Happy Tuesday! Stephen partied too hard over the weekend so his usual Monday post is today! lol Thank you, Stephen! Have a good week everyone.
Watching the Democrat primary debates . . . well one of them anyway, I couldn’t stomach two of them . . . I noticed a general theme of the party and it raised expectations of what we can expect from regressive politics of the future: Pandering.
The ultimate game of political one-ups-man-ship, or the outbidding of the previous offers of the prior candidates blatant smarmy attempt at vote buying. With a couple dozen unknown candidates, the public auction for the leftist vote is getting bid up at a rabid pace. (No, that was not a typo.)
“We should lower the cost of college education” becomes “we should relieve the debts of those seriously underwater from college loans” morphing into “we have to forgive all student debt for every student” evolving to “free college for everyone, forever”.
“Poor people need financial assistance” becomes “food stamps for as many people as we can get” morphing into “we demand a living minimum wage of $15 per hour” evolving to “guaranteed minimum income for everyone”.
They promise everything from gun confiscation, to silencing conservative speech, to open borders, to slavery reparations, to cures for cancer, to defeating hate with love. Anything and everything they can think to promise, they have promised.
It is surprising how quickly we have been offered “food stamps”, “clothing vouchers”, “free education”, “free income”, “free healthcare”, and “subsidized housing”. “Vote for us and get free food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and entertainment.
Still not enough? “Let’s offer all of this to any person who can sneak into the country illegally so long as they are willing to vote for us.”
In the ancient days of the Rome, long after their republic had declined into empire, there were a succession of emperors who spent vast fortunes to win the throne, only to lose it again because they ran out of money. (Hence about twelve hundred years later Niccolo Machiavelli would admonish would be tyrants that if they were to give away money to win people’s political support, to make sure it was not their own money.)
Sure, we are concerned about the idea of hyper-inflation which would inevitably result from these promised political giveaways, what with the predicted costs of these promises in the trillions of dollars. But, why are we not concerned with the already present hyper-inflation of political promises and the obvious unsustainable bidding war for leftist votes?
Any rational person knows that these promises are empty, they could never afford to pay for one tenth of what they are promising and if successfully implemented would collapse the economy and they well know it.
This is the beauty of the adversarial political class, the ability to repeatedly make outlandish and foolish political promises with the full assurance that the other political party will protect you from your own folly by thwarting your efforts in Congress or the courts should you ever actually get elected.
What do all of these current and former legislators vying for the executive office promise in abundance? Why that the legislatures of which they will no longer be a part, will pass legislation which they request in their promises, and in which they have not in their time proposed, of course.
If they really had a desire for these public giveaways to become law, why have they not proposed the legislation themselves . . . now, while they are still in a position to propose such laws?
For the same reason that they did not pass such legislation when the Democrats had the Presidency, a majority liberal Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, because they really do not want any of this non-sense they are proposing.
Pretty much the same way that Republicans promised to defund Obamacare if they were elected to the House, but didn’t; promised to pass Obamacare repeal if they were given the Senate as well, but didn’t; and promised to really repeal Obamacare if they were given the Presidency, but didn’t.
(They did manage a meager reduction of the individual mandate to $0, even though it remains in the law in principle, so they declared “success”.)
The political class thrives only so long as there is a sufficiently powerful opposition party to keep them from ever having to fulfil their promises so that they can court the support of their voters and contributors, while keeping some money flowing back to those groups which support them so as to show that they are not completely ineffectual.
There is an old joke in law school about what is the definition of a “small town”: it is a town where one lawyer will starve to death, but two lawyers can make a comfortable living.
Just enough conflict to profit from the adversaries. That is also the way which political parties, or factions, operate. They raise funds based on conflicts about issues knowing full well that were those issues ever actually resolved their re-election campaign funding would dry up.
The perpetual, unresolvable issues are perfect for political debate precisely because it never goes anywhere, and never gets resolved. Public works are all well and good, but you can only argue so long about whether to pay the money to build a bridge or to subsidize the ferry across the river. Trivial issues do not captivate the political donor.
Current conflicts between establishment leadership in both parties with the more idealistic elements within their own parties highlights the danger of hyping too volatile of issues. Rep. Pelosi & Sen. Schumer struggle to keep in line the far left, openly socialistic Representatives Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, and Senators like Bernie Sanders.
The die-hard true believers on these divisive issues are a problem because they seek to resolve the issues once and for all. They actually believe the political rhetoric of the divisive issues, and that poses a danger, not just to the establishment, but to the country.
Zealots do not like to be frustrated with endless promises of the sun and the moon if people will just be patient and play along with the system, or as the old union songs mocked, “there will be pie in the sky when you die”. As promises become more grandiose, the frustration at never achieving them drives the political sides further apart.
The elites have painted themselves into a corner where they really can’t say to their supporters, “guys, we really can’t achieve everything we promised you, you’ll just have to settle for a few small gains in this area and give up a little ground in that area; let’s just compromise a little.”
The bidding war of pandering has raised the expectations of total victory in the zealots, were the establishment thrives only on maintaining the status quo. If a side demands victory at all costs, by whatever means necessary, the old-guard, the establishment becomes as much of an enemy as the political opponents.
It is not by accident that the tried and true tactics of calling their political opponents racists, sexists, and homophobes has been turned on the establishment, people like Biden and Pelosi, in open rebellion. The zealots have got it in their head not only that they can win as they were promised, but that nothing is off limits in trying to achieve total victory.
The bidding wars of pandering in politics which stirs up the base and fills the coffers with campaign loot, also drives extremist zealotry. It is hard to maintain just the right amount of partisanship to bring in the money without raising expectations of victory so as to lose control of the mob your partisanship has created.
The Founding Fathers warned our nation of the dangers of factions, and we are just beginning to see the poisoned fruits of those factions as the identity voters demand increasingly specialized privileges, recognition, and free stuff.
Watch the politicians who promise less, they will fall by the wayside swept away in the bidding war in favor of the more grandiose unattainable promises. But watch those voters more because those voters have been convinced, become true believers in those grandiose promises.
Robespierre let the mob of the French revolution, until they revolved over top of him and he lost his head, quite literally. Partisan pandering has a certain way of getting out of control.
