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Notes -
There Are No Machines
Over the past 2 years, I’ve heard a number of election denialists, both online and in the media, that suggest that “machine politics” were somehow involved in rigging the 2020 election. What these theories all have in common is that they simply take for granted the existence of political machines in large cities, mostly in the Northeast and Upper Midwest; indeed, in some cases the city is simply mentioned as if it were understood that a corrupt political machine had its finger on every vote. This post originated as a response to @jkf from the other night, where he said:
What Is a Machine?
The first part of the quote betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what a machine actually is, so it’s worth exploring that. Political machines maintain their power through a system of patronage. An example of how this could have been done would be that the machine boss makes sure a crony gets appointed to chair the parks department. The crony’s appointment is not based on his qualifications as an administrator as much as it is based in his ability to use his position to obtain votes for machine candidates. So he coordinates with the boss of a ward full of poor Italian immigrants to get them all maintenance jobs. He coordinates with another ward boss to make sure that a prominent and loyal contractor in his ward gets a no-bid contract for facility renovation that will provide a ton of work to the Polish and Hungarian immigrants in his ward. And then when election time rolls around the ward boss makes sure everybody knows who they have to thank for all of this largesse and that if the machine loses control to the reformers the first thing that will happen is that they’ll get cut off. That’s just one example but there are all kinds of favors politicians can do to help normal people, down to anodyne stuff like helping them navigate bureaucracy through a few well-placed phone calls; stuff that’s so anodyne that (good) politicians still do it today. And it goes without saying that if you dare elect an opponent to lead your ward, all those services get cut off, and in the next election the machine pick will point to his inability to get anything done, even though that inability is machine-driven.
Of course, something has to give in a system like this, and it’s that problems never actually get solved. Richard Daley may not have been able to deal with poverty, but he was good enough at helping individual poor people that the machine never paid an electoral price for it. But the Chicago machine was an outlier in terms of longevity; machine politics started to die out in the 1930s, and the decline accelerated after the war. Historically, machines would get voted out of power during times of economic hardship in favor of reformers, as there wasn’t enough largess to distribute to keep the machine going. But the machine would normally make a comeback when things got better. The Depression meant that things didn’t get better for a long time. A lot of people needed help, there wasn’t much to go around, and local government was forced to focus on structural changes rather than individual favors. Some individual machines weren’t directly affected, but reforms at the state and Federal level in areas like the civil service and contract requirements gradually eroded away the machines’ ability to operate.
The upshot of all of this is that machines aren’t “faceless and anonymous” entities. Their very nature prevents them from being so. Handing out anonymous favors may be good as an act of charity, but it’s a terrible way to buy votes for your party. And when somebody sees that the town has gone to shit and wants to challenge the status quo, what do you do? Send them an anonymous threat? No; anyone trying to challenge a political machine must be aware of the fact that the machine runs the town and the machine will crush them if they try to interfere and if they’re smart enough to run the town then they’re smart enough to geta nice sinecure and maybe someday they’ll get the keys to the executive washroom. From Boss Tweed in the early days to Richard Daly at the tail end of the machine era, everyone knew who was in charge, and if they didn’t, the boss wouldn’t hesitate to let them know.
The Pittsburgh Machine
I can’t speak to every city in which fraud was alleged, but I live in SWPA and can provide a pretty detailed picture of how Pittsburgh’s government works. First, unless otherwise stated, everyone named here is a Democrat; the city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since the 1930s and that’s just the way it is. It’s also what gives rise to accusations of machine politics. But hear me out. There are 3 big players in Pittsburgh politics: The mayor, the Allegheny County Executive, and the Allegheny County Democratic Committee. The current mayor is Ed Gainey, a former state rep who beat incumbent Bill Peduto in the 2021 primary. Peduto didn’t seek the committee’s nomination and he accordingly didn’t get it; Gainey won it over Tony Moreno, a MAGA Democrat and former cop who thought Peduto was too soft on the 2020 protestors (of which we had relatively few that became problematic). Peduto also didn’t campaign, but nonetheless managed to win 39% of the vote to Gainey’s 46%, a testament to either the cluelessness of the electorate or the unwillingness of Peduto’s white, upper middle class base to support a black progressive reformer like Gainey or a cretin like Moreno. Gainey’s election was both surprising and not surprising at the same time. Had Peduto done anything to indicate that he actually wanted to be mayor he would have easily won. Before becoming mayor himself, Peduto made a name for himself by mercilessly criticizing the two previous mayors from his position on city council representing the wealthiest part of town.
Peduto was mayor during the 2020 election, but that is of little consequence since the city doesn’t run elections, the county does. The County Executive is (and was) Rich Fitzgerald. He was elected in 2011 after beating Mark Patrick Flaherty in the primary and Republican D. Raja in the general. Flaherty was County Controller, the son of a judge, nephew of a former mayor, and that isn’t the half of it. Fitzgerald was a county councilman. Fitzgerald won by about ten points. Allegheny County operates differently than other counties. Most counties in PA are run by three elected commissioners and there are a slew of row offices like prothonotary, register of wills, etc. Allegheny County’s system was dysfunctional and dominated by city interests so a home rule charter was adopted in 1999 that would put power in the hands of a unified executive and a geographically-based council. Most row offices were eliminated and replaced by civil service employees. The county runs the elections.
Finally, there’s the Democratic Committee. In theory this has over 2600 members (one man and one woman from each precinct), but in reality many of these seats are vacant since not all precincts can find enough people to fill their allotment. Most committee elections involve fewer than 1000 participants, and if you live in a precinct with a vacant spot, they’ll pretty much give it to you. The committee’s main job is (obviously) to get Democrats elected, but they also endorse primary candidates. And it’s currently a mess. Ahead of the 2020 election, there were a number of stories about how the committee had a MAGA problem; some committee members were making Facebook posts supporting right-wing policies, and committee leadership was ambivalent. Then the committee went on to endorse some of these MAGA sympathizers in local races over progressive candidates. With Peduto not seeking their endorsement, nearly 40% of the committee voted to endorse former cop and current asshole Tony Moreno for mayor. With Fitzgerald’s time as executive coming to a close, the committee is endorsing moderate and longtime county Treasurer John Weinstein. Mayor Gainey, however, has endorsed progressive state legislator Sara Innamorato. But the board failed to endorse incumbent DA Stephen Zappala in favor of the more progressive Matt Dugan. And no one has yet endorsed longtime city Controller Michael Lamb for County Executive, even though he’s from a prominent political family that includes his nephew, former US Rep Conor Lamb.
If this is supposed to be some kind of machine, it’s a pretty dysfunctional one. Politicians with long pedigrees can’t get endorsements. Politicians who endorse views antithetical to the party platform do get endorsements. Politicians with endorsements lose primary elections. Prominent figures in the party can’t agree on whom to endorse. Mayors tend to be replaced by their strongest critics. This group was supposed to have participated in the rigging of a presidential election? They couldn’t rig an election for dogcatcher. This isn’t because they’re incompetent, it’s because this is the way the system is supposed to operate.
This is good effort post, but it sounds to me a bit like proving that communist USSR didn't exist, because look how dysfunctional the ruling system was, how many dissidents were there, how if you look at any particular party functionary, they were regularly removed from their posts and assigned to random places or even just sent into retirement (or sometimes worse). I mean, if the communist dictatorship was as real as the conspiracy theorists claim, would it not be able to function much more efficiently and would something like removal of Khrushchev (who was supposed to be an all-powerful communist dictator, following right into the footsteps of the mythical uber-tyrant Joseph Stalin figure!) ever happen? Clearly, the supposed "dictatorship" and "totalitarian society" there is nothing but a conspiratorial fakery, and not even a well done one.
Of course The Machine would be full of infighting for who exactly controls the levers and who gets to be in the driver seat. Of course you can be the Chief Machinist one day and cast out by a coup on another. Of course mafia bosses would order hits on each other and sometimes even rat out each other to the feds. That doesn't mean the Machine or the mafia does not exist. A better test would be - can an outsider - or, horrible dictu, even a deplorable - ever get to the levers at all? What challenges would they encounter - besides the obvious "convince the voters" ones?
Outsiders get in all the time. Ed Gainey was a state rep before he became mayor, and he was elected to that post after defeating a 30-year incumbent on the third try. Plus, Pittsburgh's one of the whitest major cities in the country and Gainey is probably the first black guy to get elected to any city office that isn't a council seat representing a heavily black area. He's endorsing Sara Innamorato for county exec. She's another state rep, a DSA member who beat an incumbent who belongs to another prominent local family in a white working-class district. As I alluded to earlier, the ACDC endorsed a vocal Trump supporter and ACA opponent over an autistic LGBT activist. the Trump supporter lost the primary, but if the litmus test for a political system not being a machine would be something akin to a Republican who loves AOC and tweets against Trump's immigration policy winning a GOP primary in the Bible Belt, I don't know what to tell you.
I know Wikipedia should be taken with a grain of salt, but this is not exactly what I think of when I say "outsider".
DSA is an outsider to Dem party like Sanders is an "Independent" senator - formally it's true, but we all know what they'd be voting for. If they are "outside" it's the part of "outside" that the mainstream body can't venture to go without risk losing the independents, but not the part which they disagree with.
Not sure about AOC, but there are plenty of Republicans tweeting against Trump's anything, from his hair color to his politices, real or imagined. That said, if I would discover that there's a Republican Machine in, say, Wyoming, I wouldn't be exactly shocked. I'm not saying there necessary is, just saying it wouldn't be a huge surprise for me if there were.
I think that's conflating national and local political dynamics. If you're part of the Democratic establishment in a solidly blue city your personal political career is never meaningfully threatened by Republicans, it's threatened by challengers from the left. If Trump wins by 1 point you're still gonna win by 19, keep your job and be paying your dues with the party establishment so you can move up over time. If the DSA wins you have to find a different job and all that time you put in at low low level functionary positions was for nothing.
This is anecdotal but I know a former city council member of a solidly blue small Midwestern college town who is still involved in local politics. He hates Republicans, but what he wants to talk about day in and day out is how bad the the local hard left student organizations and Sander's aligned groups like Justice Democrats are. It's a "heretics are a bigger threat then pagane" dynamic.
That's to say that If Pittsburgh election administration is controlled by a corrupt tight knit organization capable of casting fraudulent ballots en masse without any defectors; they're also going to use that power to consistently rig local elections in favor of their organization. If local candidates outside of the democratic establishment can win then either this group is deeply principled enough not to interfere in intra-left fights, or they just don't actually have the ability to rig elections.
Well, as you proved, in local matters there is no unified local control - DSA people watch the establishment types like a hawk for shenanigans. However, both the establishment Dems and the DSA-types are on the same side when it comes to presidential general election politics. So if there was to be fraudulent efforts in presidential elections, you would not expect the DSA to complain about it; to the contrary you would expect them to participate.
Why does the DSA have a capacity to "watch establishment types like a hawk" and prevent voter fraud against them in local elections but the larger and better funded Republican party does not?
It depends on conditions on the ground. In deep blue counties the local DSA chapter is likely to be far better manned, resourced, and organized - at least because more likely to succeed in day-to-day politics - than the local GOP. Likewise, in deep red areas, I would expect the local insurgent right-wing group (Tea Partie, MAGA, etc.) to be at least as well-organized and active in local politics as the local Democratic party operation (though Dems are better at springing grass-roots activism up in inhospitable terrain than the GOP because the left has a longer tradition of activism, more sophisticated techniques, popularity among demographic groups willing and able to forego lucrative careers to engage in activism work, and, at least these days, much more money and PMC support, plus a friendly media and educational environment).
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From 1982 to 2018, the Republicans were subject to a consent decree which prevented them from doing so, and in that time their organization withered.
Also, I suspect the DSA is better-funded than the Republican Party in the relevant jurisdictions.
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But when people claiming there was foul play in the 2020 election point to "machine politics" as evidence, the implication is that this is a well-run political organization that does this kind of thing all the time to maintain their own power and thus already has the mechanisms in place to commit fraud. What you're arguing is that an ad hoc group of political opponents conspired to rig an election due to ideological consensus regarding one issue, despite that fact that none of them had ever done something like that before. That's the opposite of machine politics.
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