November 8, 2017
Exclusive: Neither
the Democrats nor President Trump learned the right lessons from the 2016
election, leaving the nation divided at home and bogged down in wars abroad,
writes Robert Parry.
By
Robert Parry
One
year ago, the American electorate delivered a confused but shocking result, the
election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a quirky outcome in the
Electoral College that put Trump in the White House even though Clinton got
three million more votes nationally. But neither party appears to have absorbed
the right lessons from that surprise ending.
he
Democrats might have taken away from their defeat the warning that they had
forgotten how to speak to the white working class, which had suffered from job
losses via “free trade” and felt willfully neglected as Democrats looked toward
the “browning of America.”
The
choice of Clinton had compounded this problem because she came across as
elitist and uncaring toward this still important voting bloc with her memorable
description of half of Trump’s voters as “deplorables,” an insult that stung
many lower-income whites and helped deliver Pennsylvania, Michigan and
Wisconsin to Trump.
For
more than a decade, some Democratic strategists had promoted the notion that
“demography is destiny,” i.e., that the relative growth of Latino, Asian and
African-American populations in comparison to whites would ensure a future
Democratic majority. That prediction seemed to have been validated by
Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2008 and 2012, but it also had the
predictable effect of alienating many whites who felt disrespected and
resentful.
So,
while the Democrats and Clinton looked to a multicultural future, Trump used
his experience in reality TV to communicate with this overlooked demographic
group. Trump sold himself as a populist and treated the white working class
with respect. He spoke to their fears about economic decline and gave voice to
their grievances. He vowed to put “America First” and pull back from foreign
military adventures that often used working-class kids as cannon fodder.
But
much of Trump’s message, like the real-estate mogul himself, was phony. He
really didn’t have policies that would address the needs of working-class
Americans. Still, his promises of a massive infrastructure plan, good
health-care for all, and rejection of unfair trade deals rang the right bells
with enough voters to flip some traditionally Democratic blue-collar states to
Republican red.
Staying Blind
You
might have thought that the Democrats would respond to Trump’s shocking
victory, which also left Republicans in charge of Congress and most statehouses
around the country, by launching an apologetic listening tour to reconnect with
working-class whites.
There
also might have been a clear-eyed evaluation of the weaknesses of the
Democratic presidential nominee who came to personify the corrupt insider-culture
of Official Washington, exploiting government service for financial gain by
raking in millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street and other special
interests.
Clinton
also offended many peace voters because of her support for aggressive war, both
as a U.S. senator backing the disastrous invasion of Iraq and as Secretary of
State pushing for U.S. military interventions in Libya and Syria. Her apology
for voting for the Iraq War came across as opportunistic and insincere, and her
undisguised delight over Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly murder (“We
came; we saw; he died!”) seemed ghoulish.
And,
whether fairly or not, many Americans were turned off by the Democratic Party’s
emphasis on “identity politics,” the assumption that people would vote based on
their gender, race or sexual orientation, rather than on bread-and-butter
policies and war-or-peace issues.
In
other words, the Democratic Party could have looked in the mirror and seen what
many Americans found unappealing about the modern version of a party that had
done so much to build the country, from the New Deal during the Great
Depression through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and taking a leading
role in addressing environmental, health-care and other national challenges.
But
today’s Democrats instead chose to blame their plight largely on Russia and its
alleged “meddling” in U.S. politics, a strategy that not only made little sense
– given the many other reasons why voters turned away from Clinton and her
party – but delivered a message to white working-class voters who had gone over
to Trump that they were “stupid” and had been “duped.”
Whatever
one thinks about white working-class voters who favored Trump, calling people
gullible is not an effective way to woo back a voting bloc that already feels
insulted and alienated.
Missing a Chance
So,
when Trump was sworn in last Jan. 20, the ball was largely in his court. He
could have focused on rebuilding America’s infrastructure; or he could have
proposed a serious plan for improving access to health care; or he could have
moved pragmatically to resolve a host of international conflicts that President
Obama had left behind.
nstead,
President Trump squandered his first days in office by getting into absurd
arguments about his inaugural crowd size compared to Obama’s and denying that
Clinton had won the national popular vote. His “alternative facts” made him a
laughingstock.
Last
spring, when I spoke with a group of Trump voters in West Virginia, they were
still faithful to their choice – and wanted Washington to give him a chance –
but they already were complaining about Trump’s personal outbursts on Twitter;
they wanted him to concentrate on their real needs, not his petty squabbles.
But
Trump wasn’t listening. He couldn’t kick his Twitter habit. He kept putting his
giant ego in the way.
As
his presidency stumbled forward, Trump also brushed aside suggestions that he
reverse his image as a person who had no regard for facts by declassifying
information about the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere – to reveal
situations where Obama and his team played propaganda games, rather than tell
the truth.
And,
lacking sufficient knowledge about the world, Trump failed when presented with
sophisticated plans for reshaping U.S. policies in the Middle East to become
less dependent on Israel and Saudi Arabia. Instead, Trump jumped into the arms
of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi King Salman.
Pandering
to Israeli-Saudi desires – and trying to show how tough he was – Trump fired
off 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria over a dubious chemical-weapons incident;
threatened more Mideast strife against Iran; and escalated the 16-year-old war
in Afghanistan.
Plus,
he blustered about war against North Korea and personally insulted the
country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, as “little rocket man.” Rather than rein in
neoconservative aggression, he continued to unleash it.
When
Trump did address domestic policy, he defined himself as basically just another
right-wing Republican, supporting a health-care scheme that would have made
matters worse for millions of Americans and backing a tax-cut plan that would
mostly benefit the rich while blowing an even bigger hole in the deficit. All
that red ink, in turn, drowned any hopes for investments in a modern
infrastructure.
In
other words, Trump exposed himself as the narcissistic incompetent that his
critics said he was. He proved incapable of even acting presidential, let alone
showing that he could use his power to make life better for average Americans.
He was left with little to boast about beyond the economy that was bequeathed
to him by Obama.
Republicans
also had little to brag about, explaining why Ed Gillespie, the GOP’s
gubernatorial nominee in Virginia in 2017, opted for ugly socially divisive
attack ads as the best hope for defeating Democrat Ralph Northam, a Gillespie
strategy called “Trumpism without Trump.”
But
Gillespie’s approach backfired with a surprisingly strong turnout of Virginia’s
voters putting Northam into the governor’s mansion and almost erasing the solid
Republican majority in the state legislature.
Trump
was left to tweet about how the Virginia results, which were echoed in other
states’ elections on Tuesday, weren’t a reflection on his own popularity,
ignoring his unprecedentedly low approval ratings for a president nine months
into his first term.
So,
the new political question is whether Trump can belatedly learn from his
failures and finally undertake some actions at home and abroad that actually
serve the interests of the American people and the world. Or will he continue
to bumble and stumble along?
A
parallel question is whether the Democrats will misinterpret their strong
showing on Tuesday as encouragement to continue ignoring their own political
and institutional shortcomings – and to keep on using Russia to bash Trump.
Neither side has shown much aptitude for learning.
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