This is one of my favorite talking points and I'll never stop banging it.
Politics is almost entirely a grift today. It's first a grift, foremost a grift, and overwhelmingly a grift before anything else.
Politics has always HAD graft. From the beginning of time. But I think it's only since Trump that it's PRIMARILY a grift...as in, the grift is the entire point. Trump, and much of the right, just basically made the subtext the text starting in 2016. It's not the least bit shocking that the lessons were learned by the Dems as well...there's just too much money, it's too damn easy to collect, and no downside risk.
The thing that is so damn frustrating is that for like 2500 years or however long there has been politics as we know it, there has been graft, but the graft required that you win. So no matter how larcenous, how craven, and how corrupt you were, you had to moderate your positions enough to win elections, deliver enough services and efficiency to be reelected, and compromise enough to pass bills so you had accomplishments to run on. Basically, if you wanted to award sweetheart contracts to cronies, misappropriate public funds, appoint allies to no-show jobs, etc...you had to win an effing election and at least manage some level of effective governance to do get the keys to the cash register.
But that's out the window now that:
a. it is incredibly easy with the internet to raise tons of money from individuals essentially anonymously and with zero accountability whatsoever. Back in the day, when the main source of campaign contributions was looking someone in the face, taking a check for $1000 or $10,000 from them, there was a certain amount of not being able to just piss the money away, so you could go back to the person. Money is raised so anonymously with nobody to hold accountable now.
b. The sheer amount of money that is spent on campaigns means that skimming and scamming campaigns is far lucrative enough, without having the risk of actually losing. All these grifters on both sides win whether their candidate loses or not. There just didn't used to be enough money in a presidential campaign to make you better off grifting the campaign, than getting into power and accessing the real cash flow.
I sincerely believe that the majority of these rent-seekers, consultants, go-betweens, subcontractors, etc literally don't give a shit if their candidate wins or not. They just care about peak hysteria and fear of the other to drive donations. It has led to terrible candidates, terrible campaigns, and extra divisive rhetoric.
I absolutely guarantee that a proper autopsy would discover that is the primary reason that Harris got the nomination by default, when many people intended there be an expedited primary or at least an open convention to produce the best available candidate, was the grifter-industrial complex that was built up around the Biden-Harris team and campaign. Too many people had too much to lose if candidates changed, so they were much more willing to roll the dice with a poor candidate that could lose, than take a chance on losing their access to the sweet sweet campaign coffers they had established with Biden-Harris. A switch to Newsome or someone else, and they would have brought their own grifter-kickback-crony ecosystem, and can't have that. Better to lose but get paid.
