| I don't like the word "plot". It implies a multi-stage process engineered to produce a particular outcome. Nah, this is more a "force", somewhat like gravity.
The D party's survival depends, as does the R party's, on remaining relevant. Relevance, to the D party, means the ability to gather a significant percentage of endorsements from the public (aka votes) and from the big press, which is increasingly beholden to the upper class and other special interests (hereafter collectively the "rich").
To what end do they intend to remain relevant? Well, their own continued employment, of course. It's not typically held deeply by the parties themselves that they have higher callings, or those higher callings would not be sacrificed on the altar of electability.
The favorability and existence of coverage in the big press is directly related to the extent to which a party's policies favor the upper classes, who are almost unified in calling for deregulation, privatization, the abolition of noblesse oblige and generally accumulating more wealth unto themselves. Observe that the R party has been the darling of the press since 1980 and that only fiscal conservative Ds ever get consistently good press.
Exercise: Predict the amount and favorability of press received by third party candidates based on this model.
With me so far? You don't go to the bat for the money, the money doesn't go to bat for you.
Okay. So after a party gets past that layer of editorial bias, the next thing they need is operating money. Noblesse oblige isn't something they teach in B-school anymore, nor is the notion of "enough". Those whose incomes are in the top few percent are special interest groups each unto themselves, with a vested interest in preserving the status quo. A political party that wants that money to keep flowing to help them, instead of potentially being used to hurt them, is going to favor, or even court, the interests of those people, which include keeping those people's own incomes, whatever the source or the social effect thereof, rolling and growing.
Let's switch over to the other side of the aisle for just a moment. The GOP's "base" (not Bush's "base") had a lot of social demands. Most of theirs were symbolic and generally economically regressive, and they typically carried their entire party, not least because those demands didn't harm the rich very much at all. (The rich will always have abortion on demand.) The left's demands, on the other hand, tend to be cost money in some sense or other. Medicare and Social Security are regressive taxes for progressive programs. Reducing CO2 emissions requires capital outlay. Progressive taxation hits the rich by definition. Single-payer and cramdown take money out of the Wall Street casino and put it back into the real economy.
As a result of all this, we have a party whose voters are eager to suffer, eager to drag everyone else in their class down with them, and fully willing to pay for the privilege of self-flagellation and not disturb the rich very much. On the left we have another party whose platform is to improve society, right after placating the rich in order to survive.
How do the individual officials factor into this? Simple: pols who are not independently wealthy and do not approach the gig with a reverent attitude of public service either want to hold onto the sweetest job they ever landed or take a step up the political ladder. Pissing off the money on which they are dependent (which, incidentally, is not the money over which you or I have control) is clearly counterproductive to either end.
As for what's been going on around HCR, again we are dealing with forces rather than plots. Voters tend to be placated rather easily with words, and words are cheap. The people who pay for the show are placated almost exclusively with numbers. This is essentially what Sadie Baker noted: voters are the product, not the customer.
One way to disprove this rather cynical assessment of the two-party system is for a fiscally left-of-center President to be elected, stay and act left-of-center throughout his/her term(s), and not be taken down by the establishment. Or for left-of-center members to be elected to legislatures or Congress in numbers that matter, stay and act left-of-center throughout their term, and not be taken down by the establishment.
So, really, the policy of either party is institutional survival. Everything else follows naturally therefrom, including the third-party bashing and general harassment engaged in with far more glee and zeal than with which they attack one another. Gotta keep the riff-raff off the field, don'tcha know...
As to Conyers, Grijalva, Dean, etc., they have their uses to the D party (in Dean's case, they just never knew that) and make a tolerable wedge into a supermajority. I predict that you won't find too many of those in a |
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