I was watching The Daily Show on Hulu recently, catching up, and saw the segment above where Jon Stewart expertly documents yet another Democrat snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Stewart seems outraged, as well as genuinely surprised, which he might not be if he had read the excellent Greenwald piece on the Democratic party and its strategy of rotating villains. However, when I watched this play out in video clips for the umpteenth time, it suddenly occurred to me (and I’m ashamed it hadn’t until now):

The Democratic Party is a Pro-Wrestling Federation.

Now, hear me out. Professional Wrestling is often misunderstood as being a ‘fake sport’, when in reality it’s a long running soap opera with most of the parts played by professional stuntmen. As such, it is an essentially static form of entertainment, where the same Manichean, Good vs. Evil, black and white struggle plays out, week after week, year after year. This is essential; delivering a consistent product brings in the advertisers (in both politics and wrestling, this means large corporations), who are buying a known quantity.

At the same time, in order to keep its audience, wrestling has to present the illusion of dynamism, or ‘change’ in the present parlance. Nobody wants to watch the exact same story all the time. So wrestling takes this static product and dresses it up in the paegentry of conflict, with most actors playing a rotating series of Good or Evil roles; in Wrestling terms, most wrestlers alternate between heroes (Faces) and villains (Heels).

So last week, what we saw with Senator Rockefeller, blatantly flip-flopping on his passionately stated (staged) support of the Public Option by refusing to pass it using reconciliation, that wasn’t a betrayal of the voters (audience), or of his principles; it was what is known to Wrestling fans as a ‘Face Heel Turn‘.

The only thing missing was a folding chair to the back of the Public Option’s skull.

Likewise, when Senator Lieberman came out as the (apparrently self-designated) front-man on repealing DADT, he was executing a perfect ‘Heel Face Turn’. Now he’s a Face, at least on this issue, and will fill that role. (Unfortunately for Joementum, he’s a natural Heel, and is particularly unconvincing in the Face role, but hey, you go to pay per view (election years) with the cast you have, not the cast you might want or wish to have)

As with all models, the Democratic Party as WWE model, to be useful, should allow us to make some predictions about the real world:

The Powerless Chairman (or President)
(I’ll betray my teenage’d self’s preference for the WWF with this passage, if any wrestling fans read this)

In Wrestling as in the Democratic Party, someone has to be the Boss. In both cases, the Boss is an odd figure: extremely powerful, but almost entirely unable to get results. For some reason, despite the audience (voters) being constantly reminded of the importance, power and prestige of the Boss figure, his will rarely translates into reality. Sometimes the Boss (Vince McMahon for a handy example) plays a Heel, sometimes a Face, but in either case, oddly, their power is dependent on the ‘unpredictable’ actions of their employees. A number of reasons could be posited, ranging from populist appeals (hah, look at the rich man losing again), to structural (if the Boss just fired a wrestler he didn’t like, it would endanger the suspension of disbelief).

As we’ve seen over the last year, this is no less true in the Democratic Party than in the WWE. President Obama, despite having an enormous bully pulpit, and control over both chambers of Congress, was strangely paralyzed all year. One Heel after another after another took their turn dashing his agenda; Baucus, Nelson, Lieberman, Reid, now figures like Rockefeller are getting their star turn as heels. As in wrestling, where it never occurs to Vince McMahon that, no, he doesn’t have to get in the ring with a huge steroidal hulk, President Obama seems to have never considered bringing the weight of the DNC down on a single solitary bad actor. Nor has he used the President’s natural bully pulpit, or the overwhelming level of public support for, say, the Public Option, to get what he supposedly wanted.

Prediction: More of the same will follow, on every major issue. We should be treated to a regular calvacade of Face Heel Turns over the coming year, as one lone Democrat after another after another plays spoiler to our Designated Hero and his agenda. Likewise, no actual price will be paid by any of these Heels. If there are changes, they’ll be in areas that are unthreatening to the sponsors and thus don’t affect the corporate cash flow (even more important in our post-Citizens United world). So, a repeal of DADT is entirely possible (why should GE care?), but you might as well give up now on meaningful climate reform. Obama’s stated agenda is merely the broad outline for a script of regular Face Heel Turns.

The Ringside Commentators

Wrestling just wouldn’t be the same without its commentary. From the side of the ring, much like in real sports, you get live expert analysis, background information and speculation, which helps to fill in any gaps in the viewer’s (voter’s) knowledge of the storyline, as well as tell people who to root for and who to root against generally.

Of course, it’s all ultimately fake. The commentators are in on it, their ‘surprise’ at shocking plot twists faked, and they can be relied upon not to call attention to anything that might undermine the show.

Democratic politics is precisely the same. This handily explains why groups like NARAL and Parenthood fail to mobilize their members against actual threats to choice, or why liberal economic groups fail to campaign against the excesses of Geithner’s buddies on Wall Street. That’s not in the script! Bart Stupak was slated for his star turn as a Heel ruining the House bill, and Geitner’s been designated as a Face in the banking crisis (another questionable bit of casting). The ringside guys aren’t going to say anything against the narrative, anymore than their wrestling counterparts would tell you that one of the wrestlers just palmed a razor blade so he could make a tiny cut in his forehead to get some real blood. It’s not going to happen.

Prediction: More of the same. Expect Heels turned Faces like Joe Lieberman to be praised from the rooftops by members of the Veal Pen for their sudden good will, while Heels are condemned in ways precisely calibrated to have no impact on their reelection prospects or power.

The Republicans Are On Another Network

If the Democrats are a wrestling federation, then who are the Republicans? Well, they are too; they’re just a less popular troupe, aimed at a different audience, on another network.

They still follow the same formula, but they’re geared toward different viewers. Their Faces might resemble our Heels, in terms of the way they act, but the party works much the same way. Republican voters elect their Faces to drown government in the bathtub, put gays back in the closet, what have you, only to see them pull Face Heel Turns at crunch time, enacting their real priorities like big corporate tax cuts. Then they can run against each other, with noble arch-conservative Faces forcing the ‘moderate’ Heels to see the light in time for an election, lather, rinse, repeat. You get the idea.

Prediction: If the Democratic spectacle keeps losing ratings, the Republican brand might attract enough viewers to make crossover specials between the two groups (bipartisanship) more workable. In that case, both sides will play the centrists in their own party as Heels who are sadly forcing them to compromise on, well, pretty much exactly the most lucrative middle ground for their shared pool of sponsors. This lets them build up Faces in their own parties with what they think is an appearance of credibility.

My Conclusion: Unless the Democratic Wrestling Federation wants to see a lot of viewers jump ship to their rival, they’d better realize they have a serious surplus of Heels and not enough Faces. There’s no drama if the ‘good guys’ always lose.

I meant to post a link to an idiotic flame war I got involved with on the so-called ‘Buy Nothing Day’ alternative to Black Friday’s equally stupid activities, but I got sidetracked. With buying things.

Neener neener.

I’m told that this makes me a bad person. Better to sit on my money so that… the Credit Union accumulates interest.

Well, ok. That’s not so bad; they are a credit union, not a bank.

Still, it astounds me the number of different low information strategies far left organizations (more accurately described as hippies, I suppose) will employ to make their followers feel better about being morons.

In this case, rather than tell your followers that consumer purchases, properly harnassed, can be an incredibly useful tool (witness economic boycotts during the Civil Rights movement, or against ultra-right talkers like Glenn Beck, for example), that in a world of complicated globalized industries and economies you have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort learning where things come from, who makes them and how.. these people advocate a one-size-fits-all, no thinking required solution: a day without buying stuff.

I’m sure that 0.005% or so decrease in retail sales really hurts.

*rolls eyes*

Another great example is the Locavore movement, head whackaloon in good standing Michael Pollan presiding. A long time ago, someone figured out a quick and dirty rule of thumb: all other things being equal, the farther food travels, the greater its transportation costs and pollution. Ergo, shorter travel is good, *all else being equal*.

The problem is, of course, that in the real world, all else rarely is. Maybe you live in a climate with a very short growing season (ahem, Wisconsin), or inhospitable soil, or you live in an area that can’t do any meaningful farming at all (Las Vegas). Perhaps you live in a place that, like Southern California, grows an enormous abundance of food, but does so with stolen water in an ecologically unsustainable way.

Then there’s the fact that not all forms of transit are equally dirty. A famous recent National Geographic piece on the carbon cost of wine put a great big hole in the locavore movement’s hull by pointing out that in many cases it’s better to buy products that come thousands of extra miles, so long as they come by far less polluting boats, rather than semis or planes. (though it seems that National Geographic has pulled this graphic under pressure from SoCal winemakers). (A detailed look by LiveScience is here)

Fortunately, some cracks are beginning to appear in the locavore movement’s single-minded approach.

The point here is that, well, these people are mouthbreathing idiots, looking for a shortcut to avoid the challenge of thinking. I pledge in future to always ‘celebrate’ Buy Nothing Day by spending as much cash as possible on whatever I would have gotten around that time anyway. American Apparel t-shirts were a big one this year. Who knows what it will be next year?

See, I’ll take up the challenge of investigating and learning, to make not just the quick and dirty decision, but the right one. Maybe some day they’ll join me.

So, apparently the Senate Combined Health bill is apocalyptically bad. I haven’t had much time to read it myself yet, but the early reviews are awful.

Let’s see, what’s wrong with it?

Well, to start with, it restores 50 million a year for abstinence only education. Which doesn’t work, of course. But who ever let a little thing like evidence get in the way of law? (At least, when it involves a handout to a religious group.)

Granted, 50 mil a year is peanuts. I’d gladly put a provision in the bill to give 50 billion to the Catholic Church if they’d shut their gob and keep out of US politics from now on.

It doesn’t stop insurance companies from selling insurance the way they do now, outside the exchange (except they can’t practice rescission or use pre-existing conditions). Which means that they don’t *have* to take anyone new. They can refuse to participate in the Exchange and turn down the subsidies, if they feel like it, and just price anyone they don’t want out of the individual market. Which means that the public option gets stuck in the Exchange taking ALL the sick people the Insurers don’t want.

That Public Option is an opt-out too. Which means that the idiot red states won’t get it. Now, I’m actually in favor of handing a gun to these redneck mouthbreathers and letting them blow their brains out, but it will cost us money in the long run. Well worth it, but still, costly.

The ‘Free Rider’ provision is in here, which means poor people won’t be able to get hired for a job. See, it works like this: if you, as a business, have an employee poor enough to get subsidies in the Exchange, you get fined. Thus, you have a strong financial incentive not to hire poor people. You’d much rather hire the teenage son or daughter of a local rich family, who has health insurance and doesn’t need Exchange credits, than the poor single mom who needs that paycheck to keep a roof over her head. Isn’t that swell?

It also guts all state regulations on insurance by letting insurers sell ‘national plans’ across state lines. This is a huge wet kiss to Cigna and United Health. Now, if your pesky state has rules they don’t want to follow, they don’t have to; they just move their PO box/headquarters to some uncivilized state full of knuckle-dragging savages (like Alabama) and presto, your laws no longer apply to them!

The credit card companies got the same deal a few years back. Boy, it’s pleasant dealing with them now that they’re de-regulated, huh? What’s that? There’s a desperate scramble to regulate them again? Gee, couldn’t see THAT ONE COMING.

It also screws over undocumented immigrants, who can’t buy insurance on the exchange, even without subsidies, with their own cash. Instead, they go to the emergency room, costing us 10 times the amount, or die. Or both! Great idea.

I talked in my last big post about Actuarial Value, the percentage of your expected, average health care costs that an insurance plan covers. Members of Congress get between 84-87%, meaning, on average, for every dollar of health care they’re billed for each year, they pay 13-16 cents.

In this Senate bill, the minimum value is 60%. You’d pay 40 cents, not their 13.

But fuck, you’re just a poor working class schlub. You deserve to be penalized for being poor; it’s obviously the judgment of God for your sins. We’re such a Calvinist country.

Finally, the ball doesn’t get rolling on the Exchange until 2014. FOUR MORE YEARS LIKE THIS.

Haha, oh God, what an unholy mess, and it’s all our fault.

This bill is so bad that the good folks at FDL are calling for it to die, and for the Senate, our own personal House of Lords, filibuster and elitism and all, to die right along with it.

Me, I see this as justice. This is what we wanted, as Americans. A system where no one has to pay attention, or think, or deal with empirical reality, where they can drown themselves in bible thumping and American Idol, where individual avarice and selfish greed has been elevated to holy ritual, and people with money are allowed to do whatever they want, because of the delusional belief that everybody will some day be rich. This, my friends, is American Democracy at its finest.

And H.L. Mencken said it best:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”