How Bernie Sanders Can Win

The Hillary campaign says it's over. Almost the entirety of the Democratic Party's membership in elected office has coalesced around Hillary. Some media narratives indicate that the nomination is a foregone conclusion- ready to write the retrospective on his campaign; perhaps opining that next time will be different.

The Bernie campaign begs to differ, saying that he has a viable path to the nomination with the momentum to carry his campaign forward. Social media and liberal outlets have been abuzz for weeks about how Bernie can and will win, how the MSM (mainstream media) has it wrong and is blacking out coverage (to say nothing of conspiracy theories that Democratic Party officials might be undermining the Sanders campaign). Meanwhile, a common outrage in the Bernie camp is that Super Delegates are actively stealing the election.

Which side is correct? Well, no conspiracies today. Let's start by getting some facts about delegates out of the way.

Pledged Delegates roughly represent the popular vote of the Democratic Primaries in each state. 85% of all delegates who vote to elect the Democratic Nominee are Pledged. Hillary Clinton has won about 55% of Pledged delegates in voting so far and about 43% of Pledged Delegates remain to be awarded.

Unpledged Delegates (Super Delegates) are party office holders, DNC officials, and important party personalities. These individual Super Delegates comprise 15% of all delegates who select the Nominee. They are not bound by the popular opinion of their state and can vote as they please. About 70% of Super Delegates have already publicly declared their support for Clinton and less than .05% support Sanders. The remaining 30% are publicly neutral. However, Super Delegates can (and do) change their minds and swap to supporting a different candidate before the Convention (more on this later).

So can Super Delegates steal the election away from the candidate with the clear mandate from voters?

They are highly unlikely to do so. Super Delegates have never "stolen" an election since the creation of the modern party primary (popular vote) nomination process. But Supers have historically used their role as a failsafe (to prevent the kind of Trump chaos happening right now in the GOP with a looming contested convention) stepping in to help the party come together around the eventual nominee and choice of the voters. So the key for Bernie? Establishing a clear mandate from the voters.

The first step in that process would be to win the majority of Pledged Delegates. Even in that case, Bernie would almost certainly need the help of Super Delegates to have enough votes to clinch the nomination (as would Hillary). If Hillary were to win the popular vote but Bernie were to win the Pledged Delegate total, Super Delegates might be inclined to step in on Hillary's behalf (difficult to argue with the majority of voters). The best option for Bernie to ensure the support of Super Delegates would be to win the national popular vote and establish the clear mandate.

Let's take a look at what would need to happen for Bernie to accomplish that feat in the remaining contests.

For the sake of argument, let's use a recent poll (conducted by the polling wizard Ann Selzer) which is one of the most friendly polls available to support Bernie's case that he's gaining momentum. (Other polls are not nearly so kind in their assessment of Bernie's support.) After splitting the tiny percentage of undecideds, we have a reasonably close snapshot of the race as it currently stands.

Bernie CURRENTLY has about 48.5% of the support in states which have yet to vote, and Hillary has 51.5%. Assuming this snapshot of the race is true, Bernie would have to win 10 points of Hillary supporters or about 20% of current Hillary supporters in those states over to his side. Converting 20% of Hillary supporters would likely be a pretty substantial task, given the amount of time that Democratic Primary voters have had to get acquainted with the candidates and make up their minds.

But let's suppose...

IF Bernie were to win over about one in five of current Hillary supporters in the roughly half of the population yet to vote, he would (if we take this poll as accurate) win about 58.5% of the outstanding popular vote. That number, roughly, also corresponds to the number of popular votes Bernie would need to rack up to win the overall national popular vote. We can project that number to be between 57% and 62%, depending on exactly how high voter turnout will be (and using the not-quite-right assumption that remaining delegate totals correspond roughly to remaining popular vote). Can't stress enough: This is a rough estimate based on previous states and previous voting turnout patterns so far in 2016.

But IF Bernie were to win that percentage of the remaining popular vote (>57.3%) he would be essentially guaranteed to win the most Pledged Delegates as well, since he already outpaces his popular vote percentage in delegate totals. For context, Bernie has won about 42% of the national popular vote and about 45% of the nation's Pledged Delegates. This is due to his success in low-turnout Caucus states that reward candidates with high proportions of delegates compared to the number of people voting.

Here's where the Super Delegates come in. Some of the more conspiratorial folks may be convinced that Supers will steal the election away from Bernie, even IF he wins all of these things: Pledged Delegates and Popular Vote. It is true that Super Delegates theoretically have the power to do such a thing. But with the numbers we just gave to Bernie, he would have vote totals that look very similar to Barack Obama's numbers in the 2008 primary where Super Delegates famously defected en masse from Hillary Clinton (the establishment favorite), in order to allow Barack Obama to win the nomination. In that scenario Obama had won the popular vote by only 0.1% (seriously); hardly an unequivocal mandate from the people. Hillary Clinton exploited this, hoping that Super Delegates would decide that in SUCH a contested environment, she was still the best candidate to represent the party. And yet the Super Delegates knew that the voters had spoken, and to deny our current President the Nomination at such a stage would be a disenfranchisement of the people.

I firmly believe that IF Bernie were to replicate Obama's 2008 numbers (even winning by 0.1%), Super Delegates would recognize the clear mandate, defect from Hillary (again), and Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination. At this stage (in this scenario) he would have had unequivocally commanding momentum coming into the nomination, winning the final states like California by huge (uuuuuge) double digit margins.

But... NONE of this is YET reflected in any current polling; at best Bernie is tied in big upcoming states like California and New York. Remember, 1 in 5 of expected Clinton voters would need to change sides for this fantastic scenario to materialize. It's not impossible. The polls could be wrong. Hillary's support might be more soft than anticipated. There could be a sudden shake-up involving the FBI email investigation. Something else unexpected could intervene. But in the meantime...

Moral of the story: Bernie's campaign and supporters have their work cut out for them. Bernie would need to win almost all the remaining contests and not just win them- win them convincingly. He is out of time for narrow wins and near-ties. On par he probably needs between 57% and 62% of the remaining popular vote. Bernie needs to win BIG to establish a clear mandate, replicating a semblance of Hillary's winning percentage in populous diverse states like Florida (heard anything recently about NY and Cali?). As you watch Wisconsin tomorrow and other states down the line, if you notice Bernie failing to hit close to those 57%-62% winning percentage benchmarks, you'll understand why political pundits have said that his campaign has little likelihood of winning, even with many narrow wins down the stretch.

But it's still possible. Democratic voters: Your move.

How Occupy Wall Street is Changing Washington

Occupy Wall Street has captured news headlines and provoked journalistic investigations. The movement has taken root all over the nation, and everywhere it goes occupiers have met both resistance and support. But as OWS spreads, it's dynamism is also fostering discussions and questions about the movement from those who are looking in from outside. Many of those questions have been adequately answered, as journalists examine the movement from the inside out, trying to help the public understand what is going on. But one question has not been comprehensively addressed: Is Occupy Wall Street really making a difference to the politicians in Washington?

It's a question worth asking. For all the discussions about the changes being brought about by OWS, not enough has been said about whether or not politicians are even listening. In order to answer this question we will have to examine the tangible political implications of OWS for those in power. Has OWS affected the overall American national discourse in such a way that politicians are addressing the movement's goals? Are politicians moving to embrace- or castigate- Occupy Wall Street? And how is the movement engaging with those running for office? As it turns out, events in the last few weeks can give us some great insight into this matter.

This Tuesday, President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas that frames what is likely to be the central platform of his campaign in 2012. In language that (in no small way) echoed the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Obama laid down hard facts about disparity in the country, contrasting the vast wealth of the 1% with the plummeting incomes of most workers. Calling it “wrong” and “the height of inequality” Obama blasted the entrenched government systems and loopholes that shelter the wealthy while crushing the poor.

Obama's speech was a great indicator that the chief expression of OWS has made its way into the national and political discourse: the growing difference between the 99% and the 1%. Obama spoke of "inequality" six different times.

And as Chrystia Freeland notes in her fantastic discussion of the speech, Obama essentially declared American inequality “the defining issue of our time”, a modest nod toward OWS and the (perhaps misguided) Tea Party. But Freeland also points out that whereas the Tea Party's version of American restoration had helped to change the debate in Washington to a question of spending and cutting, Obama's speech was a recognition of how the Occupy Wall Street movement is utterly re-framing the debate too: for Occupy Wall Street, restoring America means recognizing (and changing) the power of the 1% to make room for everyone else.

In that capacity, Obama seems to agree. And by lending the weight of his voice to the cause, he only gives momentum to OWS' perspective of inequality.

So there's no question that Occupy Wall Street is substantially changing the national discourse. If the Presidential bully-pulpit is blasting out 1% tirades to win an election- if Obama is staking his Presidency on the issue of inequality- we can be certain that the message of OWS is catching on, even in political circles. Although many members of OWS may be loathe to compare themselves to the Tea Party movement, it looks like grassroots OWS has offered (to the Democrats at the top) the campaign-ready ideological response to the Republican co-opted Tea Party.

And that begs the question: are the Democrats interested co-opting OWS members into their party? Do Democrats want to join the OWS protests and turn them into a political operation? In my home state of North Carolina, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (who is running for re-election next year) has fully embraced the movement, and protesters also embraced her, even as she turned an appearance at Occupy Raleigh into a campaign advertisement. Marshall represents a very small portion of Democrats, however, (mainly local leaders) who have risked the political dangers of being associated with such a 'radical' movement. National leaders, while glad of the ideological framing, have been wary of declaring themselves a part of OWS (and joining in). Nancy Pelosi, for example, has said that she 'supports' the movement... from the comfortable chair of a national interview.

This wariness shouldn't be too surprising, though, since OWS has also gained a reputation for having little appreciation for political attention. Occupy Atlanta gained headlines in October when General Assembly rules blocked Congressman John Lewis from addressing the crowd in support of the movement's goals. It was understandable; after all, OWS is a movement that strives to ignore the celebrity of power and privilege. It's also understandable that those Democrats who already have considerable power would strive to steer clear of outright participation.

But what about Republicans? If Democrats are wary of OWS, it would follow that the GOP must be deathly allergic. But Occupy Wall Street's popular influence has even had an affect on the Republican discourse, albeit at the margins. Buddy Roemer- the former Governor of Louisiana and Presidential candidate- showed up at Occupy DC in late November to listen to (and debate with) the occupiers. While there, he defended the importance of the movement: “I told the other Republican candidates, 'Listen, listen -- they're saying something we oughta hear. They're saying that the few at the top gets the best of America, and everybody [else] gets what's left over.'”

Meanwhile, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, whose libertarian supporters sometimes join OWS gatherings, has also declared his sympathy for the movement. Despite being heckled at a rally by members of OWS, Paul signaled his agreement with the protesters, saying “The people on Wall Street got the bailout and you guys got the bills and I think that’s where the problem is.”

But Roemer and Paul both represent significant outliers amongst Republican politicians. Most Republicans see OWS as a threat to American capitalism or at least an opportunity to score a good applause line from the conservative Republican electorate. Candidate Mitt Romney has called the movement “dangerous”, and Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich has declared that Occupy Wall Street demonstrates the moral collapse of America, saying to occupiers, “Go get a job, right after you take a bath”. Zing. Applause.

Occupy members don't seem too phased by the criticism, however, and some have begun to change their protest tactics to go on the offensive against those running for office. This marks a significant change in strategy, with OWS members singling out some of the Republicans for disruptions on the campaign trail. On Wednesday night, several activists sneaked into a D.C. Fundraiser for Newt Gingrich, interrupting his $1000 ticket event to remind him of the suffering of the 99%.

It is unclear whether or not this kind of direct political action by Occupy Wall Street will continue, but as elections approach next year, those of the OWS movement will have to decide how they will approach the political system. Will they protest Democrats as much as Republicans, or will they become entangled in party preference? Can occupiers embrace direct political advocacy without compromising their ideals?

In the meantime, Occupy Wall Street's mark on the political sphere is only going to grow. Even if the protests fizzle, the discussion that was started by OWS is causing the whole American discourse to shift, and politicians are watching. OWS is fundamentally changing the way politicians in both parties approach delicate issues like loopholes, tax brackets, bailouts, inequality, and free speech. Because of OWS, Americans are even beginning to wonder if the central American problem lies in an even more fundamental structure, rather than cronyism or misconduct. At a Republican Governor's Association meeting last week in which the GOP struggled to reframe the subject, strategist Frank Luntz discussed his fears about the way the movement has changed the national dialogue: "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death. They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Oh yes. Occupy Wall Street is making a difference in Washington.

Editorial Note 12/15/11: A version of this article was published at WagingNonviolence.org

Let Republicans take control of Congress, PLEASE?

Do I speak heresy for a Democratic voter, or the first bit of common sense in a Republican wave year?

This post will contain clear and inherent bias, as it is intended as a suggested Democratic perspective on the Midterm elections.


Let me level with you. Republicans are going to win and they are going to win big this year. In the House, it would not be out of possibility for them to sweep the system, taking out 70 incumbent Democrats. In the Senate it is conceivable for them to overturn as many as 10 seats, a roughly equivalent proportion as wins in the House. And while those numbers represent very worst case scenarios, Democrats are playing defense and right now and it'll be considered a significant UPSET if Democrats are able to hold onto simple majorities in both the House and the Senate.

I can already hear the leagues of Democratic voters wailing in self-righteous desperation. Must think! Who's to blame? Right! Its all the fault of those perennial enthusiasts, those formerly loyal Obama supporters who have the nerve to abandon the Party when they're really needed. Damn those pollsters and their likely voter models! Fools! All of them!

But wait! Before you torch the house of the nearest racial minority or young adult who you think is too lazy or uninformed to go to the polls, hear me out! There are hate crime statues to consider!

Instead look at it this way: If Republicans want Congress, let's give it to 'em. But just barely. Or just in one chamber of Congress as its looking to become currently. Fight for seats, yes, but hold off some of that strategic money till 2012.

How about this instead? It's about damn time that the American people see what kinds of proposals Republicans have to put forward. Obama is still President for the next 2 years, let him use his bully pulpit to show Republicans up for how hypocritical most of their debt-reducing-yet-tax-reducing proposals are. To expose on a National stage the extreme positions of Tea Partiers and the chaos of a truly gridlocked government.

In the meantime, let's keep Democrats in the best non-majority position that we can, and use that magic filibuster tactic against the Republicans who seem to like it so much. Or, even better, just let Obama veto anything that comes across his desk that he can't take explicit credit for. If Republicans do pass anything, make sure its branded "Obama" so strongly that the American people begin seeing the President as the great uniter that he promised to be.

Meanwhile, all fingers crossed, the economy is getting better, helped in no small part by increased confidence in legislative stability with Republicans in control and (quite honestly) the historically relative cyclical nature of these recessions. Obama can take credit for the economy rebounding as well, if he likes; who cares whether or not the Recovery Act was actually what swung America out of a downturn, the point is that the economy arrow went up during the Obama Administration. Tout, tout, tout! If Clinton could get through it in 1995, Obama can handle it in 2011. And good news for Dems: Clinton went on to get re-elected; Obama's got a good shot at that too.

Of course if Democrats stay in control, Republicans can continue to use the same stalling tactics and blame an even weaker Democratic Party for not getting anything done. They'll likely have the momentum in 2012, telling voters to send 'em all packin', including the President so that the Government works again. If Republicans take some control, it's possible the Government will also come to a standstill, but this time, Republicans get their share of the blame.


But hold on a minute. If things are made so good by Democrats "letting" Republicans take some control, why isn't that the Democratic strategy, at least secretly?

Well there is a lot of conventional wisdom in trying to maintain Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. Regardless of what the Government does at this point, the economy is liable to get better, as is the way with these things. Democrats are reasonably confident that they can take credit for the good economy if they can just hold on long enough for the economy to actually improve. Then there's the incumbency factor. The same reason that Obama is already nominally favored to win the 2012 election, as mentioned above, also favors all currently sitting politicians. Name recognition is already higher with incumbents, not to mention the great fundraising platform incumbency affords. This Democrats figure they'll have a lot of hurdles to overcome in the next 3 election cycles if they lose the incumbency factor in this one election. And finally there's the policy considerations. With less power, Democrats have less control over policy, Republican proposals are more likely to be adopted and signed into law.


The point of this article is to recognize some serious advantages on which Democrats might be able to capitalize if Republicans take control of either the House, or Senate, or both. Since at least one of those scenarios is likely, it will be interesting to see if Democrats use any of the strategies outlined in this piece.

I'll have a different discussion on Republican strategies in the near future.

Is there an anti-war party?

This post is intended to be an extension of the subject brought up in the previous post on the "Unstoppable Growth of Government" and a preview to another post I intend to write for the 9th anniversary for the start of the War in Afghanistan which is tomorrow.

One thing that was visibly apparent in examining the current positions of the two political parties with regard to government growth is that on national security issues, both parties are reasonably pro-government growth. What this means for foreign policy is that both parties are in favor of prosecuting wars abroad and in favor of fighting the "War on Terror".

According to Ron Paul, the Republican Party used to be the anti-war party, and that Nixon was elected to end the Vietnam War. History tells us a little bit different story, but the reality is that there has been some traditional conservatives in the Republican Party that have been historically anti-war, anti foreign military intervention, anti foreign aid. That has not been the case with the mainstream Republican Party, as Republican Presidents have been great proponents of military escalation and interventionism in the modern period since WWII.

So what about the Democratic Party? Well in the same modern period, Democrats have also tended to favor military escalation and intervention as well. Like the Republican Party, there is also a stream (a stronger stream in this case) of anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party. Democrats historically have been more anti-war, and more anti military spending than Republicans in the modern period, but this has not meant that Democrats collectively have really espoused an anti-war stance. Even though President Obama was elected to end the Iraq War, he has continued to prosecute the War in Afganistan and to some degree has continued military intervention in Iraq, even after the end of "combat operations". If you take a look at modern military altercations and spending, you can see that both Democrats and Republicans have been very pro-military; Democrats perhaps a bit less so.

Major US military altercations:


Korean War- (D) Truman
Vietnam War- (D) Johnson and (R) Nixon
Persian Gulf War- (R) George H.W. Bush
War in Afghanistan- (R) George W. Bush and (D) Obama
Iraq War- (R) George W. Bush and (D) Obama

Notable increases in Defense spending since 1966. (From this graph and this):

1951-1953 - (D) Truman
1966-1969 - (R) Nixon
1982-1990 - (R) Reagan and (R) George H.W. Bush
2000-2010 - (R) George W. Bush and (D) Obama


Given this information, people considering themselves anti-war have had to vote according to which party will be less pro-war, and recently that has been the Democratic Party. But it is shown over and over again that voting Democrat is not an anti-war vote, and certainly voting Republican is not either.


Some people have rectified this situation by voting third party candidates; although this often amounts to "throwing away your vote" in the sense that third party and independent candidates almost never win, particularly in states where there is little precedent for such action.

These days, I would argue that the strongest third party in the United States is the Libertarian Party, as it represents a group of people virtually outside the purview of the two other parties, and because it consistently performs better than the Green Party, Constitution Party, (Now, the Reform Party is basically defunct) and other third parties in national elections voting and funding. (See 2000, 2004, 2008). It also tends to have the highest count of ballot access of the major third parties (45 states as of the 2008 election). I'm mentioning this because of a recent comment made by Mike Beitler, NC Senate Candidate for the Libertarian Party. He said, “The Libertarian Party is the last anti-war party.”

Recently the Libertarian Party has made attempts to court the liberal anti-war vote (they have a history of anti-war sentiment), and this statement by Dr. Beitler is no exception. Certainly the Libertarian Party is not the only or last anti-war party, as the Green Party in particular has been clear in its stances on non-violence. But at this point in elections, the Libertarian Party can almost certainly be considered the strongest anti-war party, especially because of the Party's ability to bring together a relatively wide coalition of freedom loving voters.

In certain districts where libertarians are running, they poll well, sometimes as high as 10 or 15 percent. There are some districts where the Green Party also polls well in the same manner. Despite this, it is highly unlikely that third party candidates ever win elections. Thus people who consider themselves to be anti-war have a serious dilemma. Should they vote for a third party candidate and almost certainly "throw their vote away" or should they vote for the Democratic Party, knowing that this party (on the whole) is marginally less pro-war than the Republican Party? Should progressives who believe in economic justice, and who consider themselves anti-war, vote for a libertarian candidate, even if they disagree with libertarian positions opposing government assistance of the needy? On economic (and some other) policies, Libertarians are perhaps best described as radical Republicans; how can an anti-war progressive vote in good conscience for less gun restrictions, less environmental regulation, and a repeal of major progressive taxes like the income tax?


For those who wish, perhaps naively, for world peace through non-violence, there are sadly no clear answers or solutions.


In the meantime... the Libertarian Party wants your vote.

The Unstoppable Growth of Government

I want to make a quick note here:

In the last decade or three of governance, a disturbing trend has arisen in politics. The "size" (and in this case, it is prudent to indicate that I mean "relative power") of the Federal Government is increasing rapidly in my estimation.

Now a good historian will stop me here to point out that the size of the Federal Government has been growing since the drafting of the Constitution and the emergence of the Federalist Party. Although I will not disagree with this point, nor the point that in the 19th century Abraham Lincoln and his predecessors probably issued in the largest advance of federal powers in US history-- see: Civil War/War Between the States/War of Northern Aggression (depending on where you live)-- it is important to examine party politics since the last great re-alignment of the Republican and Democratic Parties in the Reagan era because it can provide a reasonable prediction of the future of Federal Government growth.

I expect that my educated readers understand what I mean when I say that there are three ideological categories that with relative simplicity all political positions can divided. These are National Security Policy, Social Policy, and Economic Policy (the way I have broken this down, to demonstrate a point, allows 'foreign policy' to have aspects apply to all three of these categories).

For the most part, the Democratic Party, as it currently exists, has been pushing for a Liberal Social Policy, a Liberal Economic Policy, and a Conservative Security Policy. This means that they are (Social) pro-choice, they support gay rights, they support clear separation of church and state, (Economic) pro-business regulation, pro-federal spending, pro-federal market intervention, pro-environmental protections, (Security) in favor of increased government surveillance, in favor of more homeland security, and in favor of "War on Terror" prosecution abroad.  

For the most part, the Republican Party, as it currently exists, has been pushing for a Conservative Social Policy, a Conservative Economic Policy, and a Conservative Security Policy. This means that they are (Social) pro-life, they support traditional definitions of marriage and family structures, they are think church/state separation has gone too far, (Economic) pro-market capitalism, in favor of deficit reduction, in favor of business de-regulation, against environmental protections, (Security) in favor of increased government surveillance, in favor of more homeland security, and in favor of "War on Terror" prosecution abroad.


Sorry for the review for those who were already clear on this point. The Government grows in power when these perspectives are applied: Conservative Social Policy (government control of society), Liberal Economic Policy (government control of the economy), and Conservative Security Policy (government control of security and privacy). 

Although the parties disagree about whether the government should have control of the economy or society, it turns out that the Federal Government will increase its share of power regardless.

For Democrats, the primary issue that their coalition is built upon is a Liberal Economic Policy. At all costs, they will hold Republicans hostage on this issue, ensuring blockage of legislation that might decrease Federal powers in this regard. The reason for this is because, for the most part, the American public is in FAVOR of the Democrats' economic message (by and large Americans like federal control of medicare, social security, government oversight of wall street, higher taxes on the wealthy, unemployment protections etc.). It is unlikely, even with the brief sojourn we are having over in Tea Party land, that there will be substantial changes on these issues; in fact, it is reasonable to say that the US will continue to socialize (very, very slowly) it's economy-- socialist rhetoric is not popular, but socialist policy tends to be.

Meanwhile, liberalism in Social Policy has been stagnating, partially because Americans tend to be socially conservative as a rule. Very few Americans care passionately about advancing Social Policy in general, but it people on the Religious Right tend to have the larger megaphone on this issue, and it becomes disadvantageous for Democrats to focus too much on this area. Republicans, however, love to use social policy as a wedge issue (bringing up controversial subjects like the NYC Mosque in order to break up the Democratic coalition) because Republicans tend to be on the winning side on this subject. To a large degree, social policy isn't moving either direction right now, which retains Federal powers at their current levels.

Then, finally and most importantly, in practice, both political parties are in favor of increased government powers in Security Policy, which means that whichever party is in control, you can expect government growth in this area. Period. The continued and increasing reliance on the Military-Industrial complex, citizen surveillance, and anti-terrorism rhetoric will guarantee the more powers for the Federal Government.

These details and ideological demographics of the American electorate are providing a unique situation where there is little political upside or chance for political success for either party to pursue a decrease in federal powers. Couple this with the fact that elected officials in the Federal Government will tend to support the increase of their own powers in one way or another, and small-government proponents like Libertarians are finding themselves without much leverage.

A recognition of the inevitable movement in this country toward more 'larger' Federal Government seems to be the main motivation for the development of the Liberty movement and the Tea Party which I mentioned in the post before last. I think that this group or any others will soon find that they will not be able to stop the inexorability of Government growth, absent another major party re-alignment, a major change in American attitudes toward policy, or the emergence of a real and influential third party.


There might be a reasonable argument that this perspective is short-sighted or ignores area of Federal contraction, and I am open to these criticisms. In general, we will simply have to see what happens as the future approaches, but perhaps I have convinced you of what is likely to happen, for better or worse.