How Identity Politics & Free Market Globalisation ultimately damages Democrats, why Trump is far more dangerous than we comprehend and why beating him in 2020 is cruelly easy

By
Martyn Bradbury
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42
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Pointing to a win in the House while ignoring the huge gains in the Senate is like holding up Hilary Clinton winning the popular vote in 2016 – it doesn’t matter, Trump still has the power and Trump is far more dangerous than we comprehend.

It’s not just the damage he is causing now, it is the damage he has done to the entire political environment. By lowering the standards so much for the baying masses, he has radically reset the political landscape for the next Trump and the next one after him.

It was great the Republicans lost the House today, but they gained in the Senate and the Senate can smack down anything the House puts up. While there is a clear rejection in the suburbs of the hate Trump spews (and that is a positive for the soul of America), all Democrats won today was a poisoned chalice because the gridlock they have promised will become a rod for their own backs.

The resentful anger that propelled Trump won’t dissipate with a Trump loss in 2020 if the economic alienation that empowers him isn’t dealt with. Without understanding how this cancer was visited upon us, we are doomed to repeat this mistake.

Opponents of Trump like to point to the Russian interference in the election to explain Trump winning 2016, but I think blaming Russia for ‘hacking’ the US Election is deeply counter productive.

Firstly, it’s just outrageous that the American’s who have committed coups, electoral fraud and mass deceptions on 81 other nations over the years are in any position to lecture or complain about interfering in other peoples elections.

Secondly, it allows the Democrats off the hook. Instead of acknowledging they ran a terrible candidate and fielded neoliberal policies that hurt the very workers they had simply assumed would vote for them, the Democrats can avoid scrutiny of their own rigged primary process, the manner in which Bernie Sanders was unfairly treated and their hollow policies by blaming it all on Russia.

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Newsflash to the Democrats – Trump didn’t win in 2016 because of Russia, he won because you failed to appreciate how your embrace of neoliberal globalisation hurt the very voters you needed the most.

One estimate puts the budget of Russian interference in the election via social media advertising at $250 000. With all due respect for American Democracy, if you can influence an election with a mere $250 000, you have way bigger problems than Putin.

We can scream racist and sexist as much as we like at Trump voters, but when Trump wooed Union families, women and the working poor in such huge numbers in 2016, something else needs to be examined as the reason this malignant tumour of a human being has been forced upon us all.

This time around for the midterms it was the Dems desire to use Kavanaugh as a motivation for their base that backfired.

What should have happened is that Kavanaugh should have been grilled over his views on abortion and whether or not he would ever make it more difficult for women to get them, instead it became an emotive media circus that created a toxic cultural backlash which benefitted the Republicans in the midterms.

Leaking Dr Ford’s claims to the media after sitting on them for 6 weeks and denying her the opportunity to testify in California were an obvious attempt by Democrats to create the media spectacle this turned into because Democrats wanted to capture the momentum of the #MeToo movement for the mid terms.

The problem for Democrats using that tactic meant that they also had to adopt one of the unchallenged pillars of the #MeToo movement, which is that accusation is evidence.

The ocean of incandescent rage at centuries of sexual assault, sexual abuse and sexual harassment against women that never sees justice has found voice on social media platforms that have side stepped corporate media gatekeepers, but the meta narrative that women must be believed if they make an accusation because all men are lying abusers flies in the face of due process and the presumption of innocence.

In the past, justice was guided by the belief that it was better 10 guilty men walk free rather than one innocent man go to prison, in a world framed in patriarchal white privilege those legal protections simply protect that privilege, so 10 innocent men punished rather than one going free is an acceptable price for fourth wave feminists when compared to the enormous amount of women who never see justice.

This unchallenged pillar of #MeToo, that accusation is the new evidential threshold and all accusers are guilty inadvertently created an enormous cultural backlash.

In a land of Brutal Binaries on social media platforms fuelled algorithmically by subjective rage, Kavanaugh was either a virgin law scholar who was wronged or a violent drunk pack rapist predator who would be molesting woman as soon as you turned you back. There was no middle ground, no nuance, just  the madness of extremes.

This was the Salem Witch Trials come to life, where accusation was all the evidence needed.

The idea that you can be falsely accused by hyper partisan accusers who already hate you and be found guilty without any due process terrified Independents and Republicans far more than the much more real threat of being sexually assaulted, harassed or abused.

Accusing everyone who voted for Trump as a ‘racist’ rather than understanding the economic insecurity free market globalisation had caused  didn’t work in 2016, and accusing everyone who believes in due process and the presumption of innocence of being rapists was equally unsuccessful in 2018. Every State that support Trump’s angry rhetoric and voted for Kavanugh went to Trump on election night.

The free market globalisation that Democrats embrace has robbed the domestic working classes of their dignity and economic ability to survive while their promotion of Identity Politics Uber Allas is too alienating and ultimately creates a far more dangerous white male Identity Politics backlash. Bernie Sanders understood this which is why he would have been able to woo those voters Trump needed back to the Democrats and beat Trump, but the vile corruption within the Democrats (who played to the elites within the Party) robbed Sanders of his nomination in a rigged system set up to prevent a populist left winger ever winning the candidacy.

Which is why the solution to Trump is so cruelly easy. You beat populism that plays to our worst angels with populism that plays to our better ones. Sanders understood that, which is why his free health and education policies would have countered Trump’s fear mongering over immigration. The problem is the Dems are simply too wedded to neoliberal economic policy to ever promise free education or health care.

Refusing to acknowledge failed economic policy, alienating woke identity politics and corruption within the Democrats in allowing Trump to win makes the chances of him winning again more likely, not less likely.

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42 COMMENTS

  1. U.S. Student debt $4 trillion
    U.S. Mortgage debt $5 trillion
    U.S. Government debt unplayable
    U.S. Bonds? Ponzi Scheme

    It’s not just nesessary for the U.S to take back health care and education they have to savagely cut defence spending. They would have to canceal the F-35 programme and cut over a trillion worth of defence spending.

    It’s not just a poison chalice. It’s a portal into hell.

    • .
      The Home of Rottenness

      America seeks only wealth. It seeks it only for the Wealthy.

      It does it via Tax Cuts for the ugly Rich
      It does it by ignoring the Poor and the Sick
      It does it by tramping on the low wage earners and their families
      It does it by the kaleidoscope lies that the president spits out day and night
      It does it by its hatred of every man women and child on the planet – except the Republicans.

      America is the Home of Rottenness. The Home of Homicide. The home of the Gun; The home of Deceit and Gerrymander.

      As for me, I will admire America when I see it take care of its Citizens; when it pays decent wages; when it serves the sick people; when it respects women and girls; when it buries its cowardly guns; when at long last it sticks to Truth; The whole Truth; and nothing but the Truth.

      Trump is a nothing.Merely the reflection of hateful american Rottenness.

        • Your constant need to make ridiculous comments about other peoples comments makes you look pretty stupid at times. If you want to play the smart arse fool that’s great, but it’s a worry when you don’t know you’re doing it.

          • So what? I can disagree with some one when they say Trump “is nothing merely the reflection of hateful American rottenness.”

            I mean so what? This is the third time you’ve come at me with other people’s accusations now do you have an issue of your own? Or do you just farm victim narratives.

              • I’m not in the habit of handing out participation awards or fostering ideas I believe will set us back. If you want to totally reject 70 million voting republicans then fine. At least have the guts to understand what your standing behind.

  2. Trump will be beaten by putting him where he belongs:

    Behind bars for tax evasion, fraud, conspiracy to collude with a foreign nation and obstruction of justice.

    Again, any article without mentioning the Special Counsel doesn’t address Trump’s real future at all.

    It’s Mueller time.

    • Richard Christie: “Behind bars for tax evasion, fraud, conspiracy to collude with a foreign nation and obstruction of justice.”

      And you believe all that stuff? Good grief….

      • It’s not a matter of “believing it”, D’esterre, it’s been fairly well proven. The Trumps are as corrupt as any middle eastern dictator and siding with a corrupt billionaire-bigot does you no favours. The 1% don’t need your endorsement, they dont even know or care you exist.

        Trump’s tax cuts enriched the 1% super-wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. That’s who you’re siding with.

        As they say, “follow the money”. In this case it leads back to a Russian bank.

        • Mjolnir: “it’s been fairly well proven. ”

          That’s the whole point: it hasn’t been. The Dems have been screaming about this ever since Hillary got humiliatingly walloped at the 2016 election, but nothing of substance thus far.

          “As they say, “follow the money”. In this case it leads back to a Russian bank.”

          Nope. Again: nothing substantive, precisely because there’s nothing.

          “That’s who you’re siding with.”

          Another claim of the have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet variety. Like many commenters here, it seems that you are unwilling to accept that a) scepticism regarding the wild claims about Trump is just that. Scepticism. It doesn’t entail support for him.

          And b) he isn’t our president. I don’t support him; why would I? I’m not a US citizen, so I cannot vote for him. US domestic policy is none of my business. And although US foreign policy is of moment to me, given that it is that aspect which will affect NZ citizens, again: I don’t get any say in it. None of my business.

          • It is our business, D’esterre.

            Every time the US engages in some military adventurism, we are sucked in.

            Whenever the US resists attempts to reduce carbon emissions – we will pay the price with climate change.

            When Trump supports Israel or Saudi Arabia, it makes global relations more unsafe for us all. The illegal invasion of Iraq and the civil war in Syria has had consequences throughout the world with the rise of ISIS and militant “Jihadism”.

            We are not living on individual planets, separated by vast distances. What one country does may well affect others.

            • Frank: “It is our business, D’esterre.”

              So: if you think it’s your business, tell us what you’re going to do that would make a substantive difference to what the Yankee Empire does or proposes to do? Or fails to do?

              Unless you’re a US citizen, you can’t vote in US elections. You can’t petition the president or any US political representative. You can’t in any way influence the US political process. It isn’t our business what US pollies decide to do, even in respect of foreign policy (for all that we might wish it were otherwise), let alone domestic policies.

              We complain about US interference in other polities, deplore the disastrous results of such interference. Yet here you are claiming that what happens in US politics is our business. Are you suggesting that our polity ought to interfere in the US? Good luck with that: even were it not hypocrisy.

              You’re a NZ citizen, so you’re free – some would say even obliged – to involve yourself in the local political process. Vote. Join a political party. Petition your local MP, or Ministers of the Crown, over issues about which you feel strongly. You may well help to bring about useful change in some aspect of the NZ body politic.

              But for goodness’ sake, give it up with the US.

  4. What this result means, Trump’s wings will have been clipped a bit on the domestic front, as nothing much of what he may plan in ‘reforms’ within the mighty USA will move fast or anywhere, despite of the Senate majority.

    But also will the House of Representatives not be able to do much, e.g. proposing laws and changing laws, as the Senate can trump such efforts.

    The greatest worry will be, how will Trump digest this change in representation. He may boast having a majority in the Senate, but what can he do with it, having lost majority in the House?

    Knowing Trump, he will feel that he needs to resort to other measures, to keep up his image and bully and deal maker, as the ‘strong man’ President of the USA.

    He has a lot of leeway in foreign policy and as Commander in Chief of the forces. So expect the worst, Trump causing fire and fury on various fronts, to keep up the ante.

    The bull in the china shop has see a red flag, and he is about to run mad when it comes to Iran, Venezuela, perhaps even China, and he will be tempted to give his forces a go to deal to ‘terrorists’ and those ‘funding it’, that could mean a major new war in the Middle East, get ready for WW3 in the end.

  5. “The problem is the Dems are simply too wedded to neoliberal economic policy to ever promise free education or health care.”

    Too wedded to corporate donations. Unfortunately, this election didn’t prove one way or the other that either the Justice Democrats, who don’t take corporate donations, are the way forward, or the “Corporate Democrats” who believe you can’t win elections without corporate donations.

  7. A Sanders-Warren ticket in 2020 will be the best option to beat the Orange Overlord. Anything less will play into Trump’s hands and the damage he will do until 2024 will be harder to fix.

  8. This is the biggest danger imo…nuclear war…this is why many voted for Trump and not Clinton…. Trump has always said he wants peace and not war especially with Russia

    …personally I dont care what the Americans do to themselves in their own country

    ….but I do care about their foreign policy and what they do to other countries around the world eg Hillary Clinton and the brutal murder of Gaddafi and the overthrow of Libya and pillaging of Libya’s gold reserves . The neocon warmongers backed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats . Trump is a wild card. He has far more pragmatic sense than mad Hillary …but whether he can stand up against the neocons and the Deep State is another thing ( and dont for get these entities are driven by the pro Israeli lobby, which is the tail wagging the dog)

    ‘Talking war’

    https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/442940-world-war-great-powers/

    “The talk of impending war around the world is on the increase. The Great Powers speak openly of the need to prepare for conflict. What does this tell us? If anything, it appears to be a sign that the global order, which came into being after WWII and the Cold War era, has come to an end. What is replacing it?

    CrossTalking with Peter Kuznick, Michael O’Hanlon, and Daniele Ganser.”

    • Just cos he did one thing right doesn’t excuse the fact he is a fascist demagogue. The Nats signed the Paris Accord but that doesn’t make their track record on environmental protection something to crow about.

  10. Exactly what hate has Trump spewed?

    If you’re referring to his retaliation against fake (mainstream) media, well, you’ve said as much yourself Martyn. I’m sure you will be the first to agree they’re all shills for the establishment – hidden power brokers that seek to control what people think.

    The Democrats need to present a positive alternative if they are to succeed in 2020. Just hating Trump isn’t enough – they have to flesh out an alternative vision that is plausible….

    …and this is where they’ll have trouble, because their ‘woke’ radicals don’t have a positive view of anything and when pushed to develop a consistent strategy, they will turn on each other. This is why Labour in NZ have kicked all policy development to committees – having a sensible conversation on almost anything involves picking over old identitarian scabs that haven’t fully healed.

    • I find myself agreeing with Andrew here, especially:

      >> “The Democrats need to present a positive alternative if they are to succeed in 2020. Just hating Trump isn’t enough – they have to flesh out an alternative vision that is plausible….”

      This is what Sanders was trying to do in 2016. Clinton’s campaign messaging boiled down to ‘I’m not as evil as that guy’, which as Michael Moore pointed out, is about as motivating to non-aligned voters as a plate of boiled socks. It’s noteworthy I think that Trump’s campaign was mostly an alternative vision one too (basically “make America great again”), just a shame it was all PR and bullshit.

      • Danyl Strype;

        “It’s noteworthy I think that Trump’s campaign was mostly an alternative vision one too (basically “make America great again”), just a shame it was all PR and bullshit.”

        Anyone that reads this link below properly cannot possibly agree that the Trump Administration is on the wrong path.
        https://www.wnd.com/2018/10/better-off-now-trumps-unreported-list-of-accomplishments/

        None of this above is reported properly by MSM, if at all.

        Yes, he’s dangerous alright. To the entire STATUS QUO systems that oppress us all.

        Full comment below.

  12. Trying to get the mainstream Democrats to understand their role in all this, and to change their mindset, is about as pointless as expecting the Vatican to understand and take responsibility for their role in the abuse of young people at the hands of Priests and Nuns.

    Infact less so.

    The Democrats, or more specifically, the DNC, are who they are, and would rather see the country go to wrack and ruin than let the Progressives take over.

    Their hand wringing and claim to be leading ‘The Resistance’ actually makes my stomach churn.

    • Yup and so -called Hollywood feminists of the Me Too movement were DNC Hillary Clintons biggest supporters ( too bad Hillary and Bill were long time good mates of Harvey Weinstein… more than 80 women , many of them actresses in the film industry , have accused Weinstein of rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault…how long was this swept under the carpet?)…they are a moral lot in Hollywood

      ‘LA celebs cough up $60 million for Israel Defense Forces at gala event’

      https://www.rt.com/usa/443374-idf-fundraiser-hollywood-actors/

  13. Martyn;

    “Trump is far more dangerous than we comprehend.”
    “It’s not just the damage he is causing now, it is the damage he has done to the entire political environment.”

    And that can only be a good thing.

    Whilst your analysis of the situation is a good one, the demonization of Trump seems entirely contradictory to the logic.

    “ The entire political environment” are the very same people that have oppressed us all since WW2 and the roll out of Neoliberalism in the Eighties.
    The damage of which you acknowledge and most agree.

    “The free market globalisation that the Democrats embraced has robbed the domestic working classes of their dignity and economic ability to survive.”

    And this does not just apply to America, but all Western Nations.

    Anyone that reads this link below properly cannot possibly agree that the Trump Administration is on the wrong path.
    https://www.wnd.com/2018/10/better-off-now-trumps-unreported-list-of-accomplishments/

    None of this above is reported properly by MSM, if at all.

    Yes, he’s dangerous alright. To the entire STATUS QUO systems that oppress
    us all.

    We should all be in support of his agenda with the hope that sometime, in the
    not to distant future, his efforts will bring an end to the ‘tyranny of austerity’
    that affects everyone.

    Cheers.

    It is Democrats that spew ‘racist hatred and violence’.

    And I am told that he could put an end to the FED legally, if he so wished, ‘tomorrow’.

    • The poor bloody old American public have no real idea what’s going on. And in there, is the similarity between NZ/AO and the U$A.
      Traditional NZ/AO Labour party voters have had no real idea what’s been ‘going on’ for over thirty years after roger douglas and his cultist mates threw Labour under a bus then went through Labour’s pockets as it lay crushed on the road. Us bystanders were too gobsmacked and stunned to know what to do and as a result, we were powerless to act. That’s why I recommend reading about Professor Stanley Milgram and his work. He made a study of public engagement, or the lack of, as a psychologist. The mechanisms the all- bought-and-paid-for MSM deploy against us are Milgram-esque techniques and we might be surprised at just how almost unbelievably vulnerable we are to those techniques. If you have no imagination and are not prepared to look at both sides of a proposition? You’re fucked.
      When I went into retail to augment my film industry income I was surprised to learn, by asking our customers, that very few had ever heard of the term ‘neo liberalism’. And that was the strength of the neo liberals. They knew how to fuck us and we never knew we were being fucked by them. Until, of course, it was too late. Any good parasite would want to go on blood sucking for as long as possible before the host twigs on.
      The Americans are being played like a fiddle by a con artist who owes dues to The Big Boys. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the mafia didn’t have cross hairs on trumps silly hair style.
      In any event. We Kiwis are quite hip by comparison. Per head of pop’, we’re well ahead of the average American in terms of the Thinky-thinky things. And as a result ? They get trump. And if they’re really unlucky? They’ll get to keep him while we, us Kiwis, are really starting to ask uncomfortable questions of our politicians. ( Which, in turn, means they’ll get ever more clever at evasions and deflections. Now, we see almost daily blame/accusation vectors spiralling out of national and labour who must vey for who must try hardest to hide dirty little secrets. )

  14. baying masses=disposed poor=workers of NZ
    free market globalization=vile corruption=NZ politicians
    failed economic policy, woke identity politics and corruption a damn fine description of politics in our own country.
    Open your eyes unstop your ears, the people are marching, the drums are beating, theres a red tide a coming and it will effect us all.
    “‘Remember remember the 5th of November the gunpowder treason and plot, i know of no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot”
    V for vengeance, Q for Justice WWG1WGA

    • Danyl Stripe: “There is no question Trump spews hate…”

      Insofar as I’ve had the stomach for it, I’ve heard and seen msm reportage of what Trump has said, both on the campaign trail and since election. What I heard was pretty direct attacks on illegal Hispanic migrants with regard to criminal behaviour. A lot of Americans – including a lot of Hispanics legally in the US – agreed with him. I don’t think that’s hate speech: there are issues with crime among illegal migrants, and a presidential candidate ought to be able to say so. Free speech and all that. He wanted to restrict illegals coming across the Mexican border, and limit Muslim migration: another thing about which many Americans agreed. As would many people here, I’m guessing.

      I’ve read those links. I’ve been observing politics in the US for many decades: I’ve heard versions of that before, especially prejudice directed at blacks, for instance all the way back to the civil rights era.

      I read somewhere recently that much of US society is still informally segregated: relatively little intermarriage, for instance, between blacks and whites. Unlike here, where the level of intermarriage between Maori and other groups has been very high.

      People’s prejudices tend to be persistent. It’s part of the human condition to prefer the company of people who are like us, and be suspicious of “the other”. It’s tribalism.

      I can’t recall hearing Trump say that he was going to toss out blacks (it isn’t likely, given that many blacks support him, and all the descendants of slaves are US citizens), yet some people seem to have made that connection.

      Clearly, some people feel that Trump has given them permission to say aloud these things that they’ve been thinking, or saying behind their hands. It’s a facet of freedom of speech, especially in the US, that people can say pretty much what they like. As always, it’s what people do, not what they say, that matters.

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