Monday, August 22, 2011

Sort of political Monday

What will happen to the Democrats?
A while ago I commented on the fate of the west's big "centrist" parties. These were parties that functioned, as I quoted Doug Saunders,
as the paternal overlords of protected, closed national economies, engaging in brokerage politics whereby the fruits of growth could be spread out among clients and beneficiaries on the left and right. The big political parties were like family heirlooms, their loyalties kept for life and passed on between generations – badges of personal identity, like Ford and Chevy, Coke and Pepsi, Apple and Microsoft. Membership had its benefits. 
If parties that worked on brokerage model are in decline all over the western world, what will happen to the Democratic Party? For if any party anywhere practices that sort of brokerage politics, it is the Democrats. Surely then, that party should be in trouble?

Part of the answer is a simple, Yes, they are in trouble. But that is not good enough for, although the signs of strain and decline are there, the party is doing much better than its other western counterparts. So far anyway. Why?

One thing the Democrats have in their favour is that the USA has a two party system to a greater degree than other western countries. As I noted in my previous post on these big "centrist" parties, they are all really incrementally leftist parties. As such, they had to worry about being undermined by attacks on their left flank by parties that were unelectable but still capable of exercising some power because of parliamentary arrangements. One of the ironies of the American system is that party discipline is exceptionally loose in Congress and, consequently, even if a minority third party did come into existence, it could have no real power as a party in the Congressional negotiations. The two parties do have to worry about third party candidates at the presidential level but these pose no threat at the congressional level. The individual members of this hypothetical third party would have much more leverage to negotiate their support as individuals than the party would have as a whole.

The really interesting thing that has happened in the United States, is that the internal workings of the two parties are much more evident. Again, as I have said previously, centrism is only a marketing position for parties such as the Democrats. They are really incrementally leftist. They don't have radical leftist goals but they are always moving to the left and are, for all intents and purposes, "go-slow socialists". Because of their "centrist" marketing approach, however, they all end up with some elected representatives who are not on board ideologically and these people need to be appeased and bought off to obtain any party discipline at all. In a Congress where the leadership has limited means to beat representatives into submission, however, these negotiations are far more open than what the brokerage parties in other western nations have done. (On paper a prime minister has far less power than a president, but he can make individual elected members from his own party cower in ways that an American president couldn't dream of.)

If you compare this with Canada's Liberal party—which is also a party whose leaders are incremental leftists—you can see that the Liberals can (or could until recently) almost always sweep the dissent under the rug. They have to negotiate and bribe and threaten too (for that is what brokerage politics is) but they can usually do this behind closed doors. The way Congress works, this negotiating is always evident no matter how hard leaders and members try to conceal what they are doing. The net effect of this is that a lot of the disdain that brokerage politics has attracted in other western countries has been channeled into a disdain for Congress as a whole in the USA.

All that said, I think the Democrats face a stark choice and you can see it if you consider the fate of the Liberals in Canada. And the cause of this is perhaps the Liberals only political achievement the last twenty years: the Liberals successfully reigned in spending and, along with reigning in spending, they changed campaign finance laws in such a way as to make it impossible for large donors to achieve any kind of quid pro quo. That is the thing that they achieved that none of the other brokerage parties achieved. But they paid a huge price for this undeniably positive achievement.

For what they have done is to take away their own power to dispense largesse to loyal supporters in return for being elected. Local bosses, leaders in the ethnic communities, community organizers and business people in government-favoured sectors no longer offer their support in return for considerations when it comes to brokering out. In that environment, the more ideologically driven parties have thrived. And the Liberals may very well follow suit as a faction within the party that would replace brokerage politics with ideology is challenging the old wheelers and dealers for hegemony within the party.

To take only three examples, imagine the effect on the Democrats if they removed their own ability to cut deals with union leaders, trial lawyers and heavily regulated businesses . Imagine, for example, if campaign finance was reformed such these groups could no longer make the sorts of financial contributions in return for considerations they have in the past and that government spending was better controlled, as it is here in Canada, such that it was much harder to channel government funds to pay these groups back for their support. While such a move make it possible for the Democrats to dump a lot of political positions that are liabilities for them, these are the Democrats three-biggest sources of campaign funds and in-kind help and losing this leverage with them would, severely undermine their ability yo get elected.

But while they may not willingly cut their connections with those three groups, other factors are increasingly making it inevitable. Not just the public at large, but especially the Democrats core constituency of voters, increasingly finds brokerage politics repulsive.

In a lot of ways, these brokerage politics are analogous to the segregation stance the Democrats implicitly and explicitly supported from the end of the civil war to the 1960s. They have very good pragmatic reasons to cling to it in the short run but, in the long run, brokerage politics are untenable. The party will have to go through another convulsion like it did in the 1960s and 1970s and you could argue that it already is doing so.


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