Trump’s win the result of failure of elites to recognize underlying discontent
MORE THAN A WEEK past the U.S. presidential election, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments continues, along with the protests in the streets. Donald Trump has that effect on people.
The dissection of the election will go on for ages, well past the four (or eight) years of his stay in the Oval Office.
Leaving aside the worst of Trump’s statements and personality traits – not an easy task – the reason he won boils down to a large chunk of the population eager for change, a chance to reject the decades-long decline perpetrated by the same elites who were trying to shove Hillary Clinton down their throats.
As filmmaker Michael Moore noted, the election outcome was a real “eff-you” to the establishment.
Moore had in fact predicted a Trump victory, pointing out that the political parties, mainstream media and other elites had completely missed – or conveniently overlooked – the pain and suffering that’s been going on for years in what is known as Middle America. The job losses, the falling incomes, the declining quality of life ... all of it ignored even as a few prospered and the bought-and-paid-for politicians patted themselves on the back with one hand while lining their pockets with the other.
While the neoliberal policies that have wreaked so much havoc – free trade, deregulation, trickle-down economics, shifting tax policies – date back decades, voters rightly identified Clinton as a booster for more of such failed policies. Trump, on the other hand, talked to those directly hurt by neoliberal ideology, the people who not only failed to benefit from the policies, but are being trampled under by them. Under Bill Clinton’s presidency, those policies were entrenched in a Democratic Party that turned its back on the people in pursuit of corporate money.
It was the Democrats themselves who failed to notice the groundswell of support for Bernie Sanders, rigging the primaries so that the corporately anointed Hillary Clinton could carry the flag, despite polls consistently showing Sanders would fare better in a matchup against the Republican hopefuls, including the eventual winner, Trump.
Pushed by Sanders’ support, Clinton moved some of her stated policies to something more resembling the public good, but few people were deceived – she remained reviled by much of the electorate.
Clinton was undoubtedly hurt by Barack Obama’s legacy of squandering voters’ call for hope and change by instead going ahead with even more neoliberal policies and violations of civil rights than even his predecessor, George W. Bush.
And she was, to a significant number of voters, crippled by her husband’s legacy, both from the left and the right.
For progressives, Democrats or otherwise, Bill Clinton betrayed the party’s roots and went corporate in an attempt to be more “centrist,” code for pandering to establishment dogma. For the increasingly rabid right – somewhat less slavering during his tenure – Clinton was a Democrat, and one with social policies that didn’t jibe with the increasing militancy of evangelical nutjobs, so he had to go. That was reflected in Republican obstructionism that really picked up pace in those years, not just the impeachment attempts, but the constant use of Congress as a cudgel rather than a tool of government of, for or by the people.
Most notably, when Hillary Clinton made her second attempt at grasping power – having lost out to Obama in 2008 – Americans had already figured her out as a corrupt power-seeker. The Clintons broke new ground in ‘pay-to-play’ politics, taking untold millions in direct income from the big banks and billions more from corporations and governments into their non-profit slush fund, aka the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons are wealthy because they exploited pay-to-play like no other modern politicians in America (they make the corrupt Kathleen Wynne look like a rank amateur in her money-for-access schemes). Everybody knew Clinton was in it for herself and her backers in the 1%.
That being the case, Trump could call Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and make it stick. That he himself is some ways no less crooked didn’t seem to resonate with voters hungry for change – Trump may have been an unsavoury blowhard, but he wasn’t a Washington insider. And he said all the right things to the people who would eventually go out and vote.
Last week’s result was more of an indictment of Clinton and the status quo than it was an endorsement of Trump the candidate. Trump the person is a very flawed individual, a fact many voters were happy to ignore in the rush for change.
Which brings us to the issue of whether or not Sanders would have triumphed over Trump. Although a long-time politician, Sanders isn’t considered an insider. Ostensibly an independent senator, he was naturally more inclined to support Democrats over Republicans, but he was never one of them, as was clear was the party apparatus did everything it could to stymie his attempts to unseat Clinton in the primaries. That strategy ultimately backfired, of course.
Having lived a much more virtuous life – in political terms – than either Clinton or Trump, Sanders had no real baggage, and few skeletons in the closet. The Vermont senator’s policies actually lined up in places, particularly in matters of trade and infrastructure spending, with Trump’s rather than Clinton’s at a time when Americans were heading down that road.
Clinton was the wrong candidate for the Democrats to run against Trump, but not only because of her tired neoliberal policy ideas and steadfast devotion to the interests of the 1%. She’s also unlikeable
and untrustworthy.
Sanders, in short, was someone people could trust. Certainly that was not said of Clinton, even among those who voted for her, holding their noses or otherwise. Trump’s rating on that front wasn’t much better through the electoral process, but in this case it was better the devil you don’t know.
All of that is moot, however, at least for the next few years. As of January, it’ll be President Trump, but there’s a lesson to be learned here for Canada, which is typically a decade behind the U.S. in social trends. The storm clouds of Justin Trudeau’s embrace of the neoliberal agenda, including trade agreements, will eventually displace the clear skies of sunny ways.