A peculiarity of today’s politics is the disproportion between Democrats’ fervent desires to serve in Congress and their lackadaisical willingness to cede its powers. Democratic candidates, both incumbents and challengers, are fighting ferociously to remain on, or get to, Capitol Hill. One wonders: Why?

Their party is doctrinally devoted to marginalizing the legislative branch in order to expand the discretion of the administrative state as an instrument of executive power.

And the next president certainly will be impatient with Madison’s separation of powers. President Hillary Clinton would be because progressives since Woodrow Wilson have considered this system an anachronistic impediment to energetic government powered by an unconstrained executive. President Donald Trump would be anti-Madisonian because the system of checks and balances would impede the sweep of his unmediated fabulousness.

The CFPB’s progressive authoritarianism reflects, in the language of the Hudson Institute’s Christopher DeMuth , “regulatory insouciance” made possible by “legislative abnegation.” Both will continue until conservatism reappears.