Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?

L Frank Baum

Last time, we looked at the dreaded C-word, capitalism. For this go-around, we’re going to pivot to en even more shadowy E-word, The Economy. Unlike capitalism, talk of the economy is everywhere, and it has largely been assumed that the primary role of national leadership in the US is to massage, incant, and cajole the economy, so that it delivers its glorious bounty for all. A president and Congress could be kicking ass on foreign policy, civil rights, international diplomacy, and scientific breakthroughs, but if the economy is in the toilet, they’ll be tossed out on their asses. As James Carville famously quipped, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Except maybe not. Let’s remember that Democratic and Republican support largely lines up along geographical lines. How close you live to a big city is the best indicator of how you vote. And then, we re-elect national incumbents at roughly a 95% clip over the last couple election cycles, and really nowhere under 85% in the last half century. So it might not actually matter that much how a nebulous thing like ” the economy” is doing, when every other November rolls around. We’re almost always going to vote for our tribe, and for the gal or guy who’s already in there.

While runaway inflation or outright recession certainly can affect voting around the periphery and/or in swing states, the Polarization Industrial Complex always kicks into high gear to offset any economic drags on the the main parties, injecting triggering scandals as needed through the early autumn months: sketchy emails, trans surgery for prison inmates, a years-old uttering of the N word on social media, whatever can be dug up. Roughly a billion bucks is spent per cycle to make sure that people stay in their geographic and incumbent lanes, which are already pretty solid in the first place. And this is not even considering the recent avalanche of gerrymandering, which is not just about racism and voter suppression, although it is that. It is also an attempt to reality-proof GOP districts against the winds of economic stagnation and precarity which have been gathering momentum for the last 45 years or so.

But surely this can’t last forever, right? At some point, (maybe this fall?), if inflation is out of control, and it requires a credit check to fill your gas tank, then those responsible, those actually in power, will pay the price. Right? After all, polling consistently shows that economic issues — jobs, prices, home equity, health care costs — are at the top of everyone’s list of concerns when election time rolls around.

Well, yeah, but then those concerns often melt away when the day of decision comes. People have to actually do something different when they get into the voting booth, and that’s a much different thing than just being worried about the price of eggs. Are deep red state folks really going to check off those D boxes, even among those voters calling themselves “independents?” Or if, say, a Democratic administration is failing to bend the curve of history towards economic justice, are blue staters going to get behind that curtain and pick a bunch of GOP candidates, or even (gulp) third party spoilers? No chance. Every ensuing election cycle demonstrates that, in the US at least, the political system is expertly captured, curated, and controlled by the two different camps of the plutocracy, ensuring that there is nowhere to really go for a true alternative, no matter how pissed off you are about the economic status quo.

[We’ve covered the mechanics of this political straitjacket many time before on this blog, but just as a micro-refresher: the Winner-Take-All structure of the Electoral College and of House districts, along the single-member nature of those House districts, locks in a two-party duopoly. Third or even multiple parties literally cannot emerge because of this antiquated machinery, which actually could be changed without Constitutional intervention. But the other pillar of our stuck-ness is money’s unlimited access to political power. Bad mechanics and money’s unfettered sway are the seemingly immovable supports of our political degeneration in America.]

But wait, what about that mid-term thing, where people throw the incumbents out? Doesn’t that demonstrate people using their independent judgment, punishing pols for their economic failures? Well, kind of, but not in a way that actually moves the needle on the big picture. And that picture is actually replete with evidence that the system as a whole is impervious to substandard economic performance for the masses. After all, the kick-the-bums-out thing applies to both parties and actually confirms that neither plutocratic wing is delivering long-term solutions for regular folks. The pendulum just swings back and forth, with the GOP getting punished sometimes, and the Dems at other times. Basically, voters are continually saying, “We’re getting fucked! You’re out!” But then, there is no place to go except to the other “side,” or they can just sit it out altogether in disgust. The plutocrats don’t really need to change the economic system that has created their fortunes, as the two-party duopoly ties the hands of the public.

Finally, let’s look at one other way that the major parties can avoid economic reckoning: take credit for all the good stuff, and then just blame the other side for all the bad stuff. This is Polarized Politics Propaganda 101, but it still works like a charm, cycle after cycle. Indeed, you could argue that a (vast?) majority of all the money spent on the American political system is geared towards crafting narratives, memes, and other media products that show how all the dismal economic outcomes are the responsibility of the bad guys, and every positive trend is thanks to the good guys.

Remember way back in 2016, when Candidate Trump called stock market record highs under Obama a “false economy,” and the good unemployment stats “phony” and “total fiction.” Yet after his election, those same indicators, literally just days after he took office, were suddenly evidence of his brilliant leadership right out of the gate. Same stats measured the same way, but fake when the other guys are in charge, and proof of brilliance when power is flipped.

Every political operator, every partisan media hack, every government official — they’re all well-schooled on how to explain away bad shit and take credit for good things that they likely had nothing to do with. That’s the job, and billions of dollars slosh around to maintain this polarized phantasm of mislaid causation. But it’s also why most regular people have close to zero idea that our entire civilization, of which “the economy” is just a subset, is completely unsustainable, and headed for the trash bin — unless we can come up with something much, much different… and fast.

Next time, we’ll delve into how our “economy” really is, and how what is horrible might actually be an opportunity to flip the script and start civilization’s next chapter.