Posted 1:07 PM by Floyd

The Democrats have done it again: They have found a court who will comply with their ham-fisted attempt to rig an election. Naturally this has created a lot of disgust, and some of the disgusted are Democrats. For instance, Shiloh Bucher blogged "WHY I AM NO LONGER A DEMOCRAT".

Most people's inclination would be that the Democrats will abandon their hardball tactics as more voters get disgusted with them; this is the normal process of negative feedback. (E.g. Instapundit: "Sentiments like these may be the most potent check on the doings of both parties in New Jersey, and elsewhere.") I argue that this is not going to happen; that in fact Democratic behavior shall become more and more appalling. Here are the reasons why:

1. The Democrats are the party of government

Democrats support government; their platform calls for an expanded government role in most aspects of American life. If the Democrats had their druthers there would be no American who would not interact regularly with some sort of government official. The Democracts have over the past seventy years been very successful at expanding government, thus the number of government jobs is enormous. These government jobholders are majority Democrat; also they are unionized, which has the effect of concentrating their political power in the hands of union officials who are fanatically pro-Democrat.

Many issues discussed in the political sphere do not affect most Americans; to the average American the arguments over what and how many government programs should be funded are abstruse and theoretical. To the government job-holders these issues are vital and personal, and they have no interest in arguing over them. What they need is to have the discussion stopped and the threat to their pocketbooks eliminated.

One of the perquisites of government employment is job security; another is the pension, and it is required to have job security to expect to collect a pension. Civil servants therefore react very strongly to any political threat to their employment. When there is talk of cutting government, they expect and want the Democrats to play hardball, to reassure them that their jobs can remain secure. The more absurd and blatant the exercise of power, the better, because it demonstrates the Democratic Party's loyalty to their concerns.

2. The Democrats are the party of power

Democratic politics are a vehicle through which people can obtain power over others. I am not speaking here of the power enjoyed by government employees as a function of their job; rather I refer to the policies supported by Democrats which regulate the racial composition of businesses and schools, increase the price and availability of "vices" such as cigarettes, suppress rural activities in favor of the environment, and so on.

Attempts to regulate Americans' private behavior are most effective when made by the Democratic party. There are certainly many people who would like to use the Republican party to pass laws regulating behavior such as abortion and obscene speech, but this has not been a success as courts tend to strike down these laws. Also the political mood is against Comstockery and related attitudes.

Someone who seeks to attain power over others' lives must gain some satisfaction from the involutary aspects of power, from making people do what they would not if left to themselves. (If such were not the case, they would seek not power but persuasion.) So the instinct of the power-seekers is to play hardball politics for its own sake. The thought process at work is not "This is really scummy, but we will have to do it to win." It is "This is really scummy, and it will infuriate those damn Republicans." It does not bother the power-seekers when excuses for their actions are weak; this adds to the thrill of exercising power over others. They can get their way even when there is no rational reason why they should!

3. The Democrats are losing

Fifty years ago the Democrats were a majority party because Americans believed that government could and should run their lives. It was a common belief that experts in government employ could impersonally and scientifically guide the economy, educate the young, contain the Soviet threat, and eliminate crime.

There followed twenty years during which government spent enormous resources attempting to solve these problems. The result was a disaster and America's faith in government was in tatters. Now that there is little interest in liberal politics, the Democrats have nothing to sell. Over the last twenty years, the Democrats have lost tremendous numbers of seats in state legislators. They have also lost dozens of seats in the House of Representatives.

What the Democrats have done to maintain their grip on power is to appeal to the interest groups that benefit from Democratic-sponsored government programs, and to gain office by attacking their Republican opponents. This is not a formula for long-term growth and success.

Positive Feedback

All the tendencies that I detailed above will tend to amplify themselves. There will not be negative feedback, which is healthy and correcting; there will be positive feedback, which will lead to destruction.

As the Democrats lose more elections, government workers will become more frightened and will demand that their jobs be protected by any means necessary. As the Democrats lose power, the party's power-seekers will demand similar action; also they will seek psychological compensation by exercising power for its own sake in the cases where it is still possible. As fewer and fewer people believe what Democrats believe, attacks on Republicans will become more frequent and more vitriolic.

And of course, these actions will turn off many potential Democratic voters. When I talk about government job-holders and power-seekers, I refer to the Democratic party's activist core. These people are a minority of those who vote Democratic. As the party gets more and more attuned to its vocal minority, it will lose votes from people like Shiloh Bucher.

So you might think that I will conclude that the Democratic Party has two choices: It can distance itself from its radical constituency and start to play fair, or it can spiral downward to oblivion. That's what I thought at first when I was starting to write this, but it only came to my mind because it's a thumb-sucker cliche. Shorn of its unions and activists, the Democrats will lose a lot of money and a lot of volunteer labor. It will lose donations from rich liberals with radical politics. It will also probably lose much of its corporate donations, because with the government unions gone, there will be less power to fear and less influence to bribe.

Another reason why this will not happen is that expelling a large and influencial portion of the party is a radical action. Factions like the Democratic Leadership Council are not radical. A DLC member is a southern Democrat who is vaguely concerned that an over-liberal party will make it hard for him to get elected or to serve in a Democratic presidential administration. The radical Democrats I have been discussing have real and immediate concerns about keeping their jobs and their powers. It's not hard to imagine who will win a fight between these two.