaps they have decided that we are moving down a new path, one that doesn’t need millions of voters.  Possibly they no longer care if people are happy, now that they have the majority.  Maybe they think that democracy is a bad idea, and they want to shift to something new, something that will pay off fabulously for them at the expense of the rest of us.  It is possible they believe the democratic experiment has run its course.

If this is the case, the rest of us need to show them just how wrong they actually are.

The Carrot and the Stick

Bankrupt

There is a reason why Republicans have to insist that the country, and especially the Social Safety Net Programs are “bankrupt.”  (And I refuse to use the Right’s framing of these programs as “Entitelements.”  That pejorative term automatically frames these programs in an extremely negative way.)  I would love to say that this is just an aspect of their slavish devotion to “personal responsibility” but unfortunately, I cannot.  I would even like to say that it is because they want to prove to people that government is always the cause, not the solution, of life’s problems.  The truth, I fear, is much darker.  After reading “The Dictator’s Handbook” a much more devious reason for this attack presented itself.

They need to convince Democrats that their support for their party will not net them anything, because the Democrats will not be able to deliver.

To explain this, I need to give some background.  All rulers, be they monarchs, tyrants or presidents, need to basically bribe their supporters with payouts.  I recognize that this sounds deeply cynical, mainly because it is.  However, this is the fact of how all governments function.  In a Monarchy or Dictatorship, the number of people who need to receive payment for their support is relatively small.  A group of people including the leaders of the military, wealthy patrons, and other strategically placed individuals are sufficient to keep the ruler in power.  And because the number is small, the payments can be quite lavish. 

For examples of this, reflect on the personal wealth of the men who supported Hosni Mubarak in Egypt or King Salman of Saudi Arabia.  Or for that matter, although Russia is not strictly a Dictatorship, Vladimir Putin.  The people who surround these leaders are immensely wealthy, and much of their riches stem from their support of the leader.  In Saudi Arabia, as most of the powerful men in the country are also related to the King, there is also an aspect of Dynastic Wealth.  For the others though, there are no blood ties to the leaders, only financial ties.  But these financial ties bind the support of the inner circle.  If the payments are cut off, as with Mubarak, the key supporters will quickly turn on the person in charge.

However, in a democracy, there is not the ability to enrich a select group to guarantee remaining in power.  Also, in a democracy like the United States, there are term limits that keep a person from staying in the Presidency for more than 8 years.  This means that if there was a small group running a democracy, they would run the risk of losing their gravy train with each election, and the democracy would quickly turn dictatorial simply so the money would keep flowing into their pockets.

This means, both structurally (a large number of voters must elect the leader) and effectively (no single person can enrich themselves) that democracies must function differently.  Democracies must deliver a flow of benefits to a very specific group of voters in the country, and that requires large scale programs.

In the United States, this means the Democrats create social safety net programs that benefit large groups of people, and Republicans advocate tax cuts that similarly benefit a wide group in the population.  I will deal with the Republican strategy in my next blog, as there are some worrying signs in tax policy that need to be discussed.

But basically, the Democratic strategy has always been to deliver things to a wide segment of the population in the forms of things like Social Security, Unemployment, Medicare, low cost education, etc, etc.  This is an excellent strategy, because most people will need one or more of these programs in their lives, and people will often vote their own self interest.  In fact, the creation of these programs created Democratic dominance on the national level for close to 50 years.  In fact, there were only 16 years of Republicans holding the Presidency between 1932 and 1980, and the two Republicans elected in that time had no interest in eliminating any of the social programs that had been instituted by the other party.

However, that all changed with Ronald Reagan. 

Reagan delivered two simultaneous killing blows to the Democrats, tax cuts and the deficit.  Until Reagan, deficits were not something that were particularly concerning, both because they were small compared to GDP and government bonds were a strong and positive method of saving money.  But Reagan changed this; he slashed taxes and because of this raised the deficit to astronomical, for the time, levels.  This allowed him to spin the story that the government was going “bankrupt” because of the social safety net.

And that statement deeply damaged the Democratic Party, because of the need to reward the base.  Suddenly, the programs that people voted Democratic to support seemed to be on the verge of evaporating.  It became a real fear, for example, that you might pay into Social Security your whole life only to find the trust fund empty when you were ready to draw benefits.  And then he raided the Social Security Trust Fund to make that possibility seem even more likely.  This dramatically eroded support for the Democrats among White Americans, support that, by and large has never returned, because Social Security is one of only two programs that almost all Americans know that they will be able to participate in.  The other is Medicare.

All of the other Social Safety net programs have the appearance of supporting the “unworthy” which is code for minorities and poor people.  It is no surprise that minority support for the Democrats has remained solid, because they know that they may need some of these other programs.  White people need them as well, but there is such a stigma about the benefits at this point that taking them is a point of shame, so there is little support for them, even as whites use them far more than minorities, both in terms of percentage and raw numbers.

So suddenly, Reagan took away the “Reagan Democrats” and won a second term by one of the largest victories since Washington.  He didn’t just win on his message, he won because he convinced a nation that these programs were going bankrupt and the Democrats would never be able to pay off their supporters.

At the same time, he offered another benefit that seemed perfectly targeted to the people, tax cuts.  This meant that voters would have more money in their pockets, and thereby offset the loss of Social Security.  And this was a winning strategy, and violating it, as Bush Sr. did, cost him the election.  Bill Clinton offered at least the possibility of having social programs maintained, while voters knew that Bush had violated HIS promise of “no new taxes.”  One offered the possibility of a payout, while the other had a reality of eliminating one.  Consequently Bush lost the election.

And this has been the pattern to this day.  Obama offered a great benefit, universal health care, and won by large margins.  Those margins would probably been even higher if he’d actually gotten something like Medicare for All, a low cost, high benefit plan.  However, what he created wound up not seeming like a really great benefit to a wide swath of Middle America and because of this, many “Blue” states voted for Trump.  But, as Obamacare was a huge benefit to Millennials, women and minorities, they maintained strong support for the Democrats, because they got the most benefit from the administration.  Groups that got less resumed the pattern of voting for tax cuts that they felt would be an immediate benefit.

So basically, in order to win on National, State, or even Local levels, each party much present a package of goodies that can win voters.  This election, the Democrats didn’t do a great job of selling their package, while Trump, with simplistic language, grabbed the package and promoted it.

I know this seems very base, and crass, but this ultimately is how government in a Democracy works.  You have to promise to reward a large group of people with something you can deliver on.  And then you have to do it.  If Trump succeeds in delivering his promises, he will easily win a second term.  If he does not, either through Democratic opposition, or simply the workings of reality, he will be booted from the White House.  And given his baggage, he might even be booted before 4 years are up.  He made huge promises, and, if he wants to keep his position, he’d better deliver.

The American People are very unforgiving of failure to perform.

And So It Begins...

Disintegration

We are watching the earliest stages of the dissolution of the Republican Party, and at this rate, it is quite likely that the G.O.P. will suffer the same fate as the Whigs did in the middle of the 1800's.

I am not saying this because of the disaster that was the 2012 Presidential Election, nor am I saying this because of how the current political Right cannot seem to do anything to address the shifting demographics of this country.  In and of themselves, this is damaging, but not truly fatal.  In time, the Republicans could re-brand themselves to appeal to these groups. 

It has happened before, when the Democrats cut loose the segregationist ties that the Southern wing of the party had and whole-heartedly embraced the Civil Rights Movement.  Remember, until President Kennedy met with Martin Luther King and convinced him that the Democratic Party would push for a complete end to segregation in this country, Reverend King was a Republican.  Until the mid-sixties, most blacks in this country were a swing demographic at best.  Now they are one of the most solidly Democratic groups in America.     

So in this sense, demographics are not necessarily destiny; all it would take is the Republican Party spearheading truly compassionate immigration reform, equal pay for women and a few other similar causes.  If they did this, they might level the long term playing field, maybe not for 2016, but probably for 2020 and beyond.  It only took about ten years to shift minority support into the solid Democratic column, and it is not a guarantee that it will always remain there.

The reason that I am saying the Republican Party is doomed is because Charlie Crist became a Democrat.

It is not specifically because he changed parties, while extremely popular in some areas of the electorate, his political shift is not what is going to bring down the Republicans.  Instead, it is what the change symbolizes.  Charlie Crist said the same thing Arlen Specter said a few years ago when he switched parties.  He comments, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."  And it is that statement that shows the disintegration of the party.

Understand, Charlie Crist IS a Republican, not a Democrat, at least not genuinely one in the post F.D.R. and Johnson Democratic Party.  I am not condemning Crist with this statement; he is actually one of the Republicans I admire, along with Jon Hunstman.  I think they are stellar examples of Republicans who are trying to work for a better America, and who passionately care about the future of this country.  While I may find them to be a bit conservative for my tastes, I do recognize them as excellent leaders.

But both of them are still slightly Right of center, whether you call them Progressive Republicans or Blue Dog Democrats.  Their ideology is more on the right side of the traditional political spectrum than the left.

Before I go any further with my overall point, I want to take a moment and discuss the political spectrum in the country.  Despite what you hear from the talking heads on Fox News, the United States is actually a center-left country, at least in terms of what they want the government to provide.  I am not saying this because I tend to be liberal and want to paint the country into my own frame of reference.  I am saying this because the facts on the ground prove this orientation.

When push comes to shove, Americans like the left at least slightly better than the right, even if they don't realize it or recognize that the things they like are on the liberal side of the spectrum.  Some of the most popular things in America, the things that the majority of people by double digits say they like are to the left of center.  Most people love Social Security, Medicare and disaster relief funds.  Most Americans also strongly support Unemployment Insurance, Public Schools, the Interstate System, National Parks and Progressive Taxation.  They even support things that they may not totally agree with like Welfare, Food Stamps and Medicaid.  In general, over 60% of this country, including a fair number of Republicans, support at least the idea of a social safety net, and very few would like to see these programs cut back or eliminated.  In the past, most of the debate centered not on the programs, but simply on the funding mechanisms for them.

These are left of center ideals.  They are not Socialist by any stretch of the imagination, but they do fall on the left side of the scale.  Even our obsession with an enormous military force does not shift the scale that much, especially given our equal support of the V.A., the  G.I. bill and military pensions.

To further clarify the point, a center-right country might support some social safety net programs, but only in more extreme circumstances.  It certainly would not accept the universality of these programs and benefits.  You see the center-right approach on things like means testing of benefits, lifetime caps and other things to limit or eliminate access to them.  Understand, I am not making a value judgment here, and this is a far cry from the "Makers/Takers" dialog that is occurring.  I am simply talking about how a center-right country might approach these things.

I also want to say here, for most of the 20th century, liberal and conservative were separate distinctions from political party; you had Progressive Republicans and Conservative Democrats.  In fact, some of the greatest "liberal" achievements in this country were initiated by Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Robert La Follette.  Also remember, Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which he tried to filibuster.

For most of the 20th century, with the exception of the anomalies of the 1920's, and the Regan era, where the country to a decidedly right turn, the United States has been slightly liberal.  And since the Bush years and the economic meltdown of 2007/2008, we have shifted back to our standard position of being a social democracy. 

However, the Right Wing of the Republican Party has not moved with the country; in fact, it has gone in the opposite direction.  Today, even Ronald Regan, the ideological father of the modern conservative movement would be chucked out of the party for the simple fact that he raised taxes many times.  At best, Regan would be called a moderate to his face and a R.I.N.O. behind his back.  Eisenhower, who was probably the greatest Republican President since Teddy Roosevelt, couldn't even get nominated in today's party.  Instead, that nomination would have gone to McCarthy.

To return to my point, the reason the Republican Party is falling apart is that there is no room for the Specters or the Crists in today's party.  The Far Right is purging them.  To be fair, there have been extreme ideological impulses in the Republican Party before, Barry Goldwater being a perfect example, but even at the height of that movement, the moderates like Gerald Ford were not shoved out of the party.

This time they are.

Ideological purity trumps electability, it trumps reality, and in the end, it trumps viability.  And if it continues, this is the end of the G.O.P. as a national party. 

Even though the Republicans currently have quite a bit of power in the States and in the House of Representatives, they are still killing themselves by pushing a hard Right agenda that will turn off the majority of voters eventually and accelerate driving the moderates out.  But before Democrats crow about a perpetual majority, it also dramatically and irrevocably changes the face of the Democratic Party as well.

Let me chart what might be the next twenty years of politics in this country unless the Republican Party reverses course and the moderates seize back the party.

As more and more economically center-right and socially liberal Republicans are shoved out of the party, the party becomes more and more an echo chamber of Far Right Ideology.  You see it even now with the calls to purify the conservative message.  The party heads claim that they need to articulate the conservative vision better and people will flock to them in the next election.  The problem with that is, the majority of the country is repelled by the call to turn Medicare into a Voucher Program, privatize Social Security and all of the other dismantling of the safety net that these people are advocating.  However, purging the moderates removes what little reality check exists in the Republican Party, and so they move even farther and farther to the Right.

And with it, they become more and more unappealing to the majority of people in the country, who as I said before, tend to be slightly center-left, and tend to like their government programs, at least the ones that they think they might need.

In the short term, this means that the Democrats will continue to rack up huge wins, especially as the Republicans push an ever more extreme agenda.  In this process, disaffected Republicans will become independents and then ultimately Democrats, but their core beliefs will still stay on the Republican side of the spectrum.  It has been years since there has been a truly Progressive Republican; they fell victim to the Goldwater Purge of the 1960's.

And as these former Republicans move into the Democratic Party, the party will shift somewhat to the Right to accommodate and welcome them.  In fact, it will likely end up as a purely centrist party, sometimes falling slightly left, and sometimes slightly right.  And during this period, there will likely be essentially one-party rule, with the Democrats becoming slightly schizophrenic trying to fill the role that was once held by two viable political parties.  Also, as the Republicans purify, they will become a fringe party that is not much more viable than the Libertarian Party is today.  Even if all of the Far Right parties were to merge, they still would not be viable in this center-left country.

This is not a sustainable situation, and at this point, something interesting is likely to happen; the Democrats will become the conservative party. 

As the Republicans become increasingly bizarre, the Democrats will have to function as both a liberal and conservative party.  Since the Democrats value their current image as the "Big Tent" Party, they won't throw the conservatives back out of the party, they will accommodate them, and in doing so, they will alienate the actual liberals of the Kennedy/McGovern wing of the party.

Then, those disaffected Liberals will also succeed from their party, but since there is no viable party on the left, they will probably form their own party, splitting the Democrats in half.  For a couple of election cycles, they will not win, any more than the remnants of the Republicans will, but they will gain steam as the Republicans start to see the Democrats as a true centrist party where their voices can be heard.

In the end, we will be back to a fully functional Two-Party System, but this time, the Democrats will wind up on the center to center-right end and the new party, let's call them Labor just for kicks, will end up on the center-left to left end of the spectrum.

And through this process, the system will self correct and the political spectrum will shift back to it's traditional orientation.  We will again have two viable and truly representative political parties in this country, who are not so ideological that things cannot get accomplished.  Once this happens, the United States will return to it's moderate roots, and gears of good government will begin to freely turn, instead of grind in place.

And we will be better for it.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

Post Mortem

The general consensus after the 2012 election is that it was a status quo election; the President remains the same, and both houses of Congress are still in the hands of the same parties that controlled them before the election, albeit with modest gains for the Democrats.

But the surface read does not really reflect the earth shattering implications of this election.  Some of these have been discussed (and dismissed to the peril of the groups dismissing them) and others have not been addressed by the mainstream.

First, this election proved the power of the changing demographics of the country.  Latinos, Blacks, LGBT, Women and Youth swung this election.  The reign of Old White Men is effectively over; and the politics of Racism will no longer win any statewide or national election.  They may still hold sway on the local and congressional district scale, but beyond them demographics will overwhelm racism.

Since the Civil Rights movement, the Republicans have built electoral strength on the power of White Outrage.  The messages were not even remotely coded at first, but until this election they were increasingly subtle.  Right wing pundits in this election pulled off that cloak and showed the white robes that lay beneath.  In their certainty that this country was fundamentally a country that wanted leaders that looked like them.  They called President Obama some of most vile names I have ever heard in politics and in doing so, tried to paint him as a caricature of the worst stereotypes imaginable -- lazy, stupid, incompetent and so on.

It failed.

In fact, it motivated the people who are not Old White Men, and who do not agree with that vision of America, to get out the vote and fight for their side.  And as a result, this obscene rhetoric guaranteed that the Republicans have lost large swaths of the country for a generation, just like the Civil Right Movement cost the Democrats the South for at least two generations.  It guaranteed that the so-called minorities, which actually when aggregated are actually now the majority of Americans, have now turned their backs on the Republican Party. 

But it did something more.  The elections of 2008 and 2012 have shown these groups that they wield real power in this country.  Acting as a cohesive whole, they have the ability to effect real change in the United States.  One of the great shocks to the Right in this election was that minorities and young people turned out to vote in numbers comparable to the 20008 election, even though many were supposed to be disillusioned with the Obama message of hope and change.

The thing is, the Right underestimated what these groups learned in 2008, that they can have real power.  While the Right dismissed them and talked about "takers," self-deportation and legitimate rape, these groups set out to show them just how wrong they were.

And in doing so, the Democrats proved without a shadow of a doubt, that to be the President in this country you now have to be President for all types of Americans, not just a segment of favored elites.

But the deeper lesson here is not that these groups are reliably Democrats; both sides moving forward MUST address the needs of these constituents.  They have found their power and their voice, and they will not quietly do what they are told to do.  The future of both parties depends on becoming more diverse, more inclusive and more responsive to the people.  These groups will never again willingly give up their power.

The second lesson of this election follows the first; divisive conservative position on social issues will Trump a pure economic message.  (pun intended)  It is true that this election was the Republicans' to lose, mainly because our instant gratification society felt that President Obama should have solved the economic meltdown in his first hundred days.  Even though the Republicans offered nothing but a slight repackaging of the Bush policies, if they had remained focused on their economic message, they might have won.  This would have been because they would not have alienated women like they did.

Instead, they brought social conservatism front and center in the election, and in doing so failed to recognize that the country is getting more secular, and more liberal, on these issues.   A majority of people under 50 no longer care what you do in your private life, and respect your ability to make decisions in regard to your body, you sex life and your overall personal happiness.  The more the Right clings to their rigid ideas on these issues, and tries to mandate how people handle their private lives, the more marginalized that they will become. 

The take-away here is that both parties moving forward need to articulate a vision for this country that is based in economic directions, foreign policies, and building a strong and unified nation.  No one wants to talk about these divisive issues.  One of the reasons the President won a second term was he continued to talk about America as a whole, not as a 47% solution.  I don't think anyone will ever again win a national election by setting one group in this country against another.

The next lesson, math rules.  Statistics have been incontrovertibly proven to hammer gut feelings.  When aggregated, polls are not skewed and facts do not have a political bias.

This is a hard one for Republicans to stomach this election.  They were so convinced that the polling was part of a liberal plot to suppress the truth that Romney did not even write a concession speech.  They created a fantasy world to justify their feelings that there was no way that "their" America would re-elect President Obama.  And when that delusional edifice came crashing in on them election night, it sent them into a spiral of despair.

However, I am not gloating here, the Democrats could just have easily been deluded, and in fact many of them were.  The pundits on the left did not use any epistemology for their positions either, except for the handful kept quoting Nate Silver.  And in the next election, if the models predict a Republican win, I wonder if the Democrats will bend themselves into intellectual pretzels like the Republicans did this year.

I personally did not out as much faith in him as I should have, partially for fear of dirty tricks like we saw in 2000 and the potential for them from groups like True the Vote, but more because he had only used his model for one Presidential election.  I just was not certain the mathematical model would hold true.  It did, and it did with stunning accuracy, and from this point forward, I will put my faith in the math.

Ultimately, I am not sure that this will end the reign of the Chattering Class, who sit and talk about how their side is certain to win, based on gut feelings and tea leaves, but I suspect that in the next election we will see more substantive discussion and less spin.  For certain, in the next election, people will have less faith in talking heads offering opinions with no facts or hard numbers to back them up.

  

The final major lesson of this election is that elective office is not for sale.  Money alone does not substitute for vision, nor can it buy an election.  Further, a few free-spending billionaires cannot dictate the direction of the country.  This is still a government for the people, by the people.

I did not actually think this would be the result.  I, like many Democrats, thought that Citizen's United was the end of democracy in America.  I was certain the Koch Brothers promise to purchase every second of advertising in the week running up to the election would transform the outcome. 

Instead, all of their money had the opposite effect, it motivated the Democrats, who knew that their had to have an impeccable ground game to combat the tsunami of cash flooding them.  And as a result, the Billionaire Band of Brothers got precisely as much good from their money as they would have gotten by flushing down the toilet.

And in the end, this result may have made Citizen's United the most overrated decision in Supreme Court history.  That isn't to say that it isn't a horrible ruling that must overturned soon, it just that it probably won't turn the United States into an Oligarchy.  And on that note, I feel like, for the moment at least, our Republic will be preserved.

The reason is, that I doubt that the wealthy will pony up next election like they did this election.  They did not get to be that wealthy by dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into lost causes.  They expect results for their money, and if they don't get them, they are going to be more resistant to dumping cash the next time around.

And there is an added pickup here, I think this debacle spells the end of the reign of Karl Rove; he has truly earned the nickname "Turd Blossom."  I just wonder if he will mysteriously disappear, just like the unfortunates who crossed the mob in the old days.  In any case, his reputation and power is pretty much finished at this point.

On another plus, all the cash that the Right dumped into this election will actually have a stimulative effect.  One of the problems with the Bush Tax Cuts, according to the CBO, is that the super wealthy typically do not inject as much money into the economy as the Middle Class.  All the money that was dumped into the media is now flowing around the economy.  The people who fought tooth and nail against the Stimulus Bill just did their own stimulus program.

Irony, your name is American Politics.

The Three Dimensions of Power

Power

The application of power by the stronger on the weaker has been a prevailing condition throughout history.  Its application was very thoroughly documented by John Gaventa in his book “Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley.”  In that book he discussed why Appalachian coal miners were so unwilling to complain about their horrific working environments.
 

He detailed what he termed the “Three Dimensions of Power,” and explained that the application of these dimensions was what kept the miners from rebellion.  Briefly, the three dimensions are as follows:

The First Dimension is the direct application of Power on another, the powerful forcing the powerless to do something against their will, with threat or implied threat backing up the exercise of power.  For the purpose of this discussion, I will term this “elimination of choice.”  Refusal to comply brings significant consequences.

The Second Dimension is the creation of a situation where it looks like the powerless are willingly complying, but in actuality, the powerful have eliminated all other options except compliance, and limited the discussion in such a way the other options cannot be even discussed.  I will call this “illusion of choice.”  In this scenario, it may seem that there is a choice, to someone on the outside, but in actuality, there are no more options than presented in the First Dimension.

The Third Dimension is far more insidious.  When this dimension is applied, the powerful create an internal regulation system in the powerless that makes them think they are doing what they are doing because they want to do it.  In other words, the powerless are imbued with what Foucault terms an “Internalized Sense of Discipline.”  In its most extreme expressions are found brainwashing and the Stockholm Syndrome.  I can define this as the “realignment of choice.”  Properly applied, the Third Dimension of Power makes someone do something, all the while thinking it is their own idea and free will driving their decision.

Now that I have outlined the Three Dimensions of Power, I would like to examine how the Republican Party is applying them upon their supporters and on the United States.  To be fair, the Democrats do use these techniques as well, but given the fact that that party attracts fewer megalomaniacs, it isn’t as pervasive on that side of the spectrum.  But it does exist, for example in P.E.T.A., which is an expert in the use of the three dimensions.

Back to the how the Republicans are asserting the three dimension in America.  You can see the elimination of choice applied in the post 9/11 world of “you’re either with us or against us.”  This is the power structure of the Dick Cheney’s of the world, who ram draconian measures down our collective throats, with the potential of water boarding for those who disagree.  (And that is the implied threat of Guantanamo and “enhanced interrogation,” that anyone who disagrees could fall victim to them.  Remember the man arrested in Aspen for telling Cheney off.)  The Cheney wing of the Republican party is addicted to the use of the First Dimension of Power, possibly because it is the easiest to employ.

The Second Dimension of Power is being overtly applied to the Republican candidates themselves, which implies that they have masters higher than themselves, and has implications for a puppet presidency.  The candidates who refuse to comply with the party’s litmus test on various issues have no chance of being elected.  Grover Norquist is the master of the Illusion of Choice.  He presents Republicans with his tax pledge, and they seem to chose to sign it, but the reality is, in the current environment, if they don’t sign it, they don’t get elected.  They have no actual choice in that matter, or in many others, such as abortion, gay marriage, etc.  Anyone who does not toe the line is finished in the party, but there is still the illusion that they have chosen these beliefs.  And in this case, that illusion is critical because you cannot see the man behind the curtain, or even know that there is a curtain there.

The Third Dimension can be seen in the Tea Party, and in the millions of people who voted Republican in the last election.  The power brokers funding the Right Wing in America have gotten a significant portion of the population to believe that universal health care is evil, that we shouldn’t take care of the unemployed, and that the best way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes for the wealthy.  The Republicans have gotten Americans to vote against their own self interest; they vote for people who’s policies will actually harm them.  George Lakoff details this in his book “The Political Mind.”  It seems a large segment of America has Stockholm Syndrome, and have fallen in love with their tormentors.

So how do we fight the three dimensions take back the power for ourselves? 

First, refuse to be bullied.  Understand there may be consequences for this, but stand your ground, just like you would on the playground when you were nine.  When bullies realize they can’t force you to do something, they may beat you up once or twice, but they will move on to a new target when they realize that you won’t bow to them.

Second, take back the discussion.  The second dimension loses its power when people realize there are other viable options.  Don’t let the power brokers limit the talk to what they want it to be.  Most importantly, shift the conversation back to the left.  By today’s standard, Regan would be a centrist at best, and possibly a liberal.  That is how far the Republicans have shifted the center.  Stop allowing this to happen; show that there are other options.

Third, and this is the most difficult, expose them to the truth, get them to turn off Fox, or at least listen to other news sources.  Talk to them about what is going on.  Show them that they are voting against their own interests.  It’s hard to do, and must be done slowly and delicately, but it can be done.  Inspire them to believe again in the values that made this country great.

Finally, recognize the application of the Three Dimensions of Power, and be aware how they are being used.

Knowledge is the beast weapon against tyranny. 

 As a first test, see how many Dimensions you can identify in the above cartoon.