My son gave me a subscription to Jacobin Magazine for Christmas. It’s a quarterly, and I received my first post-election issue today. I didn’t read much in the last issue, because it was pretty much premised on the certain Clinton victory.
Unfortunately, I can’t link to the article about which I’m writing, as it isn’t on line yet. It’s by David Broder (no, not that David Broder) titled Being Anti-Trump Isn’t Enough. I’ll summarize, because I think he makes some excellent point.
His central thesis is that what happened here in 2016 happened in Italy when Silvio Berlusconi was elected. The opposition pretty much united in a single party. Ideology and policy pretty much went out the door, and their sole focus was attacking Berlusconi. As with Trump, he was a crypto-fascist with kleptocratic tendencies. It didn’t work, or at least it didn’t work well. The opposition was perceived as standing for nothing, and when, after too many years, they finally got power, they had no agenda other than the austerity politics that has destroyed the economy there.
The lack of an alternative message was at least one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost. People sensed on a visceral level that she was more of the same, only more so. Going forward, if we’re going to get rid of Trump, we have to not only oppose him at every turn, but we have to stand for something that is more than simply being against Trump. Broder concludes:
The Left’s alignment with neoliberal centrists against Berlusconi did nothing to thwart right-wing populism or keep racism out of politics. It guaranteed these forces’ unchallenged hold over millions of voters, while destroying its own alternative voice. Looking over the wreckage of the 2016 campaign, the US left must avoid making a similar mistake.
The article should be on the Jacobin website soon, or you can download the magazine when it become available (Winter 2017 issue). It’s well worth reading.
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