A perfect storm of politics

Okay, skim down for links to weightier postings by some big thinkers about U.S. politics.  But if you have the patience for some ... er... unusual insights, start here.

First -- this piece of lovely satire by Andy Borowitz about how, completely aside from any policy or cultural issue, the victory of Ted Cruz in Iowa has given heart to America's most despised minority -- Nasty Folks who are hated by their peers:  

"In the wake of the Iowa caucuses, America’s most unlikeable people were lighting up Facebook with comments in praise of Cruz, bursting with pride that one of their own - the despicably unpleasant and deservedly friendless - had a legitimate shot at the White House."  Ha.

Turning more serious, here's a political weird-thought of the week: There has been a perfect storm striking the re-ignited Confederacy -- formerly called the Republican Party.

1- The oil price plunge has hurt the secret masters of the GOP, sapping their eagerness to spend.

2- Meanwhile the PAC putsch -- attempting to buy American democracy -- has run into a wall. Vast sums did nothing to reverse the plummet of Jeb Bush, nor has cash had much visible effect on other races.  Sure, big retail states like Florida may bring money back to the fore.  Still, what's an oligarch to do? What has come of America when elections are getting harder to buy?

3- Prediction.  We will very soon discover that much of that secret-master PAC money has shifted to social media.  For example, many of the angriest-sounding, most vehemently anti-Clinton folks on the Sanders sites - especially anon or pseudonymous folks - will be found to be agents provocateurs - (look up the term) - under pay to drive wedges through the Democratic coalition. 

What? You think there’s any way on Earth that’s not true, at least in some large fraction of cases? What would you do, if you were David Koch?

It won’t work.  Sanders himself will staunch that, knowing that “it’s the Supreme Court, stupid.” He's already made clear that he and Secretary Clinton will each come down hard on any of their supporters who don't, later, converge behind the nominee.

Still, my advice to emotional Sandersites is this: Fight for Bernie! But don't be like the irrationally sanctimonious Baby Boomers. Be logical and positive, then kiss and make up, whoever wins the nom. And if your blood is still up, then turn youthful vigor to your local state assembly race, where one more volunteer could wreak a seismically important shift! And where the candidate will know you by name.

4- Okay, okay, there are some old fart boomers doing the same damn thing. Madeleine Albright made the amazing statement that "there's a special kind of hell" for women who don't support Clinton, and Gloria Steinem managed to top that, telling the press that young women supporting Sanders where "just doing it to please the boys." Argh, such arrogance. Well, well. These are fools, part of a foolishly emotional generation. But certainly not on the payroll of any Koch PAC. 

Geez get it through your heads, boomers. This is no longer about you.

5- Wild card Donald Trump has been especially hard on the republican establishment, hammering Roger Ailes's Fox News -- the Murdoch-Saudi, Confederacy-rousing, poison machine. Their formula worked for years, stirring populist fury among lower middle class whites, using immigrants, scientists, teachers and all other "smartypants elites" as objects of ire, in order to distract from growing wealth disparity.  But working class whites can only be diverted this way for so long, without one of two things happening:

 -- The first possible outcome – that we saw tragically happen in Germany, 80 years ago, will be if this fervid, right wing populism stampedes even farther into crazy land, yanking the reins out of Roger Ailes's hands, much the way Junkers lords found the horse they had spurred into a froth running away with them, toward a cliff. You reap what you sow. 

Or else --

-- or else many in the tea party activist wing might (just might) start to remember their parents in the Greatest Generation. Heroes who overcame the Depression and Hitler and Stalin and built those halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s that non-college white Americans so yearn for -- days of mighty capitalist entrepreneurship that happened under high, Rooseveltean tax rates. And those working class whites may start to wonder:

"Say… did my folks know something, about class struggle, that I don't know? Like suspicion of oligarchy? And why should I keep drinking koolaid offered by oligarchs?" 

What happens to the Murdoch-Saudi game plan when white boomers ponder that Greatest Generation, and remember that their parents' favorite living human was Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

6- Hence my final weird fantasy. Only a science fiction author would or could concoct this one.  And to be clear I do not favor this weird thing!

And yet there is a scenario for some populists out there to start pushing it. A nascent, super-populist movement for TRUMP-SANDERS... or else SANDERS-TRUMP.  

Sound insane?  Of course it is! But Robert Heinlein predicted America would pass through "The Crazy Years."  Anyway, the more you ponder the wild idea, the more likely it seems that someone – somewhere on our populist-frothing internet - will raise a banner.

== Are there "cycles" to politics? ==

Jonathan Rauch notes the rule of 14 -- "No one gets elected president who needs longer than 14 years to get from his or her first gubernatorial or Senate victory to either the presidency or the vice presidency" -- may be coming to an end. Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate 16 years ago. Jeb Bush to his governorship18 years ago. 

On the other hand, many of this year's leading candidates have little or no political or military experience. A reflection of an underlying public preference for presidents who are battle-tested but not battle-weary, experienced enough to know their way around but fresh enough to bring new energy to the job. 

See a chart from The Atlantic that shows the experience level of presidential winners and losers from 1960 to 2012. Starting in 1996, the candidate with more experience begins consistently losing. Moreover, as the trend lines show, the inexperience premium has increased over time.   

Two generations ago, James Q. Wilson wrote in The Amateur Democrat that political amateurs who were unyielding in their righteousness had begun supplanting political professionals who were willing to make deals and compromise. The ascendency of amateurism, he predicted, would cause social friction and governmental gridlock: 'Political conflict will be intensified, social cleavages will be exaggerated, party leaders will tend to be men skilled in the rhetorical arts, and the party's ability to produce agreement by trading issue-free resources will be reduced.'

Time to shrug off the boomers’ self-indulgent trips and snap out of this.