Federal Rights and State Rights and our two parties

Our states have been labeled red and blue by the last election.

There are common ideas that unite both parties, but the future trends in the Republican party are difficult to predict. On the whole, they have favored state rights, as then the Republicans can gerrymander and rule all they will, passing abortion related laws that try to go around the spirit of the law, banning the clinics on various technical grounds.

The Republican party has been known to hang on to power by whatever means. They are losing people as the country becomes more a group of more multicultural, tolerant people. So we do not know where their judges will take us as far as state and federal rules go. They will resist forever approving marijuana on a nation wide scale. But you have to go case by case,

Suppose the courts overrule Roe vs Wade. By the constitution that would then fall to states to decide. We would have abortion states and non-abortion states. States would try to block travel for abortion. But they could then come back and pass a new law. "In this case" the federal government can decide what to do. They will pass laws to ban abortion at say 3 weeks initially, then all abortions.

The politicians and judges will then have a track record of backing states on some issues, controlling them on others.

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.