Professional wrestling and Congress

When I say that politics in America today are like professional wrestling, this is what I meant.

This week even D.C insider Matt Stoller, former policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, has gone public with the theme in a comment he posted at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog.  What he said is not uncommon, but as Yves points out, it’s important because he’s a well-known D.C. insider.

Citing Jimmy Carter’s administration as the beginning of Democratic elites ‘financializing the economy’ and ‘breaking public sector unions’ (deregulating the airline industry), Stoller continues:

“Obama continues this trend. It isn’t that he’s not fighting; he fights like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama flirted with Bernie’s potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants policies that cement the status of a[n] aristocratic class, with crumbs for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.

There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals want to talk about. It’s a good strategy, it’s just you are the one the strategy is being played on.

A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.” [snip]  (bold mine)

GeorgeWashington’s blog yesterday repeated Bernanke’s statement that the Fed will not help failing states and cities with loans, while continuing to throw massive amounts of money at the Big Banks, both overtly and covertly.  The list and amounts add up to an obscenity.

What would be nice would be to find people on the Right who actually understand what is actually happening. But they don't. The Right is effectively under the spell of magical thinking. One could point to the "trickle-down" theory of economics as a shift in political thinking that has undermined the logic of the Right. And it's true that much of the shift of the nation's wealth to the wealthiest has required increasing magical thinking in order to justify the status quo. More scapegoats are needed. People of color. Sexual minorities. Religious minorities. More blood libel. More bombs at parades. More union-bashing. More public employee-bashing.

This is the future of America. The Left, left without a true choice to vote for, the Right, further disconnected from reality. And, of course, it's not even Left v. Right. It's top versus bottom, but discussing that would be class warfare. And that's not allowed to be discussed.