It’s Official: Scientific Study Says We Are an Oligarchy, Not A Democracy

Now Whaddya Gonna Do About It?

By pajoly

Progressive America Rising via DailyKOS

We like to assert that Daily Kos is a reality-based community. At the very least we surely do not deny science. A new study appearing at Princeton's website may test these assumptions for some of us here. For others, it will be grim vindication of what we already know: the United States of America is no longer a democracy, but rather an oligarchy.

The anecdotes are plentiful, from modest gun control proposals that saw 90% public support, to unemployment compensation, to infrastructure spending, to women's rights; where a plurality exists even across party lines, the median public interest seems to hold no sway in policy making. Now science has proven this to be correct:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

Distilled down into simple terms: The U.S.A. is now provably an oligarchy; we are a democracy in name only. DINO, as in dinosaur... As in extinct.... Has the acronym ever been more pathetically poignant?

The authors of this study, which will appear in the Fall issue of of the academic journal Perspective on Politics, are Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University. The findings are shocking, but should surprise none. The progressive website Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/14) today posted an article on the study and pulls this deeply disturbing nugget from the study.

...the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

Since we are not science deniers, we need to do our part to make this report gets the audience it deserves. None here should take comfort in an "I told you so moment," because we are all losers here. Despite the trappings and tradition of a representative democracy, the truth is those are just theatrics. At this point, even the echos of democracy are becoming faint. Spectacles like GOP presidential nominees making the pilgrimage to kiss the ring of King Adelson now happen with full knowledge, the vampires are out of the shadows and discover it's fun in the sun. While satirists rightly lampoon it, media practically celebrates it and the Supreme Court in practice has endorsed it as a victory for the 1st Amendment.

Now that we have science on our side, will we be able to go beyond online outrage? Will the Democratic Party have the courage to fight for the restoration of the public's will?

I'll close with an understated gem from page 24 of the study's published report:

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

The bold is from me. The warning is from science.

Tue Apr 15, 2014 at 12:54 AM PT: I woke to share the blood moon with one of my young daughters, so I thought I'd run through the comments before heading back to bed. I see lots of "well no shit, water is wet" responses. While this is obvious to even casual observers, scientific validation is important as it elevates the discussion and can't be disregarded as mere whining by the 99.9%. It is provides both meat and hammer in the messaging.

Tue Apr 15, 2014 at  6:34 AM PT: I reached out to the authors and received a reply from Ben Page. He hopes their work will be used as part of evidence-based debate and he was pleased the work is gaining wider audience.

Tue Apr 15, 2014 at 12:03 PM PT: A commenter makes note from one of HoundDog's diaries that the data used for this study was drawn from study of public policy 1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002. Did you get that....2002...In other words the closing set of data PRE-dates the years most of us would say were when the oligarchs truly built steam. Think of what's unaccounted for: the Iraq War, OWS, drones and the NSA, Citizen's United and now McCutcheon. One has to think if the last 13 years had also been accessed, the conclusions would be much more dire than even they already are.

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Politics as Strategy, and as Self-Expression

Bill Fletcher: My Frustration with the

Left when It Comes to Electoral Politics

By Bill Fletcher
Progressive America Rising via Organizing Upgrade

I was recently asked to participate on a panel regarding the Left and electoral politics. I declined.  For many people this may seem strange since I have been a very strong proponent of the Left looking at electoral politics strategically.  Well, that is all true but I have encountered a problem and maybe you can help me resolve it.

Most Left “debates” on electoral politics take a very predictable route.  It looks something like this:

Electoral politics will not bring about socialism and freedom. The Democrats have consistently sold us out. They are the party of the rich. The Republicans and the Democrats are two wings of the same evil bird of prey. We need an alternative. Therefore, either:

Abstain from electoral politics and wait till the masses, in their millions rise up against capitalism, or… Create a pure, anti-corporate (if not anti-capitalist) third party right now and start running in elections even if we do not have a snow-ball’s chance in hell of winning.

What I have found striking about this line of thought, and the so-called debates that unfold around it, is that they are actually un-political and lack any sort of concrete analysis.

Let’s be clear so that we do not have a needless exchange.  Electoral politics under democratic capitalism will not result in our freedom.  Second, the Democrats are not the party of the working class.  So, now that we have that out of the way, what do we do?

Electoral politics is a field of struggle.  It is an arena.  On that arena, however, we on the Left can do two things: participate in the struggle for popular power and raise issues that have the possibility of gaining greater attention.  Much of the Left focuses on the latter and ignores the former.  Many who focus on the struggle for power, however, abdicate being Left altogether.  Therein exists the challenge.

Given the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, a concrete analysis of the USA (rather than other countries) means that we have to grapple with what it means that in most elections independent, third party candidacies fail and are viewed as spoilers.  There are certainly historical exceptions, but those exceptions prove the general rule.  This means that a concrete examination of US electoral politics must focus on the notion that a third party movement on the Left will more than likely result from an “insurrection” within the Democratic Party and a major section of its base (with the character of such an “insurrection” being more of a united front rather than a pure, Left challenge).  This is to be counterposed with the idea that such a party arises out of nothing, or to put it in its best case, out of generalized popular discontent.

So, if we on the Left really want to discuss electoral politics we must examine a concrete question: what do we do in the USA given the nature of the electoral system? If your answer is to simply raise the red flag of radicalism to see who salutes, with all due respect, you are not serious about politics; you are stuck in the world of pure ideology.

The larger challenge for the Left in electoral politics is conducting the fight, in and through our mass organizations, for the recognition of the need for an independent, progressive program that represents the interests of the downtrodden and the dispossessed.  We should not start with organization in the abstract, but with program.  We then need to figure out under what conditions we run people within Democratic Party primaries and under what circumstances we run independently.  Always, I should add, recognizing that this is a fight within the context of democratic capitalism for structural reforms, thereby laying the basis for the longer-term struggle for socialism...

…That is, if we are interested in the fight for power rather than just being ‘correct.’ But, alas, it will mean that we will need to get a bit untidy in the alliances we will need to build.

Show me a ‘purist’ revolution and I will show you a bridge that you can buy for almost nothing.

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Photo: Chicago Tabloid

A Referendum
on Obama? .
..And on Us!

By Don Rose
Chicago Observer

A Republican strategist was quoted recently saying if the presidential race is about McCain he loses--if it's about Obama, then McCain has a chance.

That's another way of saying this race is a referendum on Obama. Or, to put it as another friend did, it's Obama's to lose.

Thus far he's winning. But before Obamaniacs or other Dems revel too joyously in the thought, there are two points to remember:

1. It ain't over 'til it's over, four months from now.


2. Obama continues to run substantially worse than the hypothetical generic Democrat, meaning the public has not yet fully made up its mind about him.

Which is to say that if the candidate were, say, John Edwards or any such substantial white guy it would, for all practical purposes, be over right now.

I might add that if Sen. Hillary Clinton were the candidate, the race would be a referendum on her, though the panoply of issues that separate them might be different.

I warned earlier that all polling to date must be taken with large doses of salt, but one pattern has been fairly consistent: Obama's lead has ranged from roughly 4 to 8 points while the generic Democratic vote this time around ranges from 10 to 12.

Democrats hold the edge on just about every issue: the economy, health care, the wars, energy, education and all their subgroupings-though the GOP still comes close or ties on terrorism/national security matters.

Obama holds the edge on McCain on most of these except the constellation of experience/commander-in-chiefship/terror. Hardly surprising, even for many Democrats to think this way. This gap may close substantially as a result of Obama's currently successful tour of the Middle East (which is only half over as I write this). McCain, after all, has been around a long time and continues to bask in his long-ago reputation as a maverick. In the public eye he is a war hero. He has a lot of experience--though certainly his judgment and deportment are open to question.

Obama could have made hay on his superior judgment, say, in opposing the war, but his judgment on associates such as Rev. Wright and Tony Rezko sort of blunts that issue in the public perception.

On energy, McCain has a significant advantage with his focus on coastal drilling and a gas-tax holiday--both totally phony solutions, but highly popular. Obama's refusal to pander here works to his disadvantage.

There are other readily explainable reasons why Obama runs behind the generic Democrat: His exotic background--African father, Indonesian schooling, oddball middle-name and so forth also come into play. Yes, the phony charge that he is a secret Muslim understandably thrives in that medium like fungi in a Petri dish. Remember the huge numbers of people who still think the 9/11 terrorists came from Saddam Hussein's Iraq?

Nevertheless, Obama clings to a mid-single-digit lead in the national polls both because he is a Democrat and an otherwise supremely gifted and charismatic politician with a superb organization. Even more heartening for Democrats, in the state-by-state polls to date he stands at the brink of a possible electoral landslide. (I will deal with these prospects in a later column.) As the weeks go by and he becomes better known, he can narrow more and more of the margin McCain holds on him in certain areas.

Conversely, McCain's and other Republican attacks could exacerbate his problems and even cause new ones.

Which gets us down to the real, still largely unspoken question of race. There are still loads and loads of Democrats and independents who are unlikely to vote for him because of what still remains what Gunnar Myrdal called 'the American dilemma'.

That is the real referendum on Obama. More importantly, it's a referendum on us.

[Don Rose is a Chicago political consultant, and active in Chicagoans Against War and Injustice]

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