While much of the nation is glued to the presidential horse race, other elections are going on too. A new Congress (all 435 House of Representative seats are technically open) will be chosen in November, and also onethird—34 seats—of the Senate. The outcome matters a good deal. “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress” the Constitution states. And the Barack Obama years have been a lesson in the reach and depth of those powers. Even now the most recent of 50-odd efforts to “repeal Obamacare,” approved by the House in January awaits the President’s veto. Why write a bill destined for defeat? For the same reason the Republicans have orchestrated government shutdowns, convened no fewer than eight investigations into the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi and waged war on the Iran nuclear deal. Doing nothing—or rather, stopping things from happening—is part of politics too.
Indeed it has provided a counter-narrative during Obama’s administration, an epic of anti-government obstructionism or heroic resistance (depending on your point of view). And now the story has its master chronicler, Jane Mayer, whose Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, published in mid-January, has bounded up the US bestseller lists, with its feverishly detailed exposé of the dollarsoaked politics of America’s new Gilded Age, ruled by bosses, just like the original one, only top-hatted robber barons have given way to a new cast of ideologically-besotted “corporate plutocrats” who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the “process” in the name of the “free market” and in the interest of protecting their fortunes.