In the past I have sketched an outline of the structure of the present Democratic Party. In this post I plan to show why my outline is demonstrably correct and its implications.
The three factions I have identified are the technocrats, the elected officials, bureaucrats, and consultants who see politics as a career and/or a path to riches and power; the clients, those who want to receive benefits from government; and the reformers, those who want to accomplish specific goals that can only be accomplished using the lever of government.
That’s more than just an opinion. It’s a testable hypothesis. The following would confirm my hypothesis. For the technocrat faction if
- There is a high rotation among government, consulting, lobbying, think tanks, the media, and back to government
- Designed policies tend to increase administrative complexity, requiring credentialed intermediaries and
- There is an emphasis on “process virtue”, e.g. “expert-led”, “evidence-based”, “stakeholder engagement”, over measurable outcomes
If senior Democratic officials disproportionately end their careers wealthier than when they entered without comparable private-sector innovation or risk-taking, it supports the technocrat hypothesis.
On the other hand if a significant number of leaders voluntarily leave power without monetizing access, return to private sector roles unrelated to influence, or advocate reforms that shrink their own institutional relevance or discretion, it would contradict the hypothesis.
For the client faction if
- Programs are designed to be permanent rather than transitional
- Rhetoric frames benefits as rights rather than temporary assistance
- There is a strong resistance against means testing, program consolidation, or exit ramps tied to economic improvement
it would confirm the existence of the faction while if there were a large-scale willingness to eliminate or sharply reduce programs once they had succeeded, tie benefits explicitly to time limits, skills acquisition, or labor market absorption it would contradict the hypothesis.
For the reformer faction it would confirm my hypothesis if
- There is a focus on reforms that require centralized enforcement, produce symbolic wins even when outcomes are ambiguous, and persist even after there is evidence of limited effectiveness
- There is a willingness to redefine success metrics midstream and
- Language shifts rather than abandoning initiatives
while frequent abandonment of high-profile reforms once evidence turns negative or a preference for decentralized, voluntary, or market-based mechanisms when they outperform bureaucratic ones contraindicate it.
Based on the above my conclusion is that this structure has already been confirmed as real as rigorously as can be expected of anything in human affairs.
The implication of this analysis is that these factions are mutually reinforcing. The technocrats design programs, clients depend on them, and reformers justify their expansion. It predicts that preserving power takes precedence over resolving problems.
This explanation is not partisan or ideological. It is institutional analysis. It considers career trajectories, program lifecycle behavior, and the willingness to declare problems as solved. The bottom line is that Democratic Party behavior is better explained by incentives and coalition maintenance than by stated moral or policy goals.
In the future I plan to post a similar analysis of the factions that comprise the Republican Party, a comparison between the two, and why the two together bode badly for our future.
