An observation, however belated, about the 2014 mid-term elections:
It seems to me that, given the lines along which the American people voted for politicians (overwhelmingly conservative) versus policy (decidedly progressive) in these last mid-terms, the transformation of modern electoral politics into reality television is all but complete. This seemed to really begin with the 2012 presidential race, when the Republican Clown Car turned the primary season into a complete farce. In hindsight, those RWNJ shenanigans seem even more deliberate, a softening up of the public's incredulity designed to make a lower bar of chicanery all the more palatable (and therefore invisible) by contrast.
The schism between politicians and policy has become so wide that it seems as if much of the public can no longer see, let alone comprehend, their symbiosis. Character has all but completely eclipsed record in political advertising, and when combined with the soap-operatic stenography and endless "he said, she said" speculation of the 24-hour need cycle, people no longer seem to realize that the politicians they vote for are the very same ones who are responsible for enforcing (or failing to enforce) the policies they like.
Politicians and politics now exist in two different spheres of thought, a Venn diagram where the overlap is diminishing almost every day. The question is: who benefits? to which the answer should be obvious, at least to those of us that are paying attention: the plutocracy, the oligarchy, the fat cats, the 1%, whatever you choose to call the ultra-wealthy in America who seek to privatize their profits, socialize their losses, and couch both in the language of so-called "liberty" so the rubes will swallow it up. To them, politics is an even bigger gameshow than it is to rest of us. They would know, seeing as how they set the stage for the whole sideshow...and won't tale their hands off the rigging.