I don't want to throw around baseless conspiracy theory when there is a model we know and understand as leftists which generally explains why we see things like this, but I wonder what other tools are used that we aren't aware of to make politicians fall in line.
I think it is neither mysterious nor conspiratorial. Bernie is a senator and he interacts with other senators and meets with White House officials all the time. The senators each have a degree of influence but they all orbit the administration currently in office. Senators know what the administration wants of them at any given time and will plan their own actions on that basis. A senator that doesn’t fall in line will eventually lose office. They are not that individually powerful in the face of the other 99 senators plus the White House. You can have coalitions but even those are rife with corruption like insider trading and “lobbying”/bribing, so you have to calculate what people say versus what their material-political interests are.
All of that is to say that any individual politician recognizes the fragility of their own power and acts accordingly. Even granting elections as a 100% legitimate democratic process, being elected does not give someone any mandate. Your work as a senator is done primarily through committees not votes, and that is determined by the institutions already in place.
I don't want to throw around baseless conspiracy theory when there is a model we know and understand as leftists which generally explains why we see things like this, but I wonder what other tools are used that we aren't aware of to make politicians fall in line.
I think it is neither mysterious nor conspiratorial. Bernie is a senator and he interacts with other senators and meets with White House officials all the time. The senators each have a degree of influence but they all orbit the administration currently in office. Senators know what the administration wants of them at any given time and will plan their own actions on that basis. A senator that doesn’t fall in line will eventually lose office. They are not that individually powerful in the face of the other 99 senators plus the White House. You can have coalitions but even those are rife with corruption like insider trading and “lobbying”/bribing, so you have to calculate what people say versus what their material-political interests are.
All of that is to say that any individual politician recognizes the fragility of their own power and acts accordingly. Even granting elections as a 100% legitimate democratic process, being elected does not give someone any mandate. Your work as a senator is done primarily through committees not votes, and that is determined by the institutions already in place.