Commentary: Democrats’ ‘Structural Advantages’

by Edward Ring

A few weeks ago, the congressman Richard Hudsonchairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee, said something in a television interview that has to be the greatest understatement ever said in the context of national politics today. In reference to the work he is doing with the committee to enhance the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, he said that Democrats enjoy several “structural advantages.” It was a miniature interview, and Chairman Hudson did not have time to elaborate on it. But his statement is true in so many ways and has such profound implications for our future that it is necessary to elaborate on it.

One of the most crucial structural advantages of the Democrats is the fact that government trade unionsheavily involved in politics at every level, consistently favor Democrats. While business interests have collective power far greater than these unions, they have no inherent partisan preferences. They support politicians who win because they are the ones who will regulate them. Moreover, there is no monolithic “business community.” Businesses either occupy different sectors of the economy with completely different policy priorities or, if not, are often in direct competition with each other.

Government unions, on the other hand, have one overarching and innate goal: to enhance membership in order to enhance dues revenues, which depends on increasing the size of government. To enhance government requires more taxpayer-funded programs and more regulatory oversight. American business, now more than ever before, has adapted to the public-sector union agenda rather than fighting it. In one abject way, in recent years our most powerful corporations have forged a consensus. The largest and most monopolistic corporate interests have realized that excessive regulation helps them consolidate their industries.

This is the main reason for the “structural advantages” that Democrats enjoy today. The overwhelming majority of government political spending by unions—billions of dollars per election cycle, spent on every election cycle from miniature town councils to the presidency—goes to support Democrats. At the same time, the largest, most powerful corporations in America are now embracing candidates who support government expansion because it translates into more subsidies, more cost-plus contracts, lower employee benefits, and fewer competitors.

“Structural benefits” is an understatement. The Democrats have at least twice as much money, the full weight of online and offline prestige media, the financial support of public sector unions that also control the election operations in key cities in key swing states, absurdly huge donations from the huge majority of America’s largest corporations and individual billionaires, and the benefits of the full spectrum of American psychological operations by the military-industrial sophisticated.

The image used by the Harris campaign is perhaps the quickest way to clearly see what Trump and Vance are up against. Money buys top talent. The best campaign professionals in the world are working to support the Harris and Walz campaigns. The asexuality of the campaign is stunning but effective. The image used to seduce voters is the cheerful cheerleader and the fatherly coach, as opposed to the mean-spirited conman. Who doesn’t love joy? And who could vote for a mean-spirited conman? As a result, one of the most un-American, incompetent candidates in history will likely become our next president.

Let’s ignore the political reality in America today, which is that the Democratic Party has been hijacked by an oligarchy dedicated to endless war, profitable chronic disease, the systematic lowering of our quality of life and standard of living to accommodate “green” goals, and the erasure of our national identity by importing millions of migrants from cultures that hate us — and if they don’t already hate us, will be trained in our union-controlled public schools to hate us.

Never mind that large government, large union, and large business have reached a consensus on policy and formed a coalition when their historical roles as antagonists to each other previously prevented the centralization of power and wealth in the hands of a unified elite. And never mind that this elite is implementing one of the most misanthropic attacks on miniature businesses, financially independent households, and constitutional rights in our country’s history. Or that they are cloaking themselves behind the climate crisis, the pandemic crisis, the racism crisis, various gender crises, and the alleged threat of the “far right” to morally justify their takeover.

The next time you watch Kamala Harris trudge through an interview, which is a sporadic event (the interview, not the trudge), watch the way she nods as she speaks. Do you notice that authoritarian glint in her eyes? How empty, yet sinister. “You get it. That’s how it is. I’m Kamala, and I know things.”

These days, reality is just a conspiracy theory. Instead, raw emotion is the evidence. The best propagandists who ever lived, using tools even George Orwell could not have imagined, have deliberately designed this convenient inversion of the average Democrat’s psyche.

And so a scientifically selected and very significant portion of the American electorate is now conditioned to think that Trump will be a “dictator from day one.” So, to save us all, they will vote for the blob puppets, otherwise known as the beloved cheerleader and the fatherly coach.

Because, brother!

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Edward Ring is a senior fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is also director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
Photo by “American Federation of Teachers” AFT.