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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.
I don't have a fixed POV on this issue, but I think your accurate historical definition of "political machine" is beside the point. My "election truther" buddies, if they were to refer to a "machine" behind ballot fraud, would be using a known old term to refer to something new and different, a difference that is key to their argument. In their worldview, a paradigm shift has taken place that has removed the common man from the political machine (this is the essence of Trumpism). Now that the titans of industry are predominantly Democrats, they have conspired with Democrat politicians to circumvent the inconvenience of getting votes from regular people. The argument is that they have figured out how to rig the game at a higher level, and everything else is kayfabe. They use "current thing" to distract the public from realizing that the public is now irrelevant. Meanwhile, a closed loop of graft and favors is making everyone in the elite richer and richer. (Add to this recipe some degree of Satanic grooming, if you want a full picture of this theory of the world.)
This isn't my worldview -- I expect more uncoordinated chaos in how things fold and unfold -- but I hear it a lot, in different degrees of eloquence. Like most other machines that have been around since the dawn of the industrial revolution, political machines have gone through technological changes that would now confuse the mechanics of that earlier time.
But that is his point - the word isn't adding anything to 'dems rig elections', neither what happened nor what they allege happened resembles the old 'political machines' at all, so it's just increasing confusion. Analogies can be informative, even if mostly inaccurate literally, and this sometimes gives words new - and useful - meaning. It wouldn't be unreasonable for, if a novel form of political organization sprang up that took some things from the old 'political machines' but was very different, to use the term, and maybe for its meaning to evolve. But that analogy or new meaning, like anything interesting, can be uninformative - which is what's happening here.
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