Skip to main content

Dear neoliberal Democrats: this is your mess, own it

by George Ciccariello-Maher

The final election results are not in, but one thing is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is a failure. And so is the neoliberal establishment.

Even if she narrowly manages to defeat Donald Trump, she has still lost. Her failure is not individual, however, but a failure of Clintonism, the Democratic Party, and decades of failed economic policies. According to some exit polls, Clinton is losing half of union households and getting routed in a rust belt abandoned by Clintonism: in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a state that she took so much for granted that she didn’t make a single campaign stop there.

All this against a racist misogynist with no ground game, hemorrhaging the support of his own party leadership, with far fewer resources and a thousand character flaws and weaknesses to be exploited. All polls show that even many Trump voters doubted his qualifications and character, but they voted for him anyway.

Confronted with this reality, Clintonite liberals have been willfully ignorant, managing to both write poor whites off as racist deplorables while simultaneously underestimating their potential to swing to the Right. Neglecting poor whites, Clintonism holds Black and Latino Americans hostage, offering no solution to police murder and promising more deportations to boot.

The blame game is already in full swing: Democratic apparatchiks are already preparing to blame FBI director James Comey, third party candidates, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Vladimir Putin’s name come up—the Red Scare never gets old. But the ire of a wounded Clintonism will no doubt be directed above all at the Left.

But the liberal establishment and its neoliberal economic policies have failed, and it’s time for liberals to own that. The pundits, the talking heads, the press, and the pollsters are admitting that they had no idea what they were talking about and flailing for explanations. Maybe if liberal and conservative elites alike don’t have answers, it’s time to build a fighting left that can offer real solutions.

The left needs to directly confront the racism that Trump harnessed, but it also needs to better understand what caused the Trump phenomenon to begin with. For all of his flaws, Bernie Sanders did the second, and you don’t have to like Sanders to admit that there’s no way he would have fucked this up so bad.

But Sanders’ failure to capture the Democratic Party was no accident. If Trump wins, the same Democratic Party has been calling him a fascist and would-be dictator will demand that we recognize his legitimacy. They will suddenly discover that, instead of fighting back, they can reach across the aisle and work with this eccentric leader.

But the reality is this: if you really believe that Trump is a fascist, you’d better be prepared to do more than just vote.

Source:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

globinfo freexchange   Does Trump know what he is doing? Well, yes and no. While many interpretate his latest move, mostly as an attempt to halt China, his main goal is to give the final blow to the neoliberal order on behalf of his oligarchs .  From this perspective, Trump's unprecedented decision to decide mass tariffs against almost everyone, was an act of strategic hit against the global free market neoliberalism, with the financial capital  at its top. And that's because this dominant-for-almost-half-century system, identifies restrictions and protectionism as major threats against its own existence. In other words, Trump acted as a commander of the capitalist faction that wants to beat its neoliberal rivals and put itself in charge, through a new transformation of capitalism into a 21st century corporate feudalism.   Concerning China, Trump's move may have some negative impact on its economy for a while, since China has chosen to partially play by the rule...

Deranged euroclowns want to revive a nazi-origin project!

globinfo freexchange   Behind the ridiculously cartoonish latest spot of the EU that gives "instructions" to the European citizens on how to deal with a major crisis during the first hours, lies a secret desire.    The deranged euroclowns of the crypto-fascist extreme center , are trying to build up a condition of consent inside the minds of Europeans, which is related to their biggest wet dream: an autonomous imperialist European army. The idea was not born suddenly because of Trump's hostile attitude against his own allies. From the early 50s, pan-European networks of neo-Nazis were created. In May 1951, the European Social Movement (MSE) was founded in Malmö, Sweden. Essentially, it was about projecting the ideology of the German SRP on a pan-European level. The MSE, which would remain active until the 1980s, proclaimed the need for Europe to emancipate itself from the divisive tutelage of the USA and the USSR, called for the defense of the “European race” against th...

Neoliberalism Needs To Go

Second Thought  

Netanyahu BRAGS About Genocide - And Our Media COVERS IT UP

Owen Jones  

Google Imports Ex Israeli Spies, The Genocide Resumes, Cruel Britannia

by Nate Bear   Part 3 - Cruel Britannia   The UK is moving ahead with large welfare cuts for disabled people, including those with cancer. On TV the other day, the UK’s health secretary Wes Streeting said that people with cancer should be in work, not at home resting. Alongside this, the government has said that to cut youth employment it will push young people to join the army. This, of course, is in the context of a massive expenditure on military weapons in the face of the Russian bogeyman.   What’s happening in the UK under a nominally centre-left Labour government is a good reminder that there is never a lesser evil if your leaders are neoliberals. Balancing the books on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable in society is the north star of all neoliberals, whether they call themselves centrists, left wing or right wing. Cruelty is the policy and the point.    Yet the last few years have also been a good reminder that everything is a choice. Cov...

Trump Speeds Up FALL OF THE WEST With Tariff War

Owen Jones     Related:   Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese: World is watching a live genocide in Gaza and doing nothing

The New Arab   As Israel’s war on Gaza enters its 19th month, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is sounding the alarm louder than ever: the world is watching a live genocide — and doing nothing to stop it. In an exclusive interview with The New Arab , Albanese describes the devastation in Gaza as unparalleled since WWII. Entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, tens of thousands are dead, and 91% of Gaza’s population is at risk of malnutrition. Over 60,000 children show signs of cognitive impairment due to starvation.  “This is not just war. This is genocide in real time,” she says. “What we are seeing now is the destruction of a people who refuse to leave.” Despite UN mandates and international law, Albanese says the global system is paralysed, and governments, corporations, and even universities are complicit. “If Palestine were a crime scene, it would bear all our fingerprints.”

US Official EXPOSES Truth About Gaza From The Inside

Owen Jones  

Google Imports Ex Israeli Spies, The Genocide Resumes, Cruel Britannia

by Nate Bear   Part 2 - The genocide resumes   The day before the Wiz deal, Israel resumed its genocide of Gaza with an unhinged bloodthirsty rampage, the deadliest twenty-four hours in the last nearly eighteen months of genocide. A high bar had been set, and it was cleared. They attacked at night, itself an act of utter cowardice and sadism, and slaughtered hundreds as they slept in tents. In tents. Close to one hundred babies and young children were killed. The overall death toll exceeds 400 and is rising. As expected, there is not a flicker of condemnation from world leaders, many of whom are arming Israel with the weapons and intelligence it needs for genocide. The British air force spent the ceasefire period gathering intelligence on Palestinians and feeding it to Israel so they could restart the mass murder efficiently.  The genocide is the end of the west. It destroys any claim to moral superiority over Russia, China, Iran or any of the officially designated bad g...