[Peace-discuss] The presidential election is about the war and the economy

[C. G. Estabrook]

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/05/24/kosovo-hillary-clintons-legacy-terror/ <http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/05/24/kosovo-hillary-clintons-legacy-terror/>

For forty years, all Republican and Democrat presidential nominees have paid obeisance to both neoliberal and neoconservative principles - until now.

Clinton is a neoliberal and a neocon, but Trump isn’t either one. Neoconservatism (using military power to insure US elites' political control => more war) and neoliberalism (using legal authority to insure US elites' economic control => more inequality) are government programs that the public - when they become aware of what they entail - oppose. Therefore Clinton’s lead is declining, as she desperately seeks to mobilize class contempt (his voters are a “…basket of deplorables”) and turn the public’s attention to Trump’s ‘bigotry.’ (Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report: "Hillary Wants a Crusade to Defeat Trump’s ‘Bigotry' – and Leave Her Bankers Alone” <http://www.blackagendareport.com/hillary_crusade_against_bigotry_trump>.)   

Trump is presenting, however inchoately, the class politics of the 1930s-70s (the New Deal to the Great Society); Clinton can counter only with the identity politics to which US liberals retreated in the 1970s, after abandoning class politics under the assault of neoliberalism. 

Jeffrey St.Clair observes, "Trump knows how to talk about class politics in the peculiar American context better than any major party nominee since Mondale, though Mondale as stilted as Trump is hyperbolic. I don’t know how HRC overcomes this except through a campaign of escalating fear-mongering. HRC will offer fear of Trumpian fascism; Trump will counter with fear of The Other: immigrants, black youth, Muslims” - especially as threats to our livelihoods:    

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-in-surge-trump-retakes-advantage-on-economic-issues/article/2602009 <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-in-surge-trump-retakes-advantage-on-economic-issues/article/2602009>

—CGE



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