I will copy and paste some things here from other threads on this subject that may be useful to others.
To think that there are no back room deals, no coercion, no threats, no power plays in politics is akin to thinking there is no physical contact in ice hockey. Back room deals, coercion, threats, and power plays are what politics is. They are practically the only thing that goes on.
There are hundreds and hundreds of insider historical accounts about the way politics works, and has worked in every campaign and every White House and every Congress. There is no excuse for people to have this fantasy world gentrified and sanitized view of politics. The opposition plays in the real world of politics, and they will tear us up if we keep avoiding reality and living in some imaginary world of hope and feelings. We look ridiculous and absurd, and we are.
I find the naiveté and denial on this thread - the complete embrace of the PR the politicians put out, the abject surrender to the emotional appeals of the staged media events - to be very alarming.
I think that we need to face reality and understand what politics is. Threats, horse trading, coercion, pressure, back-stabbing, back room deals, intimidation and power plays are not the exception in politics, they are the rule. In some ways, those things define what politics is. When Johnson was trying to get Civil Rights legislation passed, he called southern Senators and threatened to "cut their nuts off." There is no shortage of insider accounts of campaigns and administrations and Congress throughout history. Read about the deals that Humphrey made with Johnson to advance his career. Read about JFK's threats to governors in the southern states. And of course there was Nixon's heavy-handed politics - exceptional mostly in the sense that we know more about the inner workings there. When Lincoln was trying to get the amendment to the Constitution passed to outlaw slavery, he grabbed congress by the lapels and said I am the president of the United States, clothed in great power to help my friends and hurt my enemies, and everyone new exactly what he was saying: play ball, or I will f*ck you up.
We cannot know exactly how Edwards was forced out of the race. The politicians keep that stuff hidden from us, because they want to put a happy face on the whole mess for the sake of PR and keeping us docile and malleable. We do know that some very powerful interests wanted the Edwards campaign destroyed - and that should not surprise us. We do know that his speech was very contrived and forced and out of character. We do know that there was a dramatic shift in the way the two leading candidates presented themselves immediately after Edwards announcement.
We also can see the power plays mirrored right here in microcosm, since the maneuvering and power plays by the candidates filter down to the grass roots through a variety of channels, and people do the bidding and spread the messages that the handlers of the candidates want disseminated.
Powerful people wanted the Edwards campaign deep-sixed. Those people have tremendous leverage over all of our politicians. They can pick up the phone and accomplish more in five minutes than all of us working together can accomplish in ten years. To deny that this is the truth about American politics is to be completely divorced from reality.
I think the Edwards campaign was too risky for the party leadership, antagonized and provoked too many rabid and powerful attack dogs who could seriously damage the Democratic party politicians, upset the power balance too much, and a calculated decision was made among the party leaders that Edwards needed to go - "for the good of the party." Things were getting out of hand - Edwards was lighting fires that were a little too dangerous to those holding power, and that needed to be suppressed before things spun out of control.
I imagine that Edwards was told something like this - "look, John, you are doing a marvelous job, don't get us wrong, but this just can't happen. You have to play ball, and there is just not going to be support for what you are doing within the party leadership, and it is seriously upsetting corporate interests who can hurt us and everything we are trying to do. We need to compromise, John, you know how the game is played. If you don't cooperate, we will mess you up and you know we can. We need to look at the big picture. For the good of the party, we can't have you flying around like a loose cannon getting people's hopes all fired up. Do you have any idea what a massive change it would require for us to get behind your program? How many skeletons in the closet of ours would be revealed? And the Republicans would use all of that, and they might beat us and then where would we be? We appreciate your idealism, and the issues you are raising, but the reality is that we just cannot piss off the big money people. We might not like that, but that is the reality we have to deal with, and they are getting very angry and making threats to all of us in the party leadership. For the sake of loyalty to the team, and the jobs and positions of so many Democrats who have helped you in the past, you must back down. If you don’t we will bury you."
A conversation such as that would be entirely consistent with what we know about all politicians and how they do business - completely congruent with every back room conversation between every politician in every campaign and every administration throughout our entire history.
Hope that helps you be not so glum, iris!
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