How incredibly obvious. Obama's a moderate Republican, on the political scale that was in use until recently.

American politics is owned by an oligarchy--the wealthy and their instrumentalities, the corporations. The oligarchy has two factions: Atoms and Bits.

Bits own the Democrat&tm; brand, and Atoms own the Republicans&tm;, with each making significant minority investments in the holdings of the other (these are oligarchs, you expected respect for the free market? Look up "hedge fund" some time.).

Bits are the information-based industries: Entertainment, finance, and "information technology", notably Silicon Valley; they backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Atoms represent the older legacy industries concerned with material things: Energy-bearing minerals and other resource extraction; manufacturing; large retail. They've lately been backing losers in Presidential races, but winning in state and local elections.

Their partisanship is really just jockeying for control of the power of government, and the enhanced profits that flow from that power. Each fights to shift the tax burden, first, to the lower classes if possible; and to the other faction if that fails. Tax break, tariffs, exclusionary laws, no-bid contracts, and uber alles, profit, are their ideology.

If that's what really concerns the powers-that-be, what are all these things that we the (little) people think we're fighting about? Do you think maybe the real job function of corporate politicians these days is to distract us from what the new aristocrats are doing, with phony controversy and manufactured outrage?

Ask not what the corporations can do for you. Ask what you can do for the corporations.