Can the U.S. left get it right?
Bob Hepburn, Linda McQuaig talk fear and hope,
REVERE, MA.— In this predominately white, working-class community just north of Boston’s Logan Airport, left-wing Democrats are filled with fear and loathing.
Their fear is that Donald Trump, the bombastic Republican nominee, will defy all the odds and defeat Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, on election day in November.
At the same time, their loathing is focused both on Trump, who they truly despise, and on Clinton, who they merely dislike.
Indeed, for the American left, this is a time of deep despair.
It’s especially true for those who backed Bernie Sanders in his surprisingly strong, but eventually losing, nomination bid. For them, the once unimaginable — namely the election of Trump as president — now seems an alltoo-real possibility, albeit a frightening one.
As the U.S. presidential race moves out of the national convention phase and into the long slog to Nov. 8, party loyalists in this Democratic enclave are trying to make sense of what is arguably the craziest and most unpredictable presidential election in generations.
In clusters on Revere beach and at a huge street festival last weekend, Democrats spoke of their disbelief in what’s happening to their party, their leadership and their country.
They shake their heads and say they don’t understand how any sane person can vote for Trump. They speak, almost in shock, of how Trump’s campaign is built on hate, fear, rage, bigotry, sexism and demagoguery.
And yet Trump is prevailing, emerging from last week’s Republican convention leading Clinton in at least three national polls.
Democrats are hoping desperately that their party’s convention, which wraps up Thursday night with a major speech by Clinton, will result in a post-convention bounce in the polls that will move her back ahead of Trump.
Until that happens, the Democrats of Revere will be in a high state of anxiety.
Revere is a microcosm of hard-luck America. Historically, it has been a solid Democratic town. But today it’s a community of lost jobs, lost hopes and low wages.
Earlier this year, a whopping 73 per cent of Revere residents voting in the Massachusetts Republican primary cast their ballots for Trump. It was Trump’s largest margin in the entire state.
For Democratic leftists, their fear and loathing centres on four points:
First, they fear many Democrats will stay home on election day rather than vote for a candidate they see simply as the lesser of two evils.
An ABC/Washington Post poll released two weeks ago suggests 54 per cent of those supporting Clinton say they will vote for her only because they don’t want Trump to win.
That’s not a resounding level of support for Clinton.
Second, they fear Clinton will be trounced later this fall by Trump in the three crucial televised debates. Part of their fear is based on the realization that Clinton lacks the warm, people-friendly attributes that worked wonders for her husband Bill Clinton in his two winning presidential campaigns.
Third, the loathing toward Clinton is palpable among diehard backers of Bernie Sanders, who don’t think Clinton is up to their fight against the big banks, Wall Street and the rich-poor gap.
One poll indicated as many as 27 per cent of Sanders’ supporters won’t vote at all. At the Democratic convention this week in Philadelphia, many Sanders followers were making a mess of it for Clinton, ignoring Sanders’ plea for unity and openly booing him while he was speaking before a national TV audience.
Fourth, the left loathes Trump, who they fear is a stronger force than they ever imagined he could be. For them, they see nothing good about this man.
Clinton is hoping to emerge from the Democratic convention with the lefties back on side, if not with her personally, then at least with the party.
The four-day convention was packaged to inspire the party faithful and remind them of the progressive views the party has championed over the decades.
As bad as it may seem to the leftists, Clinton still has time either to win them over or at least keep them onside.
One reason for that is that Americans are spellbound by this election and are paying close attention to its every twist. A Pew Research Centre poll found Americans are more politically engaged in a presidential election than since 1992, with 85 per cent of those surveyed saying they are watching news about the candidates quite closely.
That could play in Clinton’s favour if Trump’s campaign of all-fear, all-the-time starts to wear thin with voters.
If that happens, the Democratic lefties in Revere will at last be able to leave their fear and loathing behind.