Republican feudalists and the Democratic status machine
Neither of these factions are political parties in the ordinary sense.
The White House hosted a holiday party earlier this week for Democratic Twitter influencers, and the platform is now overrun with selfies from the event. Usually I try not to get too worked up over this sort of thing, because it’s like getting mad when the sun sets: sycophantic clout-chasers enjoying an absurd level of prestige and political access is just how our world works. Nevertheless, this episode was unusually crass even by modern standards. Donald Trump stands at the gates of DC with a faction of radicals poised to destroy the welfare state and privatize as much of the government as they possible can; the Democratic Party seems content to just run down the clock and quietly step aside; and meanwhile, everyone who aided and abetted this disaster is living their best life.
The whole affair seems like a metaphor for the contemporary state of party politics in our country. I won’t be the first to point out that the modern Republican Party is not operating like a party in the ordinary liberal democratic sense: it is openly contemptuous of democracy and pluralism, sees the norms and procedures that have long defined American politics as obstacles and gameable rules, and seems increasingly disinterested in maintaining a viable capitalist marketplace. But the Democratic Party, in 2024, hardly operates like an ordinary party either. Sometimes it acts like a royal court organized around the naked pursuit of status, with position determined through some combination of seniority, connections, and socioeconomic privilege. Other times it operates as as an elaborate multilevel marketing scheme: the product is the illusion that you are Fighting Fascism, the marketers are tier after tier of consultants, party insiders and campaign staffers, and Kamala Harris is standing at the top.
All of this only has a distant, indirect relationship with the actual business of governing. And that’s increasingly an afterthought for the party, which is why we see things like Chuck Schumer handing Trump four appellate judges so that he can get to bed on time.
Capital, it turns out, doesn’t really need Democrats to be a functional opposition party. What capital needs right now is for the country’s educated upper-middle class to be pacified so that it doesn’t rebel against the ruling class’s ongoing consolidation of power. And the Democratic Party is proving perfect for that role. It provides its base with constant infotainment throughout the year; it gives them all kinds of busywork when campaign time comes around; and for the most ambitious among them, it provides a whole byzantine apparatus of nonprofits and party positions for them to work their way through. More than anything it gives them the illusion that they are doing something. No need to resort to conspiracy theory here about how this is all deliberate; it’s enough to point out that this is how the modern Democratic Party is functioning.
The effect of all of this is that the Republican Party is going to spend the next two years beelining towards feudalism while the Democrats work out the invitation list for their next Resistance Cocktail Party. It’s a completely hopeless situation for workers, which is why I have a hard time begrudging them anything they want to do to protect themselves. Want to try to take over the Democratic Party from within? Sure, why not. Want to vote for Jill Stein or Claudia de la Cruz? Might as well. Want to stay home and spend as much precious time with your family as you can before you’re working 80 hour weeks on a regular basis? It’s your life.
The most plausible road to change, it seems to me, will come when the interests of the bourgeoisie start to diverge again and one faction decides to start using the Democratic Party to advance its agenda. It’s when capital starts infighting and one faction turns to the working class for support that workers have historically made the modest gains they’ve made in this country. For now, however, there’s a reason why so many billionaires are rallying around the GOP: they’re all on the same page. And for the rest of us, that’s extremely grim news.
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