Post-Election Commentary

The Democratic Party needs to quit with the identity politics and present itself, as it did in the days of old, as a WORKERS PARTY. Political parties on the left, the world around, need to quit trying to find "middle ground" with right-wingers. If you fight for WORKERS, however, many of those right-wingers will join up, because they can see first-hand that you are fighting for their interests. If you play identity politics, dividing people up by gender, sexual orientation, race, and so on, while kow-towing to capitalist orthodoxy and handing out Band-Aids (like affirmative action) to some select few burned by the predations of the billionaire class and unaccountable corporations, then you are fighting a continual rear-guard action that kills morale, inspires no one, and loses votes.

A large chunk of Trump voters are pissed off about something real. I'm not talking about the rabid racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and Christo-fascists. I'm talking the ones more concerned about bread-and-butter stuff: economic dislocation, financial insecurity, loss of the manufacturing base, pilfering of the commons, gross income inequity, and other factors. Some of these factors they may not even be consciously aware of, due not only to misinformation, groupthink and propaganda, but also to misapprehension of the complex ways that modern societies work. All of the factors are symptoms of the failures of late-stage global capitalism. And all of the factors have been exacerbated by the two major US political parties over the past 40 or so years. Irresponsible free-trade agreements, slashing social safety nets, outsourcing manufacturing jobs to other countries, privatizing everything. You name it.

Of course, the Republicans were always the better social services killers. Unfortunate, really, because those rural areas most in love with Trump are the ones most heavily dependent on "socialism" to keep their communities alive. No private company is going to waste resources delivering a piece of mail to a house in the boondocks for 73 cents. No charter school is going to set up in the middle of nowhere and bus kids to class.

What these Trump voters don't seem to realize is that what they crave are the simple things: affordable living, sound infrastructure, accessible public spaces, decent wages, a clean environment, and so on. And a responsive and responsible federal government can supply these things if it's steered by competent policy makers. But Trump does not give a crap about policies, he's in it for the grift and the glory (and now to stay out of prison). The voters have elected a scam artist who will offer them nothing substantive, just bread and circuses. The circumstances of their lives will not be improved in any meaningful way.

In the next four years I believe the mask will be fully taken off, and a bloc of Trumpers are going to realize just how little Trump and the GOP care about them. I hope.

It is a foregone conclusion, to me, that the Democrats will sweep the US House of Representatives in two years, and maybe the Senate as well. That will put an end to the worst excesses of King Trump. But we need no kings, and the US needs to adopt a new constitution that does away with presidents and replaces them with prime ministers. Likely this won't happen until after the nation fractures into two or more pieces, but it needs to happen.

@Soothfast said
The Democratic Party needs to quit with the identity politics and present itself, as it did in the days of old, as a WORKERS PARTY. Political parties on the left, the world around, need to quit trying to find "middle ground" with right-wingers. If you fight for WORKERS, however, many of those right-wingers will join up, because they can see first-hand that you are fightin ...[text shortened]... this won't happen until after the nation fractures into two or more pieces, but it needs to happen.