Screw the Apparatus!

The message I take from Iowa is this: It's more about money, entrenched power and the party machines, and privilege than about change. Iowa voters are signaling revulsion and anger at top-down money's influence in politics; “money” in the aggregate--a weakened economy; and at money's upward rush out of the pockets of the middle class into the pockets of investment princelings like Mitt Romney.

This is a populist message but not necessarily a message about insiders and outsiders. No matter what Mitt says, Obama isn't a Washington outsider. He’s a sitting US senator. Edwards isn't a Washington outsider, and Clinton surely isn’t, and yet these Democrats essentially divided the vote by thirds. And on the Right, even Huck and Romney are professional pols, if not (out front) Washington veterans, and McCain, who looks most promising in New Hampshire, is as inside as it gets.

Even Obama’s victory, which above all embodies hope for a land starved for hope, lies in his anti-lobby, anti-corporate power message, and in his populist, community organizing past and in his populist, community organizing past. It isn't so much in a call for substantive change--his record has been as centrist as Clinton's and he is calling for nonpartisan cooperation, not for overturning the Bush coup--as in rejection of the party machine. The change he calls for is tonal. And significantly, much of his money is seen as coming from the bottom up. That's important these days.

The message to Clinton is brutal: The voters will reject her even if her qualifications and experience are undeniable if she comes off as the candidate of the party apparatus. (There's that dynasty thing again). Unfortunately, she does. Her campaign of perceived inevitability couldn't have been more jarring in this election. Notice that not even her gender (quintessential outsider-ness) and her moderately populist agenda (universal health care, pro-labor) have stopped her from being perceived as more of same. In rejecting her, Iowans rejected self-satisfied power, the arrogance of rule, and the influence of elitists' wealth. Not even a Clinton will be trusted to fix the machine if she's seen as its protege. (Of course the fact that after 18 years of Rightwing smearing she isn’t liked, doesn’t help.)

If this is such a populist election, you'd expect Edwards, the true old-time populist, to have triumphed. For say what you will, his whole career points in the direction of sympathy for the little guy who’s up against the corporate juggernaut. Thus it’s ironic that he didn't do better than he did. But that little ankle-biter revelation about Edwards' haircut hurt him, and did so because it goes against the grain of his career and his rhetoric, and seems to contradict them. (It doesn't really. He’s not the first person with a luxurious lifestyle to stand for the working people. Think FDR.) Not ironic in context is that his fundamentals square with the big issue. Although he is conspicuously wealthy, he's mad at the same people the rest of the country is mad at, and what's more, he's got a history of beating them. And again, his money isn't from the machine. Bottom-up money is good. Top-down money is bad.

The message clear on the uber-capitalist side, too: Iowa Republicans seemed to say that the more money Romney slammed on the table, the less impressed they'd be. They chose the people's man, unfunded, shuffling, store-bought suit and all. They rejected the party apparatus in Romney--in fact somebody even asked him if he was packaged, and they weren't impressed with McCain, either.

But here again, there's irony. In choosing Huckabee I think they got bushwhacked, you should excuse the expression. (I suppose it just goes to show that Republicans are suckers for image. Remember Reagan? Fred Thompson? W? Substance--assuming there is any—is irrelevant—which as W showed, makes it all the more dangerous when it is empowered.)

For, depending on your definition of populist, a case can be made that Huckabee only looks and sounds the part. Like others of his tribe, the Huckster is a populist like W is a populist. Faux. But Huck does come from the opposite end of the class continuum and he is volubly anti-elitist. That sold despite the fact that his fiscal policy is utterly bereft of genuine concern for the people's wellbeing. There's no outrage at the corrupting influence of accumulated wealth and power. He merely mocks the trappings of wealth as he maneuvers to get his piece of it. In the end, Huck's appeal in Iowa was that he's not machine-fed, he's not Romney, and that he is an evangelical. (The only possible conclusion there is that if Iowa Republicans care about the middle class at all, their concern is for its social policy, not its economic prosperity.)

It'll be interesting to see what happens in New Hampshire. If the message is anti-machine, Huck should win, but perhaps New Hampshire voters are not just less evangelical than Iowa's. McCain's strengths going into NH are that he is perceived as independent of the machine, as a not-Romney, and as an underdog.

As to the Democrats, Clinton will not do well because the message is about the party machine and the power of money. Unless there is a sudden sympathy vote, I very much fear that Clinton is DOA in NH. The race there will be between Obama and Edwards, and Obama has the momentum and the money. Not only that, Edwards’ Southern heritage and his reprised campaign may work against him among older voters. And his anger may strike too sour a note among voters too young to know what corporate corruption and workplace exploitation really mean. They'll learn.