You just don’t listen!
Hillary, Ed Miliband, Corbyn – they’re all losers for the same oh-so-simple reason ...
IWAS wrong. In the end, the organisation and money weren’t enough. To the horror of the US political class – and much of the watching world – Donald Trump leapt astride the ghost of Ronald Reagan’s favourite horse, El Alamein, and galloped past Hillary Clinton and up to the West Wing of the White House.
‘I’m with her,’ Hillary’s supporters had confidently proclaimed in the final hours of the campaign. But America wasn’t. Or at least, not the parts of the country required to deliver victory in the electoral college. She didn’t have a path round the angry white men after all.
Trump’s triumph stunned the world. But in truth, it was not so much his victory as her failure. Or rather, her martyrdom.
The inquest into Clinton’s defeat is just beginning. But when it is concluded, it will find she lost for the same reason Ed Miliband lost. And Jeremy Corbyn will lose, and his successor will lose, and a procession of liberals will lose: namely, that the progressive Left long ago stopped being politicians and instead decided to start acting like missionaries.
Clinton has cut an impressive figure this year. Resplendent in her white pant-suit – her supporters created an entire website dedicated to it – she toured the housing estates of Michigan, the factories of Pennsylvania and the nursery schools of Florida. And she promised the working classes salvation.
‘We want jobs,’ they told her. She smiled and told them how with their help she would ‘break the glass ceiling’.
‘We want decent housing,’ they said. She nodded, and explained how she was ‘a change-maker’.
‘We want you to listen to us,’ they implored. So she placed her hand reassuringly on their shoulder and told them how she would be an inspiration to them and their daughters. And to be fair, many people found this munificent abstraction uplifting. Especially when contrasted with the regressive bile emanating from her opponent.
OVER the coming days we will hear much talk of the ‘Trump surge’ and ‘Trump revolution’. But the reality is more prosaic. Not only did Trump secure what is projected to be a million fewer votes than Clinton, he also won a lower share of the vote than Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney managed four years ago.
But though Trump’s words were often laced with poison, his hemlock was at least administered with refreshing directness. Faced with Clinton’s perceived wall of support among African-American voters he told them: ‘You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 per cent of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?’
Clinton’s response was to organise a series of public appearances with rapper Jay Z. The result was a seven per cent swing among black voters to Trump.
Our modern-day liberal missionaries would never even dream of speaking so bluntly to an ethnic minority group. Or anyone else for that matter. To do so would invite an equally direct response. And divining the wishes of the electorate – rather than actually listening to what they are saying – has become the progressive credo.
Some people have inevitably described Trump’s win as the ‘US Brexit’. But such comparisons are simplistic. Brexit was the result of non-voters going to the polls for the first time. Clinton’s defeat was the result of Democratic voters sitting at home, thumbing through their copies of Barack Obama’s The Audacity Of Hope.
Yet there are some parallels that cannot be ignored. On this side of the Atlantic, the political missionaries are also preparing to do the Lord’s work. The people must again be saved from themselves.
Yes, they may have voted for Brexit, but they didn’t really know what they were voting for. OK, they demanded an end to mass immigration. But they won’t like it when it happens. Don’t worry, though. The liberal elite are here. They will make sure things turn out all right.
We hear a lot about the dangers of political populism. And given the success of Trump – with his manifesto of wallbuilding and women-grabbing and Muslim-baiting – legitimately. But the time has also come to address the dangers of political paternalism.
Trump is as much a product of the progressives’ infantilisation of the electorate as he is of Right-wing-demagoguery. The need to constantly second-guess the will of the people. To obses- sively monitor and prescribe their language and the nature of their discourse. To dismiss their views as the product of brainwashing by a corrosive media or false prophets.
The people are sick of it. They no longer care about the beneficence or sincerity of the missionaries who appear on their doorstep. They want rid of them.
THAT it was Clinton who felt the full force of the people’s anger is a tragedy in many ways. As Trump acknowledged in his uncharacteristically generous victory speech, she has given a lifetime of service to her country. She endured the most abusive and divisive campaign in US presidential history with courage and dignity.
And she came within a whisker of breaking through that despised glass ceiling to secure the highest elected office on Earth.
But history was not kind to her. And the progressive Left are going to have to learn from her defeat. The days when they could benevolently reinterpret the popular will are over.
And with the martyrdom of Hillary Clinton, the era of missionary politics has been brought to a bloody and brutal close.