Political Fiction
April 15, 2016 | |
David R. Kotok
Chairman and Chief Investment Officer
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“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.” – H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Fast-forward to the end of this summer.
Conventions have been held and nominees selected. Now let’s play out a bizarre fiction.
Americans wake up to a headline: “Sanders and Trump Form a Third Political Party.” Politico breaks the news first with the help of an insider leak. CNN throws it up on “Breaking News” at once. The New York Times blazes the headline across its front page, adding, “History of third parties starts on page A 26.” The Wall Street Journal reports a mixed market reaction. A bewildered Rachel Maddow is speechless for the first time in her life. Rush Limbaugh says “It’s about time.” Roger Ailes offers to sponsor a three-party debate.
The new Sanders-Trump party is called New Rules and has a single idea in its platform: they want a new Constitution and are calling for a constitutional convention in order to change the present system. The Sanders-Trump campaign has successfully filed in nearly all 50 states. Those states that are trying to block them are in litigation, which will assuredly go to the four-vs.-four split Supreme Court for a decision.
Sanders outpolled Clinton in primary votes cast but lost at the convention due to the superdelegates who put Hillary over the top. Sanders not only won more primary votes than Clinton but also had more elected delegates. He actually won California. But Clinton’s 400 superdelegates buried him.
Trump came close but never reached the magic number. On the fourth convention ballot, Cruz squeaked through with a majority of delegates and emerged with a 3 AM victory. Forty-two percent of the delegates still favored Trump and angrily walked off the convention floor. Like Sanders, Trump had tallied the highest number of actual primary votes and had the largest number of delegates pledged on the first ballot – but not enough to lock the convention. The establishment Republicans mounted a fierce, desperate, and well-organized insider campaign and succeeded in derailing the Donald.
But both Trump and Sanders had planned fallback strategies and were already prepared to run as independents. However, each knew he could not succeed on his own. So they did the only rational thing. They joined forces.
There was precious little commonality between the two, but they managed to find some. For starters, both wanted to throw out the establishment. Their supporters did, too. Their only chance was to fight their revolution together. Sanders had marshaled millions of activist voters and small contributors. Trump, too, had a large, loud, loyal band that felt it had been robbed by the insider barons. And Trump had money.
On policy matters they set aside their differences. Donald asked Bernie to redefine billionaire at $2.4 billion, which happened to be the net worth of candidate Trump. Bernie agreed since that was the inflation-indexed definition of billionaire at the time Bernie entered public service in 1980. Thus the businessman struck a deal with the socialist.
Initial polls showed that 55% of those Americans intending to vote would favor this improbable coalition against the Republican and Democrat establishments. “We are sick and tired of the professional politicians!” said one Trump supporter. A Sanders supporter agreed, “Enough is enough” she said, “Winnie the Pooh was right: We're braver than we believe, and stronger than we seem, and smarter than we think. And we must wake up and stop being mutilated by these liars. We need to toss out all the professional politicians and lobbyists and start over.”
Sanders and Trump invoked the message of an historic figure, a writer who for half a century had been an acerbic critic of America politics: H. L. Mencken.
Mencken wrote when an ink pen was applied to paper, and folks read that ink. He was a widely known commentator in the first half of the 20th century. He was once asked why he never contributed to any political campaign and didn’t choose to register or vote for anyone. He explained, “I don’t want to encourage them.”
In those days of a locked-down two-party system, political protest was largely passive – but active in a literary way.
In the present era protest has been energized, with instant social media empowering new participants. In 2016, enough folks are angry enough to act. So what will the Trump minions and the Sanders supporters do when the establishment R and D insiders prevail?
Sanders and Trump have captured massive support, and it is deepening and may, just may, lead to some change.
Now, fiction is only fiction. The scenario above is outrageous. But is it entirely improbable? Should voters see the will of the people utterly violated by the machinations of the Republican and Democratic party establishments, will they find another way to turn this country back into the democratic republic its founders designed it to be?
Fwd by Glen Brink, theleadership.info |
