Draining The Swamp

Draining the swamp has been used in politics since 1900. Victor L. Berger, a social democrat, used it in the US in the progerssive era.

It can basically mean anything corrupt or, in the era of Trump, excessive government oversight.

Trump came with that message and has not done anything about corruption, lobbyists, gifts to giant corporations etc. He has cut down on government meddling in land use and such. He has the power to do that, as most of the departments of government report to him, not congress. If congress has ear marked funds for certain departments and causes, say firefighting in the forests of the West, Trump cannot cancel that. The Pentagon is largely independent, but Trump has manipulated that too. But the message was strong in 2016, and especially libertarians started to listen to Trump. It helped him get the outsider and reformer (LOL!) label.

Moving on from Trump, we have Sanders and Warren to look into. The swamp was a different thing for them, mainly the corruption brought in by lobbyists. Sanders and Trump both campaigned as outsiders. It works for Sanders, who certainly has been far left compared to Biden and Obama. Obama had to bail out the auto industry and the home loans industry. Yet he did not put in place any controls of Wall Street. He got us healthcare and "no pre-existing conditons" but really, the controls on the health insurance industry were minimal. Obamacare definitely included the industry in talks, even if Republicans did not participate.

Elizabeth Warren has focused on family and therefore healthcare and bankruptcy. She wants consumer protections in banking. Her policy there is not even new. It was in place from 1930s up to Reagan.  Reagan started the "freedom" movement and the labeling of government as merely a hindrance. Now we have what we have. A good portion of us are slaves to huge corporations as workers and as consumers.

There is another aspect to swamps: Corporations have repurposed government as a source of income. First you use politics to explain that the government does some thing badly and has poor managers. You then have to contract everything to businesses that do know this stuff. Including war (Blackwawter et al) for war. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company

The whole scope of private corporations taking over public works is covered in a recent book. I will let you look up details on that yourself.