Bernie’s agenda is great. His theory of political change ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — 4 Thoughts On The Iowa Results
Feel The…Ugh
Socialism is back! And it’s looking good! There’s no doubt about it, Monday was Bernie’s night and his speech was much better than either Hillary or Ted Cruz mustered. Despite the bizarre staging (who left a huge white wall in the camera shot?), the room — and candidate — showed real energy. He laid out an unambiguously progressive agenda. It was exciting. It felt like 2008…until he got to the revolution part.
Bernie’s one-dimensional theory of change is wrong
Bernie loves to lump Wall Street, corporations and the billionaire class together, and they make a compelling grab bag of bogeymen. But these groups aren’t always aligned, and the biggest fault lines of the Obama era are a result of their infighting.
Take Wall Street, for instance. If Wall Street were really running the show — or even controlling the GOP — we wouldn’t have spent three years playing chicken with federal default. The government didn’t shut down in 2013 because Republicans were doing the bidding of corporations and bankers. We had a shutdown because most Republicans in congress wanted to prove themselves to legions of ideological small donors and Ted Cruz was willing to lead the charge off the cliff. Not even the military industrial complex could protect itself from sequester cuts.
Likewise, Iowa’s ethanol lobby is a textbook example of an organized special interest using political leverage for profit. For decades, everyone has kowtowed to them. Ted Cruz told agribusiness and the ethanol lobby go to fuck themselves, and he won.
Bernie’s view of Washington was right a decade or two ago
Back when bundling donations and PACs were a big deal, organized special interest groups like the Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the AMA and politically interested businesses carried a huge amount of weight in presidential politics. And they were all transactional players who were willing to cut deals and make compromises. But over the last decade, we’ve seen the rise individual donors, big and small, driven by ideology. For these donors, politics is a zero-sum game. So for the first time, thanks to ideological money, you have organized campaigns in D.C. against things like a highway bill, Obamacare, and even paying the federal debt — all stuff corporate-special-interest Washington supports. That didn’t happen 30 years ago.
A quick glance at the GOP primary this year will confirm that the corporate faction of the GOP is getting its ass kicked by the ideological purists. The business-wing of the party is rightly freaking out. They hate Ted Cruz. Trump is terrifying. And together, Trump and Cruz took nearly 60% of the vote. It’s not going to take a Bernie-fueled “political revolution” to loosen the big-business’ grip on presidential politics, the GOP is almost there.
The revolution seems light on revolutionaries
If Bernie’s right, and a “Political Revolution” can overwhelm all opposition to his program, that’d be great! Huge rallies and marches (no drum circles, please!) sounds way more exciting than the plodding incremental slog Hillary promises.
But we had the first contest of the campaign this week in Iowa, and Bernie’s revolutionaries didn’t muster in impressive numbers. Lost in the excitement of a nail-bitter election was the fact that Democratic turnout was down — way down — from 2008.
239,000 Democrats turned out to caucus when Obama won Iowa. This year, just 171,000 did. That’s a decline of nearly 30%. For the first time ever, more Republicans turned out to caucus in an open nomination than Democrats.
