MIGHT THIS TIME BE DIFFERENT?

LAST MINUTE ELECTION REFLECTION

As I noted in a recent post, while cultural change is necessary to a populist challenge of the managerial class, it is not sufficient. Political change is required to shelter and nurture cultural change. So that brings us to questions surrounding today’s U.S. mid-term elections. I, like so many of the rest of you (I’m sure), have long expressed the opinion that the two-party system is a scam in which they engage in a bit of kabuki theater. In Schmittian terms, the parties are rivals pretending to be enemies. Are the Yankees and the Red Sox enemies, or friendly rivals who need each other as formal opponents required to mount the spectacle through which they rake in their multi-million-dollar contracts? Same kind of thing with the two-party oligarchy.

The pressing question is whether this time might be different. Of course, there are always agents of the two parties telling us just that: the future of the country/democracy/civilization hinges on this election, etc., and so on, blah, blah, yada yada. But just because they always say it, doesn’t mean it can never be true. I’m guessing a lot of people are looking at this election through the lens of the unprecedented COVID regime – with its massive fear-mongering psyops and authoritarian public health policy. I’ve discussed the implications arising from all this elsewhere (see here, here, here, and here) so I won’t rehearse it all once again. Clearly, though, for many people it’s impossible not to look at these elections through the lens of the COVID regime, and what the latter threatens going into the future. In many (most?) places, the emergency decrees have not been lifted, and the technical infrastructure for enforcing authoritarian measures remains in place.

Add to that the apparent effort to crash Western economies: e.g., insanely reckless COVID-related spending; suppressing energy production; in the face of souring inflation, pouring breath-taking sums of money into a proxy war with Russia; and imposing ostensible sanctions on Russia, which have, in fact, produced conditions of massive shortage and hardship in the Western countries. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that this proxy war brings nuclear powers to the brink of open conflict – not in distant Vietnam or Afghanistan, but – in the heart of Europe.

One must be alert to the risk posed by self-centered historical narcissism: always thinking we’re the ones living in special times. But, again, it’s likewise important not to make the mistake of assuming just because such historical narcissism is common that one therefore can’t be living in special times. But, even if we are, the earlier question still rears its head: so, what? Even if the GOP wins in a landslide, what reason is there to believe they won’t simply provide the regime cover like they always have? Isn’t that what the out of power party has always done once it got back into power – at least in our lifetime?

Fair enough, but if we really are facing unique historical circumstances, it might be true that we could see unexpected developments from the electoral process. The obvious thing which might provide hope for such developments, of course (in keeping with the themes of this substack) is the populist insurgency which has been taking place within the GOP. This latest wave of American populism, contrary to what many think, did not magically appear with Donald Trump.

Arguably the current populist wave goes back to the 1960-70s, then coopted by the Reagan Revolution of the 80s. It burst out again in the 90s, fueling the campaigns of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. But it was again coopted, this time under the banner of patriotism, following the 9/11 attacks. However, following the financial crisis of 2008, and with a growing discontent about how the 9/11 attacks had been leveraged for the American war machine, the populist insurgency swelled up again – likely in many circles believing that in the rhetoric of Obama they’d found a champion. That turned out to be untrue. When Bernie Sanders proved incapable of providing the champion they sought, the populists finally turned to the unlikely champion of Donald Trump.

And, of course, that didn’t work out either. Or so it seemed at the time. Whether one believes Trump was controlled-opposition (artificial negativity, as long-time readers will resonate), incompetent, naïve, whatever: far from taking down the managerial class regime, against which the populists are fighting, it was that regime which almost entirely contained, coopted, corrupted, and crushed Trump’s fledgling populist-ish administration.

So, considering this long list of frustration and false prophets, it’s perfectly reasonable to doubt that anything different will come of the current mid-terms. In fact, I’ll go further than that; I’ll say that that would be the wager of the smart money. Anyone betting that the current edition of the GOP will hold serious inquiries into the abuses of the COVID regime, resulting in at least formal censure, if not criminal charges; will refuse to continue financially fueling the Ukraine fiasco; or will pursue a substantial rolling back of the administrative state, with its bureaucratic paternalism, social engineering, and managerial liberalism, will be playing the longshot.

Still, having acknowledged all that, I do believe that – as long a shot as it may be – there are still grounds for a sound belief that this time indeed could be different. This is because of the specific facts involved in the current takeover of the GOP by the populists. I’ll point to two dynamics in the current situation which may make a difference: the candidates and the grassroots organization.

The Candidates

My reading of the situation – based entirely of course on the work of others – is that on the one hand, most leadership, donors, and very many officials (elected and otherwise) within the GOP remain old-school, friendly rivals of the DNC and apparatchiks of the managerial class; though, on the other hand, the membership base of the party indeed has been largely taken over by the populist insurgency. This was reflected in the astounding primary successes of the populist identified candidates – not restricted to but including most (not all) of those endorsed by Trump. Some of those candidates obviously only give lip-service to populist ideals and it’s likely that even some who seem more authentic will ultimately prove to be disappointing to the populists.

However, I’m thinking that there are going to be some that will be more reliable allies of the populist cause. Yes, many of them are managerial class members to the core, but as I’ve frequently emphasized on this substack (see here, here, here, and here) political change arises from an alliance between mass popular movements and rebel factions of the ruling class (or, less often, members of newly emergent, aspiring ruling classes). And, while such alliances can be purely cynical, they can be the product of a sincerely held common set of values.

In this case, they really may be nationalists, wanting to preserve their nation-state against the relentless erosion of national sovereignty endemic in the agenda of the globalist faction of the ruling managerial class. And if it’s true that our perception of facing uniquely dangerous circumstances is not mere historical narcissism, but an accurate evaluation of the world condition, the stakes could be high enough that managerial class rebels may have concluded that they have more to lose by not striking at the empire, than they have by just lying low and hoping for the crisis to blow over.

Therefore, I do think there’s a real prospect that this electoral cycle there may well be more candidates who will be willing to step outside of the conventional mold and run the risk of challenging the ruling faction of their class. And have no delusions; it is a major risk for them. The recent mobilization of mass super-legality against populist leaders (Flynn, Stone, Jones, Bannon, Trump, just to cite the more high-profile examples) gives us a hint of what could come their way should their strike at the king not be sufficiently fatal.

To be clear, certainly, at this point, such candidates, even if they were all elected, would be still a minority within either house of Congress. It’s not clear though whether a majority is needed to have a powerful impact. Enough elected officials from either party are careerist and opportunist enough that a sufficient critical mass of clear-eyed leadership could sway them into falling in behind the populist banner. So, I do hold out some hope that the candidates this time around may prove to be different. However, at the end of the day, I put less stock in this dynamic than in the second I’ve identified.

Grassroots Organization

Whatever you think about the legal and constitutional legitimacy of the 2020 election, what matters is that tens of millions of Americans believed that – one way or another – the electoral process was corrupted. However, even though, for those who believe such, it would constitute a historically unprecedent-level of political corruption, the popular response – contrary to what might have been expected – was not pervasive cynicism and quietism. It would have been so easy to simply write-off the electoral process as irredeemably corrupt and a waste of one’s time and energy.

Instead, though, a remarkable upsurge of grassroots organization was the populist response to the 2020 experience. A host of new organizations emerged, and some older ones repurposed, among other things, to encourage and facilitate the training and mobilization of election workers, poll watchers, and drop box observers. (And that’s to say nothing of the massive parental rights/educational reform groups working at the the school board level.) The logic was that such an election steal only could be possible if there weren’t enough eyes watching to catch and document the illicit behavior.

Whether that’s true, I suppose we’ll see. What I want to emphasize here though is a different point. The business-as-usual election scenario is that the disgruntled citizens come and vote. Once the election is over, the electorate/citizenry dissolves back into monadic individuals, going about their daily personal business. The elected politicians are then more or less free to go about their business consistent with however the wind blows and in response to the standard pressures at work in the business of government. So, once the electorate has had its say, the party leadership and lobbyists direct the real course of governance. Even if all the promisingly populist candidates turn out to be less worthy than I’m anticipating, I doubt very much this business-as-usual scenario will be so easily mobilized this time.

I say this both because, given the unprecedent stakes, and widely perceived necessity to bring about a reckoning for the abuses and injuries resulting from the COVID regime and the 2020 elections, at least, the populist citizens aren’t simply going to go home and stop paying attention. A tremendous amount of attention and pressure will be applied to this Congress – especially if the GOP wins both houses – to take substantive action in realizing that reckoning. Anything that falls short – perceived as mere window dressing or whitewashing – far from being greeted with apathetic resignation will be greeted with angry demands for substantive action.

And the second reason for doubting even a cynical, careerist Congress will be able to get away with business-as-usual governance is precisely these impressive networks of populist organization which have been formed to ensure the legitimacy of the election. Such networks are subject to dynamic pressures; they could be easily repurposed from electoral integrity enforcement to mandate delivery enforcement. They may not currently have recall mechanisms at their disposal (though such is a long time objective of North American populism), but through their organization and pervasive popular influence they could make life miserable for any candidate they supported and whom they believe betrayed their electoral mandate. They’ve already demonstrated their popular power during the primaries. I don’t think these populist, grassroots organizations are going to dissolve right after the election, and if they do not, they can be expected to play a powerful oversight and enforcement role in the forthcoming Congress.

So, yes, for all the good reasons everyone is well familiar with, it makes plenty enough sense, as a default position, to dismiss the potential for electoral politics to contribute to any dramatic or substantial change. At the same time, I do think there are enough differences in the present circumstances that this time could provide an unusual, reasonably unexpected, outlier outcome. But those pieces are now all in place. All that is left is the election, and fascinating aftermath that seems likely to unfold in 2023.