I think Dean’s parable from Man of the People to Enemy of the People should tell us/you something. Namely, that the whole point of representative democracy is this backroom dealmaking and horse-trading. You/we elect people to horse-trade in our stead, they are supposed to be two-faced conniving sons of bitches. The real problem is that this sausage-making business is supposed to get us somewhere that is not here, and this is not happening: we keep spinning a hamster wheel of deregulated capitalism, with no grand plan or horizon in sight beyond “we’ll just try to make you suffer a little bit less”. We need a plan that goes beyond selecting the right face for this or that job, something that people can agree with, and then we can unleash an army of bastards to get us there by hook or by crook. Candidate-first strategies must die.
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