The Caesar of American Democracy Recast as Kitty Genovese

Endings

Democracy in the United States is either dead or very close to it, bleeding out in a gutter outside the stage door.  That is an inflammatory statement that I’m sure will send many of you sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “LA LA LA,” probably because of the Cassandra effect.  No one wants to hear this sort of thing, because we are so certain the American system will protect us.

Unfortunately, that is a dangerous denialism, and one that is contributing to our inevitable doom.

And before I get started, I want to clear the air, this is not specifically an anti-Trump piece; Trump is a symptom, not the direct cause.  At best he will simply, as Morris Berman puts it, greatly hasten our end.  The forces at play are significantly larger than one man.  That said, because Trump is so overtly autocratic and dictatorial, these forces that have been hiding beneath the surface of the swamp are now rising like methane gas on a hot summer day.

First, let’s start with the background.  The beginnings of end of democracy in America can be traced back to the tenure of Ronald Reagan, and especially the economic policies he put into operation.  Reagan presided over the first of the great upward wealth redistributions through regressive taxation policy. 

Regressive taxation is defined as taxes that more heavily impact the poor than the wealthy.  A good example of this sort of taxation is the sales tax where a $7.00 tax on a $100.00 purchase is much harder on a poor person than on someone who is wealthy.  The opposite policy, progressive taxation, is exemplified by Income Tax, which increases its rate as the income brackets go up. 

Ronald Reagan slashed the upper tax brackets tax percentage, which under Eisenhower actually approached 90% at the highest levels, while leaving the lower tax rates substantially unchanged.  This meant the Reagan Tax Cut was heavily skewed towards helping the rich, and it can be argued, by hurting the poor.  This single act started tilting the balance of power in America towards the wealthy, and also started us down the road of the massive disparity in net worth at the ends of the spectrum. 

But, it wasn’t the only thing that set the stage.  Reagan eviscerated Unions, which provided a strong counterbalance to management.  He demonized the poor, through the new myth of the “Welfare Queen,” which he used to roll back civil rights, reversing some, but not all, of the gains of the 60s.  More importantly, he solidified the Republican Party into a majority White and Christian party, which set the stage for one party to consistently oppose any real social progress.  And, as we will see later, he reenergized the power of the shadow side of the government that came close to extinction during Watergate.  Iran/Contra was a full fledged rebirth of the so called “deep state,” which most presidents since have nurtured and grown.

The Democrats, however, are not blameless in this subversion of democracy.  In fact, after Reagan, Bill Clinton is the person most responsible for the decline of the American Concept.  Clinton, not Reagan, deregulated the banks and set the stage for the bubble/burst cycle of Shock Economics that left the middle class barely hanging on for dear life.   He finished off, for all intents and purposes, the social safety net that had been established in the 30’s, “ending welfare as we know it.”  He cut the deficit, which is arguably a good thing, but he did it by cutting programs that help people rather than by cutting a bloated and at point, largely unnecessary, Defense Department.

However, these things, at least on the surface, do not demonstrate the end of Democracy.   They show warped priorities, bad ideas, and poor policy decisions.  But if you look behind the curtain you begin to see the actual stabbing of democracy, the Ides of March of the American Ideal, because the murder didn’t occur in the public forum, it happened off stage, and people only have hinted that it even happened at all.

But every murderer leaves behind traces of what they have done, and in this case, the visible knife is the 2016 election.  And don’t misunderstand, the victim probably wouldn’t be any less dead had Hillary won, we simply wouldn’t be seeing the blood dripping off of her hands like we do Trump’s.

In this case, the indicator of the murder can be found in coalitions.

Political science defines the coalition size as one of the markers between “democracies” (including republics and parliamentary systems with a constitutional monarch) and “autocracies” (including oligarchies, dictatorships and theocracies)

In a democracy, the rulers keep power by giving benefits to large segments of the population.  In fact this is a necessity of any government; you need to “reward” your supporters with gifts.  However, to be elected, you need at least a plurality of votes, if not an outright majority.  This means that the giveaways cannot be personally benefiting to the voters, at least not directly.  You need to reward your coalition with policies that please them, be it social programs, stronger militaries, or heavy infrastructure investment.  Usually, the winning coalition is promised a mix of rewards in all three arenas. 

Additionally, it is critical to deliver broad prosperity to your country to remain in power.   The best rewards are meaningless in democracies if they are not paired with a general sense of well-being, or at least an idea that there is hope of things getting better.  This is the message that swept Obama into office in 2008, the idea that he could “fix things.”  Even though things still weren’t great in 2012, he still could offer the promise that things were actually getting better.  In short, he won and remained in office because of the power of a large coalition.

On the other hand, autocracies do not depend on a large coalition, they depend on a small group of the “elect” who help them maintain their power.  Because this group is small, the rewards are much more personal, and generally are in the form of financial remuneration for support.  The larger population is meaningless, at least in terms of maintaining power, as they have no actual say in the government.  In an autocracy, the masses are either distracted through forms of the Roman “bread and circuses” or though such profound oppression that they dare not speak out.  And in a successful autocracy, it is usually a combination of distraction and oppression that mitigate the threat the masses might otherwise pose to the regime.

Putin is a perfect example of this.  The Russian oligarchs have become fabulously rich in his regime, while the masses have been marginalized.  But Putin, unlike Stalin, mixes circuses in with outright threats.  He makes sure the masses are relatively comfortable and well fed, with many of the trappings that they didn’t have during the Soviet rule.  But he also jails (or often kills) opponents with enough regularity that people understand that opposing his rule is a quick way to end up in a modern gulag or dead.

And this sets us up to examine the rapidly expiring body of American Democracy.

While we do not have overt oligarchs (yet) or obvious small coalition policies, if you look at the legislative agenda of the Republican Party, you can see that the large coalition (most of us) being sacrificed for the sake of the small coalition.  Every major piece of Republican legislation benefits a very small group of Americans, generally at the expense of the masses.

First, lets examine the attempt to repeal Obamacare.  While this law did not have majority support until recently, it was a good example of “large coalition” policy.  Although it could have actually gone further, and had fewer rewards for large national corporations, it was audacious in its attempt to provide affordable health care to the majority of Americans.  This is the type of thing a “democratic” leader needs to do to remain in power, give rewards to large swaths of the population.

However, “Trumpcare” does the exact opposite.  Despite the spin that the Republican Party is trying to spread, the ACHA bill does not help large segments of the population.  In fact, according to the CBO, it will cause 24 million people to lose access to insurance.  That is not smart “large coalition” policy, because all of the spin in the world will not matter when stories start to circulate about people dying or going bankrupt from illnesses that Obamacare would have treated.

However, the ACHA does profoundly benefit one group of people, the wealthy, especially the extremely wealthy; basically the people who compose approximately one percent of our population.  That certainly looks like “small coalition” politics.  When Grandma dies despite an early diagnosis of breast cancer or the baby bankrupts his parents because of his childhood leukemia, people are going to get angry.  And as the 24 million people who are going to be hurt the most live in “red states” this SHOULD be electoral suicide for them, and should make most of them run screaming from the bill

But it’s not and they are not.  This is because the large coalition no longer figures into their calculus. 

And all the policies are this way.  The EPA, school lunches, Medicare, Climate Change, National Parks, bank regulation and many other things targeted by the Trump Administration have deep support across the country, and ending them should be completely off the table in a large coalition situation.

However, there is one group that is generally against all of these things, the neo-oligarchs who form the new coalition.  These billionaires throw gouts of money into elections, facilitate the spread of outright lies, and manipulate the rules through gerrymandering and other nefarious techniques to circumvent the will of the people.

And they write articles like this one, which is in the “Liberal” Huffington Post, which claims democracy is not necessarily the best form of government. 

And through these examples, we can see how democracy is being killed.  The large coalition that drove American politics for the last century is rapidly being replaced by the small.

However, it is not entirely hopeless, and there is still a chance that massive blood transfusions can still save the patient.  We were in much the same position at the end of the Gilded Age, when J.P. Morgan felt that he could personally call the shots in this country.  Teddy Roosevelt showed him the truth, that a powerful president, with a broad base of support across the country, could reign in the small coalition that had become convinced that the United States was their personal playground.  A lesson that his nephew, Franklin, also taught to Morgan’s ideological successors, ushering in the largest coalition democracy the world had ever seen via his “New Deal.”

But absent the large coalition of Americans, from both parties, uniting against the real enemy of the neo-oligarchs, democracy, in this country and likely most of the world, is bleeding to death unseen behind the forum.  And at this point, people are watching, and possibly recording the death on their phones, but not actually trying to save her. 

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.

Playing the Trump Card

Trumped

At this point, I have to say, Donald Trump is running the most brilliant, if the most cynical campaign of the 2016 election season.  While it would be utter disaster for this man to be elected, I think that pundits who are dismissing him are sacrificing themselves at the altar of conventional wisdom. 

This man actually stands a chance a good chance to be nominated, and possibly even elected.  I'd like to examine the reasons that could come to pass.

First, we need to go back to 2012.  While Mitt Romney was "inevitable," the GOP base kept trying to find ANYONE but Mitt.  They tried a succession of frontrunners, each who surged past Romney in a comet-like blaze of glory.  This shows a deep dissatisfaction in the base for the establishment candidate: the guy "who's turn it is."  The stream of candidates who briefly flared showed an angry and tempestuous base. 

But the problem in 2012, was that the supernova candidates didn't resonate past a certain area.  Gingrich was popular in the South, but not so much outside of there.  Santorum inspired the Religious Right, but scared more secular voters.  Ron Paul fired up the Libertarians, but terrified the Neo-Cons who pull the strings in the party. 

So basically, each alternate candidate couldn't sustain a real challenge to Romney, because they'd win a couple, then lose when they were outside of their stronghold.  Then the base who was desperate for a change would flee to another candidate, only to have the pattern repeat.

So, at the start of the season, there is a large group of angry voters who hate the GOP Establishment almost as much as they hate the Democrats, and who will not tolerate the anointed one, who is probably Jeb Bush, getting the nomination.

Into this scene enters Trump, stage center, to take control of everything.  He is the perfect combination of narcissism,  megalomania, psychopathy, and wealth to fill a void in the unhappy Republican soul.

Now to look at the perfect storm of things that make him a viable candidate.

First, and this is the most brilliant point in his actual campaign, he is spewing Fox talking points.  He only says what regular viewers of Fox, listeners to Rush Limbaugh, and readers of the Drudge Report want to hear.  He is being unabashedly racist and sexist.  He is articulating all the things they want to hear, and given his wealth and position, he has no care about the ramifications.

Conventional wisdom would say this is exactly the wrong strategy, that you need to code your politically incorrect views in language that is not overt.  However, in this, I think conventional wisdom is wrong.  Every racist or misogynistic statement out of Trumps mouth seems to add to his lead, not reduce it. 

The reason that I think this is occurring is that people view this as brave and principled.  While that may seem strange to many, having lived in the South, I can hear people say, this man says openly what we are all thinking.  In a Right Wing World, sick and tired of Political Correctness, this is a welcome image of someone finally standing up against the tyranny of Liberal Oppression.  Finally, they have a candidate who will say the vile racist things they want to say themselves.  (And honestly, I actually appreciate this myself, because it is easier to show and talk about the inherent racism and sexism of the Right, when its on open display; you can't cover this up when it is on display in the frontrunner)

But even further, every single thing that comes out of his mouth is an echo AND answer to the things that the Right hears on their media. America apologizes for being who we are, so we'll make America Great.  Mexicans are evil, so we stop them from coming to this country.  And so on, and so on.  Every talking point is framed in the exact language that articulates the rage on the right.

Never mind that there are no actual solutions in his speeches, he says what they want to hear, just like every demagogue in the past.  And the worst thing is, just like those orators in the past, people are flocking to his banner.

And this also leads to a more widespread appeal.  Since he will say literally anything his audience wants to hear, he can move beyond the limitations that crippled Santorum and Ron Paul.  Every speech is market researched, focus group tested and field approved.  This makes him the perfect firebrand to inspire people.

Further, when he spouts some batshit crazy thing, he doesn't apologize or back down, he doubles down on it, sucking all of the oxygen out of the criticism.  When someone apologizes, or uses the modern equivalent of the non-apology, "if anyone was offended" then the conversation shifts to "today, X issues another statement disavowing Y" which paints the person as at minimum, wishy washy, at worst completely fake.

And I want to point out that I am stunned by the irony of the most fake candidate in American history being viewed as authentic by refusing to walk back his insanity.

Which leads to the next point about Trump's success, he perfectly fits the zeitgeist of America.  We are so inured to crazy behavior because of reality television, that we have normalized out of control antics.  Worse, we are beginning to like them.  We love Hoarders, Bar Rescue, and the entire Real Housewives franchise because of the crazy people yelling at each other, putting our national sociopathy on full display.

Thanks to our TV, we now equate belligerence, anger and disrespect with real leadership.  The way Trump dominated the stage at the debates wasn't viewed as him being a narcissistic asshole, it came across as a real leader who dominated the competition.  People all over America envisioned him talking like that to Putin or the Iranian leaders, and got a hard-on by proxy.  While he can't ACTUALLY do that sort of thing in a diplomatic situation, he fulfilled the fantasies of old white men all over the country.

And following from this, he has now managed to turn even Fox News against him.  This isn't the liability it seems like, and in fact, is probably an asset.  This means that the entire "Republican Establishment" is arrayed against him.  As crazy as this may sound, many of the people on the Right view Fox as middle of the road, and I have had a couple of people tell me that they are still "slightly liberally biased, just not as bad as the rest of the media."  Given that many people on the Right are disillusioned with the Republican brand and the establishment, this will likely be an asset to Trump.

He can run as the guy the Republicans want to silence, because he speaks the truth.  He can spin this in the same way that many on the Left do, that both parties are essentially the same, and he won't hold to the party orthodoxy.  (And this is the same reason that Bernie Sanders has the same appeal on the Left) 

By running as the guy who the party wants to get rid of, he can mix in victimhood into his run.  This plays well for people who view "Happy Holidays" as a personal attack, and who claim that Christians are the only people in this country who it is OK to discriminate against.  It adds a component of, "I'm just like you" into the mix.

Then there is the other issue of him being a business man.  This serves his campaign in two ways.  First, he is wealthy enough to be able to say in the race through self funding.  He doesn't need a billionaire patron, he is his own funder.  This means that the establishment can't pull the plug by withholding funding.  He literally doesn't care.

And then the other part of this, as a businessman, he is not used to being told no, and is very used to being able to buy what ever he wants.  He had decided that he wants the presidency, and he will do whatever it takes to purchase it.  The opening bid of his negation was on full display at the debate.  When he refused to rule out an independent run, he wasn't being petulant, he was laying his bid on the table.

Basically he told the Party, either nominate me, or I'll ruin you.  He knows full well that a third party bid would devastate the chances of the Republicans winning the election.  It's very simple, as a businessman, he knows that he has to negotiate from a position of strength.  It made it clear that if the Republicans want to stand a chance in 2016, he'd better be their nominee.  (Now it this does presuppose that he will continue to have his current strength) 

Still as a man used to winning and getting whatever he wants, he will be utterly ruthless in a way that the Party is likely not prepared to handle.  Political negotiations typically are we each get a bit of what we want.  Business negotiations tend to be much more one sided, especially with someone like Trump,. who won't be afraid to execute his hostages.

Finally, there is an additional strength that Trump possesses that might contribute to his victory, and this time in a general election.  It's called the "Boris Johnson Effect."  For decades, London had a highly competent, if very boring mayor.  Boris Johnson ran against him, on more or less the same antics that Trump is using.   For his behavior, he was widely viewed as a buffoon.

And yet Johnson won.  He's the mayor of London.

The main reason he won was no one believed he had the remotest chance, so they voted for him as a joke.  It would be a funny story to tell in the breakroom or by the water cooler.  But the joke was, enough people cast the ironic vote to elect the guy mayor.

And given the cynical nature of the American Hipster, I could see this repeat here.  The "haha, I voted for Trump, isn't that funny?" can easily become, "OH. MY. GOD.  WHY DID I VOTE FOR TRUMP."

And has been pointed out elsewhere, we will have about two months to prepare for Armageddon.

A Recipe for Revolution

Upheaval

Right now, the far Right Wing of the Republican party is sowing the seeds for a revolution in the United States.  It is not, however, going to be the revolution they think, nor want.  They want a revolution to eliminate the Federal Government, roll back civil rights, equal rights and gay rights, define Christianity as the national religion, and completely unfetter the financial markets.  But in short, they want a revolution that puts old white rich men inextricably in charge of this country. 

That is not the revolution they will get.

They might get it in the short term; the game might be rigged enough by 2016 to elect a President Cruz.  Riding high on his election, and the probable control of both houses of congress that electing him would bring, they will unwind all of the social safety net programs that they hate, disenfranchise millions so they can't protest, and try to set up a permanent hegemony in the governmental apparatus.

Even if they don't get the big prize of the presidency, they can work toward their revolution piecemeal, creating government shutdowns and debt ceiling threats so regularly that the Democrats eventually acquiesce to some of their demands, just because they are worn down from the fight.  And if you think this isn't on the horizon, Ted Cruz spoke in Iowa and claimed that his path was the path to victory.  This movement is not going to be derailed by real facts.  The Ministry of Truth will continue to feed the true believers delusions.

But this is were actual reality rears it's ugly head.  If they actually get their revolution, they will likely spawn a real insurrection.  History is our guide on this.  When people are utterly without recourse, they rise up against the government and attempt to overthrow it.  Most recently, this happened in Egypt and Libya, and is still moving along in Syria.

But before I talk about how this might happen here, I would like to take a moment to explore the policies of the Right that will lead us to the cliff.  (I am going to refer to them as the Right, not the Republicans, because not all Republicans are on the bus that the Right is driving off the cliff.)

First, they want to drastically cut, or in their wildest hopes, eliminate food stamps.  The problem is, a majority of people on food assistance are not the unemployed, they are actually working.  In short, they are not working for wages high enough to feed themselves, and still take care of the other necessities like shelter and clothing.

The minimum wage across most of this country forces people to make choices in their day to day life.  But the unfortunate reality is, those choices typically are things like, do I eat, or pay my rent?  The minimum wage is no longer a living wage, and people earning it must turn to government subsidies to survive.  Without food stamps, there would be a lot of employed, but still hungry, people in this country.

Which leads to the second thing that the Right wants to eliminate, the minimum wage.  Michelle Bachman, with her perfect grasp of economics, called for the elimination of the Federal Minimum Wage.  She claimed, in a bizarrely correct way, if we eliminated the minimum wage, we would drastically cut unemployment.  This is true in the sense that companies would be willing to hire massive numbers of people if they didn't have to actually pay them. 

The core idea of the minimum wage is that slavery is outlawed; people have to be paid for work.  Without it, do you really think companies are going to pay their employees well?  You will see places like Wal-Mart drop employee pay to pennies, because that will cut their overhead and raise their profits.  And then Wall Street will reward them for increasing profits by ballooning their stock prices, which will incite another round of pay cuts, that will be rewarded in turn.  Eventually, wages will bottom out at Chinese levels of compensation, which will be just a few dollars a day for most employees.

The third thing that the Right wants to eliminate is the Health Care Act.  While I disagree with the ACA because I don't think it went far enough because there is no public option, it is our only hope currently to try to get a handle on health care in this country.  Having Emergency Rooms be the primary care provider for a good chunk of the people in this country is very bad for the economy.  Yet the Right sees no problem with the Emergency Room handling the majority of health care.

But people need health care, or they will die, even from easily treatable things like infections or the flu or a broken leg.  Like food, heath care becomes an unaffordable luxury for millions of low paid people in this country.  The ACA helps get people medical treatment.

Finally, the Right is attacking pensions, not just Social Security, but actual Defined Benefit Plans earned through long term employment in a single place of employment.  (And in this one, even some on the Democratic side are complicit, for example Gina Raimondo, the Treasurer of Rhode Island) The primary target are those who are drawing government pensions, but the entire system is under attack.  Even social security, that once unassailable bulwark of the social safety net is being assaulted with things like the chained CPI and means testing.

The largest group of people in this country living in poverty are not minorities or single mothers, it is the elderly.  And unlike the other groups in poverty, these people are literally unable to work, even if there were jobs available.  A person with advanced Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease is not going to be able to hold down a job, so pensions and social security are there to take care of them at a point in their lives when they desperately need care.

To sum this up, if you make people be hungry, even when they are employed, cut the ability to work for a wage that might make ends meet, increase the number of people who die from easily treatable conditions and cause the elderly to live in squalor, you set the stage for massive unrest.  And to make matters worse, you are doing this to widen the profit margins for billionaires, a group that already is not one that people inherently  feel sympathy towards.

This sets the stage for rebellion.

Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."  Even more, the arc of humaity bends towards fairness.  And it isn't fair when people see starvation in their lives, while the rich get richer; when people can't afford even the basics of life; when they watch their children die from simple health issues, while the wealthy get extraordinary treatment; then they watch their parents be unable to care for themselves, while the wealthy live in luxury.

I'm not here to give a moral debate on this, I am simply stating the facts, whether you think it is right or wrong, when people perceive this sort of inequality and unfairness, they become enraged.  And the worse the disparity, the worse the rage.  Both Roosevelts saw this and as a result, Teddy broke the Trusts and brought down the Barons, and FDR instituted the broadest social compact that we had seen in this country.

They didn't do it because they were Communists or even Socialists, they did it because they were pragmatists.  Not to say they didn't believe strongly in their actions, they did, but they also knew that action was necessary.  They both knew that if something was not done to change the course of the country, eventually, the disparity would lead to despair, and the despair would lead to revolt.  This is history's lesson that we have forgotten.

In the blind hatred of entitlements, we have ignored that, at the end of the day, it is far better for a government to be loved than feared. 

The reason that totalitarian societies fall is that the government is feared.  But fear cannot be maintained indefinitely, it may take decades, but eventually fear turns to anger and anger turns to hate.  Once people hate their government, it's all over.  They WILL rise up.  And this is another piece the Right does not get, they are stoking hatred of the Federal Government to get what they want, but once they have achieved their ends, they will have a country full of people who hate the government.  This will not end well.

Governments, by their very nature, do a lot of things that people don't like.  We generally don't like laws or restrictions or regulations, unless we see personal benefit in them  We all like laws against murder, but laws against Marijuana?  That is harder for a lot of people to see.  You have to step outside of your personal system to see a societal benefit in order to see good in a lot of the laws even a "good" a government passes.

So to keep people working together, and have a strong country, you have to get them to love their government, or at least like it.  In order to be viable, a government needs to produce tangible benefits for their citizens; they need to provide a service.  Otherwise, they have no reason to be supported.

The inherent nature of the human race tends also toward anarchy.  For the most part, we only work together well in small groups, because that is what our genetic programming designed us to do.  We function in larger groups because we have to, and we see the reasons to, not because we exactly want to.  We see the benefit of a State Level society, but many of us yearn towards a simpler life, with less interaction with large apparatuses of control.

So for a government to work, the benefits of it's existence have to outweigh the burdens.  And in America, that has always meant a government that stands up for the little guy, that protects the helpless, and provides actual help to people in need.  It builds roads and schools, keeps the peace, and provides for the helpless.  Without that, most people don't see any real reason to have one.

And this is where the Right has led us to a precipice.  They have gotten most of America to hate the government, for their own selfish ends.  What they don't realize is history's lesson.  When people hate their government, they don't make government go away, as the Right hopes, they replace it.  They may replace it with something bad, or they may replace it with something better, but they will force a change.  

This is what happened in Eastern Europe, and what is going on right now in the Middle East.  People hated their government, saw the government as a destructive force in their lives, and they overthrew it.  Simple citizens, often even unarmed, can do a lot of damage to the system when they put their minds to it.  If the system is extremely well armed, the conflict will drag on for years, as we are seeing in Syria.  But eventually, if people are determined enough, they will eventually win.

The reason that Egypt fell so quickly was not arms or even that the military abandoned Mubarak; it was because of the sheer size of the population that rose against the government.  In a country of 80 million people, the military cannot enforce the system for any length of time.  It would be even worse in a country of almost 400 million.  Short of carpet bombing our own citizens, there is no way any sort of martial law would stop a revolution in this country.

Wise leaders like the Roosevelts knew this, and made government a force for good in people's lives.  That is enlightened leadership, and for two centuries, it was the guiding force in this country: how can we make life better for people?

Once government stops doing this, the stage for revolution is set.  And the ultimate irony is, the Right is dismantling government to increase profit margins, but the worst thing for profit is revolution. 

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.