Continuing my continuing of a line of thought: democrats and the iron law of institutions

So, yesterday I discussed various theories in which the democrats either were incompetent, or they knew what they were doing and had their own ulterior motives. This article is going to continue more on the second. I briefly mentioned the iron law of institutions, but I came across it after I wrote the majority of the article so I kind of just added it as a slight tangent. Today, I want to discuss it more in depth and how it might explain the democrats' actions.

The iron law of institutions, according to political blogger Jonathan Schwartz, essentially states that:

”The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

 In other words, applied to this election, the democrats would rather lose this election and maintain their power within the institutions, than to win and be out of the job. Originally, the law was actually applied to the democrats ignoring anti war protesters in 2007, but it applies very well this election cycle. The democrats have arguably acted as they have, been hostile to progressives even to the point of not caring that they lose to Donald Trump, because if they ran Sanders and won, establishment democrats would lose their control of the party. They would be out of the job. The party would move in a different direction without them, and they would be consigned to the dust bin of history. So instead, they ran the most establishment candidate they could find with a willingness to run (the former first lady of the president that allowed them to come to power to begin with) and shut out everyone else who was a threat to their power structure. And now that they lost, what happened? Well, they made Pelosi and Schumer the de facto heads of the party. It's as if they learned nothing.

In all fairness though, this theory is just a theory and we are seeing some changes. I don't endorse this as truth of what happened, this and the previous article are speculating on the democrats in general and their intentions. They're not intended to say "this is definitely what happened". In 2008, the democrats did pivot to Obama, who spoke out against the Iraq war (although to be fair, he got us in a bunch of other minor conflicts across the world and basically largely continued Bush's policies). After the election, they did give Sanders more power within the party. So maybe political pressure that comes from loss can make them pivot somewhat. Which is quite frankly what I was counting on if the democrats lost to Trump. That the democrats would be forced to appeal to progressives to win elections. So maybe change will come, it just needs to happen slowly and it's only been a few weeks. Only time will tell.