Vice President Joe Biden, April 7, 2015. Photo courtesy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
At The American Conservative, Robert W. Merry laments that rather than American voters, a group of powerful elites including “pollsters, commentators, and money guys,” whom he calls the “New Bosses,” are positioned to determine who succeeds in politics. He writes (abridged):
Most of the commentary that’s surrounded Joe Biden’s touchy-feely approach to interpersonal relations misses what it tells us about the nature of presidential politics today. Biden is under attack by what we might call the New Bosses of politics, and it looks like they’re going to chew him up and spit him out. The likely result: exeunt Joe Biden from the presidential race before it even begins.
Pollsters, commentators, and money guys have assumed the role that the old machine pols once played—winnowing down the field before the voters have a chance to cast a single ballot. The irony here is hard to miss, yet it gets almost no attention as the newfangled process proceeds.
This entire pre-campaign campaign has only become more treacherous with the rise of political correctness and the #MeToo movement. That’s because small rivulets of angry political sentiment can be amplified by the cable guys into something far more politically significant than they really are.
The New Bosses of our political system are in the process of passing judgment on Uncle Joe in lieu of the voters. They’re the vetters now, and they do their work without sentimentality or even a discernible degree of compassion. The smoke-filled room has been supplanted by the green room, and the result isn’t more democracy, just an uglier version of the old kind.
Read more here.
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