[Peace-discuss] Why Clinton's identity politics was no match for Trump's half-understood class politics

[C. G. Estabrook]

http://seeyouin2020.blogspot.com/2016/11/hillary-plays-fiddle-as-democratic.html <http://seeyouin2020.blogspot.com/2016/11/hillary-plays-fiddle-as-democratic.html>

I think it's wrong to say "fascism is rising again," as in a repeat of the German 1930s, instructive as that period may be for us today. But it is true that neoliberalism is in crisis, and in America those most responsible are the people who abandoned the lessons of the 1930s - American liberals who gave up the New Deal tradition in the 1970s.

"The first signs of the Democrats' transformation into a disguised tool of the status quo came in the years between the 1968 and 1972 election cycles, when the former supporters of George McGovern worked to reform the party. Though the Democratic Party under the McGovern coalition was more anti-war and pro-civil rights than the one before it, this new version of the Democrats had left behind many of the economically populist values that the party had previously represented [i.e., the New Deal tradition]…

"In 1972, many working class whites who had used to make up the party's base realigned with the Republican Party, costing Democrats the election. This cleared the way for Jimmy Carter, the logical conclusion of the anti-worker Democratic standard that the party had adopted, to appear in 1976.

"It was no coincidence that income inequality, long on the decline, then began to climb upward in the late 70's. [In fact, it was the desired result of the conscious, calculated 1970s movement in US business circles = neoliberalism.] Carter took on an elite-oriented approach to economics that none of his recent predecessors, Democratic or Republican, had come close to embracing, enacting deregulations, neglecting infrastructure and social spending, and failing to invest in jobs. Though most see Clinton as the first neoliberal Democratic president, the party had gone in that direction long before the 90’s.

"The Democrats' corruption has only gotten worse since then, with the party being responsible for the Wall Street deregulations, anti-worker trade deals, cuts to the social safety net, and other policies which have driven economic inequality to levels unprecedented in American history. Therefore, it's no wonder that Republicans have been able to get working class whites solidly on their side since 1972, and it should certainly come as no shock that Trump was able to so successfully utilize this anger against the economic order which Democrats represent.

"New Yorker writer George Packer, in an article about the disillusionment so many economically insecure people are feeling towards the Democratic Party, assesses the mindset of the early 70's McGovern Democrats as they decided to re-route their party's direction away from economic populism: 'The class rhetoric of the New Deal sounded out of date, and the problems it addressed appeared to have been solved by the wide prosperity of the postwar years.' This exposes the irony of the situation; the Democrats of four decades ago, forgetful of the reason their party had shifted towards economic populism during the 1930's and 40's (hint: extreme wealth inequality), saw no problem with pivoting towards big business and setting society on the same track that had led it into the great economic and political disasters of the 20th century…"

—CGE
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20161110/fca27729/attachment.html>