Instead of asking how Donald Trump could actually become President of the US, it is necessary to flip the question: How come the Democrats chose Hillary Clinton to take him on?
For all except the purblind, suave, liberal intelligentsia living in big American cities, Trump’s win could not have come as a surprise. Forget his braggadocio — those who voted for him did so not necessarily because they secretly approved of his political incorrectness, but because his economic agenda made a lot of sense. He promised jobs to disembowelled inner America, he scoffed at the economic punditry of the day which kept parroting that free trade was great for all, when evidence on the ground was pointing the other way. There were no jobs (forget the data-mongers in Washington DC), medicines were appallingly expensive, life expectancy looked to be dipping — and the middle class disappearing. Amidst this, the technical, financial and managerial elites were earning hand over fist. Globalisation seemed a rigged system — one in which Clinton was embedded all these years.
Trump tapped into this angst of the blue collar white — but this was something that Bernie Sanders was doing quite as well in the primaries, without, of course, resorting to a regressive socio-cultural agenda in the process. Many Trump supporters have clearly said that they would have voted Sanders, and that they were just not willing to stomach Clinton. Trump actually got the left Democrat vote!
The Democrats’ failure to push Sanders also suggests that they failed to grasp the import of Brexit. Status quoists like Clinton were doomed. Sanders’ agenda for the revival of the US was grounded in a a sound package of state-led policies with an emphatic rejection of Wall Street. He could have given Trump a fight. The world over, centrist, hypocritical politicians are in trouble. The tragedy is that Trump and his ilk elsewhere make for a dismal alternative.
Senior Deputy Editor