Duopoly Disintegration

Democratic politics in big industrial oligarchies like the United States is a game of manipulating public ignorance. Republicans electorally feast on fear -- fear that big government is going to rob you blind or make you live with black people or round you up in an internment camp. Democrats peddle hope as well as fear -- hope that wars of choice will not be embarked upon, that jobs will be created, that government will be administered fairly. For both branches of the duopoly to function effectively, public ignorance needs to be not only dominant but ascendant.

Barack Obama convinced a lot of Democrats that it was no longer so irrational to hope that the duopoly might actually be able to address some of its systemic woes -- income inequality, unemployment, wage stagnation, climate change, militarism, etc. What is happening now is a significant number of people (one might say the critical strata of the Democratic Party electoral base) are waking up to the realization that it was irrational to believe that Obama represented a break with the past and a possibility of renewal.

Obama's appeal has always been his ability to seem as if he was speaking honestly. His supporters could point to Republican obstructionism to explain why his deeds never matched his words. But what happens when his words no longer ring true? We're seeing that now, for instance, with his lie-bloated speech yesterday in Brussels. Obama told some whoppers: Kosovo was not precedent for Crimea; Iraq was invaded by working within the international system; and the United States did not conspire with fascists to topple the elected government of Ukraine. All lies, and acknowledged as such by people who pay attention to the issues.

But Obama isn't playing to people who pay attention; he's cutting against the grain of his appeal -- the intellectual truth teller -- to bang the drum of public ignorance. And it is going to cost him.

Democrats will lose the Senate. Obama, never a tough customer, will spend the last two years in office having to be tough and veto and a lot of bad bills.

The rapid erosion of the Democratic Party as a national electoral force has commenced; hopefully, this will be more than a cyclical phenomenon. Hopefully, the duopoly will begin to disintegrate.