On Sunday night, eight so-called “centrist” Democrats crossed party lines to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—surrendering their key demand on extending health-care subsidies.

Liberal critics called it moral cowardice, proof that “moderates” lack the courage to confront growing fascism on the right. But that misses the deeper truth. The problem isn’t weakness—it’s allegiance.

The elite Democratic establishment’s real loyalty is to the system that made them and their benefactors wealthy, and keeps the rest of us poor: capitalism itself. Trump’s brinkmanship threatened to unleash the one thing they fear more than his authoritarianism: a genuine, possibly explosive, movement from below that could end capitalism as we know it.

His moves to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers, refusal to give them back pay after the shutdown, and then cut off food stamps to tens of millions more could have had a terribly destabilizing effect on our economic—and thus, political—system as a whole.

The connection between mass unemployment, hunger, food insecurity and social unrest and political upheaval has been well documented by social scientists.

This is precisely what set the stage for the Arab Spring uprising in 2011. Youth unemployment surged in the years leading up to the revolt in both North Africa and Southwest Asia, hitting nearly 28% in the former and 27% in the latter. For comparison, youth unemployment in the U.S. today sits around 10%.

But it wasn’t just unemployment. Global food prices spiked sharply after the 2008 financial crisis, hitting record highs in 2010–2011. That led to widespread food insecurity across the Arab world. In six out of ten countries, majorities (53-68%) later reported they “ran out of food before they had money to buy more.”

The failure of political and economic elites to address these crises—combined with the rapid spread of new communication technologies—helped ignite the mass protests that ultimately toppled four governments, and sparked one of the deadliest and most disruptive civil wars in world history.

The Great Depression almost did the same thing in America.

By 1933, roughly one in four American workers was unemployed. Breadlines and hunger were widespread—a genuine social emergency. My grandfather, born on a rural West Virginia farm in 1924, often spoke of going barefoot most of the time as his family struggled to coax crops from a dry, rocky hillside.

That desperation gave rise to radical movements—on both the left and the right—demanding sweeping changes to the country’s economic and political systems, simply to survive.

As John Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath, “when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need.”

It was precisely under that threat—alongside coordinated pressure from socialists, communists, and labor unions—that Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted the New Deal. Many historians argue those interventions prevented a descent into fascism or revolution by channeling public anger into reform and promising Americans what FDR later called a “freedom from want.”

To be clear, I’m not suggesting Trump’s actions are about to trigger another Great Depression. But they could exacerbate an already fragile political situation in the United States.

A majority of Americans already live under financial strain, and most believe our economic and political systems need major change—or a complete overhaul. A massive shock—like 42 million people suddenly losing access to food assistance—could be exactly the kind of rupture that pushes the public from quiet frustration to open revolt.

That chaos would be felt most acutely in Washington, D.C.—the heart of American power—where one in four workers is employed by the federal government. Angry protests in a far-off city like Minneapolis are one thing. But angry, hungry crowds on the steps of the U.S. Capitol are quite another.

It was against this backdrop that those eight “centrist” Democrats voted to end the shutdown—to get federal workers back on the job, restore their pay, and keep food flowing to tens of millions of families.

Elite Democrats may not cite Steinbeck or Tahrir Square, but they know this history—and they know what happens when you push desperate people too far.

Because if the public began demanding change by force, the movement might not stop at Trump. It might shake the very foundations of the system that has made those same elite Democrats—and their benefactors—wealthy and powerful.

At the end of the day, the Democratic Party’s true fidelity is to capitalism, not to the working class. Its leaders aren’t trying to fix a system that keeps millions quietly exploited; they’re trying to preserve and manage it.

Their project is not liberation but containment, moderating the system’s cruelties just enough to prevent revolt. Every “reasonable compromise” is an act of maintenance, a way to keep the machine running no matter how many people it grinds down.

That’s why this vote was disappointing, but not surprising. It’s the logic of a party elite who can accept children going hungry or parents dying because they can’t afford healthcare as simply the cost of doing business.

Until we take back the Democratic Party from the capitalists who own it, that logic will prevail. And until then, the liberal right will keep caving to the fascist right—because it’s never in their interest to let the system collapse, or change.

The question is whether we’ll let them keep saving capitalism—or start saving ourselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Andrew Springer is an Emmy-winning journalist and the editor-in-chief of NOTICE News and has written for NBC News, ABC News, and Good Morning America. He’s also a former communications director for Bernie Sanders.