The Sandernistas: P.P.S. on Trump and the crisis of the Republican Party

Chris Cutrone, June 22, 2016

Further amendment to “The Sandernistas: The final triumph of the 1980s” (Platypus Review 82, December 2015 – January 2016) and “Postscript on the March 15 primaries” (Platypus Review 85, April 2016), after the end of the primary elections Corel Draw 2018.

Trump is no “fascist,” nor even really a “populist,” (( See Tad Tietze, ā€œThe Trump paradox: A rough guide for the Left,ā€ Left Flank (January 25, 2016) mssql ė‹¤ģš“ė”œė“œ. Available on-line at <http://left-flank.org/2016/01/25/the-trump-paradox-a-rough-guide-for-the-left/> ģ„±ź°€ėŒ€ ģ•…ė³“. )) but is precisely what the Republicans accuse him of being: a New York-style Democrat — like the socially and economically liberal but blowhard “law-and-order” conservative former 1980s New York City Mayor Ed Koch 19 ė‹Øģ†” ė‹¤ģš“ė”œė“œ. Trump challenges Hillary precisely because they occupy such similar moderate Centrist positions on the U.S. political spectrum, whatever their various differences on policy ģ»·ģœ„ģžė“œ. Trump more than Sanders represents something new and different in this election season: a potential post- and not pre-neoliberal form of capitalist politics, regarding changes in policies that have continued from Reagan through Obama, driven by discontents of those alienated from both Parties ė°ėŖ¬ ķˆ“. Trump has successfully run against and seeks to overthrow the established Republican 1980s-era “Reagan Revolution” coalition of neoliberals, neoconservatives, Strict Construction Constitutionalist conservatives and evangelical Christian fundamentalists — against their (always uneasy) alliance as well as against all of its component parts Download this. Established Republicans recoil at undoing the Reagan Coalition they have mobilized since the 1980s. Marco Rubio as well as Ted Cruz — both of whom were adolescents in the 1980s — denounced Trump not only for his “New York values” but also and indicatively as a “socialist.” Glenn Beck said that Trump meant that the America of “statism” of the Progressives Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had won over the America of “freedom” of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Download Rocket Dog Skin. Of course that is ideological and leaves aside the problem of capitalism, which Trump seeks to reform. Sanders could have potentially bested Trump as a candidate for reform, perhaps, but only on the basis of a much greater and more substantial mobilization for a different politics than it is evidently possible to muster through the Democrats, whose nostalgia for the New Deal, Great Society and New Left does not provide the necessary resources Download Minecraft 1.8.

Trump has succeeded precisely where Sanders has failed in marshaling the discontents with neoliberalism and demand for change. Sanders has collapsed into the Democratic Party Download Hunterx Hunter. To succeed, Sanders would have needed to run against the Democrats the way Trump has run against the Republicans. This would have meant challenging the ruling Democratic neoliberal combination of capitalist austerity with New Left identity politics of “race, gender and sexuality” that is the corporate status quo. The results of Trump’s contesting of Reaganite and Clintonian and Obama-era neoliberalism remain to be seen. The biggest “party” remains those who don’t vote. Trump will win if he mobilizes more of them than Clinton. Clinton is the conservative in this election; Trump is the candidate for change. The Republicans have been in crisis in ways the Democrats are not, and this is the political opportunity expressed by Trump. He is seeking to lead the yahoos to the Center as well as meeting their genuine discontents in neoliberalism. Of course the change Trump represents is insufficient and perhaps unworkable, but it is nonetheless necessary. Things must change; they will change. As Marx said, “All that is solid melts into air.” The future of any potential struggle for socialism in the U.S. will be on a basis among not only those who have voted for Sanders but also those who have and will vote for Trump. | Ā§


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3 Responses to “The Sandernistas: P.P.S. on Trump and the crisis of the Republican Party”

  1. […] Some self-styled leftists have portrayed Trump as a moderate, or moderately conservative, on the grounds that some of his ā€œpolicy positionsā€ are ā€œto the left ofā€ Clintonā€™s. This preposterous line of ā€œreasoningā€ leads directly to the conclusion that Hitler was also a moderate or moderately conservative. As the Political Compass team has pointed out, ā€œHitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today’s Labour parties.ā€ The truth is that the standard left-right political continuum is unable to come to grips with fascism and proto-fascism. ā€œPolicy positionsā€ notwithstanding, these are retrogressive, reactionary phenomena. […]

  2. […] Affiliated Society(3) has examined the Trump phenomenon several times in this light.Ā  In a “P.P.S. on Trump and the crisis of the Republican Party” attached to his article The Sandernistas, Cutrone first dismisses the typical left hysteria […]

  3. […] Some self-styled leftists have portrayed Trump as a moderate, or moderately conservative, on the grounds that some of his ā€œpolicy positionsā€ are ā€œto the left ofā€ Clintonā€™s. This preposterous line of ā€œreasoningā€ leads directly to the conclusion that Hitler was also a moderate or moderately conservative. As the Political Compass team has pointed out, ā€œHitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today’s Labour parties.ā€ The truth is that the standard left-right political continuum is unable to come to grips with fascism and proto-fascism. ā€œPolicy positionsā€ notwithstanding, these are retrogressive, reactionary phenomena. […]