The Decline of Trumpism and the Crisis of Capitalism

The chaotic Trump reign over US politics is showing critical signs of weakening on many fronts: Trumponomics is failing: Trumpian immigration policy has stirred a powerful backlash; Teflon Trump has been tarnished by his clumsy, slippery handling of the Epstein scandal; his foreign-policy contradictions and outrages have confused both international friends and foes alike; and his violation of his “end to endless wars” campaign has caused a break with some of his most ardent supporters.

It is easy to forget that this Trump regime has been in power for only a little more than a year, while enjoying a majority in both the House and the Senate, as well as a favorable majority in the Supreme Court. In such a short time, he and his cohorts have managed to do extraordinary damage.

Unlike in his first term, where Trump included some of the Republican Party old guard, the new administration was outfitted with hard-core MAGA-- a cabal that proved to be craven sycophants, unhinged racists and nationalists, and intellectual reactionaries.

Whatever traction Trump may have gotten with those angry with two-party betrayal, his already shattered promises are reflected in his falling poll numbers. With the mid-term elections coming, significant numbers within his coalition are questioning his policies or distancing themselves from his positions despite his brazen threats to destroy them politically for their heresy.

It would be more than misleading to credit the decline of Trumpism to the resistance, the Democrats, or the broad left. For sure, there have been remarkable centers of mass struggle against Trump’s policies, most notably, the impressive Minneapolis resistance to ICE that successfully organized tens of thousands into a powerful force driving the Trump forces into an embarrassing retreat. Those hoping to reverse the Trump onslaught would do well to study the Minnesota phenomenon rather than deferring to Democratic Party leadership.

The labor unions-- potentially a formidable adversary to Trumpism-- are paralyzed by a leadership afraid to defy their members who might support Trump. They are willing to close their eyes to MAGA’s clearly anti-union program in order to maintain the internal tranquility of business unionism. As support for Trumpism declines with working people, careerist union leaders remain on the sidelines. When union organizers and leaders have stood up in the past, they have made the difference between surrendering to reaction or defending the interests of working people. The left-led CIO unions of the thirties were the bulwarks of the resistance to the far-right “answers” to the Great Depression.

Similarly, the Democratic Party has demonstrated both its inability and unwillingness to defeat the Trump steamroller. Trump’s reelection itself proves that the Democratic Party has failed to create a program that will deliver voters from the fears and anxieties that animate Trump support. Tolerating-- if not welcoming-- the admission of billionaires, war mongers, spies, hucksters, and careerists into their inner circle, Democratic Party leaders are counting on Republican failure and Epstein-sleaze to propel them back to power, instead of developing a popular agenda. 

Recent local and by-elections have shown a hunger among Democratic Party voters for progressive, populist candidates of the Sanders/Mamdani ilk, but party functionaries have sought to cultivate ex-military, CIA, FBI hawks with corporate-friendly agendas to fill their electoral slates. The Democratic Party has evolved into a massive fund-raising machine more than willing to wait its turn in the two-party back-and-forth. Candidates of substance have no place in the strategic vision of their bankrupt leaders.

The Democratic Party response to the ongoing war against Iran (and the recent invasion of Venezuela) evidences its cynical, corrupted posture. Sensing a vulnerability with Trump’s naked aggression, they attack the Republicans-- not on moral or humanitarian grounds-- but on procedure! The slaughter of the innocent victims of Israeli and US bombs is passed on uncritically, but the failure to consult Congress counts as a grievous sin!

This is a party that long left its New Deal image in the rear-view mirror.

But because of the deeply entrenched two-party system, expressions of popular struggle, of resistance, of progressive change too often feel it necessary to tether to a corrupted Democratic Party.

Especially after the shock and awe of massive deindustrialization and a devastating economic crisis, many mistakenly envisioned Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party as a possible break from the indifference of the elites leading both parties. Trump presented himself as such, trading on desperate hope and the desire for change, just as his Democratic Party predecessor stirred a wave of optimism based on vague promises. With economic inequality-- the benchmark for all kinds of inequality-- relentlessly advancing, Trump’s empty promise of restoring manufacturing jobs nonetheless resonated with the disenchanted.

He promoted the idea that a heavy dose of sanctions, tariffs, and other forms of arm-twisting would secure for the citizens a bounty of wealth that had been cheated from them, stolen from them, or given away by the treacherous Democrats. This let’s-make-a-deal economic policy was the basis for the delusion that billions of lost wealth would be recovered for the public good. 

Couple these fantasies with a regressive tax policy to appease the hard-headed corporate bosses, and you have the essence of Trump’s economic plan.

Meanwhile, the serious problems of stagnation and inflation carried over from the Biden administration remain unattended.

Like the Democrats, Trump had no immigration policy that balanced guaranteeing labor-market stability with humanitarian concerns. Instead, he chose to not only expel all undocumented immigrants, but to also whip up hysterical waves of xenophobia, much of it rabidly racist. Unleashing a Gestapo-like ICE on communities and cities played poorly in even the corporate media, costing him dearly in support.

The Epstein scandal-- unlike other exposures of ruling-class libertinism and debauchery-- will not go away because both the Democrats and Republicans will not let it go away. Both parties are thoroughly devoted to throwing slime on their opponents, since both parties own prominent friends of Epstein. However, the Epstein affair has done serious and costly damage to Trump because he already exhibits extraordinary vulgarity, he has clumsily mishandled suspicions of his involvement, and his attorney general has botched the investigation. 

Despite running on a nationalist platform disclaiming foreign entanglements, Trump has been baited by the neo-conservative, Marco Rubio wing of MAGA to embrace regime change. After the Venezuela invasion, the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro Moros and Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, and the government’s subsequent capitulation, Trump grew “dizzy” with his perceived success. The Wall Street Journal has dubbed his novel regime-change strategy as “decapitate and delegate.” Now Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has wooed Trump into applying the strategy to Iran, launching a joint war that threatens to escalate into a regional war with profound implications for the global economy.

Trumpism’s decline comes at a time of the deepening crisis of capitalism. Since the devastating economic crash of 2007-2009, the world economy has failed to recover fully from financial stress, stagnation, and inflation. 

Under the management of political and central bank leaders, rapidly rising inequality, deteriorating standards of living, social stress, and widely expressed dissatisfaction afflict all the advanced capitalist countries. The most dramatic mass expression of this rising discontent is the growing rejection of centrist political parties—parties that have shared rule in most countries for many generations of voters. Trumpism and other, European and Asian, right-wing populist parties and movements reflect this bitter discontent with conventional governance.

Some of the so-called lower-middle or higher-middle-income capitalist or capitalist-accommodating countries have high growth rates that-- in spite of great inequality-- have generated growing middle strata and relative political stability. Insofar as they enjoy high growth from the migration of capital and industrial production to their economies, they also sustain high rates of labor exploitation along with modestly rising living standards. Their ruling classes have traded extreme labor exploitation for a competitive advantage against the advanced capitalist countries. 

Of course, the poorest countries remain tragically stunted from the legacy of European colonialism, denied any but the grimmest future in the capitalist economy.  

Competition between the advanced capitalist countries, rivalry with the emerging economies, and the desperate conflict between the have-nots for a place in the imperialist system constitute a global tinder box. 

Headlines understandably report US-Israeli aggression in the Middle East (now engaging nearly all of the countries in the region) or US brazen meddling in the Americas. 

Less acknowledged are the wars, conflicts, and civil wars stoked and conducted in nearly every region: Russia-Ukraine, Pakistan-Afghanistan, China-India, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Rwanda-DRCongo, Sudan, Thailand-Cambodia, Sahel, Myanmar, China-Taiwan, China-Japan, China-Philippines, Haiti, Colombia, are part of a list that grows almost weekly. Millions of lives have been affected by, even sacrificed to national ambitions to acquire markets, to attain resources, or to secure advantage over others directly or indirectly.

While the US remains the biggest capitalist bully in the imperialist system, it is simplistic and misleading to assume that its action is the only global expression of capital’s ruination upon the world’s people. Nor should it be forgotten that capital oppresses and immiserates the people of the US as well. It is an entire system in dysfunction.

As more and more people recognize that the current system and its managers are failing us, they will necessarily look for a more radical alternative. It should be apparent that recycling the same leaders, the same ideas, the same parties will simply not do. 

Yet there are those who insist that bringing down Trump or his global counterparts is enough. They see Trumpism and right-wing populism as a plague that visits the world periodically and must be collectively turned back to restore some kind of normalcy. They conjure an idyllic past that Trump and his ilk disturbed. This is the fantasy of privileged elites who have not felt the sting of inequality, insecurity, and misery persistently and increasingly inflicted by capital on many millions and for many generations.

To escape the trap of nostalgia for a decadent past and to avoid the return of right-wing snake charmers, socialism must be pressed on the people’s agenda. Socialism must not be pushed down the road as an ideal, as a far-off destination. The fact that polls show a popular acceptance of socialism, even a preference-- especially with the young-- for socialism, should demand its serious advocacy. 

The future can be brighter.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Some Thoughts on THE ELECTION

In the wake of the election-- THE ELECTION, in capital letters and with strong emphasis-- I have read many insightful and thoughtful assessments of how we have arrived at the point where Donald Trump was re-elected. I highly recommend the recent scathing essay by my colleague at Marxism-Leninism Today, Chris Townsend, on the crying need for an alternative to the two-party charade and the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party as a representative for working people.

But for every good analysis, there are a dozen awful commentaries that ultimately blame the voters’ judgment or endorse their worst fears. 

However, if pressed for a simple explanation of the election results, one might consider the following:

Once again, offered the odious, devil's choice between two candidates who are rich, elitist, and completely detached from “ordinary” people, the US voter chose a candidate who was rich, elitist, and completely detached from the lives and interests of most people. 

Of course, people want to know why the voters chose this particular rich elitist at this particular time. That question calls forth both a specific, practical response and a far deeper, concerning answer.

Polls and disregarded economic data show that most voters have a profoundly negative and often painful relationship with their economic status-- they are not doing well. They typically punish incumbents when under economic distress. This should come as no surprise. But the highly paid consultants of both parties-- with approaching two billion dollars to spend-- chose to press many other issues as well and deal with the economy only superficially. 

But in the end, exit polls show that economic distress played a decisive role in shaping voters’ choices. Apparently, the pundits forgot how persistent, value-sucking inflation led to the election of Ronald Reagan forty-four years ago. 

Again, like today, the 1970s were a period of realignment. The Democrats had lost the South to the Republicans over desegregation and the Civil Rights legislation. After the Nixonian scandals associated with the Watergate burglaries and other dirty tricks, the Democrats won over suburbanites disgusted with Republican chicaneries-- a demographic thought by many functionaries to be the needed replacement for the lost South.

In 1976, the Democrats swept in with a squeaky-clean, untarnished candidate, James Carter. With the decade-long stagflation coming to a climax, the Carter regime was short-lived; despite a rightward turn on his part, Carter was beaten by an ultra-right movie star turned politician, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the default choice for voters wanting change after a lost decade.

For those who like their history repeating from tragedy to farce, consider the transition from the self-righteous old red-baiter, Ronald Reagan, to the pompous, supercilious windbag, Donald Trump. History has a wicked sense of humor.

Few pundits acknowledge that Democratic Party strategists decided in the 1980s that the future of the party would be determined by the interests and concerns of metropolitan voters, especially those in the suburban upper-middle stratum who were “super voters,” economically secure, and attuned to lifestyle and identity liberalism. While they represented the legacy of “white flight,” the suburbanites contradictorily espoused the urbanity of tolerance and personal choice.

Coincident with the embrace of the suburban vote, Democratic Party strategists saw no need to attend to past central components of their coalition: the working class and multi-class Blacks. Loyal union leaders would corral the working-class vote and ascendant Black leaders would rally African Americans of all classes.

Besides, it was believed that neither had any other place to go besides the Democratic Party.

Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, revealed this thinking in 2016, when he said: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” Even before that careless remark, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama-- in moments of candor-- revealed their contempt for working people outside of the metropolis.

This election stamped “paid” on this program, with nearly all the assumed components of the Democratic coalition drifting towards the Republicans. 

The always insightful Adam Tooze, writing in The London Review of Books, concludes that the Democratic Party failings demonstrate “the high-achieving, insincere, vacuous incoherence that thrives at the top of the American political class.”

There is, however, a far deeper explanation of the Trump phenomenon seldom mentioned by mainstream commentators. Those who cite the specific issues of abortion rights, immigration, trans rights, crime, racism, etc.-- issues that indeed played a role in the November election-- neglect the fact that Trumpism is part of an international trend that infects the politics of such far-flung countries as India, Japan, and Argentina, as well as many European countries for often vastly different reasons. The rise of right populism in virtually all European countries-- Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, RN in France, AfD in Germany, Vox in Spain, Chega in Portugal, and similar parties in virtually every other European country-- share one defining feature with the politics of India’s Modi and Argentina’s Milei: a rejection of centrist, traditional parties. 

Right populism rises as a response to the ineffectiveness of the politics of normality. It reflects the dissatisfaction with business as usual.

For hundreds of millions throughout the world, the twenty-first century has brought a series of crises eroding, even destroying their quality of life. Ruling classes have stubbornly refused to address these crises through the indifference of traditional bourgeois political parties. Voters have punished these parties by turning to opportunist right-populist formations that promise to give voice to their anger. Of course, this often takes the form of ugly, reprehensible claims and slogans-- appealing to the basest of motives.

But it is not enough to denounce these backward policies without addressing the desperation that unfortunately popularizes those policies. It is not helpful to righteously raise the alarm of “fascism” if we fail to offer an alternative that will answer the hopelessness and misery that serves as the fertile soil for reaction.     

From the tragedy of the Reagan election to the farce of the Trump re-election, we have suffered from two sham parties taking turns representing the “people,” while neither did. Isn’t it time for an independent people's party-- a party of the working class majority-- that addresses the twenty-first century economic crises and their aftermath, the acute environmental crisis, the broken public health and health care systems, the insidious impoverishment of inflation, the crumbling infrastructure, and a host of other urgent demands, a party dedicated to serving the working people of the US and not its wealthy and powerful?

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Election Fever: A Fever Dream?

With nearly sixteen months to go, we are well into the silly season. The campaigning, fund raising, maneuvering, plotting, and mud-slinging have already reached a fever-pitch. We are told that the 2024 Presidential election-- like every Presidential election in my lifetime-- holds the fate of the country in its grip.

Maybe it does.

But it is almost impossible to see how the existing political machinery-- the two-party system, fueled by vast sums of money, and lubricated with the influence of a toadying, sensationalist media-- can generate any real answers to these challenges. 

The system’s apologists like to write and speak of “our democracy” -- in supposed contrast to the shifty authoritarians. But what kind of democracy requires a billion-dollar-or-more war chest to gain access to the state’s highest executive position? Under those terms, only a handful of rich and powerful people could realistically become President of the US by convincing other rich and powerful people to support and sustain their effort. Isn’t this akin to the “democracy” of the Roman Senate?

Of course, on the lower rungs of the political hierarchy, there are elected officials who are able to fund their campaigns for far less-- entry level costs are much lower. It is possible to parlay social activism, media exposure, and a popular base into a modest fund-raising apparatus that propels some representative faces into government. But they are quickly seduced and obsessed into building an even greater fund-raising machine and locating themselves in the narrowly defined political space occupied by the two parties. The weight of the system and its conventions soon drains their independence. 

It is hard to find optimism under these circumstances.

Faced with a Democratic Party that has inexorably moved to the right from its New Deal roots, many argue for nonetheless uniting behind the Democratic Party to halt the Republican Party’s inexorable movement to the right. It is a strange strategy.

Odd as it may be, it is sold to the left as building a buttress-- a united front-- against fascism. 

It is the word “fascism” that conjures up the notion of a united front across class, across identity, and across political loyalty. For those with some minimal knowledge of twentieth-century history, fascism triggers memories of powerful nationalist movements that arose in response to a potent anti-capitalist workers’ movement and a crisis of capitalist rule, even a challenge to the very existence of capitalism. These were alone or together sufficient conditions for the rise, the threat, or the political success of historical fascism.

The post-World War One economic crisis and the rise of a militant industrial class in Italy and intense class struggle in the Italian countryside gave birth to the first self-described fascist movement in Europe. The Italian ruling class awarded it power when it accepted Mussolini as the decisive barricade against intensifying class struggle.

Similarly, of the many nationalist movements that sprung up in Germany, the Nazi Party was the one best equipped to address the rise of a growing, powerful Communist Party during the economic collapse of the Great Depression. German industrialists showered the Nazis with money, and their representatives expeditiously turned over power to Adolf Hitler.

We may extend the term “fascism” to other 1930s regimes in Europe-- Mannerheim, Pilsudski, Antonescu, Admiral Horthy, Franco, Salazar, Petain, etc.-- because they were puppets of Naziism or shared the same anti-Communist zeal which was sparked by intense class conflict within their respective countries. 

Whether one prefers to confer the terms “quasi-fascist” or “semi-fascist” instead of “fascist” on the military coups-- Greece, Chile, Indonesia, etc.-- arising from political instability and left insurgency since World War II is a matter of little import. Nonetheless, they all share-- perhaps with some nationally specific differences-- the conditions that gave rise to fascism in the 1930s. Significantly, they also all established an “open, terroristic dictatorship” as defined by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935-- a political edifice built on the ashes of the previous structure.

It would take an enormous stretch of the imagination to suggest that the US ruling class is under siege from a revolutionary workers’ movement, that US politics has reached a stage of lethal instability, that the US economy is on the verge of collapse, or that there is a force empowered and dedicated to the elimination of bourgeois democracy. 

Confronted with these historical anomalies, it is hard to see the danger of fascism as anything imminent in the US. Certainly, there are fascists in the US, even fascist organizations. Moreover, there are many fascist-minded people and people with fascistic ideas, even in positions of power. But fascism is neither around the corner nor on the near horizon.

Yet the unjustified threat of fascism is a useful tool in uniting the left behind a soulless, gutless Democratic Party-- a shell organization built around fundraising and fright-mongering. If there were no fascist bogeyman, or Communist bogeyman, or Russian bogeyman, today’s Democratic Party would have little on which to base a campaign. 

That is not to deny that the people in the US are in crisis. It is certainly true that there is growing dissatisfaction in the US, as in Europe and other advanced capitalist countries. Opinion polls show a broad, deep distrust in long-established institutions. From the courts to the political parties, citizens have lost confidence in the old ways of doing things (for example, in a Quinnipiac University poll, 47% of respondents indicated that they would vote for a third party in the US, should there be one).

Nor should this argument be taken to mean that there is no threat from the right. In response to the mass dissatisfaction, movements and parties have sprung up, exploiting the thirst for the new, speaking to the neglect of various economic, class, and regional interests, and promising to voice the concerns of the majority against the arrogance of elites. Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Professor Thomas Greven of the Free University of Berlin noted that “A right-wing populist backlash… was inevitable.” A scholar of right-wing populism in the US and Europe, the professor then points to the key reason: “For me, it goes back to the failure of center-left, social democratic parties to manage, in a socially acceptable way, increased global competition.”

The breadth of dissatisfaction is shown by the rise of right-populism in many countries. And, as Professor Greven argues, it is the failure of the center, especially the left center, that allows right-populism to grow. Today, as in the 1930s, the cravenness of social democracy creates a political vacuum. The opportunist right has only to fill it. In the case of the 1930s, the ruling classes saw stark choices between revolutionary socialism and fascism. They too often picked fascism and nursed it into power.

Today, there are no stark choices. In Europe, faddish, rebranded social democratic parties like Podemos, Syriza, The Five Star Movement, or The Greens fall as quickly as they arise. In the US and the UK, Labour and the Democrats don’t bother to rebrand, they simply put “New” in front of “Labour” and “Democrats,” offering their services as the acquaintance that you know as opposed to the other that you should fear.

So, if we are to understand Professor Greven, then it would make no sense to embrace social democracy-- including the Democratic Party in the US and Labour in the UK-- when the rise of right-wing populism is itself a response to social democracy’s failings! How can clinging to the Democratic Party-- the party that betrayed the cause of working people-- be the answer to the rise in popularity of its right-wing movement posing as an alternative? Surely, this is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

But once again, as in so many election cycles, leaders of labor, civil rights organizations, environmental groups, and other worthy causes are lining up to support the Democratic Party-- regardless of its betrayal of working people.

Those wise enough to recognize the Democratic Party’s many decades of spinelessness propose that the left conspire to infiltrate or take over the party, to operate both outside and inside the Democrat apparatus. 

But to what effect? 

In its long history, the Democratic Party only embraced working-class interests when pressed by independent forces outside of the Democratic Party who directly threatened the party’s most urgent agenda-- to retain or gain power. That is the story of the Democrats’ moments of glory: the New Deal and the Great Society. In both cases, the social movements led and the Democrats followed. Today’s urgency to rally behind the Democrats is foolish-- counterproductive foolishness.

Plenty of charlatans and hucksters join with the misinformed and delusional to pressure the left to steer clear of third-party movements and back the Democrats for one more round. Like the serial abuser, they ask the victims to give them one more chance.

Another apologist grants the need for separation, but suggests something called a “dirty break” instead of a divorce. Citing the long, tortured break with the UK Liberal Party that spawned the Labour Party in 1906, he recommends supporting the Democrats until the pain is so great that working people will flee the Democrats and form their own party, a process that may need several decades to ferment. Of course, that is the same Labour Party that recently ambushed its progressive wing and banished its left agenda back to the margin of UK politics.

The same author urged the same patience with the Democrats in 2017, then based on the long transitional “dirty break” that the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party made with the Democrats. The Farmer-Labor Party is long gone, but we will probably hear of the “dirty break” again in 2027.

It is a striking fact that most of our self-described left does not want to have a discussion of a third-party campaign. The mere thought of an alternative to the Democrats is seen as an assault on Enlightenment values, endangering the chances of defeating whatever candidate the Republicans turn up! It is inconceivable to them that pressure from the left might even strengthen their candidates in the distant election. It’s too risky…

For the rest of us, there is no way to begin to break the fatal chokehold that the Democrats have on the left other than supporting an outsider, an independent voice. It must be understood that the process will be long, tortured, and with many setbacks. Yet there will never be a better time when it will not be long, tortured, and with many setbacks.

It is not so important that we have the best standard-bearer or that we agree with every position he or she holds. But a good candidate does exist with good positions on the most important questions: Cornel West!

For a strong case for a third party and Cornel West’s candidacy, I recommend Chris Hedges' article: Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

What We Said Then...

A few days after the 2016 US Presidential elections, the editorial board of Marxism-Leninism Today constructed an early, preliminary assessment of the widely unexpected Trump victory. We collected our impressions and distilled our thoughts and posted our first analysis on November 15, 2016.

The Meaning of the 2016 US Presidential Election stands up well as a first take on the events that had rocked the media on the morning of November 9, 2016. In fact, while going against the then-prevalent grain, it captures succinctly how such an unlikely, unworthy character could attain the highest office in the most powerful country in the history of the world. We suggested that:

...much of the liberal and left commentary has focused on President-elect Donald Trump, and the danger that his ascension to the White House portends.

 While that is a matter of great and serious concern, it should not overshadow the meaning of the election — what the election says about the two-party system and the mood of the electorate. Without a class analysis, without an understanding of what the vote expresses… future results will be even more disappointing.

Four years later, that forecast is not at all off the mark. We are, as Matt Taibbi noted recently, “...arriving where we might have four years ago…”-- with a Trumpian entr’acte. 

While the left within the Democratic Party has made notable gains with the public, its influence within the Party is no greater today. Bernie Sanders, a popular left icon, and others left of the party’s center worked diligently to elect Biden and the ticket, but they have garnered no concessions from the Democratic establishment. 

The Democratic Party, despite some electoral successes by its small progressive component, has lost further congressional ground in the interim election and in 2020, even with Biden’s close victory.

We noted in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was clearly the favored candidate of the ruling class: “It is important to note that nearly 85% of those super PAC contributions went to Hillary Clinton’s campaign… Nearly every major newspaper endorsed her. And Wikileaks revealed the widespread collusion between media figures and political operatives working in her favor. Like most of monopoly capital, most of the vast news and entertainment empires favored Hillary Clinton.”

“Among the big losers in the November 8 US federal elections were the commentators, the media, the electoral consultants, the pollsters, and the two major political parties.”

We saw Trump overcoming the Democratic Party advantage with his false promises of deep and radical change: “The Democrats lost because they refused to address the issues that mattered most to the electorate. By nearly twice the number of the next most popular trait, voters sought a candidate who ‘can bring needed change.’ Instead, Clinton offered experience and continuity.”

Alternatively, Trump postured as a faux-populist, intent on “draining the swamp” of cynicism, corruption, and apathy. We characterized Trump’s campaign as an exercise in right-wing populism, “...a contradictory ideology, combin[ing] attacks on socially oppressed groups with distorted forms of anti-elitism based on scapegoating. Trump’s populism represented an amalgam of white racism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, isolationism, anti-intellectualism, American nationalism, nostalgia for a golden past (Make America Great Again!) and hostility to ‘establishment’ elites.”

We were careful to distinguish right-wing populism from home grown fascism, as so much of the left failed to do: “Though the Trump movement has certainly attracted fascistic elements of the so-called ‘alt-right’... and could conceivably morph in a fascist direction, as of now it lacks, except in embryonic form, most of the classic elements associated with fascism...”

“And of course, unlike Germany in the early 1930s… there is no existential political crisis in which the US ruling class feels threatened enough by revolution to turn away from normal bourgeois democratic methods of rule.”

We warned that “[I]t would be a mistake not to see the economic distress, frustration, and anti-elitist anger as the central force in the Democratic Party defeat. Many key, if not most, predominantly white, working class areas that abandoned the Democrats in 2016 backed Obama in 2008 and 2012. And they backed Obama, not necessarily from racial identity, but from a thirst for change. They voted for Trump — a corrupted, wind bag businessman — for the same reason.”

In the immediate wake of the election, the MLT collective anticipated that: “Democratic Party operatives are working feverishly to channel the anti-Trump sentiment into nothing more than a fresh campaign of uncritical support for Democrats… They assiduously avoid any remedies to the inequalities, declining living standards, and indebtedness that plague working people. Instead, they rail against Trump’s personal failings and vulgarity, but make no demands on his administration.”

This was to become the persistent theme of Democrats and the liberal media for the next four years. While anticipating distractions, we no doubt underestimated how the Democratic Party would obsess over bogus Russia connections and assorted conspiracies rather than address issues important to US citizens. Politics were reduced to reality-show drama, while urgent needs went unaddressed. Though Democratic officialdom and a compliant media tirelessly and tiresomely intrigued against and mocked the Trump administration, it became clear that, at the same time, they sought to delegitimize the 2016 election with charges of foreign collusion and domestic chicanery.

It is a bitter irony that questioning the 2016 election results served as a prelude to Trump’s own Quixotic campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the subsequent election results in 2020.

In summary, we sized up the 2016 election results as follows: “For the people, this election marks a further deterioration, a deepening crisis, of the US two-party system. The distance between the interests of the masses and the actions of elected public officials are, today, virtually unbridgeable. The working class loses again, as it would have if the Democratic Party candidate had won.”

And now a lackluster, center-right Democrat has eked out a narrow victory over a proven mediocrity, and we are, as Matt Taibbi put it, “arriving where we might have four years ago.”

We placed hope, perhaps somewhat misplaced, that while: “...after Clinton’s nomination, many were shepherded back into the Democratic Party fold by the Party’s cry of impending doom, still others saw clearly the corruption and corporate-complicity of the Democratic leadership. They recognized the impossibility of securing real change through the vehicle of the Democratic Party. They give hope to the emergence of a truly independent movement, one that understands the need to replace capitalism with people’s power — socialism. This election could well mark an important step in that direction.”

We remain hopeful that even more people will be drawn away from witting or unwitting obeisance to the Democratic Party. The lure of funding, the fear of being marginalized, the seduction of access to seats of power, and unbridled opportunism hold many within the party’s orbit. Yet more and more grow frustrated with the complacency and detachment of elected Democrats, an affliction that has historically infected even the party’s most progressive figures.

Nonetheless, we are encouraged by the growing interest and support our website has enjoyed, especially in the last few years.

The Force the Vote movement for shaming the Democratic leadership toward a floor vote on Medicare For All is a welcome, early, and healthy sign. Rising over a month before Biden’s inauguration, it shows that there exists a militant, independent left determined to be neither servile nor compliant, an encouraging omen for the future. In the face of resistance from weak-spined “progressive” Democrats, it has spurred some, even Bernie Sanders, to pledge to hold up the obscene military budget in order to secure spending on a more humane pandemic response. Still others now join the fight, seeking to leverage advanced, progressive issues against Speaker Pelosi-- the symbol, in the House of Representatives, of all that corporate ownership of the Democratic Party buys. These engagements portend other battles brewing in the coming year.

Four years after Marxism-Leninism Today’s early analysis of Trump’s ascension, it is satisfying to revisit the document. It shows the usefulness and sagacity of “a class analysis,” of the science of Marxism-Leninism over the fog of distortion spread by the capitalist scribes.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com