Jacob Stevens writes:
“Their world is
collapsing. Ours is being built.” – Florian Philippot, a strategist for
France’s Front National tweeted on the day
of the US presidential election.
The collapse in the Democratic Party vote shows the
bankruptcy of their strategy: the time of the Third Way has come to an end.
With decades of political experience and the enthusiastic backing of media and
economic elites on both coasts, Hillary Clinton was the perfect candidate for
the Democratic platform.
Previous setbacks — her loss to Obama in 2008,
Benghazi, the email server — had since been turned to her advantage.
Clinton
turned out the Southern vote to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primaries, outwitted
her partisan opponents during 11 hours of Congressional hearings, and finally
brought the FBI to heel.
Hillary’s “Lean In” feminism and multicultural appeal
were perfectly attuned to her economic and political platform, as advertised in
the speeches to Goldman Sachs.
The Democratic Party’s 1% — open to applications
from all — was poised to smash the glass ceiling of the 0.1%.
Explanations that focus on Hillary’s “unlikeability”, or the
idea that the US wasn’t ready to elect a woman, obscure more than they reveal —
Trump’s favourability ratings were considerably lower, and yet his vote held up
by comparison with Romney’s in 2012.
That sexism and racism were significant
factors in Trump’s support is undeniable — they energised his base, and he
gained more from stepping up his attacks than he lost in female or minority
votes.
But the sexism of his electorate was not Hillary’s problem, as her
highly paid political operatives were well aware.
It worked in her favour as
the Democratic candidate, which is why the Democratic National Committee chose
to elevate the “pied piper”
candidacies of Trump, Cruz and Carson.
Hillary’s problem is that she lost about
four million votes from Obama’s 2012 total, while Trump almost matched Romney’s
haul.
The Obama coalition, already substantially reduced since 2008, fell apart
under Clinton.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the first popular reaction
in the US was the Tea Party, followed three years later on the left by Occupy Wall Street.
Despite its inherent contradictions — “Keep Government Out of My Medicare” —
right-wing populism in the US started earlier than its left-wing counterpart,
and effectively targeted the electoral system: providing many of the votes that
cost Obama control of the House in 2010, and taking state and city offices
across the South.
Trump didn’t invent this coalition, he inherited it — and
then poured petrol onto its flames at every rally.
That he only managed to
match Romney’s vote should have provided an opportunity for the left.
Donald Trump paid close attention to the
Bernie Sanders primary campaign, as did the increasingly alarmed leadership of
the Democratic Party.
The DNC, watching Bernie turn out new voters across the
rustbelt and the Midwest, chose to neutralise the ageing firebrand they held
responsible.
Once they’d done so, the way was clear for Trump to borrow from
Sanders’ speeches and turn his arguments against Clinton.
The presidency was
lost in Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and
Florida, all of which swung from Democrat to Republican, in most cases with a
similar or reduced turnout from 2012 (Florida had a much higher turnout).
Of
those states, Bernie had won Wisconsin’s primary and Maine’s caucus.
In
elevating the pied pipers of the right, while attacking the “unrealistic”
demands of the left, the Democratic Party leadership created the conditions for
its own defeat.
The tragedy of the Sanders story is not
that he should have beaten Clinton, or that he would have won the election if
he had — though both are true — but that he was then fated to stump for Hillary
in the electoral wasteland that remained, while Trump stole his best lines.
Trump’s approach to the question of party loyalty — threatening a third-party
run if the Republican National Committee opposed him — would have spelled the
end of Sanders’ campaign.
And yet Republican Party disarray, which allowed
Trump to repeatedly buck against the leadership and led to open warfare in the
weeks before the vote, has been rewarded with all three branches of government.
Party discipline used to be regarded as a prerequisite for authoritarian
government. In this election, Democratic Party discipline was its undoing, and
Republican Party chaos helped Trump to sweep into power.
Labour Party grandees,
pressuring Corbyn to step down in the interests of party unity, seem keen to
follow the same script.
The early indications are that the
American left is gearing up for a sustained, extra-parliamentary
opposition: forming new coalitions and planning campaigns to oppose every Trump
measure, from Inauguration Day onwards.
Anti-deportation actions are likely to
be an initial focus, as Trump contemplates overturning Obama’s DACA executive
order, which granted a temporary reprieve to three quarters of a million
“Dreamer” immigrants.
Black Lives Matter is sending activists to Standing Rock to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline,
alongside the Sioux and a vibrant coalition of environmental organisations and
anarchists.
The Movement for Black Lives has shown that it can unite dozens of
different groups around a wide-ranging manifesto.
The current, hysterical
reaction of US liberals in the media is nothing more than an expression of bad
conscience: those who failed to oppose Obama’s abuses of executive power —
drone wars, assassinations and deportations, jailing whistleblowers rather than
Wall Street — can now see that they’ve strengthened Trump’s hand.
While there is little agreement about the future of the
Democratic Party, there does seem to be a widespread acceptance of the need to
build a range of new political organisations outside it.
The coalition needed —
pro-immigrant and anti-austerity, in defense of workers’ rights and the welfare
state, addressing the ecological crisis — is the same one that’s needed to
oppose the new right in the UK and Europe.
Florian Philippot’s quote should
strike a chill into all of us — the right has been building on the ruins of the
Third Way for years.
Now it is time for the left.
And this got published about it in the New Statesman. That magazine's Blairite intermission is over, normal service has been restored.
ReplyDeleteNormal service was never brilliant, but yes.
Delete"After the 2008 financial crisis, the first popular reaction in the US was the Tea Party, followed three years later on the left by Occupy Wall Street."
ReplyDeleteAnd while Obama and his DNC pals could never touch the Tea Party they ran Occupy off the streets, employing every power of the state, at all levels, and including illegal surveillance, to do so.
Which reminds me: Obama just broke all records in the deportation stakes, 2 million in four years. That was the record that Clinton was promising to continue.
It will be hard for the Republicans to Trump that.