The Third Bait and Switch

Imagine raising money for a biotech company that promises to cure cancer. People invest because they want the cure. The money arrives in the company’s bank account. Then the founders use it to start a Formula One racing team because they love cars.

That is the bait and switch: take support raised in the name of one purpose and spend it on another.

American politics has done this twice already this century.

George W. Bush gained overwhelming support after September 11. Americans were grieving and frightened.

He used that support to vastly expand presidential power and government surveillance to launch never ending global war and build a vast security apparatus funded by government contracts enriching his friends.

The country’s trauma became the justification. The benefits flowed to the administration, its allies and the industries that grew around the new security state.

Barack Obama gained the next great store of political capital. Americans had been lied into the Iraq War and watched the financial system collapse. They wanted change. Obama used that mandate to ignore the war criminals and the banks to use his capital to pass health care reform made private insurers the center of the system.

The public paid more than ever into a system the insurance industry still controlled, millions still had no insurance whatsoever and costs spiral higher to feed the beast of the private insurance monopoly.

Meanwhile, the presidency gained even more power to unilaterally conduct secret lethal operations without trial or outside review.

So…. Democrats have gained another historic advantage through the repudiation of Donald Trump.

Systematic Corruption is the central issue in the public’s judgment of government.

People want accountability and a reason to trust the system again.

The Democrats’ first signals show where they intend to spend that advantage. They will investigate Trump and his family for corruption. They will investigate ICE and the Department of Homeland Security over corruption and the killings of protesters. They will return to universal health care and taxes.

Here is what they won’t do: comprehensive campaign-finance reform, an end to pay-to-play politics, radical transparency and a government modernized to serve people efficiently.

The Democrats’ plan is to investigate the corruption of their opponents, advance their own policy agenda and leave the machinery that produces corruption in place.

That is the same bait and switch. First comes the promise that a crisis will change the system. Then the political capital created by that crisis is spent strengthening the party’s position and delivering its preferred policies. The public gets a new administration. The underlying bargain survives.

The lesson from Bush and Obama is clear. Enormous political capital converts into more power for them while telling the us they are acting in our name.

The Democrats are now following that pattern. Their stated priorities focus on Trump, ICE, health care and taxes.

Fundamental reform of campaign finance, transparency and political self-protection is missing. That omission is the evidence.