What's Wrong With the Democratic Party?

We've all been wondering "What the hell?". The party leadership has lost its mind and made rules that reward state party loyalty more important than the actual will of the voters. But that is just recently. The real downfall of the party started with Bill Clinton's election, and it wasn't Bill that was the problem.

First, a few bits of political theory.

Once upon a time there was a German-ish protege of Max Weber named Michel. Michel formulated a theory based on bureaucracy called Michel's Iron Law of Oligarchy. It states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies.

But how, and why?

Even democracies are stratified. There is a top and a bottom. People with power like to keep it. In monarchies, they keep it through heredity. In democracies, they use bureaucratic rules, rules designed to make changing the power structure very difficult. (I can't remember who said it, but a professor was fond of quoting "I like democracy. I think we should rotate elites periodically")This is why it is so hard to pass public campaign funding.

So when Bill was first elected, there were a lot of old party Dems who were shocked, shocked that this yahoo from Arkansas managed to get to the highest office when their best and brightest had failed over and over and over and over. You might remember that the Dems in congress did such a lackluster job and fought Clinton on damn near everything in his first two years, that they lost the House for the first time in 40 years to Newt Gingrich of all people.

And then Clinton, despite sex scandals, congressional investigations, and even a law suit, managed to be easily re-elected while the Rethuglikans held onto the House.

And the old school Dems seethed. Bill (and Hillary) are populists. You know what populists do, they work for the people. You know what party elites do? Work for themselves.

So Gore ran in 2000 and didn't use the most popular president in decades in his campaign. Now I liked Gore, still do. But he still represents the old party elite, even coming from a famously political family.

And Gore lost. And then in 2002, the Dems lost the Senate.

Now rather than acknowledge that perhaps the "Liberal Elite" label might be turning off their working class base, the Dems clung to it. Fortunately for them, by 2006 Bush had done such a piss poor job of running the country that the people voted Dems back into power.

But nothing got better. The Dems are still happy with their elitist status and can't for a second imagine that it wasn't their strength but Rethuglikan weakness that gave them another chance. Since taking back power they have not: fixed the CHIP program, ended or defunded the Iraq war, done a damn thing on healthcare, or the economy, or the mortgage crisis, or No Child Left Behind, or oil prices, or product safety.

So the Whole Foods side of the Democratic party thinks they have won out over those damn populist hicks, the Clintons.

And, as per the Iron Law of Oligarchy, they are using the bureaucratic means of the Rules and Bylaws Committee to keep power. They would rather lose the next election to John McCain and keep their own power structure than see a populist like Clinton legitimize white southern democrats, Reagan democrats, and anybody else that the elites have been trying to write off since the Republicans put the Southern Strategy in place.

They truly believe that with the arugala eaters, and (notoriously lazy in their voting habits) college students and an African American populace that hasn't been promised a damn thing but really wants to see one of their own make it, that they can cut off the rest of us from influence and power- AND STILL WIN. HA!

That plan hasn't worked yet (See Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, Humphrey)but it has let the party elite pretend to the moral and/or intellectual high ground.

People, actual people, the people that make up this country, and their votes are more important than maintaining the power structure of the Democratic party. Hillary knows that. She's worked towards enfranchising more voters her entire political life. (And let's not forget the Bill is the reason for the Motor Voter Act).

When the Democratic party starts acting like the Rethuglikans over voters, then the Democratic party has succumbed to the Iron Rule of Oligarchy. And like my favorite president, Jefferson, said (paraphrased, natch) You need a revolution to keep the powers that be from becoming entrenched.

The party elites have made clear the party is no longer the Big Tent party. No working class whites, no Latinos, no women, no Asians, no poor, no uneducated, no southerners. No Michigan, no Florida. No popular vote count.

And that is a hell of a lot of people to start a revolution.