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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former U.S. president
Bill Clinton greet supporters during a primary night gathering on April 26,
in Philadelphia. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton Needs to Wake Up. Trump Is Stealing the Voters She Takes for
Granted
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
30 July 16
For the first time in living memory, the Republicans are outflanking the
Democrats on the left. If they don't rise to the challenge, they'll be
trounced
The Republican party wants my liberal vote. This was the most shocking wave
to wash over my brain last week as I sat in the convention center in
Cleveland. It was more startling in its way than the storm of hate that I
saw descend on former GOP hero Ted Cruz, stranger than the absence of almost
all the party's recent standard-bearers, weirder than the police-state
atmosphere that hovered over the streets of the city.
The Republicans were trying to win the support of people like me! Not
tactfully or convincingly or successfully, of course: they don't know the
language of liberalism and wouldn't speak it if they did; and most of the
liberals I know will never be swayed anyway. But they were trying
nevertheless.
Donald Trump's many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were
just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin
Roosevelt, he denounced "big business" (not once but several times), and
certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one
of George McGovern's campaign theme: "Come home, America."
Ivanka Trump promised something that sounded like universal day care. Peter
Thiel denounced the culture wars as a fraud and a distraction. The
Republican platform was altered to include a plank calling for the breakup
of big banks via the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. I didn't hear anyone
talk about the need to bring "entitlements" under control. And most
crucially, the party's maximum leader has adopted the left critique of "free
trade" almost in its entirety, a critique that I have spent much of my adult
life making.
It boggles my simple liberal mind. The party of free trade and free markets
now says it wants to break up Wall Street banks and toss Nafta to the winds.
The party of family values has nominated a thrice-married vulgarian who
doesn't seem threatened by gay people or concerned about the war over
bathrooms. The party of empire wants to withdraw from foreign entanglements.
Trump is not going to receive my vote, of course. His bigotry, his racist
statements about Mexicans, his attitude toward global warming, his love of
authoritarianism, his hypocrisy, his ignorance, his untrustworthiness, and
his years of predatory business practice all make such a thing impossible.
He frightens me every time he opens his mouth.
But that's not the point. The question we need to ask is this: what are the
consequences of the violent disruption Trump has visited on our delicately
balanced political system? Look what he has done. He has dynamited the
free-trade consensus that dominated Washington for so many years, he has
done it with force, and in the process he has made himself the choice of
many millions of Americans who have watched their economic situation
deteriorate and heard their concerns brushed off by the Thomas Friedmans and
the Bill Clintons of the world.
Think about it this way. For years, Republican orthodoxy on trade made
possible endless Democratic sell-outs of working people, with the two-party
consensus protecting the D's from any consequences. They could ram Nafta
through Congress, they could do trade deals with China, they could negotiate
the Trans Pacific Partnership, they could attend their conferences at Davos
and congratulate themselves for being so global and so enlightened, secure
in the belief that the people whose livelihoods they had just ruined had
"nowhere else to go".
In other words, it was only possible for our liberal leaders to be what they
are - a tribe of sunny believers in globalization and its favored classes -
as long as the Republicans held down their left flank for them. Democrats
could only celebrate globalization's winners and scold its uneducated losers
so long as there was no possibility that they might face a serious challenge
on the matter from the other party in the system.
Well, today all that has changed. The free-trade consensus lies in shards on
the floor. The old Republican party has been smashed by this man Trump. It
is a new political world out there. How will Democrats react to this altered
state of affairs? How will they present themselves to voters now that the
bipolar system of the last four decades has exploded, now that they can no
longer count on free-trading Republicans to make their own passion for
globaloney seem acceptable?
So far, Democrats are acting as though nothing has really changed. In speech
after speech at the Philadelphia convention they are denouncing Trump as
though he was just an outrageous extension of the familiar conservative
demonology, rather than an altogether different monster.
And Democratic leaders seem to be preparing to run exactly as they have
always run. Hillary Clinton is pivoting to the right just as other Democrats
did before her because ... because, well, that's what Democrats always do.
Her first big move after securing her party's nomination was to choose Tim
Kaine as her vice-presidential candidate - a man who voted for fast-tracking
the Trans Pacific Partnership and a supporter of his state's right-to-work
laws. He is, as a recent headline proclaimed, "a Democrat Wall Street can
like".
Appropriately enough, Wall Street personnel are reportedly flocking to the
convention in Philadelphia, eager to be reunited with the party that, for a
time during the primary season, seemed to be turning away from them. Other
accounts suggest that Hillary intends to reverse course on trade as soon as
it's possible to do so.
Do Democrats and their supporters even glimpse the danger in such moves? On
the contrary: they seem to think it shows statesmanlike gravitas. On Monday,
Bill Scher wrote, of Hillary Clinton:
She tapped Sen Tim Kaine despite his support for the 'fast track' law
designed to ease ratification of multinational trade agreements. She's
reached out to anti-Trump Republican hawks by embracing the philosophy of
American Exceptionalism, declaring that 'if America doesn't lead, we leave a
vacuum, and that will either cause chaos or other countries will rush in to
fill the void'. Her aides told the New York Times earlier this month that
her governing strategy would be squarely based on bipartisanship, the
antithesis of Sanders' vision of steamrolling Congress via grassroots
revolution.
Let's see: trade agreements, outreach to hawks, "bipartisanship", Wall
Street. All that's missing is a "Grand Bargain" otherwise it's the exact
same game plan as last time, and the time before that, and the time before
that. Democrats seem to be endlessly beguiled by the prospect of campaign of
national unity, a coming-together of all the quality people and all the
affluent people and all the right-thinking, credentialed, high-achieving
people. The middle class is crumbling, the country is seething with anger,
and Hillary Clinton wants to chair a meeting of the executive committee of
the righteous.
When Democrats sold out their own rank and file in the past it constituted
betrayal, but at least it sometimes got them elected. Specifically, the
strategy succeeded back in the 1990s when Republicans were market purists
and working people truly had "nowhere else to go". As our modern Clintonists
of 2016 move instinctively to dismiss the concerns of working people,
however, they should keep this in mind: those people may have finally found
somewhere else to go.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former U.S. president
Bill Clinton greet supporters during a primary night gathering on April 26,
in Philadelphia. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/hillary-clinton-donald
-trump-voters-republicans-democratshttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree
/2016/jul/28/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-voters-republicans-democrats
Hillary Clinton Needs to Wake Up. Trump Is Stealing the Voters She Takes for
Granted
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
30 July 16
For the first time in living memory, the Republicans are outflanking the
Democrats on the left. If they don't rise to the challenge, they'll be
trounced
he Republican party wants my liberal vote. This was the most shocking wave
to wash over my brain last week as I sat in the convention center in
Cleveland. It was more startling in its way than the storm of hate that I
saw descend on former GOP hero Ted Cruz, stranger than the absence of almost
all the party's recent standard-bearers, weirder than the police-state
atmosphere that hovered over the streets of the city.
The Republicans were trying to win the support of people like me! Not
tactfully or convincingly or successfully, of course: they don't know the
language of liberalism and wouldn't speak it if they did; and most of the
liberals I know will never be swayed anyway. But they were trying
nevertheless.
Donald Trump's many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were
just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin
Roosevelt, he denounced "big business" (not once but several times), and
certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one
of George McGovern's campaign theme: "Come home, America."
Ivanka Trump promised something that sounded like universal day care. Peter
Thiel denounced the culture wars as a fraud and a distraction. The
Republican platform was altered to include a plank calling for the breakup
of big banks via the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. I didn't hear anyone
talk about the need to bring "entitlements" under control. And most
crucially, the party's maximum leader has adopted the left critique of "free
trade" almost in its entirety, a critique that I have spent much of my adult
life making.
It boggles my simple liberal mind. The party of free trade and free markets
now says it wants to break up Wall Street banks and toss Nafta to the winds.
The party of family values has nominated a thrice-married vulgarian who
doesn't seem threatened by gay people or concerned about the war over
bathrooms. The party of empire wants to withdraw from foreign entanglements.
Trump is not going to receive my vote, of course. His bigotry, his racist
statements about Mexicans, his attitude toward global warming, his love of
authoritarianism, his hypocrisy, his ignorance, his untrustworthiness, and
his years of predatory business practice all make such a thing impossible.
He frightens me every time he opens his mouth.
But that's not the point. The question we need to ask is this: what are the
consequences of the violent disruption Trump has visited on our delicately
balanced political system? Look what he has done. He has dynamited the
free-trade consensus that dominated Washington for so many years, he has
done it with force, and in the process he has made himself the choice of
many millions of Americans who have watched their economic situation
deteriorate and heard their concerns brushed off by the Thomas Friedmans and
the Bill Clintons of the world.
Think about it this way. For years, Republican orthodoxy on trade made
possible endless Democratic sell-outs of working people, with the two-party
consensus protecting the D's from any consequences. They could ram Nafta
through Congress, they could do trade deals with China, they could negotiate
the Trans Pacific Partnership, they could attend their conferences at Davos
and congratulate themselves for being so global and so enlightened, secure
in the belief that the people whose livelihoods they had just ruined had
"nowhere else to go".
In other words, it was only possible for our liberal leaders to be what they
are - a tribe of sunny believers in globalization and its favored classes -
as long as the Republicans held down their left flank for them. Democrats
could only celebrate globalization's winners and scold its uneducated losers
so long as there was no possibility that they might face a serious challenge
on the matter from the other party in the system.
Well, today all that has changed. The free-trade consensus lies in shards on
the floor. The old Republican party has been smashed by this man Trump. It
is a new political world out there. How will Democrats react to this altered
state of affairs? How will they present themselves to voters now that the
bipolar system of the last four decades has exploded, now that they can no
longer count on free-trading Republicans to make their own passion for
globaloney seem acceptable?
So far, Democrats are acting as though nothing has really changed. In speech
after speech at the Philadelphia convention they are denouncing Trump as
though he was just an outrageous extension of the familiar conservative
demonology, rather than an altogether different monster.
And Democratic leaders seem to be preparing to run exactly as they have
always run. Hillary Clinton is pivoting to the right just as other Democrats
did before her because ... because, well, that's what Democrats always do.
Her first big move after securing her party's nomination was to choose Tim
Kaine as her vice-presidential candidate - a man who voted for fast-tracking
the Trans Pacific Partnership and a supporter of his state's right-to-work
laws. He is, as a recent headline proclaimed, "a Democrat Wall Street can
like".
Appropriately enough, Wall Street personnel are reportedly flocking to the
convention in Philadelphia, eager to be reunited with the party that, for a
time during the primary season, seemed to be turning away from them. Other
accounts suggest that Hillary intends to reverse course on trade as soon as
it's possible to do so.
Do Democrats and their supporters even glimpse the danger in such moves? On
the contrary: they seem to think it shows statesmanlike gravitas. On Monday,
Bill Scher wrote, of Hillary Clinton:
She tapped Sen Tim Kaine despite his support for the 'fast track' law
designed to ease ratification of multinational trade agreements. She's
reached out to anti-Trump Republican hawks by embracing the philosophy of
American Exceptionalism, declaring that 'if America doesn't lead, we leave a
vacuum, and that will either cause chaos or other countries will rush in to
fill the void'. Her aides told the New York Times earlier this month that
her governing strategy would be squarely based on bipartisanship, the
antithesis of Sanders' vision of steamrolling Congress via grassroots
revolution.
Let's see: trade agreements, outreach to hawks, "bipartisanship", Wall
Street. All that's missing is a "Grand Bargain" otherwise it's the exact
same game plan as last time, and the time before that, and the time before
that. Democrats seem to be endlessly beguiled by the prospect of campaign of
national unity, a coming-together of all the quality people and all the
affluent people and all the right-thinking, credentialed, high-achieving
people. The middle class is crumbling, the country is seething with anger,
and Hillary Clinton wants to chair a meeting of the executive committee of
the righteous.
When Democrats sold out their own rank and file in the past it constituted
betrayal, but at least it sometimes got them elected. Specifically, the
strategy succeeded back in the 1990s when Republicans were market purists
and working people truly had "nowhere else to go". As our modern Clintonists
of 2016 move instinctively to dismiss the concerns of working people,
however, they should keep this in mind: those people may have finally found
somewhere else to go.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
