America's Election Shame

Often others are able to see through the ideological mystification of capitalist politics. A member has drawn the blog’s attention to this response from a friend to an article about the American election campaign at Spiegel Online: America's Election Shame.

He recommends his friend's reply to it for its clarity. His friend writes:

"Good article… and it’s absolutely true and getting said over here that the Republicans are simply reaping what they have sown….

But in a strange way, the Sanders / Clinton debate on the Democratic side, which is not gutter, represents the other side of the coin for the same trend….

It’s the trend itself that needs to be clearer…. What I mean is …

The Republicans are deeply divided… Trump is moderate/anti-Republican on many issues such as keeping Social Security, gay rights, etc. He is anti-free trade – believes in tariffs and other restrictions, which spits in the face of the Republican free enterprisers…At the same time, he goes over the top with the racism, sexism, and bigotry fostered and used by the Republicans over the past few decades.

And he has a lot of support… particularly among white lower-income men, but not limited to them…

Meanwhile, the Democrats are also seriously divided…. A great deal of the party base, young people in particular, love Sanders, while the establishment loves Hilary. Her claim to real-person support is mainly with a huge majority of black people – because of the history from Bill and her going back to his governorship … But even that may be eroding….  There’s a lot of talk, a lot of people who say that they would vote for Bernie but would not vote for Hilary under any conditions…

And Bernie’s main point is that the policies of BOTH the Repubs and the Demos, with all the “free trade” agreements and favorable treatment of the rich banks and corporations – policies including the Clintons and Obama – have just served to make rich people richer and put more Ameircans in deep trouble…. He makes a living pounding on the fact that the richest people buy and control government in this country.

In other words, the common thread for both Sanders and Trump is speaking to the deep anger and frustration of people in this country. [our emphasis]

The main difference seems to be that the pro-Trump supporters seem to blame immigrants, people of color, Muslims, uppity women, foreign countries such as China and Mexico…. While the pro-Sanders progressives blame Rich and the politicians they have bought.

Where and how this all plays out … I don’t know … But we may be at a time where things are brewing and moving some major re-alignment of forces…. may be some big changes over the next few years… In what direction, I don’t know … The whole role of terrorism and how that will play into it, the continued or halted disintegration of peoples’ quality of life … too many unknowns for me … but we’re entering a major transition period of some sort, I think…"