It is clear by now that the Democrat Party apparatchiks follow the iron rule of institutions, which claims that the power elite in an institution is first and foremost concerned with protecting its own power within the institution than with protecting the power of that institution vis a vis other institutions. The DP apparatchiks would rather have Democrats lose the 2016 election than lose their power within the DP. The party bosses may ruin the DP as a national party as long as they control the ruins.
This is, of course, not an exclusive domain of the DP. Republicans are not much different. You can read about it herehttp://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html So what is to be done about it?
We may accept being "buried alive" by the two party system, as Walter Karp, who recognized this fundamental structural problem of the US politics, aptly dubbed it. Or we may refuse being "buried alive" by party bosses and to "break that integument asunder." How? By making the two party system unusable to those who have vested interests in it.
The role of political parties in general, and especially in the US, is to act as intermediaries to obtain government services, aka selling political patronage. This is of course nothing new or controversial. George Washington acknowledge this is his farewell addresshttp://www.earlyamerica.com/m…/washingtons-farewell-address/. So do the leaders of the French Revolution who passed the Le Chapelier Law in 1791 that effectively banned any "intermediate institutions" between citizens and government (it also abolished the right to strike, but that is another story). However, in the US the patronage peddling role of political parties has been elevated to an unprecedented level by the byzantine legal system full of loopholes and complicated institutional architecture, created by the very same parties. Navigating this byzantine system to obtain government services of any kind is extremely difficult to begin with and made even more difficult by constant tweaking and changes thrown in by both parties. Obamacare is the latest example of it.
While this byzantine architecture and constant shifting may appear as irrational inefficiency - it is anything but that. Its role is to make political parties indispensable for private parties - be it special business interests or broad segments of the general public - to obtain any government services - from sweetheart deals and lucrative contracts to basic services such as water supply or roads. In short, to make peddling political protection and patronage indispensable to anyone who want to obtain government services for which we all pay by our taxes. And it fulfills that role with iron efficiency. This political protection and patronage racket places the US among Third World countries where such practices are common, cf. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari aka. Mr. 10 percent.
This political protection and patronage system will remain in place as long as the two parties remain indispensable for delivering government services. For businesses, this patronage system is simply the cost of doing business which can be passed on consumers, but the general public gets the short end of the stick in the form inflated prices and shortage of government services, as they generally cannot afford to buy a politician. The "New Deal" was an attempt to make this patronage system to work for the general public, but this has been effectively killed by neoliberalism.
However, cracks start to appear in this protection and patronage system. Those cracks first appeared on the Republican side as the republicans decided to sabotage Obama presidency at any cost by slowing down government operations if not bringing to a standstill. Internal fissures within the Republican party followed. For a while, Democrats appeared to by unified and ready for the coronation of HRC for the next POTUS, but then Bernie came along and cracks within the DP party structure started to appear as well.
Those cracks on both sides of the partisan divide may be bad for party bosses, but they are good for everyone else because they create an opportunity for breaking lose from the bipartisan graveyard. The within- and between-party fighting greatly reduces both party capacity to act as intermediaries and patrons in delivering government services. General public has already suffered from that diminished patronage capacity, as demonstrated for example by the drinking water crisis in Flint and elsewhere, but the businesses still can buy that patronage.
This is why further diminishing of the bipartisan patronage is essential at this point. If the current lopsided status quo of bipartisan patronage for business and doing nothing for the public persists, we will indeed be "buried alive" as Walter Karp quipped. But if the system becomes balanced by diminishing its capacity to deliver business patronage, it will lose it raison d'être and will become the integument for business as well. In this situation, the interests of business and general public will coincide and may start working to burst that integument asunder.
This is why keeping Bernie's bid for presidency is of critical importance. There is little doubt in my mind that Bernie will fail to deliver any of his main campaign promises - breaking up big banks or expanding universal social services. The dark forces conspiring against these reforms are simply too strong at this time. However, Bernie's attempts to bring these reforms will impede the bipartisan capacity to sell political patronage to business and by so doing it will diminish the utility of that system to the business community as well.
This is probably a unique window of opportunity to break the bipartisan system, because the cracks seem to appear on both sides of the partisan divide and the system has already lost its capacity to deliver government services to the general public. Obamacare was probably the last hurrah of the latter, and ended up with a whimper.
So my dear American friends and family - please do not waste that opportunity. Do not settle for business as usual, because if you do, you will surely be "buried alive". Supporting Bernie is the only hope of digging out of this bipartisan grave. Please keep his bid alive by donating to his campaign. Go to Bernie Sanders website and donate $15 or $25, which you can surely afford. This is perhaps the best investment opportunity that you have at the moment, far more promising than keeping your money in the bank, stocks, or for that matter, the mattress (at least the mattress will not eat your investment).
Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal, I urge you bet whether Bernie will succeed or not. If he does not, you do not lose much - the cost of a lunch or a Valentine's Day dinner at most. After all, you have already lost whatever government of this country has to offer. But if he wins - and all that it takes him to win is to diminish the system's capacity to deliver political patronage to business - you and the great majority of the American public will win a priceless opportunity to free the country from the 19th century political patronage system and bring it up to the 21st century.
