GUEST BLOG: David Cunliffe – Waking up to the Donald

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The Daily Blog
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Sometimes our shared future hangs by a slender thread.  

An anti-establishment Republican landslide won the US presidential election for Donald Trump, and carried the House and Senate too.  Against most predictions, popular determination to “drain the Washington swamp” has resulted in an epoch-shifting political event.  

Polling see-sawed over the last few months.  Clinton won the debates but was the victim of character assassination.  Dirty politics became a billion dollar industry. The FBI’s last minute email investigation didn’t help.  

But something far bigger than that is going on.  Across the US a tide of protest arose at a neoliberal economic system that is not delivering for working and middle voters.

Their resentment and frustration, their struggles and alienation have led America to this day; a country fractured and markets in melt-down.

America’s ‘middle class’ is running harder on the treadmill just to stand still.  Workers are crunched in a precariat grinder. Insane excess dwells alongside abject poverty.  Some 90% of the last decade’s wealth created by the Fortune 500 accrued to around 0.5% of the population.  Global netizens pay no tax at all (which the President-elect called “smart”).  

A new generation is giving up on the hopes and norms previously taken for granted.  Normally sensible people are clutching at straws.  People believe the system is ‘rigged’ against working families – but they turned to Trump and not to Clinton (or the ideas of Picketty) to fix it.  Why?  

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Because we are in an age of deep anxiety. Technology is eating white collar jobs.  Jobs that payed mortgages have turned into patchwork make-do’s that no bank manager will lend on.  A generation is excluded from home ownership, American Pie or the Pavlova Paradise.  The rust belt is eating into the green belt.

Mr Trump mainlined into the resulting resentment, entrenched racism and misogyny. Aided by self-reinforcing social media that reinforces prejudice as well as perception. Sadly, this ‘post-truth politics’ helped win the White House.  Now there, it is challenged to govern.

So we enter a new age of instability.  Not exactly 1912.  Nor yet 1929.  But with financial markets down 5% on our 9/11 alone, with massive credit bubbles bulging around the globe, and with the lights on late in Beijing and Moscow, who knows where this will end?  Brexit was not predicted; nor was a Trump win.  Politics seems a volatile coin toss.  

As we all pick up the pieces from 8 November, there is also an opportunity to learn.  Our people are crying out to be heard.  The want bold solutions.  To feed and house a family.  To repair torn social fabric.  To give everyone a chance and a stake.  To hope for a better future.  Actually, to save capitalism from itself: to manage boom/bust cycles and to set boundaries so that competition benefits all stakeholders, without pillaging our planet.

Rumination on the lessons of this US election will go on for some time.  Platitudes and shows of unity have already begun.  But an enduring lesson will be that voters are crying out for truly different ways to address rampant inequality and alienation, and that progressives must rise to this challenge.

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53 COMMENTS

  2. Greetings, David 🙂

    Interesting choice to blog here rather than at The Standard where you get mentioned much more frequently (or maybe that’s the reason…)

    I made the wrong prediction about which of the two would ‘win’ because if the vastly worse of them had won, I would at least have the small consolation of guessing right. As it happens the ‘less worse’ has won.

    Regarding polls, whereas the internal kind can be said to be seeking information, the published kind are at least as likely to be for publicity/manipulation. When a poll is designed to get a desired outcome, as I believe the pro-Clinton ones were, it loses its power to elicit true information.

    When National does something horrid, unerringly a poll will appear that shows them with a higher approval rating. This will go on as long as it keeps working, because what matters, as our PM shows so often, is not the truth, but the believability of the lie offered in its place.

    In the US there will have been many who knew what was about to happen (I certainly viewed many blogposts to that effect) because they were on the ground finding out, not on the air lying about polls designed to lie.

    But David, you, if anyone does, know all this. You have much personal experience of the lying, colluding attack media. While Trump may have many failings, his great success this time seems to have been about winning against the neolib attack machine. This machine, which also defends Clinton and operates here in NZ, is free to mention all the bad stuff Trump is accused of, but relatively little of what Clinton is accused of.

    Why do so many seem to have voted Trump? Because, it seems, they are more awake to the lies they are being told than we are over here.

    As long as a blogpost on The Standard about the latest Roy Morgan poll gets more contributions than the average there the problem can be said to remain. A sign that we are waking up will be that people lose interest in polls because they will have done enough work to know for themselves.

      • True Chooky

        We are all sick of any “establishment” even with our NZ smug Nactional politicians who act like smart arses.

        Whether it is a political left or right they seem to represent always that arrogance today.

        As to much power is left among to few in the two party system.

        But when Donald Trump came along he is generally seem as not the standard right wing politician.

        He is an outsider like us to and not an “establishment politician” as Hillary is clearly.

        Many saw Trump more aligned to us underdogs.

        This is why he won the day as it was a complete rejection of the “business as usual inside the beltway smug “establishment.”

    • Excellent analysis and conclusion:
      “When National does something horrid, unerringly a poll will appear that shows them with a higher approval rating. This will go on as long as it keeps working, because what matters, as our PM shows so often, is not the truth, but the believability of the lie offered in its place.”

    • Was that a bit of a dig, George Hendry? Rather an irrelevant and unnecessary point you have made, since David Cunliffe has often posted on the Daily Blog.

  3. Great blog. Says it all. If there is anything to learn from this mess, it seems to be that dis-empowered and dis-enfranchised want bold not bland, they want to fundamentally challenge the status quo, not just tweak it. It is the challenge for Progressives everywhere. Don’t just do more of the same with a slightly different spin. They want to know that you are not of the system but are prepared to rewrite it.

    • And this surely is why DC is leaving the labour party full of neoliberal, too afraid to speak up for the popular vote instead chasing the ever shrinking centre vote who still have aspirations that democracy is actually a real thing.

    • Yes many of us got to know David and liked him and thought he was a fine leader. Thanks David for the analysis and well written piece here. You will be missed and never doubt that many MANY of us realized your brilliance and your dedication to better this country. Sad, very sad to see you leave but then much can be done outside of the political arena as well. Good Luck ! !

      Maybe later on when this insane out of touch govt. is replaced, you might consider returning ? ? Hope so.

    • Not quite sure why people are linking Donald with Winston.

      Trump is the anti-politician politician, Peters is the quintessential politician.

      Trump has been a politician for about a year, Winston has been in politics since Noah was a teenager

      • Very true. But Winston is the 2017 protest vote for those doing it hard and left behind. Consider this: Brexit, 11% overseas born, Trump 14%, No Zealand 30% and climbing….

  6. It’s taken some time, but the voting for the lesser of two evils now out. What is interesting is the generation gap, the once so called liberal baby boomer generation are the ones who are voting in droves for this new type of conservatism.

    Personally, I’m quietly ambivalent at the moment on one hand, it’s quite refreshing to have confirmed that misogyny and white nationalist are strong inside the USA. On the other I agree completely with David, unless progressives/left/open-minded people actually start looking at the world differently, and get that globalization is a dog – then they will wallow in obscurity.

  7. The US stock market is actually up big post the Trump victory. The predicted “meltdown” completely failed to materialise. At least so far.

  8. Here’s how the markets looked at the close.

    The Dow Jones up 1.4% to 18,590 points.
    The S&P 500 up 1.1% to 21,163.
    The Nasdaq up 1.1% to 5,251.

  9. Labour need to lose the idea that ‘technology’ is taking the jobs. Nope global capitalism is taking the jobs. Technology should be increasing the well paid jobs in areas such as solar and research and making and repairing automated systems.

    In NZ we are going for some sort of sweat shop low wage approach under the Natz and not using technology very well. Labour has not successfully rebutted this idea and instead – Labour sound like dinosaurs blaming technology for job losses when 166,000 working visas a year are being dished out to foreign students alone. It’s not just technology that seems to be the problem it’s the lack of technology investment creating new jobs and opportunities and the fall back on cheap labour and old style jobs more the issue.

    As for Trump getting in. It was due to the Fuck You to Bernie Sanders by Clinton and her advisers. They cheated in the race against Sanders and voters were angry. If Clinton had joined forces in a real and meaningful way with Sanders they would have won. Stronger together was an action that was not utilised by Clinton or the democrats who are more self satisfied, foolish, self serving and elite bureaucrats than change agents.

    And the voters wanted change and a real solution that worked in America for Americans.

      • Yes, I am perfectly aware technology is changing the workforce and has been happening since the year dot. The point is, high paid jobs in NZ could be created by technology change, however the message I am hearing from Labour is a negative one about technology being for job loss rather than job gain, while avoiding any mention of the loss of jobs from neoliberalism.

        Labour have NOT successfully had National up on their 8 years of low wage economy approach which has fucked up the country.

        I got the Labour future of work questionnaire and it was clear that it was just a pointless survey that would not get real answers from Kiwis about the future of work. It was too leading and not enough leeway to learn anything new by asking open ended questions. The same with the Greens surveys. too leading and not open ended. It was written by someone who already had the idea that technology was dangerous and also failed to look at people who did not have regular hours or multiple jobs or earn’t a living outside of wages.

        I got phoned on a very good international survey recently. It asked things like
        How would I rate my quality of life 1 -10
        How would I think the quality of my life would be in the next 12 months 1-10
        What is the most important thing in my life
        Where do I live urban/rural
        What do I think of John Key
        What do I think of Merkel
        What do I think of Obama
        What do I think of immigration too high or too low
        Would I care if a member of my family married an immigrant
        (That is an interesting one to get the racists from the people genuinely worried about other aspects of immigration).
        What do I think of banks
        What do I think of police etc etc

        – anyway it was very detailed and you could learn a lot about someone if you asked those types of questions. However I never get asked anything detailed from Labour or Greens. All questions are very leading in their surveys.

        Just saying that Labour and Greens are missing an opportunity to find out what people really think and feel and what they want from politicians. Maybe they should get some professional to do survey questions in the future.

  10. Trump was conciliatory in his victory speech. But his campaign violated every civil norm you can think of – almost (there are probably civil norms he didn’t but it is hard to name them at the moment).

    Horrified. Just horrified.

    Horrified for my Latin American friends. Horrified for the Muslim population there. Horrified for the disabled population.

    Unfortunately a lot of my political friends seem delighted. Maybe there are good reasons, but when you know a people in the States who feel alienated, it is difficult to share in that enthusiasm. I just cannot.

    Maybe its just rhetoric and he did not mean that stuff, but he’s barked up the wrong trees totally with me.

  12. Yes as expected Hennie in the near term the soothing of market nerves is underway, the sun still rises etc. But the increased risk premium is already embedding in a steeper yield curve that has more than swamped NZs OCR cut for example. Longer term the risks are real and growing rapidly.

  14. Trump says he’ll cut taxes. Then he’ll spend more money on the military.

    Business as usual with the Republican Party. America, you got suckered!!

    • Disagree Priss. He will be making sure that China etc. pays their fair trading share to the US and he is opposed to Nafta and TPPA. The US people did not get suckered, they stood up for change and an end to the elitist 1 % criminal corporations and criminal bankers control. They stood up against the insanity of the Bush era and the Clinton era that brought fracking and oil drilling and told us lies about how much crude was below the surface in America. The Bushes and the Clintons and Obama did much harm to the U.S. and now maybe ? with this new administration, there maybe some good changes in the future.

      Give the man a break to see what he will and will not do before slamming him and the American voters who voted him in. Sure he has made mistakes and said some horrific things but lets let time take its course and see what happens.

    • Thank you David.
      I think you of all people must realize the grand mistake Labour is making by doggedly holding on to the neolib policies. Would it be out of place to suggest that a man of your capability and mana could join the Greens and help rid us of this failed experiment that the Natz and Labour are determined to follow?
      In my view the Americans basically wanted their country back and ,as far as I’m concerned, so do we. Cheers.

    • ‘Trump shock victory: New Cold War no more?’

      by Bryan MacDonald (Irish journalist)

      https://www.rt.com/op-edge/366110-trumps-victory-new-cold-war/

      …”In his victory speech, Trump made a major point of emphasizing his desire to invest heavily in America’s decaying infrastructure. And there’s only one feasible way to fund such a plan – sharply cut military spending and foreign aid.

      Thus, instead of flinging billions of American tax dollars around the Middle East, Asia and Europe, in what always amounted to bribing nations – or at least their elites – into friendship, Trump intends to bring a good deal of the money home. By any measure, this will amount to a geopolitical earthquake…

      • Except that Trump has said he will increase military spending across all the US armed forces (including cyber) and pay for infrastructure and tax cuts with spending cuts, ie social spending on welfare, health etc. Sound familiar? Behind the rhetoric that people like Blake continue to put their hands over their eyes and believe, Trump’s actual policy platform is typical US Republicanism, and with the exception of the TPP, pretty similar to Key and National’s policy. Fact it, those who saw Trump as somehow economically progressive got suckered big time.

  15. So how is Trump any different to Clinton?
    He is appointing his banker mates and CEOs like Jack Welch to his Cabinet.
    The problem isnt ‘globalisation’ or ‘neo-liberalism’, it’s imperialism.
    US imperialism is in terminal decline, its old white middle class which shared in a century of US imperialist plunder is dying out.
    The old middle class provides the fascist fodder that Trump rallied against the New Democrat progressive/cosmopolitan new middle class also living off debt and delusion.
    There is no way the US imperialism in terminal decline and ignoring global warming can be saved from itself. It has to die so that humanity can live.
    The third alternative to Clinton and Trump was voting with your feet to build a new mass workers party that can fight Trumps racist shocktroops on the streets and campuses and unite all the progressive forces, not behind Bernies fake revolution, but a real social revolution.
    This is what has to happen now.

  16. He hasn’t got a chance, he’s got no political base, he’s not politician, he’s got no policies, he’s devises blah blah blah………….Gareth Morgan

  17. Actually, to save capitalism from itself:

    That can’t be done. No amount of twiddling will ever make capitalism a workable system. That’s why usury is banned in all major religions and all capitalism is is usury.

  18. Trump is elected President. So what? I don’t think it matters one bit. I think US presidential elections are only a distraction from business as usual in the board rooms around the planet.
    I’m hoping, however, that those board room conversations will, for the first time, avoid global conflict, once necessary to re set the ponzie scheme that is the supposed ‘ global economy’.
    Huge debt ballooning? Who cares. Just write it off. I think the idea of ‘ debt owed’ being used as an excuse for war and conflict is becoming unfashionable. As the internet becomes more universal, people will become better educated as to the wily ways of the creeps who use debt/money/work ethic/polite slavery to imprison people in to dark enclaves of dysfunctional cities then send them off on the pretext of that particular horror being noble and for King and Country etc and will refuse to buy into that bullshit.
    The very construct of NZ neoliberalism was to take away that which was ours while we were happy and comfortable and took our eye off the ball. Now? We had to work harder for that which was ours because the buyers of what was once ours now insist it turn a corporate profit. In the mean time, the pricks that broker the deals with our stuff make $-billions! Fuck that ! I want my stuff and things back thanks and the cheap crooks who took it should be in prison, at the very least.
    Trump getting elected is a distraction brought about by a bull shitting media well versed in the psychology of achieving that aim. I think the deep state rich bastards are freaking out that they be found out. Just like our own cadre of bastards from the late 1980’s. Think about it? How else would we be having this discussion if it were not for the WEB? Via an all bought and paid for MSM? Yeah…? Nah. Big little stevie joyce tried his best to fuck TV3 but it just won’t stay buried. paul henry and that ghastly little prick hoskings are doing their very best to drag TVNZ into the gutter, the NZ Herald is nothing more to me than a fire starter, RNZ has the dullest woman on Earth droning on like an idiot with a mouth full of sock fabric from nine to noon while Kim Hill has been relegated to Prozac Time on Saturday mornings. And I knew she would be destroyed after I heard her peel roger kerr, Big Hero and Business Round Table Guru and spender of OUR money like a sour little grape!
    Trump being elected is meaningless and is a pointless topic of discussion. The good thing is only that re setting the crime this time may not wipe out your kids and homes and where strangers will only find their names etched into stupid pointy rocks on road intersections in the middle of the fucking countryside.
    The one thing I’ll say about Trump. He’s awful in plain sight. The other fuckers? Those scum who’ve murdered millions and made billions? All nicey-nicey in front of the cameras but really are just vile, greedy, narcissists and psychopaths too.
    Oh, and what the fuck’s john kerry doing here ? A wee holiday? Aw, bless.

  19. Absolutely gutted that you seem to be leaving coalface politics ,joined the Labour party just to vote for you :(. Great to see you still active and please know I will support you in all that you pursue

  20. What this post does not mention is the factor the poorly informing and even misinforming, mostly commercially focused and privately owned media played in all this.

    Trump got heavy support by social media players, but almost no support by mainstream media.

    The MSM was heavily favouring Clinton, but has over years not been that independent and informing. Hence the wide public view the MSM cannot be trusted, and is part of the problem. The MSM does spend more time on market reporting and business reporting, that is when they do not report on hideous crimes, on celeb news, on sports, the weather and other not quite so important stuff.

    Politics is ridiculed anyway, so people develop a very dim view of politics, and with poor information being broadcast or written about, few actually get informed with anything of substance, like what measures may be needed to address the issues and challenges.

    So the voters are rather encouraged to follow emotions (which the MSM loves to stir up), and seek solutions elsewhere, and that was Mr Donald Trump, a rich prick himself, but smart in telling people what they wanted to hear, whether he will ever honour any of his promises or policies is another question.

    The voters are dumbed down, kept ignorant, but also angry, so they look for a “saviour” and valve to express their anger, the Trumps, the Farrages, the Le Pens, the Wilders, the AfD’s and the ones also in Poland, Hungary and now the Philippines, they serve the perceived needs of the angry and bring in their populist, nasty “solutions”, which most will not wake up to, once the failures become totally evident.

    Dumb people choose dumb solutions, it seems, so we have Trump now, but in the end, the elite and the powerful and rich, they have largely only themselves to blame, the outcome will be anything but positive and good, but that does not matter, as the future is beyond comprehension for most.

    Fossil brains vote for fossil minded politicians, to offer fossil fuel aged solutions, the climate will get screwed, and we will all suffer, thank you, American voters who voted for that narcissist, I remember Hitler was one also.

    • Couldn’t find the original clip but this is pretty good to show you the media’s part.
      https://youtu.be/YFgQn6mwH74

      I saw right through the campaign online journalists commenting on how all over Donald Trump the mainstream media was, – much like our media’s love affair with Mr Key.

      Talk back makes you dumb – much like Fox News – but our own ‘respected’ media here is dragging our intellect down with it. You want people to buy your newspapers? – print some actual news in it, not your P.R. & propaganda!! Lord, if it wasn’t for National Radio we’d be a bloody gulag! Not saying they’re perfect.

      Oh and if you haven’t already, sign the petition to pressure National to pay Radio NZ some bloody money.

  21. ‘To hope for a better future.  Actually, to save capitalism from itself: to manage boom/bust cycles and to set boundaries so that competition benefits all stakeholders, without pillaging our planet.’

    This is just plain silly, David: the economic system demands pillaging ‘our planet’ (not that it’s ‘ours’ anyway; we are just temporary passengers on it, sharing it with millions of other species at the moment and in the process of annihilating most of them, and to suggest that the planet is ‘ours’ is exceedingly anthropocentric).

    The globalized industrial economic system cannot operate without pillaging the Earth. Nor can the globalized industrial economic system operate without severely polluting the Earth and overheating it -very likely to the point of causing the biggest mass extinction event in the Earth’s entire history in a matter of decades.

    Capitalism cannot be saved from itself because capitalism is a system based on fraud, and is a subset of industrialism, and, as already pointed out, is totally dependent on looting and polluting the Earth.

    It naturally follows that there cannot be a ‘better future’, so there is no point in hoping for one: everything that matters is guaranteed to be made worse by the capitalist [industrial] system.

    Rather than hoping (which Derrick Jensen points out is looking for an outcome when one has no agency) we could attempt to make the future less bad; but ‘no one’ even wants to do that! So we continue, collectively, to make the future worse faster.

    With respect to Trump becoming president, the Saker makes more sense than most commentators:

    ‘So it has happened: Hillary did not win!  I say that instead of saying that “Trump won” because I consider the former even more important than the latter.  Why?  Because I have no idea whatsoever what Trump will do next.  I do, however, have an excellent idea of what Hillary would have done: war with Russia.  Trump most likely won’t do that.  In fact, he specifically said in his acceptance speech:

    I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone — all people and all other nations. We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict.

    And Putin’s reply was immediate:

    We heard the statements he made as candidate for president expressing a desire to restore relations between our countries. We realise and understand that this will not be an easy road given the level to which our relations have degraded today, regrettably. But, as I have said before, it is not Russia’s fault that our relations with the United States have reached this point.

    Russia is ready to and seeks a return to full-format relations with the United States. Let me say again, we know that this will not be easy, but are ready to take this road, take steps on our side and do all we can to set Russian-US relations back on a stable development track.
    This would benefit both the Russian and American peoples and would have a positive impact on the general climate in international affairs, given the particular responsibility that Russia and the US share for maintaining global stability and security.

    This exchange, right there, is enough of a reason for the entire planet to rejoice at the defeat of Hillary and the victory of Trump.’

    http://thesaker.is/trump-elected-as-president-risks-and-opportunities/

    By the way, ‘the markets’ seem to love Trump and are surging. Aussie up over 3%, Japan up over 6% today. (Totally unsustainable, of course).

  25. an insiders view…hope for the future?

    http://www.stevepieczenik.com/us-takeover-may-be-near/

    “The United States may experience a transition of power however this transition will not be abrupt, nor cataclysmic, nor unprecedented. As a matter of fact, in a republic such as ours power shifts quite often.

    In this Talk, Dr. Steve Pieczenik shares his unique experience as a political insider and offers his advice on how to handle the upcoming transition without compromising the strength and autonomy of our great nation.”

    http://www.stevepieczenik.com/the-hillary-clinton-takeover-of-the-united-states/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Pieczenik

  28. “Technology is eating white collar jobs.”

    Wrong. Technology change is just one of the disruptions (natural disasters and wars are other examples) corporations are using to eat white collar jobs, the same way they’ve eaten blue collar jobs, and replaced them with casualized, “gig economy” jobs. Doug Rushkoff explains the drivers and mechanisms of corporatization and their history in his excellent books ‘Life Inc.’ and ‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’, as discusses potential solutions. For a nutshell summary check out his excellent talk at SXSW:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKQKCe1xl0

    Good to see an ex-Labour leader criticizing neo-liberalism David, but…

    “Clinton won the debates but was the victim of character assassination. Dirty politics became a billion dollar industry. The FBI’s last minute email investigation didn’t help.”

    The FBI were just doing their job. Clinton was involved in some dodgy dealings, and investigating them, and reporting on them, is not “character assassination”. Amongst other things, her emails, released by Wikileaks, show that the mass media focus on Trump was a core part of the Democrats strategy, giving him enough rope to hang himself with. Well that worked ;P

    “but they turned to Trump and not to Clinton (or the ideas of Picketty) to fix it. Why?”

    See above. Putting Clinton and Picketty in the same sentence implies that Clinton and her Wall St backers would have done something to reduce inequality. I doubt it, and I see Clinton’s loss as a win for the left in the same way that Trump’s loss would have been. The Wikileaks releases also show that Clinton and her cronies conspired to keep Sanders from winning the Democrat nomination. As I’ve said before on TDB, the left lost the election when Sanders didn’t run as an independent or a third party candidate.

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