Joe Biden swears Bernie Sanders into the Senate. (Public Domain)
…we know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mobs. Never before in all our history have these forces been united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hatred for me, and I welcome their hatred.” –Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Madison Square Garden, 1936
I’m hoping that someone gets knocked off their horse on the road to Damascus.” -James Carville, Political Consultant
What is Pete Buttigieg’s policy position on any issue whatsoever? No one really knows. Learning about Pete’s positions is like stepping into Heraclitus’ river: everything is in a state of flux. We’re mostly familiar with a curated set of biographical details. Pete is a millennial. Pete is gay married. Pete is an ex-mayor from America’s HeartlandTM. Pete served in the military. What else do you need to know? The only important question is can he beat Trump? Is he electable?
What is Elizabeth Warren’s position on Medicare for All? Hard to say. Her position on the number one issue with voters keeps ‘evolving’. This is odd given her campaign slogan: I’ve got a plan for thatTM. But that’s not important. All that matters is can she beat Trump? Is she electable?
What’s Joe Biden’s campaign platform? This one is easy. It’s I can beat Trump! Biden is running on pure electability. Forget about the hopes, dreams, needs, and concerns of the electorate. Go straight to the calculus. Biden’s household name, experience, and Obama brand association versus Trump’s extreme unfavorability with liberals and Never Trump Republicans. Does the math work? Is he electable? Can he really beat Trump?
There’s a theme here, echoed by political pundits, party operatives, consultants, and the mainstream media outlets that shape public opinion. As far as the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries are concerned, don’t get caught up in policy proposals, plans, and party platforms. Electability is the only important selection criteria for choosing the Democratic nominee for President. Stay focused on our #1 goal. We must beat Trump!
This narrow electability focus isn’t a suggestion, by the way. It’s a requirement. If you persist in publicly scrutinizing candidates’ positions on substantive issues, the backlash will be swift and adamant. Shut. Your. Mouth. Why? Because we have to stay unified. Because drawing distinctions is divisive. Because asking hard questions of aspiring elected officials is harassment. It’s toxic. Democrats don’t want politics in their politics. Democrats hate politics. Politics is rude. Politics is mean. Focus on the goal. We have to defeat Trump! #VoteBlueNoMatterWho
This electability narrative is a sure-fire strategic loser and a great gift to Donald Trump. Despite this being the case, an entire food-chain of Beltway insiders, think tanks, consultants, strategists, and media pundits who make their very lucrative living off of American electoral politics shill this losing narrative relentlessly. They do so because they’re strongly incentivized to do so. It’s not that they don’t want to see Trump defeated. It’s just that some things are more important to them.
Does this mean that beating Trump isn’t really their #1 priority? Yes. Of course. That’s not to claim, by the way, that they’re a bunch of lying dog-faced pony soldiers (to borrow a cringe-worthy Bidenism). Modern advertising techniques (propaganda techniques in political parlance) are often persuasive even to the people who employ them. Also, especially in America where talk of class is still largely taboo, people tend to defend their class interests unreflectively. In this respect, many of these folks, perhaps even most, are eating their own dog food.
In the end none of us can read what’s in their hearts. Regardless, however, one thing is very clear: the 2020 electability narrative is a grift. We’re all being hustled, and the likely outcome is four more years of Trump.
Electability: A Recipe for Failure
Let’s begin by getting clear about exactly why obsessing on electability is a recipe for electoral failure. I see two major reasons.
First, a primary race premised on sheer electability divorced from any consideration of the candidates’ proposals and plans for America gives the impression that the Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything. It suggests that all the Democratic Party cares about political power, and that it’s sole preoccupation is to find someone, anyone, who can beat Trump.
Republicans have already sniffed out and weaponized this nihilistic will-to-power narrative. On February 3rd, for example, as Trump’s botched impeachment was dying in the Senate, Georgia congressman Doug Collins Tweeted a cynical charge: “Democrats have one goal and one goal only: Defeating Donald Trump.” Collins’ insinuation here–couched in finger-wagging about the impeachment–is that the reason Democrats focus exclusively on beating Trump is because they really have nothing to offer the American people. In Collins’ words, “they have no plan, no purpose, and no shot of winning the 2020 presidential election.”
In the face of this charge, the optics around electability are really bad. Beating Trump isn’t going to be easy. His popularity, post-impeachment, is higher than ever. The RNC has a massive war-chest that it’s barely begun to tap. It’s not only going to require rallying the Democratic base and swaying the mythical “swing voter.” It’s also going to require motivating eligible voters who don’t vote to show up at the polls. “Someone has to beat Trump!” as a party platform, while motivating enough for many, isn’t likely to put fire in the belly of wide swaths of the electorate.
Democrats have one goal and one goal only: Defeating Donald Trump.” –Georgia Congressman Doug Collins
What’s doubly exacerbating is that Collins’ charge of “no plan, no purpose” isn’t even true. The Green New Deal, Medicare for all, student loan forgiveness, free college tuition, an end to forever regime-change wars, universal basic income–these are unambiguously bold plans, popular with broad segments of the electorate, and fueled by an urgent sense of purpose. What could be more inspiring and motivating that preserving the conditions of organized human life on earth, or liberating an entire generation from poverty, precarity, and debt-peonage? But Beltway pundits who know better than we do have informed us that these issues aren’t important right now. What’s important is defeating Trump, full stop. It’s a frustrating, self-defeating, and ultimately demoralizing narrative.
Speaking of demoralization, this brings us to the second major reason that the electability narrative is a recipe for failure. Insisting to the electorate that politics is taboo. Insisting that the electorate dismiss as unimportant their interest in exploring the candidates’ policy positions, that they refrain from comparing, contrasting and debating those positions publicly, that they abstain from pressuring candidates to tailor their positions to better address the needs and concerns of the electorate, reflects a grim cynicism about democracy that only serves to demotivate and demoralize voters. It effectively communicates to the electorate the following: “You with your hopes and dreams and worries don’t matter, but the party still needs your vote.” It encourages the very opposite of what the Democrats need to defeat Trump, which is to excite and motivate massive swaths of the electorate to participate.
Stop the Progressives!
If the electability narrative is such a disastrously bad idea then why does the mainstream media shill it 24/7? There are a number of reasons, but let’s begin with the most direct and immediate. The DNC and its surrogates and symbiotes have concocted this odd electability narrative in an effort to accomplish an incredibly difficult–perhaps even impossible–two-fold task.
On one hand, as one of two franchises in a political duopoly, the Democratic Party is trying to wrest executive political power away from its competitor, the Republican Party. Since this is formally a democratic process, they need your vote to do it.
At the same time, however, the Democratic Party is also trying to kill off its progressive wing. Shockingly, what this means at this point in the Democratic Presidential primary race is that the Democratic Party is trying to stop the momentum of its own front runner, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Consider for a moment how incredibly stupid this is given the Democratic Party’s putative #1 priority: defeating Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders generates the very kind of grassroots enthusiasm and excitement that the party needs to bring out the vote. This momentum could be magnified dramatically–rivalling Obama’s stunning 2008 campaign–if only he had access to the DNC-friendly media machine. Instead, in the early months of the primary race Sanders was the brunt of a widespread media blackout. Headlines like this one from July when Sanders was in second place were typical: Harris, Warren tie for third place in new 2020 Dem poll, but Biden still leads. This treatment continued through the New Hampshire primary where the big news of the night was not Sanders’ victory, but Amy Klobuchar’s strong third place finish. When Sanders does receive mainstream coverage–now a begrudging necessity given his front-runner status–it’s typically negative.
This tactic–the DNC using its own campaign machine to put the brakes on the growing grassroots momentum of its front-runner–will very likely result in four more years for Donald Trump. What’s important for us to note is that the Democratic Party prefers this outcome to a Sanders victory. The fundamental rationale of the electability narrative–that defeating Trump must be our top priority–is disingenuous. Defeating Donald Trump is the #2 priority. The #1 priority is to stop the progressive.
This tactic–the DNC using its own campaign machine to put the brakes on the growing grassroots momentum of its front-runner–will very likely result in four more years for Donald Trump.
To understand the motive, we merely need to look back to September 2019 when Elizabeth Warren, a progressive critic of big banks and corporate corruption, was climbing in the polls, threatening to overtake Joe Biden as the frontrunner. Wall Street donors warned the DNC that if Warren became the nominee they would either sit out the 2020 Presidential election funding cycle or back Donald Trump. It’s safe to infer that the same threat applies to Bernie Sanders, who threatens to do to Wall Street everything Warren threatens and more.
The message is clear: Wall Street is fine with a neoliberal centrist Democrat. However, if a progressive wins the Democratic nomination, Wall Street will turn off the money spigot, or worse still. They’ll divert the flow to Trump! This obviously incentivizes the DNC to go neoliberal or bust. This isn’t by any means a recent change of course, by the way. Neoliberal or bust has been the DNC flight plan ever since Bill Clinton’s Third Way New Democrats transformed the Democratic Party from a party of unions and working class people to the party of Wall Street.
We can assume similar donor threats from other major corporate and economic elite donors as well–even if they’re not articulated as overtly as the Wall Street warning above. Insurance and pharmaceutical industries against Medicare for All. Fossil fuel interests against The Green New Deal. Commercial banks and other lending institutions against student loan forgiveness. These donors represent billions in campaign financing–funds that both parties are addicted to. To keep the money flowing, Bernie Sanders and other progressives must be stopped.
The Investment Theory of Political Parties
So how does the electability grift work then? The electability grift is an attempt to regain control over a primary campaign process that’s simply become too democratic. To appreciate how this works, it’s worth briefly examining political scientist Thomas Furguson’s Investment Theory of Political Parties.
Ferguson’s theory aims, in part, to understand how the American donor-funded two party system I described above works. What Ferguson’s theory has to recommend itself is its remarkable predictive power in determining election outcomes simply by following financial investments.
Ferguson’s working hypothesis entails viewing American electoral politics as a market. In much the way investing works in other markets, business and other interests invest money hoping for a favorable ROI. In this case, a favorable ROI is political influence and favorable legislation.
Because the American politics market is a duopoly, there are only two places to invest: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In exchange for this investment capital, which the parties use to run increasingly expensive political campaigns, the parties offer candidates, policies, and platforms that are favorable to the investors. In this sense, the investors (aka “the donors”), rather than the democratic electorate, are the two parties’ true constituents.
Because the American politics market is a duopoly, there are only two places to invest: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
Given that the vast majority of investment capital comes from investors of great means–economic elites and corporations–it’s no surprise that a 2014 study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern Universities revealed via statistical analysis that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” In short, this study reveals that the United States functions as an oligarchy rather than the democracy it pretends to be.
As Thomas Ferguson puts the matter himself (in his masterwork, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems), “The electorate is not too stupid or too tired to control the political system. It is merely too poor. ”
The Election Industry
Those political influence investments–literally billions of dollars per election cycle– have to be metabolized somehow. They have to be transformed into political influence within a formally democratic process. An entire market-based, for-profit election industry exists to facilitate this metabolization. At the center of this industry sits what political scientist Adam Sheingate aptly calls the political consultant racket. “Like the microscopic bugs in our gut,” Sheingate explains in his book Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy, political consultants are “crucial to the metabolic functioning of a system of influence peddling that turns vast amounts of money into legally sanctioned political services.” The political services in question in addition to strategic and consulting services, are primarily advertising (billions of dollars worth) on corporate media and social media, political polling, and direct mail marketing.
In short, the election industry might be best described as a sub-genre of the advertising and public relations industry. Much like consumer product marketing, the objective is to sell a curated set of candidates representing packages of donor-friendly policies and proposals to the American electorate, employing the full brace of modern advertising tools and techniques: ‘consumer’ polling, focus group testing, target marketing, message optimization, ‘authentic’ branding, and lots and lots of advertising.
The Electability Grift
Back to the electability grift. As I noted above, the electability grift is an attempt to regain control over a primary campaign process that’s simply become too democratic.
Bernie Sanders is popular because he’s running an issues-based campaign that champions positions that address the needs and concerns of the democratic majority. Most of his positions entail taking on the oligarchical interests that provide the vast majority of the billions of investment dollars the Democrat-Republican duopoly live on. He hammers on the issues relentlessly. And because most of the electorate are fed up with the duopoly’s long-standing refusal to address their needs, Bernie and the movement he represents have become very popular.
This isn’t how the for-profit election market is supposed to work. Primary campaigns are supposed to run like beauty pageants. Since policy and platform are matters for the party to negotiate with investment blocs of donors, ‘selling’ candidates is supposed to be an exercise in product marketing where superficial brand differentiators, or identity differentiators that mimic brand differentiators distinguish one candidate from another. Kamala Harris is supposed to appeal to women and people of color because Kamala Harris is a woman of color. Pete Buttigieg is supposed to appeal to millennials because Pete Buttigieg is a millennial. And so on. Nevermind that women, people of color, and millennials are not homogeneous blocks, but collections of individuals with varying and intersecting needs, concerns, and wishes.
Establishment candidates positioned as packages attractive to the donors simply cannot compete in an issues-base contest with a candidate like Bernie Sanders because their policies and positions aren’t popular. They’re not designed to be. They’re designed to serve the interests of the DNC’s true constituency: the donors. Since these establishment candidates cannot compete, the DNC and their election industry symbiotes attempt to stigmatize politics under the pretense that a public contestation of the issues will only serve to undermine unity and distract us from the ultimate goal of defeating Donald Trump.
Establishment candidates positioned as packages attractive to the donors simply cannot compete in an issues-base contest with a candidate like Bernie Sanders.
Instead voters are asked to invest their faith in an incredibly nebulus electability thesis. Speculating about electability is dubious under the best of conditions. Just ask Nate Silver. As a criterion for selecting the Democratic Presidential nominee, we may as well consult a Ouija Board or Magic 8-Ball. It’s unclear how anyone could employ this criterion in a meaningful way. But that’s not really the point.
Electability ex nihilo isn’t a tool for the electorate to employ. It’s a pretense for the electorate to re-invest its trust in the authority of election industry ‘experts’ who can steer them in the right direction via various forms of punditry and compelling advertising. In short, it’s a pretext to shut down an eruption of democratic contestation to allow the for-profit “politics market” to reclaim control.
The kinds of ‘electability’ analysis these ‘experts’ offer are predictable, as evidenced by punditry with titles like Bernie Sanders Can’t Win and Bernie Can’t Win and Bernie Sanders’s Agenda Makes Him Unelectable and Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity. Not surprisingly, most of the conversation about electability is aimed at ‘proving’ that Berie Sanders can’t win. That’s the grift.
Bernie’s Existential Threat to the Election Industry
Back in 2016 Professor Noam Chomsky offered the following remarks on the Bernie Sanders phenomenon:
“Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system. Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat.”
It’s in this respect that we should understand the charge that Bernie Sanders is an existential threat to the Democratic Party. He’s an existential threat in the sense that he wants to course-correct its 30+ year career as the party of Wall Street by returning it to its early 20th century FDR-style pro-working class roots. That’s plenty of reason for the party establishment and its donors to “hate him” as they hated FDR.
I think it’s even more important, however, to understand how Bernie Sanders poses a threat to the election industry itself. We can begin to do so simply by noting that there have been candidates in the past who have veered off of the DNCs script. The election industry has been able to dispatch these rogues easily enough. Since the party has a vast corporate media machine at its disposal all that was required was to have a few prominent journalists, pundits, and personalities to create some bad press and the rogue candidate’s campaign would tank. The same power could be used to amplify a favored candidate.
Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign is a case in point. Going into the Iowa caucus Dean, an anti-Iraq war progressive, looked like a formidable challenger to DNC favorite John Kerry. Because he gave fiery, impassioned speeches, a pseudo-concerning media narrative began to develop that Howard Dean was “angry” (a charge often lodged at Bernie Sanders for same reasons). On the night of the Iowa caucus Dean gave an impassioned speech in the middle of which he uttered an entirely context-appropriate yell. The next day this yell became known as the “Dean Scream” and the mainstream media dogpiled on it, giving the impression that Howard Dean was somehow unhinged. And that was the end of Dean’s campaign.
Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system.” –Noam Chomsky
In most cases, however, assassination by media isn’t necessary to take out a candidate who isn’t appropriately aligned with the interests of the donor class. If the candidate isn’t sufficiently aligned, that candidate’s campaign funding will simply dry up. This is, of course, incentive for the candidate to keep in mind who the real constituency is.
This tactic doesn’t work on Bernie Sanders, because Bernie Sanders doesn’t take the money. He’s funded by small individual donations, over seven million of them to date, averaging $19 a piece. And this is the key to understanding how he’s a threat. They can’t starve him financially.
This is not the threat to the election industry I’m referring to, however. I have something else in mind. Recall Thomas Ferguson’s observation that the electorate is simply too poor to control the political system. This being the case, Ferguson suggests that the only way for the electorate to gain political power is to join together in solidarity to become an investment bloc unto itself, sufficient in clout to compete with corporate and economic elite investors. On Ferguson’s telling, this occured only one time, during the Great Depression, when “for the first time in American history, masses of ordinary voters organized themselves and succeeded in pooling resources to become major independent investors in a party system.” This rare democratic success of ordinary people resulted in the New Deal.
By funding his campaign with individual donations, Bernie Sanders is creating an investment bloc of ordinary voters with the aim of taking on economic elite and corporate exploitation. In the fourth quarter of 2019 the most common occupation of a Sanders supporter was teacher. The most common employers for Sanders donors were Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the US Postal Service, and Target. This is a working class movement and a working class investment bloc, going after the oligarchy in the era of Citizens United.
To be frank, the odds (and the money) are stacked against success. But to me this attempt at rehabilitating democracy alone earns my support (not to mention my frequent small donations).
It’s worth noting also, for those who view Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as very similar progressives, the following difference. Much has been made of the comparison of Bernie’s political revolution versus Warren the reformer of corruption. In most cases this is cast as a difference between Bernie’s democratic socialism and Warren’s “I’m a capitalist to my bones.” However, casting this as a difference of opinion as to whether corrupt capitalism can be reformed misses the point in my view. More significant is the question of the market capture of American politics and whether, in the era of Citizens United, democracy remains a political possibility. And here Bernie Sanders stands out clearly.
When asked a question about the fairness of the primary system by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman last November, Warren demurred, saying, “Look, I’m just a player in the game.”
A Matter of Class
I want to close by addressing how class figures in the 2020 electability grift.
Last February Dutch historian Rutger Bregman went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he told an assembled group of billionaires that to address the world’s problems they needed to stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about paying their fair share of taxes. Sufficiently delighted by Bregman’s provocation, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson invited him to be a guest on his show. The episode never aired. Carlson ended the interview with an expletive-laden rant after Bregman reminded him, “You are a millionaire funded by billionaires”.
Tucker Carlson shills for the GOP franchise, but the same charge can be rallied at DNC-friendly media personalities. Rachel Maddow, Joy Ried, Anderson Cooper, and Chris Matthews come to mind. All of them are, like Tucker Carlson, millionaires funded by billionaires. It’s a way of saying they make their fortunes in the multi-billion dollar campaign industry.
How about political consultants? David Axelrod, a key strategist in Barack Obama’s Presidential bid, is worth an estimated $37 Million. Adam Sheingate notes that some consultants have become millionaires on advertising commissions alone. Millionaires funded by billionaires. Look! Here’s an article in Architectural Digest about Mary Matalin and James Carville‘s House Virginia. They’re both consultants and their home can easily accommodate 250 guests. James was the consultant who helped Bill Clinton transform the Democratic Party into the party of Wall Street.
“You are a millionaire funded by billionaires.” -Rutger Bregman
As I’ve noted, an entire ecosystem of players make their very lucrative living within our multi-billion dollar, for-profit election industry. This includes political consultants, pollsters, pundits, think tank fellows, and corporate media personalities. These are rich people. Some lower in the food-chain may not be millionaires, but most of them are solidly in the top 10% of the income distribution. The famous professional-managerial class.
These people don’t need to have their arms twisted to attack the progressive movement. It’s in their personal financial interest to do so. It’s also in their class interest. Like many of us, they live in their own bubble, oblivious to how the other 90% live their lives. Not surprisingly, they frequently exhibit a kind of class blindness. For them, life under the oligarchy isn’t so bad. They have good health insurance. If they have student debt they can afford to pay it off. Deaths of despair, the suicide epidemic, and the opioid crisis might register, but they don’t see how any of it connects to economic inequality.
These well-manicured human capitals simply don’t understand popular movement politics. They think a bi-partisan neoliberal consensus enforced by oligarchs in a duopoly reflects the “fact” that the vast majority of the electorate must love status quo “centrism.” After all, why else, then, would they keep voting for it over and over again? Well, except in 2016. They still haven’t come to terms with the fact that an off-the-map candidate like Donald Trump beat status quo centrist par excellence Hillary Clinton, and that this defeat flies in the face of their unreflected assumptions about the popularity of a status quo that’s working for them. Unsurprisingly they have no idea what to make of Bernie Sanders and the “rude” and “toxic” multi-racial working class army who’ve selected him as the current leader of their movement.
Perhaps one day soon they’ll take up an interest in democracy.
