It's why wealthy conservatives often invest a fortune in obscure state judicial elections, for example. But the big kahuna is obviously the U.S. Supreme Court and its power to decide issues of commerce and taxation that matter the most to the oligarchic powers-that-be. When Justice Antonin Scalia abruptly died in early 2016, an exercise of true democracy — granting even a public hearing to the man that our democratically elected president, Barack Obama, nominated, the eminently decent centrist Merrick Garland — was blocked by that oligarchy's protectorate, the Senate GOP majority led by Mitch McConnell. That's because staying within the guardrails of democratic norms would have killed the right's decades-long takeover of all the levers of government. Instead, it was left to a president elected with nearly 3 million fewer popular votes than his opponent to finish the job.