TRUMPED

Liberals only need to look in the mirror to see who was responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.

THAT DONALD TRUMP would win the presidential election- and win convincingly in the Electoral College - was largely unforeseen. Certainly one of the first casualties of the Trump presidential victory could well be the opinion poll industry and the reputation of various commentators who got paid a lot of money to tell us - apparently - what was going down in the American electorate. They may as well have just flipped a coin for all the good they did.

It should also be noted that  nearly half of all eligible American voters didn't bother to turn up at the polling booths, such is the level of alienation from a democracy that doesn't work for  the majority of the people.

'I think the discontent of the American people is far greater than the pundits understand,' tweeted Bernie Sanders once it became clear that Clinton had lost.

Too right. But it was also far greater than Hillary Clinton - and the liberal milieu that surrounds her - understood as well. Clinton, the Washington career politician of three decades and a loyal friend of Wall Street, was never going to connect with that anger out in the American hinterland. Parading around a stage with mega-wealthy pop stars like Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce, for example, was not going to resonate with a working class America suffering under the iron heel of neoliberalism. In fact I imagine it antagonised quite a number of folk.

To castigate Trump for being racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and a generally all round unpleasant person (all true) failed to recognise that Trump wasn't created in a political vacuum - he is a product of the anger and disillusionment sparked by the same neoliberal orthodoxy that Hillary championed when her husband was president. This is what the Wall Street Journal said about Bill Clinton in 1993:

“Even though President Clinton has railed against rich people, special interest lobbyists, overpaid executives and insurance and drug companies, he is now aggressively wooing big business, inviting small groups of top executives – 80 in the past 10 months – to lunch. On issue after issue, Mr. Clinton and his administration come down on the same side as corporate America."

That it would be business as usual under Hillary's presidency was not denied by the Goldman Sachs endorsed Democratic candidate who was not even prepared to back a straightforward policy like raising the minimum wage to $15 hour.

But such is the arrogance of the Democratic Party leadership they have already blamed others for their mistakes. Jill Stein and the Green Party have been attacked for supposedly taking away crucial votes from Clinton - as if Jill Stein was somehow not entitled to stand as a candidate. Flak has also been fired in the direction of FBI Director James Comey and Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Even Clinton critics like actors Susan Sarandon and Mark Ruffalo have found themselves being accused of contributing to Clinton's downfall.

And we shouldn't forget Vladimir Putin's evil plans for world domination.

It could have been so much different if the Democratic Party establishment hadn't given the middle finger to the 13 million people who voted to have Bernie Sanders as the Democratic Party candidate. His call for progressive change, for a 'political revolution' caught the imagine of a nation in way that the machine politics of Hillary Clinton never did.

It could well have been President Sanders if not for those who conspired against him on behalf of Clinton. It's clear that the Nevada Caucus was stolen from Sanders , and the Democratic National Committee blocked independents from voting in many of the primaries, in many of the states, and independents were Bernie Sanders’ primary base. Yet former DNC chairperson Debbie Wassermann Schultz, who was forced to resign after leaked emails exposed what she had been up to, walked straight into a job on Clinton's campaign team! Extraordinary. Presumably this was her reward for her unswerving loyalty to Hillary.

Already various liberals are raising the alarm bells about the consequences of a Trump presidency. But they are exactly the same people who have consistently failed to protest at the adverse impact the neoliberal orthodoxy has had on ordinary working class Americans. While they warn of a Trump apocalypse they have ignored the neoliberal apocalypse which consigned over 47 million Americans to living in poverty in 2015. They only have to look in the mirror to see who was really responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.

In truth we don't know what we'll get from Trump but, despite the rhetoric , it's unlikely he'll do anything that will jeopardise the interests of Empire, corporate interests and the rule of the one percent.

But, as economist Michael Roberts has commented, Trump will preside over an economy in trouble  and his recipe for its salvation - cutting taxes, reducing government spending and taxing imports to  'protect' American jobs will hit hardest the very people who voted for him. This presents a major problem for  capital which won't to provoke a confrontation with an already angry  working class. Somehow, they are going to have to find a way of controlling Trump and the corporate media's uniform call for 'unity'  is an early sign of 'the rules' being laid down for him.