I posted an article a week ago, maybe a couple weeks ago, about how the democratic party doesn't seem to have a desire to change. Some people are wondering, based on how clueless they are, if they even want to change. As such, in this article, I'm going to explore a various theories to explain the democratic party's current behavior. Some of these imply incompetence, some imply corruption, and some imply both.
Theories involving incompetence
In this section, I am going to analyze models that assume the democratic party is simply incompetent and clueless.
It's possible that the democrats' perceptions of reality are simply due to the fact that those control the party are older and have been socialized to see the world in certain ways. As we know, younger people flocked to Sanders, and older people to Clinton. I don't think this is a coincidence. In party alignment theory, it's possible that alignments and realignments happen based on age cohorts. That people who were born at certain times and grew up in certain situations just see the world in a certain way and this affects their views. Talking to older democrats, I've noticed many of them are far more centrist. This is in part because older people have more of a stake in the status quo and have more teeth in the game due to their lifetime of accomplishments, but it's also because the political situation in their lifetime influences how they think. A lot of older democrats came to age and lived in a time in which the new deal coalition fell apart. They might remember Humphrey, and McGovern, and Carter. They might remember the rise of Reagan. They might remember that after seeing their party destroyed by the GOP that the thing that finally worked for them was moving to the center in the 90s under Clinton. Just as the "watergate babies", much more economically conservative and socially liberal democrats, replaced the old fiery new deal types who came to power in the 1930s, it could be possible we're seeing some friction between older baby boomer democrats who grew up in conservative times and have conservative ideologies, and the far more liberal younger generation that faces new challenges like graduating from college only to end up as baristas and stuff. Older people generally do have a tendency to not get the younger generations, and fail to realize the world is moving on from their ideas. So they focus on the past and run conservative candidates because they are conservative and also because they don't believe liberals can win.
I've seen a lot of more old timey conventional thinking based on the accumulated wisdom of the last several decades coming out of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. It's possible the reason they blew off the Sanders people was because they understand from previous failures that pushing too far to the left is dangerous and costs them elections. They understand that in 1992 Clinton brought the democratic party from the brink of death by triangulating: moving to the center to appeal to the center right while still enjoying the traditional liberal base. And to them, this is their formula for success. It would explain why they run to the center and ignore the left fringes of their party. Because to them they ARE fringe, and they see appealing to the center as more important to appeal to than the "purists." It's been said by some that for every progressive the democrats piss off, they will gain two centrists or disaffected republicans. As such, it's far more important for the dems to move to the center come the general than to appeal to their base, going by this logic. This might explain their hostility for the left and why they so believed Clinton was so electable.
They might have also relied on conventional knowledge regarding the primaries, which led them to believe that defection from their ranks was not going to be as large as it was. In 2008, Obama and Clinton had a brutal, bitter primary in which people threatened not to vote democrat in November, but in the end most of them did and they won the election anyway. It's possible they literally just did not think Sanders people were serious when they said they did not intend to vote democratic, and thought they legitimately could get people to fall in line.
As far as the political structures of the democratic party, it's possible that they are as they are in order to help them win. They might have added superdelegates and the like not to suppress the will of the people per se, but to protect the party from running an unwinnable candidate like McGovern. To them, superdelegates and the whole process that favored Clinton were there in order to stop insurgents who can't win in the general to take over and hijack the party. Democrats are more interested in winning elections than anything else, and as such, they rely on these measures to temper the process and ensure it protects them.
Theories that the democratic party or larger political system is corrupt
Despite the prevalence of a lot of the above logic, some suspect that there's more to the story to what was mentioned above. That the democrats are too unresponsive to their electorate even in facing defeat, that they do not care what the people think. They have their own agenda, and that the only reason to explain the cluelessness of the democratic party is to assume insidious intentions on their part. The scope of these intentions can vary a lot, and the scope of the corruption without our political system can vary depending on what theory is to be believed.
It's possible that the democratic party is normally fair, but that this election was one in which they were just extraordinarily corrupt. In 2008 and 2012, I got the impression that despite Obama's centrism, he at least WANTED to move to the left, and he did care about the people. I was drawn to the democratic party because I felt they cared about the working class or the 99%. Obama worked to defend social programs and protect the working class from the excesses of the republicans and their ideology of just ramming a raw member up the 99% behind in order to expand the benefits of the rich. While Obama was fairly moderate and reasonable in dealing with the republicans, he legitimately did seem to have the best interests of the people at heart in his own way. I think that years of progressive discourse under Obama also set the stage for Sanders, as people recognize what Obama did was not enough, but that the party must evolve and build on that progressive legacy. I don't think it's any coincidence the Sanders movement appeared now,
but that it's a continuation of what started in 2008 and 2012.
I did not get that vibe from the establishment democrats this year, though. Despite the rearing to go among the progressives, the centrist democrats had a much different message that came off a lot like "screw you, we don't care what you think, we want Clinton, and you better support her. They didn't care what the people had to say. They seemed to care about one thing and one thing only, making Hillary the president of the United States. Why would they go all in with Hillary? Well, there are a few possible models, but party patronage seems to be a reason. They felt she was owed the presidency for previous things done to the party, and because of her relationship with a previous president who made the democratic party successful, so they basically rigged it this year for Clinton.
Let me give you guys a time line of some events that I think might be relevant to this theory. In 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went through a prolonged, bitter primary. Eventually, Clinton conceded, but she didn't seem willing to go down without a fight. Since the party cares about unity and winning elections, perhaps there was some back room deal about how Clinton should concede in order to unite the party and give Obama the nomination. In return, the democratic party may have offered Clinton support for a future run for the White House. So Clinton signed on with the Obama administration, and served as secretary of state, biding her time until it would be HER turn to run things (hence the whole "it's her turn" mentality I seemed to get from the party). Tim Kaine was the DNC chair from 2009-2011. It's possible Obama asked him to step down from the chair, as the Clinton campaign called in a favor, and promised HIM a powerful position in return for stepping down. As we know, this election, he was Clinton's running mate. Who did they install in Kaine's place? Debbie Wasserman Schultz. A former high ranking member of the Clinton campaign, and the person in charge during most of the 2016 campaign, and who was accused of being extremely biased toward Clinton. Using her media connections and her power as chair, she tilted the scales in favor of Clinton this election cycle, ensuring she got the nomination.
While Snopes tends to be skeptical of the intentions of this theory, stating different publicly known reasons for the DNC chair shifts, I think the fact that wikileaks implied that Kaine was Clinton's VP from the get so is arguably a reason why this theory seems kind of interesting. It may be false, but if true, it explains why the democratic party had such a cavalier attitude toward their voters. Part of me does not believe that the democratic party is so out of touch it doesn't know what it's doing, it knows exactly what it's doing, but it had to honor its past agreements and promise Clinton the presidency, which would explain the creepy "it's her turn" vibe I got from this election. Clinton running, and being a centrist who wanted things her way, meant that the party would inevitably return to the way it was in the 90s when Bill was in charge. Instead of the progressive message offered by Obama and expanded upon by Sanders, we got the centrist politics of the 90s combined with identity politics. We progressives were thrown overboard, and dissent was suppressed. Because the establishment knew it had little to offer progressives, they instead focused their message on appeals to unity and taking one for the team, and when that didn't work, lots of bullying, threats, suppression, and other dirty political tactics. This would explain why the democrats were so hopelessly out of touch. Their obligations pigeon holed them into defending a turd and because they couldn't turn Clinton into a progressive, they used fear tactics and other damage control techniques to force us into line.
Again, accept the theory, reject it, whatever. There's reason to ignore is as a conspiracy theory, but I find it thought provoking and think it explains a lot. The inevitability narrative. The "it's her turn" vibe. The shift in tone from borderline progressivism back to blatant centrism. The lack of positive message and resorting fear tactics and bullying to get people to support a turd. It was her turn. She was calling the shots, she was doing it her way, and NOTHING was gonna get in her way, especially those meddling progressives. In this model, the democratic establishment is a country club. They reward people with positions based on their willingness to advance the party's goals, and candidates aren't selected by the people, but by the establishment, and then justified to the people through the media and other narratives.
There's yet another insidious theory, and this one is even worse. It's possible that not just the democratic party is corrupt, but the entire political system is corrupt. In this theory, elites control the political system. They donate money to the candidates, they bankroll them, they ensure job security, and they are once again one big country club. The job of the political candidates is to preserve the interests of the elites. Which would explain why our foreign policy is so imperialist (it's all about the money), and why our two parties are so far to the right these days. In this theory, politics is a matter of political theater, and the republicans and democrats are on the same side. They have similar donors with similar interests.It doesn't matter who wins, their interests are served either way. And the democrats in particular act as a gatekeeper to ensure that real left wing movements have no place in American politics.
When a candidate like Sanders runs, it is a threat to the establishment and its interests. So those guys are shut out of the process when they try. Doubly so for third party candidates. So the parties suppress debate, the media affiliated with them introduces a strict spectrum of debate to use Chomsky-esque terms, and thought outside of this debate is discouraged. It is better for the democrats in this model, to lose an election defending a centrist, than to have their party taken over and not controlled by the elite financial interests. This idea is supported when looking at the iron law of institutions, which expresses similar thoughts.
This also would explain the hostility the democrats have toward their voters. When the democrats act entitled to votes and seem to be engaging in so many mental acrobatics to deny the premise that parties should appeal to their voters, it tells me that the parties don't care. And where do we have to go? We can't take over the party because their machinery discourages that. And if we run third party, we're squashed. And even if they lose, many people like Schumer and Pelosi maintain their positions in office, and the gravy train keeps rolling. However, if the democratic party worked for the people, the gravy train would stop.
In a nut shell, in this theory, the United States is an oligarchy. Elections are political theater to lull a complacent public to sleep. They're there to give the illusion of choice and limit the spectrum of debate, and when Sanders' movement came out of nowhere, it threatened the established order of things so they squashed it and are completely unrepentant about it. This theory is scary. because it tells us that there's no hope for change. We're not really politically free, we're actually an oligarchy and our system is a sham. Try as we might, the democratic party will not change, and they would rather let the republicans win than to let it change.
Conclusion
I don't know what theory is true. I guess we'll have to see how the next few election cycles play out. It is possible the democrats are just so freaking clueless they just don't change on a dime, and legitimately believe they're doing the right thing. But it's also possible that there are more malevolent intentions at work. It's possible they wheel and deal behind the scenes and raise people based on patronage and contribution to the organization, and it's even possible we're not really a democracy and our system only gives us the illusion of choice.
In some of these models, the parties have hope of changing. They could be forced to be more receptive to the people, even if the results aren't readily apparent. We might see the democrats learn by 2020 and improve their message if their behavior is the result of groupthink and conventional knowledge that no longer applies. Even if they did rig it for Clinton, it might just be a one and done deal and that other elections were more fair and will be more fair. On the flip side, we might see them continue this abusive behavior in future elections if they wheel and deal or if the system is oligarchical as that last theory implies. I don't know the truth. This post is mostly speculation. I'm trying to find ways to rationalize the behavior of the democrats.
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