There's a nice trans-Atlantic meme about how you can't buy an election.
Why no, not if you're a candidate. People still lose when they outspend their supposed competitors. But isn't it apparent that candidates are the product, not the purchaser?
Just as it has been long observed that the true target of television and other programming are the advertisers, with audiences as the product and the producers the salesmen, we can see that in electoral campaigns that the real winners are out of the spectacle with which we are presented.
And some people say that elections mean nothing. IOZ usually touts a line like this, and if he doesn't, let me trot him out as a straw man. I hope he'll pardon me.
So what about the fact that elections mean nothing? I can't agree. Elections may mean nothing to the supposed voters, but while I feel that representative democracy is simply some strange, Azadian game in which the old campaigns of civil war and factional strife are abstractly represented, I feel that it may well be significant--so long as we're being clear about which players, pieces, and outcomes we discuss.
In short, all this shit about the primaries and the lever pulling? It's a minigame at best.
Rather cogently observed, C. So your theory is that all that loot is spent corralling voters in order to demonstrate to the powers that be that candidate So and So has the juice?
ReplyDeletePrecisely. It allows the resources of capital to swirl around the powerful and not be lost as they were under earlier modes of competitive dominance. Donations, PR salaries, and so on produce patronage and build future relationships; who reuses a bullet or a dead war horse?
ReplyDeleteIt's an intriguing mechanism, then. Because, if it holds true over time, the investment in candidates by donors and corporate concerns allows those corporations to obtain proxy demographic fealty by way of the politician. So the company helps to fund the candidate as a marketing move, and the candidate's success doesn't demonstrate as much about the candidate as it does about his backers?
ReplyDeleteThe main entry is good.
ReplyDeleteThe comments? ...a dull conversation with Crowbar pretending nobody has thought of this theme before Cuneyt's main entry above.
Some of us have been arguing it for well over 15 years. Publicly.
It's not new... and for a self-named NH political consultant, millionaire fund-manager, and head-kicker of those who mocked his "poverty" (sushi 1x/wk instead of 5x/wk)... what howling irony.
Of course politicians are face-men. They have always been thus. They are not leader-savants, noble statesmen, or purposeful professorial professionals. Not even the ones Crowbar supposedly rambled about when he was an ace NH consultant.
Hey, Cuneyt. Thanks for the discussion. I'll check back after Karl/Charles/Sean/Pico/Sockpuppet decides he wants to grown into his adulthood already.
ReplyDelete